Spy on Your Customers… or Else
By Mark Nestmann
Do you distrust the banking system? Prefer to do business in cash? Complain about the encroachment of Big Brother into every facet of your life?
If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you’d better watch out. You’re a “person of interest” – and a growing number of businesses must report your “suspicious activities” to the feds. If they don’t, they can be fined and the responsible parties even imprisoned.
These requirements originated in a law called the “Bank Secrecy Act” (BSA). Of course, this Orwellian law has nothing at all to do with protecting bank secrecy. Indeed, the BSA has all but eliminated confidentiality.
Regulations issued under the BSA require financial institutions to notify the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a Treasury Department bureau, of any unusual transactions in which their customers engage. Reporting is mandatory for transactions that exceed $10,000 and are not the sort in which the particular customer would normally be expected to engage. For money transmitter businesses, a $2,000 threshold applies.
The businesses covered by these requirements must file “suspicious activities reports” (SARs) secretly, without your knowledge or consent. FinCEN makes the reports available electronically to every US Attorney’s office and to dozens of law enforcement agencies. No court order, warrant, subpoena, or even written request is needed to access a report.
What exactly is suspicious? According to official Treasury guidance, suspicious behavior includes:
Paying off a loan;
Objecting to completing Currency Transaction Reports (required for transactions over $10,000);
Changing currency from small to large denominations;
Buying cashier’s checks, money orders, or travelers’ checks for less than the reporting limit $10,000 for a cash transaction);
Making deposits in cash, then having the money wired somewhere else; and
Withdrawing cash without counting the cash first.
Now, FinCEN has issued preliminary regulations that could extend these rules to investment managers. All SEC-registered investment advisers would be required to design and implement an anti-money-laundering program. They would also need to file SARs with FinCEN.
Once these rules come into effect, investment advisors would no longer be accountable to you, their client. Their highest duty, reinforced by civil and criminal sanctions, would be to act as unpaid undercover agents for the US Treasury.
But FinCEN’s suspicious transaction reporting rules are just the tip of the iceberg. For instance, official guidance from the FBI and other government agencies indicate that all of the following actions make you a terror suspect:
Making an inter-library loan request for “The Little Red Book” by former Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-Tung;
Owning a suspicious cat;
Wearing a politically provocative shirt;
Searching online for a pressure cooker and backpack;
Putting a “Do not disturb” sign on the door to your hotel room;
Making politically inflammatory remarks when getting atattoo;
Attempting to shield your computer screen from the viewing of others;
Expressing frustration with “mainstream ideologies”; and
Storing more than seven days of food in your home.
Then there’s the “drug courier profile” developed by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). The following profiles are all court-approved reasons to search you and your property:
Having a pale or dark complexion;
Having a Hispanic appearance;
Being between the ages of 25 and 35;
Acting too nervous or too calm;
Carrying $100, $50, $20, $10, or $5 bills;
Wearing casual clothing;
Wearing perfume;
Having window coverings on your personal residence;
Buying a one-way or round-trip airline ticket; and
Being among the first, last, or middle group of passengers off of an airplane.
As Richard Miller expressed in his landmark book, Drug Warriors and Their Prey,
Being a citizen is sufficient cause to suspect a person of criminal conduct, thereby constricting civil liberties protections for that person. That situation is hard to distinguish from the legal status of citizens of Nazi Germany.
In a world that views virtually everything you do as suspicious, there aren’t a lot of options to protect yourself. Indeed, simply by expressing your interest in privacy, asset protection, precious metals, or any of the other topics I cover routinely, you’re likely on one government watch list or another already.
However, you can take steps to avoid having a bank or other financial institution – including an investment manager – file an SAR on you. If you’re considering doing anything out of the ordinary in your account, talk to an officer at the bank, brokerage, or other financial institution first. For instance, you might want to let someone know before you pay off a loan or make or receive a large transfer.
If you have a reasonable explanation for the transaction, it’s much less likely to set off an alarm. And in a country in which all citizens are considered criminal suspects, that’s definitely something you want to avoid.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/mark-nestmann/spy-on-your-customers-or-else/
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
SSRIs and violence...
Could antidepressants make you violent? Young people who take drugs including Prozac are '50% more likely to be convicted of assault and murder'
Those in late teens and early 20s 50% more likely to commit violent crime
SSRI drugs include Prozac, Seroxat, Lustral, Cipralex and Cipramil
Experts believe adolescent brains are more sensitive to drug interference
And less likely to take their pills allowing symptoms to boil over to violence
By Fiona Macrae Science Editor For The Daily Mail
Popular antidepressant pills make young people violent, it is feared.
An Oxford University study found that men – and women – in their late teens and early 20s – were almost 50 per cent more likely to be convicted of offences from assault to murder when taking SSRI drugs.
This family of anti-depressants includes Prozac, as well as Seroxat, Lustral, Cipralex and Cipramil, the most commonly prescribed of the pills.
One in eight Britons takes SSRIs each year – and the number of prescription has doubled in the last decade.
Meanwhile in the US around 11 per cent of people aged 12 and over take antidepressants, including SSRIs, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3235530/Could-Prozac-make-violent-People-antidepressants-50-likely-convicted-assault-murder.html#ixzz3lwDmAVCu
Those in late teens and early 20s 50% more likely to commit violent crime
SSRI drugs include Prozac, Seroxat, Lustral, Cipralex and Cipramil
Experts believe adolescent brains are more sensitive to drug interference
And less likely to take their pills allowing symptoms to boil over to violence
By Fiona Macrae Science Editor For The Daily Mail
Popular antidepressant pills make young people violent, it is feared.
An Oxford University study found that men – and women – in their late teens and early 20s – were almost 50 per cent more likely to be convicted of offences from assault to murder when taking SSRI drugs.
This family of anti-depressants includes Prozac, as well as Seroxat, Lustral, Cipralex and Cipramil, the most commonly prescribed of the pills.
One in eight Britons takes SSRIs each year – and the number of prescription has doubled in the last decade.
Meanwhile in the US around 11 per cent of people aged 12 and over take antidepressants, including SSRIs, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention...
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3235530/Could-Prozac-make-violent-People-antidepressants-50-likely-convicted-assault-murder.html#ixzz3lwDmAVCu
Planned Parenthood and black genocide...
Who's really killing blacks in America? Planned Parenthood kills 90,000 blacks in one year; Confederate flag kills no one
by: J. D. Heyes
A recent race-related mass shooting in Charleston, S.C., by a deranged, drug-addled young white man who was subsequently discovered on a racist website posing alternately with a Confederate army battle flag and a U.S. flag led to the popular denunciation of just one of those symbols, the former.
Compelled in large part by race-baiters who convinced African Americans to feel offended by Confederate symbolism because of historic ties to slavery, businesses stopped selling the battle flag, state governments removed it from public spaces, and a movement began across much of the South to replace Confederate monuments and de-emphasize Confederate history.
And yet, one of the biggest threats to the lives of blacks in America is not only a lawful entity but remains free to continue decimating the African American population – Planned Parenthood, an organization that is favored by the political Left and, ironically, the same Democrat Party that most blacks affiliate with.
Also, ironically, one of the most polarizing figures for Democrats, former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential contender Sarah Palin, seemed acutely aware of this hypocrisy in a recent Facebook status update of an image featuring the Confederate battle flag image and Planned Parenthood's corporate logo.
The image asks which symbol "killed 90,000 black babies last year?"
Today, the Confederate battle flag is not black America's biggest threat
The answer is, of course, Planned Parenthood, the abortion provider currently under fire after some of its officials were caught on video haggling to get the highest profit possible for aborted baby body parts.
Democrats, including 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have defended Planned Parenthood, describing the organization as a responsible provider of "women's health services" and pushing back against any notion that it sells baby parts for profit, a violation of federal law.
Nevertheless, as reported by Politico, the video revelations have renewed calls from Planned Parenthood critics and pro-life advocates to take away nearly $500 million in taxpayer funding annually – though by law, that funding cannot officially be used directly for abortions (but that doesn't mean that the money doesn't still support abortion services).
BlackGenocide.org is a website dedicated to exposing the deadly impact that abortion – and, in particular, abortions performed by Planned Parenthood – is having on America's African American community.
"The purpose of this web site is to expose the disproportionate amount of Black babies destroyed by the abortion industry. For every two African American women that get pregnant one will choose to abort," the site says on a transition page that auto loads to the home page after a few seconds. In quoting statistics from the Alan Guttmaucher Institute, it states, "A Black baby is 5 times more likely to be killed in the womb than a White Baby."
Supportive of Democrats who support killing them off
The site also contains a quote from liberal left-wing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, from 2009: "Frankly I had thought that at that time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." "Roe" in this quote is a reference to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 legalizing abortion in all 50 states.
And this quote from Rev. Clenard H. Childress, Jr.: "The most dangerous place for an African American to be is in the womb of their African American mother."
According to the website:
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn't that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant.
The site also notes that PP was founded by Margaret Sanger, a "devout racist" who created the "Negro Project," whose aim was to sterilize unknowing young black women and others she deemed undesirable (Sanger was a eugenicist as well). She once said, "Colored people [the euphemism for African Americans in the early part of the 20th century, when Sanger was forming her groups] are like human weeds and are to be exterminated."
And yet, blacks vote overwhelmingly for the same Democrats who use them as political cover by whipping up opposition to a now-harmless Confederate symbol, all the while supporting an organization that is committed in part to exterminating as many African Americans as possible.
To most Americans, this makes no sense whatsoever.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051187_Planned_Parenthood_black_genocide_abortion_mills.html#ixzz3lwDJeV69
by: J. D. Heyes
A recent race-related mass shooting in Charleston, S.C., by a deranged, drug-addled young white man who was subsequently discovered on a racist website posing alternately with a Confederate army battle flag and a U.S. flag led to the popular denunciation of just one of those symbols, the former.
Compelled in large part by race-baiters who convinced African Americans to feel offended by Confederate symbolism because of historic ties to slavery, businesses stopped selling the battle flag, state governments removed it from public spaces, and a movement began across much of the South to replace Confederate monuments and de-emphasize Confederate history.
And yet, one of the biggest threats to the lives of blacks in America is not only a lawful entity but remains free to continue decimating the African American population – Planned Parenthood, an organization that is favored by the political Left and, ironically, the same Democrat Party that most blacks affiliate with.
Also, ironically, one of the most polarizing figures for Democrats, former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential contender Sarah Palin, seemed acutely aware of this hypocrisy in a recent Facebook status update of an image featuring the Confederate battle flag image and Planned Parenthood's corporate logo.
The image asks which symbol "killed 90,000 black babies last year?"
Today, the Confederate battle flag is not black America's biggest threat
The answer is, of course, Planned Parenthood, the abortion provider currently under fire after some of its officials were caught on video haggling to get the highest profit possible for aborted baby body parts.
Democrats, including 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have defended Planned Parenthood, describing the organization as a responsible provider of "women's health services" and pushing back against any notion that it sells baby parts for profit, a violation of federal law.
Nevertheless, as reported by Politico, the video revelations have renewed calls from Planned Parenthood critics and pro-life advocates to take away nearly $500 million in taxpayer funding annually – though by law, that funding cannot officially be used directly for abortions (but that doesn't mean that the money doesn't still support abortion services).
BlackGenocide.org is a website dedicated to exposing the deadly impact that abortion – and, in particular, abortions performed by Planned Parenthood – is having on America's African American community.
"The purpose of this web site is to expose the disproportionate amount of Black babies destroyed by the abortion industry. For every two African American women that get pregnant one will choose to abort," the site says on a transition page that auto loads to the home page after a few seconds. In quoting statistics from the Alan Guttmaucher Institute, it states, "A Black baby is 5 times more likely to be killed in the womb than a White Baby."
Supportive of Democrats who support killing them off
The site also contains a quote from liberal left-wing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, from 2009: "Frankly I had thought that at that time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of." "Roe" in this quote is a reference to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision in 1973 legalizing abortion in all 50 states.
And this quote from Rev. Clenard H. Childress, Jr.: "The most dangerous place for an African American to be is in the womb of their African American mother."
According to the website:
Planned Parenthood is the largest abortion provider in America. 78% of their clinics are in minority communities. Blacks make up 12% of the population, but 35% of the abortions in America. Are we being targeted? Isn't that genocide? We are the only minority in America that is on the decline in population. If the current trend continues, by 2038 the black vote will be insignificant.
The site also notes that PP was founded by Margaret Sanger, a "devout racist" who created the "Negro Project," whose aim was to sterilize unknowing young black women and others she deemed undesirable (Sanger was a eugenicist as well). She once said, "Colored people [the euphemism for African Americans in the early part of the 20th century, when Sanger was forming her groups] are like human weeds and are to be exterminated."
And yet, blacks vote overwhelmingly for the same Democrats who use them as political cover by whipping up opposition to a now-harmless Confederate symbol, all the while supporting an organization that is committed in part to exterminating as many African Americans as possible.
To most Americans, this makes no sense whatsoever.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051187_Planned_Parenthood_black_genocide_abortion_mills.html#ixzz3lwDJeV69
You know these neocon nuts are up to no good...
Homeland Security Chief Warns of 'New Phase' of Terrorist Threats in the United States
Robert Wenzel
Jeh Johnson, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, was in San Francisco on Tuesday and, during a question and answer period at the Commonwealth Club, warned of a "new phase" of terrorist threats in the United States.
He said that the new terrorist threats will be home grown and inspired by news on the internet.
I am not making this up:
This "new threat" will certainly come to careful followers of the news as a surprise, and of even greater surprise to those involved in protecting against terrorist attacks. Nearly a decade ago, a top Las Vegas hotel security chief said almost word for word what Johnson just classified as a "new threat."
Here's a little history on Johnson.When he was general counsel of the Defense Department, Johnson co-chaired the working group that studied the potential impact of a repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and reported that the risk to overall military effectiveness of a repeal would be low.
He was also a partner at the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP,to which he returned after his four years at the Defense Department
Johnson was nominated by President Obama to be the fourth U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in October 2013, and was subsequently confirmed on December 16, 2013.
While at the Commonwealth Club, Johnson also mentioned that the Homeland Security budget is $60 billion and that the department has 240,000 employees.
He said that the TSA, under the DHS umbrella. screens 1.8 million people each day and he said the recently created faster clearance that was designed to include a shorter line is "rapidly becoming the longer line."
He said that if the new cyber-security legislation passes Congress, it will "greatly enhance my authority."
He also said that the DHS is now "working closer with local police authorities," in an attempt to identify terrorists.
He said that half of the 11 million undocumented in the country have been here more than 10 years and that from a law enforcement point of view he wants "to see them come out of the shadows."
He also noted that the DHS opened a recruitment office in April in Silicon Valley to recruit cyber security employees. He said it would be a great experience for cyber expertss to work for the government to see how it works "and then go work for Citibank."
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/09/homeland-security-chief-warns-of-new.html
Robert Wenzel
Jeh Johnson, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, was in San Francisco on Tuesday and, during a question and answer period at the Commonwealth Club, warned of a "new phase" of terrorist threats in the United States.
He said that the new terrorist threats will be home grown and inspired by news on the internet.
I am not making this up:
This "new threat" will certainly come to careful followers of the news as a surprise, and of even greater surprise to those involved in protecting against terrorist attacks. Nearly a decade ago, a top Las Vegas hotel security chief said almost word for word what Johnson just classified as a "new threat."
Here's a little history on Johnson.When he was general counsel of the Defense Department, Johnson co-chaired the working group that studied the potential impact of a repeal of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and reported that the risk to overall military effectiveness of a repeal would be low.
He was also a partner at the New York law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP,to which he returned after his four years at the Defense Department
Johnson was nominated by President Obama to be the fourth U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security in October 2013, and was subsequently confirmed on December 16, 2013.
While at the Commonwealth Club, Johnson also mentioned that the Homeland Security budget is $60 billion and that the department has 240,000 employees.
He said that the TSA, under the DHS umbrella. screens 1.8 million people each day and he said the recently created faster clearance that was designed to include a shorter line is "rapidly becoming the longer line."
He said that if the new cyber-security legislation passes Congress, it will "greatly enhance my authority."
He also said that the DHS is now "working closer with local police authorities," in an attempt to identify terrorists.
He said that half of the 11 million undocumented in the country have been here more than 10 years and that from a law enforcement point of view he wants "to see them come out of the shadows."
He also noted that the DHS opened a recruitment office in April in Silicon Valley to recruit cyber security employees. He said it would be a great experience for cyber expertss to work for the government to see how it works "and then go work for Citibank."
Link:
http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/09/homeland-security-chief-warns-of-new.html
Blunder or pre-planned?
Dubya’s Biggest, Stupidist, Most Emotional, Irrational Blunder
Michael S. Rozeff
George W. Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was by Bush’s side on 9/11. His tweets tell us Bush’s emotional reactions or “thinking”, if you will. They amount to making WAR. But against whom? Not Saudi Arabia, the source of most of those who flew the airplanes into the Trade Towers that day. Not a state that was and is a close ally of the U.S. because of oil. No, Bush chose Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the Taliban of Afghanistan. Later on, Obama (and H. Clinton), perpetuating Bush’s idiocy, took on both Libya and Syria, the latter in a further misguided effort to deny Russia its warm water ally in the Middle East.
The blunder was to turn 9/11 into a war on terror.
America’s corresponding biggest, stupidest, most emotional and irrational blunder has been to erect a state and a presidency that have the enormous powers to act on the emotional whims of its presidents (and Congresses) and to accord them both respect and support. The war on terror was and is such an emotional whim. So is the neocon notion of U.S. superpower dominance. Only with such a political apparatus in place such as America now has and has had for a long time could Bush 2 have brought about the last 15 years of ongoing disasters.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/dubyas-biggest-stupidist-most-emotional-irrational-blunder/
Michael S. Rozeff
George W. Bush’s press secretary, Ari Fleischer, was by Bush’s side on 9/11. His tweets tell us Bush’s emotional reactions or “thinking”, if you will. They amount to making WAR. But against whom? Not Saudi Arabia, the source of most of those who flew the airplanes into the Trade Towers that day. Not a state that was and is a close ally of the U.S. because of oil. No, Bush chose Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the Taliban of Afghanistan. Later on, Obama (and H. Clinton), perpetuating Bush’s idiocy, took on both Libya and Syria, the latter in a further misguided effort to deny Russia its warm water ally in the Middle East.
The blunder was to turn 9/11 into a war on terror.
America’s corresponding biggest, stupidest, most emotional and irrational blunder has been to erect a state and a presidency that have the enormous powers to act on the emotional whims of its presidents (and Congresses) and to accord them both respect and support. The war on terror was and is such an emotional whim. So is the neocon notion of U.S. superpower dominance. Only with such a political apparatus in place such as America now has and has had for a long time could Bush 2 have brought about the last 15 years of ongoing disasters.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/dubyas-biggest-stupidist-most-emotional-irrational-blunder/
Public School State Prison...
Public School Students Are the New Inmates in the American Police State
By John W. Whitehead
“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning. From metal detectors to drug tests, from increased policing to all-seeing electronic surveillance, the public schools of the twenty-first century reflect a society that has become fixated on crime, security and violence.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes
In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.).
Indeed, at a time when we are all viewed as suspects, there are so many ways in which a person can be branded a criminal for violating any number of laws, regulations or policies. Even if you haven’t knowingly violated any laws, there is still a myriad of ways in which you can run afoul of the police state and end up on the wrong side of a jail cell.
Unfortunately, when you’re a child in the American police state, life is that much worse.
Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools contain almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”
From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment she graduates, she will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.
If your child is fortunate enough to survive his encounter with the public schools, you should count yourself fortunate.
Most students are not so lucky.
By the time the average young person in America finishes their public school education, nearly one out of every three of them will have been arrested.
More than 3 million students are suspended or expelled from schools every year, often for minor misbehavior, such as “disruptive behavior” or “insubordination.” Black students are three times more likely than white students to face suspension and expulsion.
For instance, a Virginia sixth grader, the son of two school teachers and a member of the school’s gifted program, was suspended for a year after school officials found a leaf (likely a maple leaf) in his backpack that they suspected was marijuana. Despite the fact that the leaf in question was not marijuana (a fact that officials knew almost immediately), the 11-year-old was still kicked out of school, charged with marijuana possession in juvenile court, enrolled in an alternative school away from his friends, subjected to twice-daily searches for drugs, and forced to be evaluated for substance abuse problems.
As the Washington Post warns: “It doesn’t matter if your son or daughter brings a real pot leaf to school, or if he brings something that looks like a pot leaf—okra, tomato, maple, buckeye, etc. If your kid calls it marijuana as a joke, or if another kid thinks it might be marijuana, that’s grounds for expulsion.”
Many state laws require that schools notify law enforcement whenever a student is found with an “imitation controlled substance,” basically anything that look likes a drug but isn’t actually illegal. As a result, students have been suspended for bringing to school household spices such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.
It’s not just look-alike drugs that can get a student in trouble under school zero tolerance policies. Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in detention.
Acts of kindness, concern or basic manners can also result in suspensions. One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.
Unfortunately, while these may appear to be isolated incidents, they are indicative of a nationwide phenomenon in which children are treated like suspects and criminals, especially within the public schools.
The schools have become a microcosm of the American police state, right down to the host of surveillance technologies, including video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners, as well as RFID and GPS tracking devices, employed to keep constant watch over their student bodies.
Making matters worse are the police.
Students accused of being disorderly or noncompliant have a difficult enough time navigating the bureaucracy of school boards, but when you bring the police into the picture, after-school detention and visits to the principal’s office are transformed into punishments such as misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.
In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking—sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”
Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting (nearly 20,000 by 2003). Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SROs) have become de facto wardens in the elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepperspray, batons and brute force.
The horror stories are legion.
One SRO is accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting the cafeteria line. That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury. In Pennsylvania, a student was tased after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.
Defending the use of handcuffs and pepper spray to subdue students, one Alabama police department reasoned that if they can employ such tactics on young people away from school, they should also be permitted to do so on campus.
Now advocates for such harsh police tactics and weaponry will tell you that school safety should be our first priority lest we find ourselves with another Sandy Hook. What they will not tell you is that such shootings are rare. As one congressional report found, the schools are, generally speaking, safe places for children.
In their zeal to crack down on guns and lock down the schools, these cheerleaders for police state tactics in the schools might also fail to mention the lucrative, multi-million dollar deals being cut with military contractors such as Taser International to equip these school cops with tasers, tanks, rifles and $100,000 shooting detection systems.
Indeed, the transformation of hometown police departments into extensions of the military has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police have been gifted with high-powered M16 rifles, MRAP armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member SWAT team.
According to one law review article on the school-to-prison pipeline, “Many school districts have formed their own police departments, some so large they rival the forces of major United States cities in size. For example, the safety division in New York City’s public schools is so large that if it were a local police department, it would be the fifth-largest police force in the country.”
The ramifications are far-reaching.
The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to a phenomenon in which children who are suspended or expelled from school have a greater likelihood of ending up in jail. One study found that “being suspended or expelled made a student nearlythree times more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice system within the next year.”
Not content to add police to their employee rosters, the schools have also come to resemble prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, random locker searches and active shooter drills. The Detroit public schools boast a “‘$5.6 million 23,000-sq ft. state of the art Command Center’ and ‘$41.7 million district-wide security initiative’ including metal detectors and ID system where visitors’ names are checked against the sex offender registry.”
As if it weren’t bad enough that the nation’s schools have come to resemble prisons, the government is also contracting with private prisons to lock up our young people for behavior that once would have merited a stern lecture. Nearly 40 percent of those young people who are arrested will serve time in a private prison, where the emphasis is on making profits for large megacorporations above all else.
Private prisons, the largest among them being GEO and the Corrections Corporation of America, profit by taking over a state’s prison population for a fee. Many states, under contract with these private prisons, agree to keep the prisons full, which in turn results in more Americans being arrested, found guilty and jailed for nonviolent “crimes” such as holding Bible studies in their back yard. As the Washington Post points out, “With the growing influence of the prison lobby, the nation is, in effect, commoditizing human bodies for an industry in militant pursuit of profit… The influence of private prisons creates a system that trades money for human freedom, often at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children, immigrants and the poor.”
This profit-driven system of incarceration has also given rise to a growth in juvenile prisons and financial incentives for jailing young people. Indeed, young people have become easy targets for the private prison industry, which profits from criminalizing childish behavior and jailing young people. For instance, two Pennsylvania judges made headlines when it was revealed that they had been conspiring with two businessmen in a $2.6 million “kids for cash” scandal that resulted in more than 2500 children being found guilty and jailed in for-profit private prisons.
It has been said that America’s schools are the training ground for future generations. Instead of raising up a generation of freedom fighters, however, we seem to be busy churning out newly minted citizens of the American police state who are being taught the hard way what it means to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, with every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans—especially young people—have no rights at all against the state or the police.
I’ll conclude with one hopeful anecdote about a Philadelphia school dubbed the “Jones Jail” because of its bad reputation for violence among the student body. Situated in a desperately poor and dangerous part of the city, the John Paul Jones Middle School’s student body had grown up among drug users, drug peddlers, prostitutes and gun violence. “By middle school,” reports The Atlantic, most of these students “have witnessed more violence than most Americans who didn’t serve in a war ever will.”
According to investigative reporters Jeff Deeney, “School police officers patrolled the building at John Paul Jones, and children were routinely submitted to scans with metal detecting wands. All the windows were covered in metal grating and one room that held computers even had thick iron prison bars on its exterior… Every day… [police] would set up a perimeter of police officers on the blocks around the school, and those police were there to protect neighbors from the children, not to protect the children from the neighborhood.”
In other words, John Paul Jones, one of the city’s most dangerous schools, was a perfect example of the school-to-prison, police state apparatus at work among the nation’s youngest and most impressionable citizens.
When management of John Paul Jones was taken over by a charter school that opted to de-escalate the police state presence, stripping away the metal detectors and barred windows, local police protested. In fact, they showed up wearing Kevlar vests. Nevertheless, school officials remained determined to do away with institutional control and surveillance, as well as aggressive security guards, and focus on noncoercive, nonviolent conflict resolution with an emphasis on student empowerment, relationship building and anger management.
The result: a 90% drop in serious incidents—drug sales, weapons, assaults, rapes—in one year alone. As one fifth-grader remarked on the changes, “There are no more fights. There are no more police. That’s better for the community.”
The lesson for the rest of us is this: you not only get what you pay for, but you reap what you sow.
If you want a nation of criminals, treat the citizenry like criminals.
If you want young people who grow up seeing themselves as prisoners, run the schools like prisons.
But if you want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters, who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, then run the schools like freedom forums. Remove the metal detectors and surveillance cameras, re-assign the cops elsewhere, and start treating our nation’s young people like citizens of a republic and not inmates in a police state.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/john-w-whitehead/new-inmates-of-the-american-police-state/
By John W. Whitehead
“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning. From metal detectors to drug tests, from increased policing to all-seeing electronic surveillance, the public schools of the twenty-first century reflect a society that has become fixated on crime, security and violence.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes
In the American police state, you’re either a prisoner (shackled, controlled, monitored, ordered about, limited in what you can do and say, your life not your own) or a prison bureaucrat (police officer, judge, jailer, spy, profiteer, etc.).
Indeed, at a time when we are all viewed as suspects, there are so many ways in which a person can be branded a criminal for violating any number of laws, regulations or policies. Even if you haven’t knowingly violated any laws, there is still a myriad of ways in which you can run afoul of the police state and end up on the wrong side of a jail cell.
Unfortunately, when you’re a child in the American police state, life is that much worse.
Microcosms of the police state, America’s public schools contain almost every aspect of the militarized, intolerant, senseless, overcriminalized, legalistic, surveillance-riddled, totalitarian landscape that plagues those of us on the “outside.”
From the moment a child enters one of the nation’s 98,000 public schools to the moment she graduates, she will be exposed to a steady diet of draconian zero tolerance policies that criminalize childish behavior, overreaching anti-bullying statutes that criminalize speech, school resource officers (police) tasked with disciplining and/or arresting so-called “disorderly” students, standardized testing that emphasizes rote answers over critical thinking, politically correct mindsets that teach young people to censor themselves and those around them, and extensive biometric and surveillance systems that, coupled with the rest, acclimate young people to a world in which they have no freedom of thought, speech or movement.
If your child is fortunate enough to survive his encounter with the public schools, you should count yourself fortunate.
Most students are not so lucky.
By the time the average young person in America finishes their public school education, nearly one out of every three of them will have been arrested.
More than 3 million students are suspended or expelled from schools every year, often for minor misbehavior, such as “disruptive behavior” or “insubordination.” Black students are three times more likely than white students to face suspension and expulsion.
For instance, a Virginia sixth grader, the son of two school teachers and a member of the school’s gifted program, was suspended for a year after school officials found a leaf (likely a maple leaf) in his backpack that they suspected was marijuana. Despite the fact that the leaf in question was not marijuana (a fact that officials knew almost immediately), the 11-year-old was still kicked out of school, charged with marijuana possession in juvenile court, enrolled in an alternative school away from his friends, subjected to twice-daily searches for drugs, and forced to be evaluated for substance abuse problems.
As the Washington Post warns: “It doesn’t matter if your son or daughter brings a real pot leaf to school, or if he brings something that looks like a pot leaf—okra, tomato, maple, buckeye, etc. If your kid calls it marijuana as a joke, or if another kid thinks it might be marijuana, that’s grounds for expulsion.”
Many state laws require that schools notify law enforcement whenever a student is found with an “imitation controlled substance,” basically anything that look likes a drug but isn’t actually illegal. As a result, students have been suspended for bringing to school household spices such as oregano, breath mints, birth control pills and powdered sugar.
It’s not just look-alike drugs that can get a student in trouble under school zero tolerance policies. Look-alike weapons (toy guns—even Lego-sized ones, hand-drawn pictures of guns, pencils twirled in a “threatening” manner, imaginary bows and arrows, even fingers positioned like guns) can also land a student in detention.
Acts of kindness, concern or basic manners can also result in suspensions. One 13-year-old was given detention for exposing the school to “liability” by sharing his lunch with a hungry friend. A third grader was suspended for shaving her head in sympathy for a friend who had lost her hair to chemotherapy. And then there was the high school senior who was suspended for saying “bless you” after a fellow classmate sneezed.
Unfortunately, while these may appear to be isolated incidents, they are indicative of a nationwide phenomenon in which children are treated like suspects and criminals, especially within the public schools.
The schools have become a microcosm of the American police state, right down to the host of surveillance technologies, including video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners, as well as RFID and GPS tracking devices, employed to keep constant watch over their student bodies.
Making matters worse are the police.
Students accused of being disorderly or noncompliant have a difficult enough time navigating the bureaucracy of school boards, but when you bring the police into the picture, after-school detention and visits to the principal’s office are transformed into punishments such as misdemeanor tickets, juvenile court, handcuffs, tasers and even prison terms.
In the absence of school-appropriate guidelines, police are more and more “stepping in to deal with minor rulebreaking—sagging pants, disrespectful comments, brief physical skirmishes. What previously might have resulted in a detention or a visit to the principal’s office was replaced with excruciating pain and temporary blindness, often followed by a trip to the courthouse.”
Thanks to a combination of media hype, political pandering and financial incentives, the use of armed police officers to patrol school hallways has risen dramatically in the years since the Columbine school shooting (nearly 20,000 by 2003). Funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, these school resource officers (SROs) have become de facto wardens in the elementary, middle and high schools, doling out their own brand of justice to the so-called “criminals” in their midst with the help of tasers, pepperspray, batons and brute force.
The horror stories are legion.
One SRO is accused of punching a 13-year-old student in the face for cutting the cafeteria line. That same cop put another student in a chokehold a week later, allegedly knocking the student unconscious and causing a brain injury. In Pennsylvania, a student was tased after ignoring an order to put his cell phone away.
Defending the use of handcuffs and pepper spray to subdue students, one Alabama police department reasoned that if they can employ such tactics on young people away from school, they should also be permitted to do so on campus.
Now advocates for such harsh police tactics and weaponry will tell you that school safety should be our first priority lest we find ourselves with another Sandy Hook. What they will not tell you is that such shootings are rare. As one congressional report found, the schools are, generally speaking, safe places for children.
In their zeal to crack down on guns and lock down the schools, these cheerleaders for police state tactics in the schools might also fail to mention the lucrative, multi-million dollar deals being cut with military contractors such as Taser International to equip these school cops with tasers, tanks, rifles and $100,000 shooting detection systems.
Indeed, the transformation of hometown police departments into extensions of the military has been mirrored in the public schools, where school police have been gifted with high-powered M16 rifles, MRAP armored vehicles, grenade launchers, and other military gear. One Texas school district even boasts its own 12-member SWAT team.
According to one law review article on the school-to-prison pipeline, “Many school districts have formed their own police departments, some so large they rival the forces of major United States cities in size. For example, the safety division in New York City’s public schools is so large that if it were a local police department, it would be the fifth-largest police force in the country.”
The ramifications are far-reaching.
The term “school-to-prison pipeline” refers to a phenomenon in which children who are suspended or expelled from school have a greater likelihood of ending up in jail. One study found that “being suspended or expelled made a student nearlythree times more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice system within the next year.”
Not content to add police to their employee rosters, the schools have also come to resemble prisons, complete with surveillance cameras, metal detectors, drug-sniffing dogs, random locker searches and active shooter drills. The Detroit public schools boast a “‘$5.6 million 23,000-sq ft. state of the art Command Center’ and ‘$41.7 million district-wide security initiative’ including metal detectors and ID system where visitors’ names are checked against the sex offender registry.”
As if it weren’t bad enough that the nation’s schools have come to resemble prisons, the government is also contracting with private prisons to lock up our young people for behavior that once would have merited a stern lecture. Nearly 40 percent of those young people who are arrested will serve time in a private prison, where the emphasis is on making profits for large megacorporations above all else.
Private prisons, the largest among them being GEO and the Corrections Corporation of America, profit by taking over a state’s prison population for a fee. Many states, under contract with these private prisons, agree to keep the prisons full, which in turn results in more Americans being arrested, found guilty and jailed for nonviolent “crimes” such as holding Bible studies in their back yard. As the Washington Post points out, “With the growing influence of the prison lobby, the nation is, in effect, commoditizing human bodies for an industry in militant pursuit of profit… The influence of private prisons creates a system that trades money for human freedom, often at the expense of the nation’s most vulnerable populations: children, immigrants and the poor.”
This profit-driven system of incarceration has also given rise to a growth in juvenile prisons and financial incentives for jailing young people. Indeed, young people have become easy targets for the private prison industry, which profits from criminalizing childish behavior and jailing young people. For instance, two Pennsylvania judges made headlines when it was revealed that they had been conspiring with two businessmen in a $2.6 million “kids for cash” scandal that resulted in more than 2500 children being found guilty and jailed in for-profit private prisons.
It has been said that America’s schools are the training ground for future generations. Instead of raising up a generation of freedom fighters, however, we seem to be busy churning out newly minted citizens of the American police state who are being taught the hard way what it means to comply, fear and march in lockstep with the government’s dictates.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, with every school police raid and overzealous punishment that is carried out in the name of school safety, the lesson being imparted is that Americans—especially young people—have no rights at all against the state or the police.
I’ll conclude with one hopeful anecdote about a Philadelphia school dubbed the “Jones Jail” because of its bad reputation for violence among the student body. Situated in a desperately poor and dangerous part of the city, the John Paul Jones Middle School’s student body had grown up among drug users, drug peddlers, prostitutes and gun violence. “By middle school,” reports The Atlantic, most of these students “have witnessed more violence than most Americans who didn’t serve in a war ever will.”
According to investigative reporters Jeff Deeney, “School police officers patrolled the building at John Paul Jones, and children were routinely submitted to scans with metal detecting wands. All the windows were covered in metal grating and one room that held computers even had thick iron prison bars on its exterior… Every day… [police] would set up a perimeter of police officers on the blocks around the school, and those police were there to protect neighbors from the children, not to protect the children from the neighborhood.”
In other words, John Paul Jones, one of the city’s most dangerous schools, was a perfect example of the school-to-prison, police state apparatus at work among the nation’s youngest and most impressionable citizens.
When management of John Paul Jones was taken over by a charter school that opted to de-escalate the police state presence, stripping away the metal detectors and barred windows, local police protested. In fact, they showed up wearing Kevlar vests. Nevertheless, school officials remained determined to do away with institutional control and surveillance, as well as aggressive security guards, and focus on noncoercive, nonviolent conflict resolution with an emphasis on student empowerment, relationship building and anger management.
The result: a 90% drop in serious incidents—drug sales, weapons, assaults, rapes—in one year alone. As one fifth-grader remarked on the changes, “There are no more fights. There are no more police. That’s better for the community.”
The lesson for the rest of us is this: you not only get what you pay for, but you reap what you sow.
If you want a nation of criminals, treat the citizenry like criminals.
If you want young people who grow up seeing themselves as prisoners, run the schools like prisons.
But if you want to raise up a generation of freedom fighters, who will actually operate with justice, fairness, accountability and equality towards each other and their government, then run the schools like freedom forums. Remove the metal detectors and surveillance cameras, re-assign the cops elsewhere, and start treating our nation’s young people like citizens of a republic and not inmates in a police state.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/john-w-whitehead/new-inmates-of-the-american-police-state/
Monday, September 14, 2015
"What are we waiting for? Let's march for a $1 million minimum wage right now!"
Beyond Bernie Sanders: Why we should raise the minimum wage to $1 million an hour for everyone in America: A lesson in progressive economics
by Mike Adams
To the delight of low-wage workers, Bernie Sanders has come out in favor of a mandatory $15 minimum wage. He's surging in the polls against Hillary Clinton, so he must be doing something right... right?
But I think he's under-cutting America with a paltry $15 an hour minimum wage. If America is supposed to truly accomplish "equality," then why shouldn't burrito rollers at Taco Bell earn as much as, say, a hedge fund manager on Wall Street? Now that's true equality! It's almost downright democracy!
That's why I'm recommending we unilaterally raise the minimum wage to $1 million an hour. There's no reason why the fast food workers who earn the money in this country shouldn't take home more than the hedge fund managers who steal it from them, right? So by invoking the rock-solid principles of liberal economics as taught in the pages of the New York Times, I'm going to explain exactly why $1 million an hour will make America so great again that we don't even need Donald Trump.
See if you can follow my logic... or not.
Why a $1 million minimum wage will solve all our problems and make everybody wealthy almost overnight
Explained in the language of "progressive" economics.
Reason #1) A $1 million minimum wage would eliminate all unemployment overnight.
Obviously, many people decide not to work today because they don't think it's worth the pay. With all the unemployment benefits and food stamps and government subsidies, going to work for a low-paying job just doesn't make financial sense, and that's why 94 million Americans are out of work today.
I don't know why fiscal conservatives can't understand this, but it's obvious that paying everyone $1 million per hour would eliminate unemployment and result in an explosion of economic abundance. You can't argue with that. It works because more money = more abundance!
Reason #2) A $1 million minimum wage would eliminate the national debt in less than five years.
In addition to a $1 million minimum wage enriching all workers across America, it would also eliminate the national debt because of the very high federal tax rates on people who earn over $100,000 per year. If everybody is earning $1 million an hour, then everybody is rich, and since we tax the rich at very high rates, then we can tax everybody into a huge surge of new revenues for the federal government that will eliminate the national debt. You can't argue with that either. It's simple math, folks.
Reason #3) Employers can easily afford the wages because they will receive government subsidies.
Now you might think that employers wouldn't be able to afford paying everyone $1 million a year as a minimum wage, especially those employers at fast food restaurants like McDonald's or Taco Bell. But you clearly don't have an accurate grasp of the amazing ability of governments to create economic abundance on demand.
All that has to happen here is for the federal government to subsidize all employers across America with the amount of money that equals the difference between $1 million per hour and the actual amount that each employee is worth in the free market (about $6 - $10, depending on the region).
And where will this government subsidy money come from? Simple! They confiscate that money by taxing the rich... especially since everybody is now rich. This is how clever government financial planning creates sustainable economic abundance. All we have to do is decide that we're all equal and then elect someone like Bernie Sanders. Through the magic of socialism and equality, we can all take home the same millions that Wall Street crooks earn.
Now, in case you're thinking that fast food restaurants having to pay their employees $1 million per hour would cause them to raise all their food prices to compensate -- $500,000 for a Big Mac, anyone? -- don't worry because I've got that covered, too. The Bernie Sanders administration can simply announce mandatory price controls on everything, including Big Macs and French Fries. Hey, it works in Venezuela, doesn't it? Why can't we enjoy the same organized, centrally-planned economy right here in America, too?
Reason #4) America can lead the world in the number of billionaires, making us No. 1 in something that counts!
With America falling behind every other nation in the world in terms of academic scores, scientific education, work ethics and even medical care, it's important for America to lead the world in something other than the percentage of the population incarcerated in federal prisons.
By paying everyone a minimum wage of $1 million per hour, America can finally lead the world in something that matters: the number of billionaires. Once my $1 million minimum wage agenda kicks into action, America will have more billionaires than any other nation in the world! Everyone who has a job would obviously be a billionaire after just one year of working. How can you argue with that?
Reason #5) A $1 million per hour minimum wage would unleash a massive stock market boom and housing boom.
Everybody knows that the most important thing in an economy of abundance is to make sure that all stock prices keep going up forever. One of the best ways to make this happen is to ensure that there's lots of spending money in the hands of people who buy things and then throw them away, creating horrible gaps in their lives that must be filled by buying yet more things.
So by paying a $1 million minimum wage to every worker across America, we would see an explosion in housing prices, consumer purchasing, stock market valuations, and even the national savings rate. These are all great for the economy! These rising numbers, combined with the zero unemployment rate, would put America on a path of endless economic abundance for decades to come. I'll buy that for a dollar!
What are we waiting for? Let's march for a $1 million minimum wage right now!
In summary, it's clear that the pathway to widespread economic abundance in America is found in socialism and "equality." Redefining the value of money creates instant wealth and abundance, even when no one else is actually working or producing anything at all.
No, wait... I'm confusing my premise with Barack Obama's economic promises. It's Obama who makes irrational and nonsensical economic promises based on wishful thinking and emotional rhetoric rather than economic reality. But if you believe the points I laid out in the story, you're probably willing to believe anything uttered by a president whose primary achievement in the realm of economics has been the destruction of America's economy.
Clearly the answer to all this is to allow unlimited illegal immigration of desperate opportunists who will take all the low-wage jobs that home-grown Americans are barely holding on to as it is. Yeah, that's gotta work out just great! Vote for Bernie Sanders!
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051168_minimum_wage_Bernie_Sanders_socialist_economics.html#ixzz3ljgU7W5U
by Mike Adams
To the delight of low-wage workers, Bernie Sanders has come out in favor of a mandatory $15 minimum wage. He's surging in the polls against Hillary Clinton, so he must be doing something right... right?
But I think he's under-cutting America with a paltry $15 an hour minimum wage. If America is supposed to truly accomplish "equality," then why shouldn't burrito rollers at Taco Bell earn as much as, say, a hedge fund manager on Wall Street? Now that's true equality! It's almost downright democracy!
That's why I'm recommending we unilaterally raise the minimum wage to $1 million an hour. There's no reason why the fast food workers who earn the money in this country shouldn't take home more than the hedge fund managers who steal it from them, right? So by invoking the rock-solid principles of liberal economics as taught in the pages of the New York Times, I'm going to explain exactly why $1 million an hour will make America so great again that we don't even need Donald Trump.
See if you can follow my logic... or not.
Why a $1 million minimum wage will solve all our problems and make everybody wealthy almost overnight
Explained in the language of "progressive" economics.
Reason #1) A $1 million minimum wage would eliminate all unemployment overnight.
Obviously, many people decide not to work today because they don't think it's worth the pay. With all the unemployment benefits and food stamps and government subsidies, going to work for a low-paying job just doesn't make financial sense, and that's why 94 million Americans are out of work today.
I don't know why fiscal conservatives can't understand this, but it's obvious that paying everyone $1 million per hour would eliminate unemployment and result in an explosion of economic abundance. You can't argue with that. It works because more money = more abundance!
Reason #2) A $1 million minimum wage would eliminate the national debt in less than five years.
In addition to a $1 million minimum wage enriching all workers across America, it would also eliminate the national debt because of the very high federal tax rates on people who earn over $100,000 per year. If everybody is earning $1 million an hour, then everybody is rich, and since we tax the rich at very high rates, then we can tax everybody into a huge surge of new revenues for the federal government that will eliminate the national debt. You can't argue with that either. It's simple math, folks.
Reason #3) Employers can easily afford the wages because they will receive government subsidies.
Now you might think that employers wouldn't be able to afford paying everyone $1 million a year as a minimum wage, especially those employers at fast food restaurants like McDonald's or Taco Bell. But you clearly don't have an accurate grasp of the amazing ability of governments to create economic abundance on demand.
All that has to happen here is for the federal government to subsidize all employers across America with the amount of money that equals the difference between $1 million per hour and the actual amount that each employee is worth in the free market (about $6 - $10, depending on the region).
And where will this government subsidy money come from? Simple! They confiscate that money by taxing the rich... especially since everybody is now rich. This is how clever government financial planning creates sustainable economic abundance. All we have to do is decide that we're all equal and then elect someone like Bernie Sanders. Through the magic of socialism and equality, we can all take home the same millions that Wall Street crooks earn.
Now, in case you're thinking that fast food restaurants having to pay their employees $1 million per hour would cause them to raise all their food prices to compensate -- $500,000 for a Big Mac, anyone? -- don't worry because I've got that covered, too. The Bernie Sanders administration can simply announce mandatory price controls on everything, including Big Macs and French Fries. Hey, it works in Venezuela, doesn't it? Why can't we enjoy the same organized, centrally-planned economy right here in America, too?
Reason #4) America can lead the world in the number of billionaires, making us No. 1 in something that counts!
With America falling behind every other nation in the world in terms of academic scores, scientific education, work ethics and even medical care, it's important for America to lead the world in something other than the percentage of the population incarcerated in federal prisons.
By paying everyone a minimum wage of $1 million per hour, America can finally lead the world in something that matters: the number of billionaires. Once my $1 million minimum wage agenda kicks into action, America will have more billionaires than any other nation in the world! Everyone who has a job would obviously be a billionaire after just one year of working. How can you argue with that?
Reason #5) A $1 million per hour minimum wage would unleash a massive stock market boom and housing boom.
Everybody knows that the most important thing in an economy of abundance is to make sure that all stock prices keep going up forever. One of the best ways to make this happen is to ensure that there's lots of spending money in the hands of people who buy things and then throw them away, creating horrible gaps in their lives that must be filled by buying yet more things.
So by paying a $1 million minimum wage to every worker across America, we would see an explosion in housing prices, consumer purchasing, stock market valuations, and even the national savings rate. These are all great for the economy! These rising numbers, combined with the zero unemployment rate, would put America on a path of endless economic abundance for decades to come. I'll buy that for a dollar!
What are we waiting for? Let's march for a $1 million minimum wage right now!
In summary, it's clear that the pathway to widespread economic abundance in America is found in socialism and "equality." Redefining the value of money creates instant wealth and abundance, even when no one else is actually working or producing anything at all.
No, wait... I'm confusing my premise with Barack Obama's economic promises. It's Obama who makes irrational and nonsensical economic promises based on wishful thinking and emotional rhetoric rather than economic reality. But if you believe the points I laid out in the story, you're probably willing to believe anything uttered by a president whose primary achievement in the realm of economics has been the destruction of America's economy.
Clearly the answer to all this is to allow unlimited illegal immigration of desperate opportunists who will take all the low-wage jobs that home-grown Americans are barely holding on to as it is. Yeah, that's gotta work out just great! Vote for Bernie Sanders!
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051168_minimum_wage_Bernie_Sanders_socialist_economics.html#ixzz3ljgU7W5U
"Why are so many Americans so convinced that the welfare-warfare system that was grafted onto America’s original federal governmental system in the 20th century can still be made to work, notwithstanding the horrific results it has produced after decades of operation?"
What Kind of Society Do You Want and How Do You Get It?
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Ask yourself: What kind of society do you want?
I would think that most people would answer: I want to live in a free society and one that is prosperous, peaceful, and harmonious.
Obviously, those of us Americans living today do not live in that type of society. Yes, I know that there are multitudes of Americans who are convinced that they live in a free society. They sing glorious praises to the troops for defending our “freedom” and proudly sing “Thank God I am an American because at least I know I’m free.”
But believing you’re free when you’re not doesn’t make you free. A denial of reality only leads to psychosis, which might partly explain the decades-long, ongoing drug-use crisis in America. The words of Johann Goethe sum up the plight of many Americans today, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
If Americans are free today, then what does that make Americans who in lived in, say, 1890? They lived in a society that was a total opposite of the type of society in which Americans live today.
Imagine: No income tax, IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, farm subsidies, education grants, foreign aid, welfare, immigration controls, minimum-wage laws, drug laws, occupational licensure, standing army, military industrial complex, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, Federal Reserve, fiat (i.e., paper) money, sanctions, embargoes, foreign aid, and foreign military bases.
Today, those are the core elements of American society.
It would be difficult to get more opposite than that.
Moreover, in 1890 the federal government lacked the legal authority to arrest Americans without judicially issued warrants, incarcerate them indefinitely in concentration camps or military dungeons, torture them, and execute them without trial by jury. The government also lacked the legal authority to assassinate Americans.
Today, the government wields those omnipotent powers over the U.S. citizenry and has ever exercised them.
Two opposite systems. How can people who live under two systems that are opposite both be considered a free people? Since we’re dealing with opposites, if one people are considered to be free, the other must be considered to be unfree.
Today, American society is riddled with ongoing chaos and crisis. The immigration crisis. The Social Security crisis. The healthcare crisis. The crisis in Iraq. The crisis in Afghanistan. The crisis in Syria. The monetary crisis. The financial crisis. The banking crisis. The drug-war crisis. The refugee crisis.
The crises never stop.
Today, we are as far from a peaceful society as a country can get. We’ve already been advised by U.S. officials, repeatedly, that their “war on terrorism” is almost certain to last longer than even the Cold War. The U.S. government continues bombing countries, killing people, destroying things, and assassinating people on a regular basis. Is it really just a coincidence that much of the world hates the United States and that many foreigners would love nothing more than to kill as many Americans as they can? That’s not exactly a harmonious society.
Today, the U.S. government is, for all practical purposes, bankrupt, owing to the enormous and ever-growing money needed to fund the welfare-warfare state. There is no way that it can repay the massive debt it owes plus comply with all the unfunded mandates, such as Social Security and Medicare, with reasonable levels of taxation on the young and productive. Oh sure, it could start taxing young people to the tune of 50-60 percent of their incomes to pay off its debts and keep the Social Security and Medicare largess flowing to seniors and to keep paying all the rest of the welfare-state largess, as well as continue flooding the “defense” industry with warfare-state largess, but who’s going to keep producing and saving when people are being taxed at that rate?
Thus, no matter how much some Americans have convinced themselves otherwise, we clearly do not live in the type of society to which most people would aspire — a free, prosperous, peaceful, and harmonious society.
Therefore, what do we need to do to achieve that goal?
One option — one that I would bet many people favor — is to just keep doing the same things. Continue Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, and the rest of the welfare state. Keep fighting the drug war. Keep the national-security state intact and continue funding the “defense” industry. Keep bombing, destroying, and assassinating to make us more “secure.”
But there’s one big problem with that option. It’s the welfare-warfare state way of life itself that has brought us a society of constant crisis, chaos, impoverishment, conflict, war, and disharmony. Why would continuing it produce any different results? Recall the popular definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Another option: Elect Donald Trump or (insert your favorite candidate here) president and elect “better people” to Congress. The problem with that option, however, is that it assumes that the welfare-warfare state system is capable of succeeding if we could just find the “right” people to run it.
But that’s just not going to happen. Why? Because the welfare-warfare state is an inherently defective paradigm. When a system is inherently defective, it doesn’t matter who is running it. Inherently defective means incapable of working, no matter who’s in charge.
The only system that will produce a society based on freedom, prosperity, peace, and harmony is one that is not based on a welfare-warfare state. That is, the way to attain the type of society most of us want is to adopt a system in which there is no income tax, IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, standing army, military-industrial complex, drug laws, economic regulations, foreign aid, and other aspects of the welfare-warfare state.
Why are so many Americans so convinced that the welfare-warfare system that was grafted onto America’s original federal governmental system in the 20th century can still be made to work, notwithstanding the horrific results it has produced after decades of operation?
It’s a good question. The continued allegiance to the welfare-warfare state system just makes no sense to me.
Link:
http://fff.org/2015/09/14/what-kind-of-society-do-you-want-and-how-do-you-get-it/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Ask yourself: What kind of society do you want?
I would think that most people would answer: I want to live in a free society and one that is prosperous, peaceful, and harmonious.
Obviously, those of us Americans living today do not live in that type of society. Yes, I know that there are multitudes of Americans who are convinced that they live in a free society. They sing glorious praises to the troops for defending our “freedom” and proudly sing “Thank God I am an American because at least I know I’m free.”
But believing you’re free when you’re not doesn’t make you free. A denial of reality only leads to psychosis, which might partly explain the decades-long, ongoing drug-use crisis in America. The words of Johann Goethe sum up the plight of many Americans today, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
If Americans are free today, then what does that make Americans who in lived in, say, 1890? They lived in a society that was a total opposite of the type of society in which Americans live today.
Imagine: No income tax, IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, public (i.e., government) schooling, farm subsidies, education grants, foreign aid, welfare, immigration controls, minimum-wage laws, drug laws, occupational licensure, standing army, military industrial complex, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, Federal Reserve, fiat (i.e., paper) money, sanctions, embargoes, foreign aid, and foreign military bases.
Today, those are the core elements of American society.
It would be difficult to get more opposite than that.
Moreover, in 1890 the federal government lacked the legal authority to arrest Americans without judicially issued warrants, incarcerate them indefinitely in concentration camps or military dungeons, torture them, and execute them without trial by jury. The government also lacked the legal authority to assassinate Americans.
Today, the government wields those omnipotent powers over the U.S. citizenry and has ever exercised them.
Two opposite systems. How can people who live under two systems that are opposite both be considered a free people? Since we’re dealing with opposites, if one people are considered to be free, the other must be considered to be unfree.
Today, American society is riddled with ongoing chaos and crisis. The immigration crisis. The Social Security crisis. The healthcare crisis. The crisis in Iraq. The crisis in Afghanistan. The crisis in Syria. The monetary crisis. The financial crisis. The banking crisis. The drug-war crisis. The refugee crisis.
The crises never stop.
Today, we are as far from a peaceful society as a country can get. We’ve already been advised by U.S. officials, repeatedly, that their “war on terrorism” is almost certain to last longer than even the Cold War. The U.S. government continues bombing countries, killing people, destroying things, and assassinating people on a regular basis. Is it really just a coincidence that much of the world hates the United States and that many foreigners would love nothing more than to kill as many Americans as they can? That’s not exactly a harmonious society.
Today, the U.S. government is, for all practical purposes, bankrupt, owing to the enormous and ever-growing money needed to fund the welfare-warfare state. There is no way that it can repay the massive debt it owes plus comply with all the unfunded mandates, such as Social Security and Medicare, with reasonable levels of taxation on the young and productive. Oh sure, it could start taxing young people to the tune of 50-60 percent of their incomes to pay off its debts and keep the Social Security and Medicare largess flowing to seniors and to keep paying all the rest of the welfare-state largess, as well as continue flooding the “defense” industry with warfare-state largess, but who’s going to keep producing and saving when people are being taxed at that rate?
Thus, no matter how much some Americans have convinced themselves otherwise, we clearly do not live in the type of society to which most people would aspire — a free, prosperous, peaceful, and harmonious society.
Therefore, what do we need to do to achieve that goal?
One option — one that I would bet many people favor — is to just keep doing the same things. Continue Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, and the rest of the welfare state. Keep fighting the drug war. Keep the national-security state intact and continue funding the “defense” industry. Keep bombing, destroying, and assassinating to make us more “secure.”
But there’s one big problem with that option. It’s the welfare-warfare state way of life itself that has brought us a society of constant crisis, chaos, impoverishment, conflict, war, and disharmony. Why would continuing it produce any different results? Recall the popular definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Another option: Elect Donald Trump or (insert your favorite candidate here) president and elect “better people” to Congress. The problem with that option, however, is that it assumes that the welfare-warfare state system is capable of succeeding if we could just find the “right” people to run it.
But that’s just not going to happen. Why? Because the welfare-warfare state is an inherently defective paradigm. When a system is inherently defective, it doesn’t matter who is running it. Inherently defective means incapable of working, no matter who’s in charge.
The only system that will produce a society based on freedom, prosperity, peace, and harmony is one that is not based on a welfare-warfare state. That is, the way to attain the type of society most of us want is to adopt a system in which there is no income tax, IRS, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, Pentagon, CIA, NSA, standing army, military-industrial complex, drug laws, economic regulations, foreign aid, and other aspects of the welfare-warfare state.
Why are so many Americans so convinced that the welfare-warfare system that was grafted onto America’s original federal governmental system in the 20th century can still be made to work, notwithstanding the horrific results it has produced after decades of operation?
It’s a good question. The continued allegiance to the welfare-warfare state system just makes no sense to me.
Link:
http://fff.org/2015/09/14/what-kind-of-society-do-you-want-and-how-do-you-get-it/
Boy, have times changed...
In 1970 a Penny Gas Hike Was Big News
Perspective on the economy and how far inflation has come.
News on Cleveland area Sohio raising gas prices a penny a gallon in 1970.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/09/in-1970-penny-gas-hike-was-big-news.html
Perspective on the economy and how far inflation has come.
News on Cleveland area Sohio raising gas prices a penny a gallon in 1970.
Link:
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/09/in-1970-penny-gas-hike-was-big-news.html
Return to conscription???
Would a Return to Conscription Substantially Reduce the Probability of War?
David R. Henderson
One of the biggest victories for freedom to which economists contributed in the last third of the 20th century was the abolition of military conscription.1 Some economists argued that the draft was an extreme violation of individual liberty because it forcibly put people in jobs—and not just any jobs, but jobs in which they could be killed in a foreign war. Virtually all economists who participated in the debate also pointed out a subtle economic point: that conscription would, by imposing costs on those conscripted, actually make military manpower more, not less, expensive.2
An increasingly common argument for the draft, though, and one made especially by foreign policy intellectuals, is that the draft would put the children of the rich and powerful at risk and, therefore, cause their parents to raise more objections than otherwise to military adventurism. That argument is superficially plausible. But a careful look at economic incentives shows that the case for using a draft to prevent a war is weak. In any plausible draft, the rich and powerful would have a cheaper and surer way to shield their children from harm than by devoting resources to stopping or preventing a war.
In the last few years, many intellectuals have made this new argument for the draft. Thomas E. Ricks, for example, a fellow at the Center for a New Economic Security, drawing on similar thinking by retired General Stanley A. McChrystal, writes that having a draft might "make Americans think more carefully before going to war."3 Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a critic of the 21st century Iraq war, writes, "Americans should insist on fielding a citizen army drawn from all segments of society."4 To achieve that goal, he would have the government force all able-bodied 18-year-olds into two years of national service, either civilian or military. This would mean, he claims, that "[i]t will be incumbent upon civilian and military leaders to make the case to citizen-soldiers (and their parents) for long, drawn-out, inconclusive wars in far-off places."5
Before I get to why this argument is weak, it's important to make a moral point. Most of us think that it's wrong to use innocent people as human shields in war. The immorality is due to two factors: (1) those innocent people's lives are put at risk, and (2) they do not get to choose whether to risk their lives. We don't make our moral judgment conditional on the consequences. We tend to believe that using people as human shields is wrong even if it prevents the other side from firing.
Similarly, it is profoundly immoral to put innocent young people at risk so that their parents will get politically active. Those who advocate conscription as a way to avoid war are advocating that innocent people become "human shields." Even if it can be shown that reintroducing conscription would reduce the chance of a war breaking out, it still is wrong to force people to put their lives at risk.
Whatever one's views on the moral issue, the argument that a return to conscription would reduce the probability of wars is weak. Those who make such an argument do make one good point: that all other things equal, if the children of rich and powerful people could be forcibly sent to war, those people would tend to ask more questions about the war. But if the main goal of the influential is to avoid having their children put at risk, there is a more direct way to do so: get their children exempted from the draft or, in the unlucky case that their children are drafted, use their influence to get their children relatively safe postings that are far from the battle. Further weakening the case, there are many influential people without draft-aged children and, perhaps, some who want their draft-aged children to be conscripted.
Inadvertently, the proponents of a draft have come up against what economists call a public-good, free-rider problem. The key characteristic of a public good that's relevant here is that it is prohibitively costly to exclude non-payers. So, economists have concluded, there is typically underinvestment in producing public goods. You and millions of people may value them very much, but if it is prohibitively costly to exclude non-contributors from getting the benefits, people have an incentive to free-ride on the efforts of the contributors. The result is that many beneficiaries of the public good don't contribute and even those who do often contribute much less than the value they place on the good.
How does the public good reasoning apply here? Even if influential people would be against the war because their children would be at risk, two factors would cause them to invest little in preventing war. First, any resources they put towards lobbying, writing letters, etc. would only marginally change the probability of war. Second, they would risk wasting their investment because of the likelihood that others would free ride and cause the collective effort to fail. This means that they would be unlikely to contribute much to the public good of avoiding the war. A far better investment, from their viewpoint, would be to invest in a private good, one from which only they and their children benefit. That private good is to arrange a special deal—either draft exemption or a safe job in the military—for their children.
Those who want a draft to reduce the probability of war might argue that people are not that narrowly self-interested. But if they so argue, then they have rejected their own view: recall that it was their belief that the rich and powerful are self-interested that led them to make this argument for conscription in the first place.
Some people who want to return to the draft to reduce the prospect of military adventurism point to the Vietnam War as Exhibit A for their position. But a much stronger case can be made, as Henderson and Seagren point out, that the Vietnam War is Exhibit A for the exact opposite position. They write:
First, the existence of a draft did not prevent the Vietnam War or even appear to affect how intense the war became. Second, it took many years of protests and, more important, over 58,000 American military lives lost and over 150,000 wounded before the war ended. Indeed, it took a few years of high casualties before there were widespread protests against the Vietnam War.6
Moreover, a large body of anecdotal evidence suggests that many children of the rich and powerful carried out exactly the strategy that I suggest above: namely, finding ways around the draft or finding relatively safe jobs in the military. Baskir and Strauss write:
Congressman Alvin O'Konski took a personal survey of one hundred inductees from his northern Wisconsin district. Not one of them came from a family with an annual income of over $5,000. A Harvard Crimson editor [James Fallows] from the class of 1970 tallied his twelve hundred classmates and counted only fifty-six who entered the military, just two of whom went to Vietnam.7
The advocates of using conscription to cause the rich and powerful to question wars could argue that their draft would be different from the Vietnam era draft in that it would require all able-bodied 18-year-olds to serve. That would be different, but not in a way that matters much: the domestic service option that Bacevich and others favor would still give people a way to avoid going to war. And there would always be the option of lobbying to get their children into a relatively safe job in the military.
Recall Bacevich's argument, quoted above, that, with his preferred draft, "It will be incumbent upon civilian and military leaders to make the case to citizen-soldiers (and their parents) for long, drawn-out, inconclusive wars in far-off places." I've already dealt with his argument about their parents. But Bacevich's claim is profoundly weak in another way, as well: it's precisely when people are conscripted that civilian and military leaders do not have to make the case for a war. If the draftees could say to their leaders, "Oh, you've failed to make the case and so I won't fight," this draft would be like none that I have ever heard of.
In short, young people would be heavily coerced in order to reduce the probability of war only a little. And in the event that the strategy failed, as it well might, the nation would be stuck fighting wars with conscripts who are (a) unlikely to be as effective as volunteers and (b) because of their relative ineffectiveness, at higher risk of dying.
Moreover, in one important way, relying on volunteers to fight a war can help discourage wars: the government must entice people to join. To entice volunteers, it often must pay more. That contrasts with the case of a conscripted military. Henderson and Seagren note that, as the number of troops in Vietnam increased from 1964 on, real military personnel outlays per military member barely budged. By contrast, real military personnel outlays per member rose substantially as the U.S. government got in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. From an average of $73,887 per member between 1996 and 2001, real outlays rose to an average of $103,772 from 2004 to 2010, an increase of 40 percent.8 The reason: the government had to increase pay to meet its manpower targets. Henderson and Seagren point out that this higher cost per military member resulted in about an extra $45 billion per year in U.S. government spending. That higher cost was, admittedly, financed mainly with deficits rather than with current taxes. But deficits now, unless the government later defaults or cuts spending, lead to higher taxes in the future. And if, as seems likely, the future tax system even roughly resembles the present tax system in forcing higher income people to pay a much higher percent of their income in taxes, the rich and powerful will pay more for war. So a volunteer force does give the rich and powerful an incentive to oppose war.
This incentive does not appear to be strong, but it exists. More importantly, that incentive for high-income taxpayers to oppose war is not clearly weaker than the incentive that conscription of their children gives them to oppose war.
The questionable morality of using innocent young people as political pawns to get their parents politically active, combined with the small probability that the strategy will work and the larger probability that it will backfire, means that the new argument for conscription is unpersuasive.
Link:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2015/Hendersonconscription.html
David R. Henderson
One of the biggest victories for freedom to which economists contributed in the last third of the 20th century was the abolition of military conscription.1 Some economists argued that the draft was an extreme violation of individual liberty because it forcibly put people in jobs—and not just any jobs, but jobs in which they could be killed in a foreign war. Virtually all economists who participated in the debate also pointed out a subtle economic point: that conscription would, by imposing costs on those conscripted, actually make military manpower more, not less, expensive.2
An increasingly common argument for the draft, though, and one made especially by foreign policy intellectuals, is that the draft would put the children of the rich and powerful at risk and, therefore, cause their parents to raise more objections than otherwise to military adventurism. That argument is superficially plausible. But a careful look at economic incentives shows that the case for using a draft to prevent a war is weak. In any plausible draft, the rich and powerful would have a cheaper and surer way to shield their children from harm than by devoting resources to stopping or preventing a war.
In the last few years, many intellectuals have made this new argument for the draft. Thomas E. Ricks, for example, a fellow at the Center for a New Economic Security, drawing on similar thinking by retired General Stanley A. McChrystal, writes that having a draft might "make Americans think more carefully before going to war."3 Andrew J. Bacevich, a professor of history and international relations at Boston University and a critic of the 21st century Iraq war, writes, "Americans should insist on fielding a citizen army drawn from all segments of society."4 To achieve that goal, he would have the government force all able-bodied 18-year-olds into two years of national service, either civilian or military. This would mean, he claims, that "[i]t will be incumbent upon civilian and military leaders to make the case to citizen-soldiers (and their parents) for long, drawn-out, inconclusive wars in far-off places."5
Before I get to why this argument is weak, it's important to make a moral point. Most of us think that it's wrong to use innocent people as human shields in war. The immorality is due to two factors: (1) those innocent people's lives are put at risk, and (2) they do not get to choose whether to risk their lives. We don't make our moral judgment conditional on the consequences. We tend to believe that using people as human shields is wrong even if it prevents the other side from firing.
Similarly, it is profoundly immoral to put innocent young people at risk so that their parents will get politically active. Those who advocate conscription as a way to avoid war are advocating that innocent people become "human shields." Even if it can be shown that reintroducing conscription would reduce the chance of a war breaking out, it still is wrong to force people to put their lives at risk.
Whatever one's views on the moral issue, the argument that a return to conscription would reduce the probability of wars is weak. Those who make such an argument do make one good point: that all other things equal, if the children of rich and powerful people could be forcibly sent to war, those people would tend to ask more questions about the war. But if the main goal of the influential is to avoid having their children put at risk, there is a more direct way to do so: get their children exempted from the draft or, in the unlucky case that their children are drafted, use their influence to get their children relatively safe postings that are far from the battle. Further weakening the case, there are many influential people without draft-aged children and, perhaps, some who want their draft-aged children to be conscripted.
Inadvertently, the proponents of a draft have come up against what economists call a public-good, free-rider problem. The key characteristic of a public good that's relevant here is that it is prohibitively costly to exclude non-payers. So, economists have concluded, there is typically underinvestment in producing public goods. You and millions of people may value them very much, but if it is prohibitively costly to exclude non-contributors from getting the benefits, people have an incentive to free-ride on the efforts of the contributors. The result is that many beneficiaries of the public good don't contribute and even those who do often contribute much less than the value they place on the good.
How does the public good reasoning apply here? Even if influential people would be against the war because their children would be at risk, two factors would cause them to invest little in preventing war. First, any resources they put towards lobbying, writing letters, etc. would only marginally change the probability of war. Second, they would risk wasting their investment because of the likelihood that others would free ride and cause the collective effort to fail. This means that they would be unlikely to contribute much to the public good of avoiding the war. A far better investment, from their viewpoint, would be to invest in a private good, one from which only they and their children benefit. That private good is to arrange a special deal—either draft exemption or a safe job in the military—for their children.
Those who want a draft to reduce the probability of war might argue that people are not that narrowly self-interested. But if they so argue, then they have rejected their own view: recall that it was their belief that the rich and powerful are self-interested that led them to make this argument for conscription in the first place.
Some people who want to return to the draft to reduce the prospect of military adventurism point to the Vietnam War as Exhibit A for their position. But a much stronger case can be made, as Henderson and Seagren point out, that the Vietnam War is Exhibit A for the exact opposite position. They write:
First, the existence of a draft did not prevent the Vietnam War or even appear to affect how intense the war became. Second, it took many years of protests and, more important, over 58,000 American military lives lost and over 150,000 wounded before the war ended. Indeed, it took a few years of high casualties before there were widespread protests against the Vietnam War.6
Moreover, a large body of anecdotal evidence suggests that many children of the rich and powerful carried out exactly the strategy that I suggest above: namely, finding ways around the draft or finding relatively safe jobs in the military. Baskir and Strauss write:
Congressman Alvin O'Konski took a personal survey of one hundred inductees from his northern Wisconsin district. Not one of them came from a family with an annual income of over $5,000. A Harvard Crimson editor [James Fallows] from the class of 1970 tallied his twelve hundred classmates and counted only fifty-six who entered the military, just two of whom went to Vietnam.7
The advocates of using conscription to cause the rich and powerful to question wars could argue that their draft would be different from the Vietnam era draft in that it would require all able-bodied 18-year-olds to serve. That would be different, but not in a way that matters much: the domestic service option that Bacevich and others favor would still give people a way to avoid going to war. And there would always be the option of lobbying to get their children into a relatively safe job in the military.
Recall Bacevich's argument, quoted above, that, with his preferred draft, "It will be incumbent upon civilian and military leaders to make the case to citizen-soldiers (and their parents) for long, drawn-out, inconclusive wars in far-off places." I've already dealt with his argument about their parents. But Bacevich's claim is profoundly weak in another way, as well: it's precisely when people are conscripted that civilian and military leaders do not have to make the case for a war. If the draftees could say to their leaders, "Oh, you've failed to make the case and so I won't fight," this draft would be like none that I have ever heard of.
In short, young people would be heavily coerced in order to reduce the probability of war only a little. And in the event that the strategy failed, as it well might, the nation would be stuck fighting wars with conscripts who are (a) unlikely to be as effective as volunteers and (b) because of their relative ineffectiveness, at higher risk of dying.
Moreover, in one important way, relying on volunteers to fight a war can help discourage wars: the government must entice people to join. To entice volunteers, it often must pay more. That contrasts with the case of a conscripted military. Henderson and Seagren note that, as the number of troops in Vietnam increased from 1964 on, real military personnel outlays per military member barely budged. By contrast, real military personnel outlays per member rose substantially as the U.S. government got in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. From an average of $73,887 per member between 1996 and 2001, real outlays rose to an average of $103,772 from 2004 to 2010, an increase of 40 percent.8 The reason: the government had to increase pay to meet its manpower targets. Henderson and Seagren point out that this higher cost per military member resulted in about an extra $45 billion per year in U.S. government spending. That higher cost was, admittedly, financed mainly with deficits rather than with current taxes. But deficits now, unless the government later defaults or cuts spending, lead to higher taxes in the future. And if, as seems likely, the future tax system even roughly resembles the present tax system in forcing higher income people to pay a much higher percent of their income in taxes, the rich and powerful will pay more for war. So a volunteer force does give the rich and powerful an incentive to oppose war.
This incentive does not appear to be strong, but it exists. More importantly, that incentive for high-income taxpayers to oppose war is not clearly weaker than the incentive that conscription of their children gives them to oppose war.
The questionable morality of using innocent young people as political pawns to get their parents politically active, combined with the small probability that the strategy will work and the larger probability that it will backfire, means that the new argument for conscription is unpersuasive.
Link:
http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2015/Hendersonconscription.html
Saturday, September 12, 2015
Basic economics...
Study: Businesses, Taxpayers Fleeing High-tax States
Bob Adelmann
Based on the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) concluded that, given the opportunity, taxpayers as well as businesses move from high-tax states to lower-tax states.
In 2013, more than 200,000 people moved from New York, Illinois, California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to Texas, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Arizona.
And they took with them more than $16 billion in adjusted gross income. The single largest migration was 17,355 from New York to Florida. Those migrating left behind Democrat-dominated states in favor of Republican-run states. Altogether, said ATR:
[In 2013] Democrat-run states lost a net 226,763 taxpayers, bringing with them nearly $15.7 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI). That same year, states with Republican governors gained nearly 220,000 new taxpayers, who brought more than $14.1 billion in AGI with them.
The biggest loser was New York, which shrank by 115,000 taxpayers, taking with them $5.65 billion in adjusted gross income. Texas was the biggest gainer, enjoying an influx of 152,000 taxpayers, who brought with them $6 billion in adjusted gross income.
Other measures reflect the massive migration to tax-friendly states. For instance, over the last 20 years, Texas has enjoyed four times the job growth of California, and enjoys an unemployment rate half that of California. The U-Haul index shows that it costs twice as much to rent a U-Haul trailer from Texas to California, reflecting the great demand from Californians to move to Texas and the nearly nonexistent demand from Texans to move to California.
It’s not just taxpayers uprooting themselves in search of better tax climates, either. In June, right after Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy signed into law the second massive tax increase in three years, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt sent this e-mail to his people:
Last night the Connecticut legislature passed a tax package which includes significant and retroactive tax increases for businesses in the state. The passing of this law, despite the concerns we raised, has serious implications for GE, other businesses, and for the business climate in Connecticut….
As a result of this law passing, I have assembled an exploratory team to look into the company’s options to relocate [our] corporate headquarters to another state with a more pro-business environment.
Attached to his e-mail was a “fact sheet” listing all the reasons why GE is considering the move. It includes the unsurprising conclusion by a number of indexes and rankings that show Connecticut to be among the bottom 10 among the 50 states. Gallup places Connecticut dead last in its “job climate” index while CNBC places the state 46th in its economic profile, 47th in its cost of doing business ranking, and 48th in its cost of living analysis. Forbes ranked the state 44th out of 50 in 2014 in its economic climate ranking, while the Tax Foundation rated Connecticut 42nd in its Business Tax Climate index and 49th in its property tax ranking. It also showed state and local tax collections per person to be the second-highest in the country.
If GE moves, it will have not only a negative economic impact on Connecticut, but a social one as well. At present the company employs 5,700 people there, and spends $14 billion a year with local suppliers, helping to support more than 65,000 jobs in the state. The company contributes millions to local charities, including $1.2 million in 2010 to Fairfield County healthcare centers and $7.5 million in 2012 in a partnership with the University of Connecticut to fund engineering research and scholarship. In 2013, the company donated $15 million to Newtown for a new community center. In 2014, the company made a total of nearly $10 million in contributions to local and state charities, as well.
If it moves, GE will take with it 4,500 volunteers who each year invest nearly 50,000 man-hours in more than 145 local and state-wide projects.
As Immelt explained in his e-mail:
We purchase $14 billion in goods and services from Connecticut companies. Despite this, we have had a tough past decade in Connecticut. Our taxes have been raised five times since 2011.… I believe we should pay our fair share and that all of us should give back to our communities.
But we can compare Connecticut with other states where small and large businesses have a better environment to thrive and compete.
Connecticut politicians appear to be blind or oblivious to the consequences of their actions. Carol Platt Liebau, president of the Yankee Institute, a free-market think tank, supports the potential move out of the state by GE:
I think it does make sense, because what you’ve seen [by politicians] is not only a willingness to raise taxes but a seeming lack of comprehension on the part of state leaders as to why that’s a problem.
Not every politician in the state has lost his mind, however. State Senator Joe Markley, a rare Republican in a heavily Democrat state, said that 25 years of tax increases and exploding government has destroyed “one of the country’s great manufacturing bases.” In a moment of candor, Markley said Connecticut’s problem is simple: “The economy stinks and we spend too much,” adding, “We are the example of what you get with big government.”
Not to pick on Connecticut unnecessarily, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), in its recent Rich States, Poor States study, is helpful in pointing out that, in general, taxpayers and businesses are leaving poorly run states in favor of better performing ones. In its study, New York ranks dead last in its Economic Performance Outlook while Illinois ranks 40th, California ranks 44th, Connecticut ranks 47th, and Massachusetts ranks 28th.
In contrast, the states where taxpayers are fleeing to are, in general, ranked higher by ALEC. Texas is ranked 11th while Florida is ranked 15th. South Carolina is ranked 32nd, while North Carolina is Number 4 with Arizona at Number 5.
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/21552-study-taxpayers-businesses-fleeing-high-tax-states
Bob Adelmann
Based on the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) concluded that, given the opportunity, taxpayers as well as businesses move from high-tax states to lower-tax states.
In 2013, more than 200,000 people moved from New York, Illinois, California, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to Texas, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Arizona.
And they took with them more than $16 billion in adjusted gross income. The single largest migration was 17,355 from New York to Florida. Those migrating left behind Democrat-dominated states in favor of Republican-run states. Altogether, said ATR:
[In 2013] Democrat-run states lost a net 226,763 taxpayers, bringing with them nearly $15.7 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI). That same year, states with Republican governors gained nearly 220,000 new taxpayers, who brought more than $14.1 billion in AGI with them.
The biggest loser was New York, which shrank by 115,000 taxpayers, taking with them $5.65 billion in adjusted gross income. Texas was the biggest gainer, enjoying an influx of 152,000 taxpayers, who brought with them $6 billion in adjusted gross income.
Other measures reflect the massive migration to tax-friendly states. For instance, over the last 20 years, Texas has enjoyed four times the job growth of California, and enjoys an unemployment rate half that of California. The U-Haul index shows that it costs twice as much to rent a U-Haul trailer from Texas to California, reflecting the great demand from Californians to move to Texas and the nearly nonexistent demand from Texans to move to California.
It’s not just taxpayers uprooting themselves in search of better tax climates, either. In June, right after Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy signed into law the second massive tax increase in three years, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt sent this e-mail to his people:
Last night the Connecticut legislature passed a tax package which includes significant and retroactive tax increases for businesses in the state. The passing of this law, despite the concerns we raised, has serious implications for GE, other businesses, and for the business climate in Connecticut….
As a result of this law passing, I have assembled an exploratory team to look into the company’s options to relocate [our] corporate headquarters to another state with a more pro-business environment.
Attached to his e-mail was a “fact sheet” listing all the reasons why GE is considering the move. It includes the unsurprising conclusion by a number of indexes and rankings that show Connecticut to be among the bottom 10 among the 50 states. Gallup places Connecticut dead last in its “job climate” index while CNBC places the state 46th in its economic profile, 47th in its cost of doing business ranking, and 48th in its cost of living analysis. Forbes ranked the state 44th out of 50 in 2014 in its economic climate ranking, while the Tax Foundation rated Connecticut 42nd in its Business Tax Climate index and 49th in its property tax ranking. It also showed state and local tax collections per person to be the second-highest in the country.
If GE moves, it will have not only a negative economic impact on Connecticut, but a social one as well. At present the company employs 5,700 people there, and spends $14 billion a year with local suppliers, helping to support more than 65,000 jobs in the state. The company contributes millions to local charities, including $1.2 million in 2010 to Fairfield County healthcare centers and $7.5 million in 2012 in a partnership with the University of Connecticut to fund engineering research and scholarship. In 2013, the company donated $15 million to Newtown for a new community center. In 2014, the company made a total of nearly $10 million in contributions to local and state charities, as well.
If it moves, GE will take with it 4,500 volunteers who each year invest nearly 50,000 man-hours in more than 145 local and state-wide projects.
As Immelt explained in his e-mail:
We purchase $14 billion in goods and services from Connecticut companies. Despite this, we have had a tough past decade in Connecticut. Our taxes have been raised five times since 2011.… I believe we should pay our fair share and that all of us should give back to our communities.
But we can compare Connecticut with other states where small and large businesses have a better environment to thrive and compete.
Connecticut politicians appear to be blind or oblivious to the consequences of their actions. Carol Platt Liebau, president of the Yankee Institute, a free-market think tank, supports the potential move out of the state by GE:
I think it does make sense, because what you’ve seen [by politicians] is not only a willingness to raise taxes but a seeming lack of comprehension on the part of state leaders as to why that’s a problem.
Not every politician in the state has lost his mind, however. State Senator Joe Markley, a rare Republican in a heavily Democrat state, said that 25 years of tax increases and exploding government has destroyed “one of the country’s great manufacturing bases.” In a moment of candor, Markley said Connecticut’s problem is simple: “The economy stinks and we spend too much,” adding, “We are the example of what you get with big government.”
Not to pick on Connecticut unnecessarily, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), in its recent Rich States, Poor States study, is helpful in pointing out that, in general, taxpayers and businesses are leaving poorly run states in favor of better performing ones. In its study, New York ranks dead last in its Economic Performance Outlook while Illinois ranks 40th, California ranks 44th, Connecticut ranks 47th, and Massachusetts ranks 28th.
In contrast, the states where taxpayers are fleeing to are, in general, ranked higher by ALEC. Texas is ranked 11th while Florida is ranked 15th. South Carolina is ranked 32nd, while North Carolina is Number 4 with Arizona at Number 5.
Link:
http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/21552-study-taxpayers-businesses-fleeing-high-tax-states
“Classical liberalism” is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade. Up until around 1900, this ideology was generally known simply as liberalism.
When “Liberal” Was Lost
By Bionic Mosquito
We find ourselves using the term “classical liberal,” to distinguish from what is now understood as “liberal.”
What is classical liberalism?
“Classical liberalism” is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade. Up until around 1900, this ideology was generally known simply as liberalism.
Doesn’t sound too bad. What happened?
The qualifying “classical” is now usually necessary, in English-speaking countries at least (but not, for instance, in France), because liberalism has come to be associated with wide-ranging interferences with private property and the market on behalf of egalitarian goals. This version of liberalism — if such it can still be called — is sometimes designated as “social,” or (erroneously) “modern” or the “new,” liberalism.
Was it due to some nefarious plot, designed to bastardize the language of freedom? Maybe. But there may be a simpler – yet no less destructive – story.
From A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin:
Between autumn 1916 and autumn 1917, the Ottoman Empire held firm while the governments of its adversaries, the Allied Powers, collapsed.
In each of Britain, France, and Russia the governments that began the war were overthrown. To follow the history of the term “liberal” perhaps it is instructive to follow the British experience.
The Prime Minister who had brought Britain into the war was the first Allied leader to fall victim to it.
This would be the (classical) Liberal H.H. Asquith. He was to be replaced by the (once-was-but-no-longer-classical-instead-just-plain-new) Liberal David Lloyd George.
Asquith apparently prosecuted the war while respecting liberal traditions (to the extent such is possible). For example despite the military catastrophes in Mesopotamia, Gallipoli and on the western front he refused to initiate compulsory conscription.
Lloyd George, in dramatic contrast, made the conscription issue his own. In taking the lead on this issue he showed how much his political position had changed….Traditional Liberals, who had always opposed compulsion, felt that Lloyd George was going over to the other camp.
Having lost many of his former political colleagues due to his completely changed views, Lloyd George found some new ones. Most notable (to me at least) was Alfred Milner – the champion of imperialism.
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner KG GCB GCMG PC (23 March 1854 – 13 May 1925) was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played an influential leadership role in the formulation of foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s. He was also the key British Empire figure in the events leading up to and following the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902 and, while serving as High Commissioner, is additionally noted for mentoring a gathering of young members of the South African Civil Service, informally known as Milner’s Kindergarten who, in some cases, themselves became important figures in administering the British Empire. In the later part of his life, from December 1916 to November 1918, he was one of the most important members of David Lloyd George’s War Cabinet.
And his “kindergarten”?
Milner’s Kindergarten is an informal reference to a group of Britons who served in the South African Civil Service under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner, between the Second Boer War and the founding of the Union of South Africa. They were in favour of the South African union and, ultimately, an imperial federation of the British Empire itself.
Milner and Rhodes were joined at the hip on this project of a global, Anglo-imperialism, according to Stead. According to Maurice Hankey, the most influential group in Britain at the time was the Round Table group, and Milner was the leader.
Milner was a key figure in the launching of the Boer War in South Africa; at the time, Lloyd George “vigorously opposed” this venture, as any self-respecting liberal (as the term was properly understood) would have done. No more.
Lloyd George, the “pragmatic, intuitive opportunist” was now in the hands of Milner, who was “methodological in action and systematic in thought….” Daily, the “dictatorship of two” would meet at 11:00 AM, along with Hankey and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Only after this, at noon, would they meet with the other members of the war cabinet.
With Milner as an ally, Lloyd George set out on the transformation of the term “liberal”:
It was a sweeping, revolutionary change in the way the country was governed. Arthur Balfour, the former Prime Minister who became Foreign Minister in the new government, remarked of Lloyd George at the time: “If he wants to be a dictator, let him be. If he thinks that he can win the war, I’m all for his having a try.”
Lloyd George was the last Prime Minister of the Liberal Party. Thereafter, the office alternated between “Conservative” and “Labour.”
And that’s what happened to the term “liberal.”
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/bionic-mosquito/when-liberal-was-lost/
By Bionic Mosquito
We find ourselves using the term “classical liberal,” to distinguish from what is now understood as “liberal.”
What is classical liberalism?
“Classical liberalism” is the term used to designate the ideology advocating private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and international peace based on free trade. Up until around 1900, this ideology was generally known simply as liberalism.
Doesn’t sound too bad. What happened?
The qualifying “classical” is now usually necessary, in English-speaking countries at least (but not, for instance, in France), because liberalism has come to be associated with wide-ranging interferences with private property and the market on behalf of egalitarian goals. This version of liberalism — if such it can still be called — is sometimes designated as “social,” or (erroneously) “modern” or the “new,” liberalism.
Was it due to some nefarious plot, designed to bastardize the language of freedom? Maybe. But there may be a simpler – yet no less destructive – story.
From A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin:
Between autumn 1916 and autumn 1917, the Ottoman Empire held firm while the governments of its adversaries, the Allied Powers, collapsed.
In each of Britain, France, and Russia the governments that began the war were overthrown. To follow the history of the term “liberal” perhaps it is instructive to follow the British experience.
The Prime Minister who had brought Britain into the war was the first Allied leader to fall victim to it.
This would be the (classical) Liberal H.H. Asquith. He was to be replaced by the (once-was-but-no-longer-classical-instead-just-plain-new) Liberal David Lloyd George.
Asquith apparently prosecuted the war while respecting liberal traditions (to the extent such is possible). For example despite the military catastrophes in Mesopotamia, Gallipoli and on the western front he refused to initiate compulsory conscription.
Lloyd George, in dramatic contrast, made the conscription issue his own. In taking the lead on this issue he showed how much his political position had changed….Traditional Liberals, who had always opposed compulsion, felt that Lloyd George was going over to the other camp.
Having lost many of his former political colleagues due to his completely changed views, Lloyd George found some new ones. Most notable (to me at least) was Alfred Milner – the champion of imperialism.
Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner KG GCB GCMG PC (23 March 1854 – 13 May 1925) was a British statesman and colonial administrator who played an influential leadership role in the formulation of foreign and domestic policy between the mid-1890s and early 1920s. He was also the key British Empire figure in the events leading up to and following the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902 and, while serving as High Commissioner, is additionally noted for mentoring a gathering of young members of the South African Civil Service, informally known as Milner’s Kindergarten who, in some cases, themselves became important figures in administering the British Empire. In the later part of his life, from December 1916 to November 1918, he was one of the most important members of David Lloyd George’s War Cabinet.
And his “kindergarten”?
Milner’s Kindergarten is an informal reference to a group of Britons who served in the South African Civil Service under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner, between the Second Boer War and the founding of the Union of South Africa. They were in favour of the South African union and, ultimately, an imperial federation of the British Empire itself.
Milner and Rhodes were joined at the hip on this project of a global, Anglo-imperialism, according to Stead. According to Maurice Hankey, the most influential group in Britain at the time was the Round Table group, and Milner was the leader.
Milner was a key figure in the launching of the Boer War in South Africa; at the time, Lloyd George “vigorously opposed” this venture, as any self-respecting liberal (as the term was properly understood) would have done. No more.
Lloyd George, the “pragmatic, intuitive opportunist” was now in the hands of Milner, who was “methodological in action and systematic in thought….” Daily, the “dictatorship of two” would meet at 11:00 AM, along with Hankey and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Only after this, at noon, would they meet with the other members of the war cabinet.
With Milner as an ally, Lloyd George set out on the transformation of the term “liberal”:
It was a sweeping, revolutionary change in the way the country was governed. Arthur Balfour, the former Prime Minister who became Foreign Minister in the new government, remarked of Lloyd George at the time: “If he wants to be a dictator, let him be. If he thinks that he can win the war, I’m all for his having a try.”
Lloyd George was the last Prime Minister of the Liberal Party. Thereafter, the office alternated between “Conservative” and “Labour.”
And that’s what happened to the term “liberal.”
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/bionic-mosquito/when-liberal-was-lost/
"Proud? Of what?"
Thank You For Your Service, Huh, Yeah, Right...
By Jack Perry
You know, I’ll tell you a secret. I used to be very depressed over the whole state of affairs in this country. Then one day, it came to me that it’s all just a grand illusion. None of it is actual reality. Therefore, one should laugh at it and also laugh at the clowns taking this all seriously. As if voting in Flookey McPheerson is going to actually make a bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. Once we have President McPheerson, he will start wars, of course. And real people will die in them. Lots of people will die in them. Why? Because they enlisted believing in the illusion. That it was REAL and America was a real place governed by laws, concerned with righteousness and justice. Huh. I made that mistake once and got assigned to the purgatory of the 101st Airborne for my sins.
People say, “Thank you for your service…” but won’t make good on that because I don’t eat the correct trendy mountainous shrubs, drink coffee made with exotic-cat defecated beans, and ride the coolest bicycle made from alloys pioneered by the United States government. Thank me for my service…hmmm…I’d rather have that time back and I’ll give them back the awards sitting in a box full of other useless junk. If I can find the box under boxes of other forgotten crap I’ve also forgotten to take the plunge and throw away. People now think dogtags are cool. They’ve become jewelry they sell at the mall! Hey people, those were issued to identify the body! Or what might be left of it, if anything! Hel-LO!!! That’s why you had to list religion on them, so they knew whose prayers went with what dead body so they could match them up. The army is all about things matching. Especially funding from the Department of Defense matching their imperial ambitions which they won’t admit to on this side of the Rubicon, er, Potomac. Yes, and they’re made of a very high grade of stainless steel. I wish I could find kitchen cutlery made of that steel. Then they wouldn’t stain the sink. But the dogtag needs to not corrode during decomposition, see. That’s a world of difference from onion juice. Amazing things, and now they’ve become fad jewelry. It’s the same as wearing a coroner’s toe tag, you dolts!!!
If people really knew that a day of walking in your garden in quiet contemplation would do more for you than a year in the service of this regime, nobody would enlist. From time to time, I run across people who think these were the best days of their lives. I feel sorry for them. I learned a lot, but not what the army taught me. (Though what they taught me several years and a lot of meditation to unlearn.) The army knows this because several anti-war folks have sprung from the loins of the military. So they’d always search the barracks and made notes of who was reading what. I left anti-war books for them to find, getting into the spirit of the Cold War we were willing to lose men in horrifying training accidents to show the Russkies whose choppers crash better. What? You wanted a safe helicopter to fly in?! What, you think this is Air Force One?! Get on there, soldier! They asked, “Where did you get these books?” From the post library on the base here. “What?! We better check that out. Library procurement will have a lot to answer for!” They never asked if I read them so I never volunteered that information. Never volunteer—lesson numero uno in the army. You already made that epic mistake and that’s why you’re there in the first place repeating the mantra of, “If only, If only, If only…” Yes, if only you’d hung up the phone when the recruiter called. The recruiter invites you to lunch at some fast-food burger joint, or they did back in the day. Yeah, the free lunch that costs you a fortune. It’s like volunteering to be meshuggeneh, I tell you. No, wait, it IS volunteering to be meshuggeneh. Trust me on that one.
It took a lot of time and travel to start erasing the vestigial tail issued by the United States Army. The throwback gene to our reptilian ancestors, if that be true. If not, the army deems it to be true and plans accordingly. “Tail, Reptile-Type, One Each! Place it into your duffel bags and hold up your hand assembly group! Come on, hurry up, get your heads out of your duffelbags!” So, what goes in the duffelbag, the tail or the head or both? Ah! This is the United States Army! The head goes elsewhere! Feh! I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience, but I wouldn’t pay a nickel for it, either. Wait, I’d rather have the million dollars. I’ve paid far, far more than a nickel thanks to the army.
Look, kids, the United States government spends a lot of money to convince you that the military is a swell place. Hey, after basic training and AIT, it’s just like a 9 to 5 job! There’s college money, maybe bonus money! How did they do this back in the day? “I Want YOU To Be A Mamluk!” You go in there and you think you’re being such a great patriot. A True Believer. Everyone’s in awe, they put your picture in the paper and all that. Yeah, well, the obituaries put peoples’ pictures in the paper, too. You don’t see people clamoring for that publicity. Read how they did it in the First World War, a war so great they called it the Great War at first and so great it spawned a sequel just a couple decades later. They got everyone hopped up on patriotism which, if it were a controlled substance, would be right up there with heroin and cocaine. The reality? Human wave assaults against machine guns. Millions of dead. Skeletons are still turning up after heavy rains. The first use of chemical weapons. Gee, the bug spray works so well against the ants in the house, maybe we should try it on soldiers! And they did. This show must go on! It has passed into being a mini-series! They have to keep bringing in new characters as the original ones get killed off. That’s where you come in, kid.
So it must all be laughed at. This great time I’m told I had, to be proud of my country and my veteran status. Proud? Of what? Having been an accomplice of this racket? Where’s that nickel? I’ll trade it for that million dollars and mail my awards to the Pentagon with instructions on where they can stash them.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/jack-perry/thank-you-for-your-service-huh-yeah-right/
By Jack Perry
You know, I’ll tell you a secret. I used to be very depressed over the whole state of affairs in this country. Then one day, it came to me that it’s all just a grand illusion. None of it is actual reality. Therefore, one should laugh at it and also laugh at the clowns taking this all seriously. As if voting in Flookey McPheerson is going to actually make a bit of difference in the grand scheme of things. Once we have President McPheerson, he will start wars, of course. And real people will die in them. Lots of people will die in them. Why? Because they enlisted believing in the illusion. That it was REAL and America was a real place governed by laws, concerned with righteousness and justice. Huh. I made that mistake once and got assigned to the purgatory of the 101st Airborne for my sins.
People say, “Thank you for your service…” but won’t make good on that because I don’t eat the correct trendy mountainous shrubs, drink coffee made with exotic-cat defecated beans, and ride the coolest bicycle made from alloys pioneered by the United States government. Thank me for my service…hmmm…I’d rather have that time back and I’ll give them back the awards sitting in a box full of other useless junk. If I can find the box under boxes of other forgotten crap I’ve also forgotten to take the plunge and throw away. People now think dogtags are cool. They’ve become jewelry they sell at the mall! Hey people, those were issued to identify the body! Or what might be left of it, if anything! Hel-LO!!! That’s why you had to list religion on them, so they knew whose prayers went with what dead body so they could match them up. The army is all about things matching. Especially funding from the Department of Defense matching their imperial ambitions which they won’t admit to on this side of the Rubicon, er, Potomac. Yes, and they’re made of a very high grade of stainless steel. I wish I could find kitchen cutlery made of that steel. Then they wouldn’t stain the sink. But the dogtag needs to not corrode during decomposition, see. That’s a world of difference from onion juice. Amazing things, and now they’ve become fad jewelry. It’s the same as wearing a coroner’s toe tag, you dolts!!!
If people really knew that a day of walking in your garden in quiet contemplation would do more for you than a year in the service of this regime, nobody would enlist. From time to time, I run across people who think these were the best days of their lives. I feel sorry for them. I learned a lot, but not what the army taught me. (Though what they taught me several years and a lot of meditation to unlearn.) The army knows this because several anti-war folks have sprung from the loins of the military. So they’d always search the barracks and made notes of who was reading what. I left anti-war books for them to find, getting into the spirit of the Cold War we were willing to lose men in horrifying training accidents to show the Russkies whose choppers crash better. What? You wanted a safe helicopter to fly in?! What, you think this is Air Force One?! Get on there, soldier! They asked, “Where did you get these books?” From the post library on the base here. “What?! We better check that out. Library procurement will have a lot to answer for!” They never asked if I read them so I never volunteered that information. Never volunteer—lesson numero uno in the army. You already made that epic mistake and that’s why you’re there in the first place repeating the mantra of, “If only, If only, If only…” Yes, if only you’d hung up the phone when the recruiter called. The recruiter invites you to lunch at some fast-food burger joint, or they did back in the day. Yeah, the free lunch that costs you a fortune. It’s like volunteering to be meshuggeneh, I tell you. No, wait, it IS volunteering to be meshuggeneh. Trust me on that one.
It took a lot of time and travel to start erasing the vestigial tail issued by the United States Army. The throwback gene to our reptilian ancestors, if that be true. If not, the army deems it to be true and plans accordingly. “Tail, Reptile-Type, One Each! Place it into your duffel bags and hold up your hand assembly group! Come on, hurry up, get your heads out of your duffelbags!” So, what goes in the duffelbag, the tail or the head or both? Ah! This is the United States Army! The head goes elsewhere! Feh! I wouldn’t take a million dollars for the experience, but I wouldn’t pay a nickel for it, either. Wait, I’d rather have the million dollars. I’ve paid far, far more than a nickel thanks to the army.
Look, kids, the United States government spends a lot of money to convince you that the military is a swell place. Hey, after basic training and AIT, it’s just like a 9 to 5 job! There’s college money, maybe bonus money! How did they do this back in the day? “I Want YOU To Be A Mamluk!” You go in there and you think you’re being such a great patriot. A True Believer. Everyone’s in awe, they put your picture in the paper and all that. Yeah, well, the obituaries put peoples’ pictures in the paper, too. You don’t see people clamoring for that publicity. Read how they did it in the First World War, a war so great they called it the Great War at first and so great it spawned a sequel just a couple decades later. They got everyone hopped up on patriotism which, if it were a controlled substance, would be right up there with heroin and cocaine. The reality? Human wave assaults against machine guns. Millions of dead. Skeletons are still turning up after heavy rains. The first use of chemical weapons. Gee, the bug spray works so well against the ants in the house, maybe we should try it on soldiers! And they did. This show must go on! It has passed into being a mini-series! They have to keep bringing in new characters as the original ones get killed off. That’s where you come in, kid.
So it must all be laughed at. This great time I’m told I had, to be proud of my country and my veteran status. Proud? Of what? Having been an accomplice of this racket? Where’s that nickel? I’ll trade it for that million dollars and mail my awards to the Pentagon with instructions on where they can stash them.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/09/jack-perry/thank-you-for-your-service-huh-yeah-right/
Friday, September 11, 2015
"Possibly for the first time since its founding 70 years ago, a major UN agreement involving social policy does not mention the family..."
Obama, UN Pushing Radical LGBT/Abortion Agenda for Sustainable Development Summit
Written by William F. Jasper
One hundred-fifty presidents, prime ministers, dictators, and other heads of state are coming. Pope Francis is coming. Thousands of journalists, diplomats, and NGO activists are coming. The United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, to be held September 25-27, at the UN headquarters in New York City, is set to become one of the global body’s biggest confabs ever. In addition to promoting global-warming fears and the UN’s Paris Summit on Climate Change in December, as well as global taxation, education, and environmental goals, the upcoming September gathering will undoubtedly be used as a springboard to impose more population control, abortion, and homosexual/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered “rights” on developing countries that are resisting the “enlightened” perversion of the United Nations and its powerful supporters in the post-Christian governments of the United States and the European Union
Despite huge media and diplomatic pressure to formally include LBGT rights, abortion, and other “sexual and reproductive rights” in the Sustainable Development Goals, the final outcome document approved by the UN General Assembly on September 1 left these items out. This was due to the insistence of an alliance of African, Latin American, and Arab nations, together with the Vatican, which had refused to cave in on these issues during the last three years of contentious negotiations.
In announcing the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised them as a “turning point” and “the start of a new era.” However, the Obama State Department expressed disappointment, stating, “We believe that we could have gone farther and broken new ground. We instead relied on agreed language.”
Samantha Power, President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations and one of the administration’s key advocates for the LBGT cause, led a last-minute effort at the United Nations Security Council on August 24 to influence the SDG outcome vote. Regarding this LBGT “historic event” the State Department public affairs office reported:
Today, members of the UN Security Council held their first Arria-formula [off the record] meeting on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) issues, particularly in the context of ISIL’s crimes against LGBT individuals in Iraq and Syria. This historic event recognizes that the issue of LGBT rights has a place in the UN Security Council.
Around the world, the UN has documented thousands of cases of individuals killed or injured in brutal attacks simply because they are LGBT or perceived to be LGBT.
“Injecting” LGBT “Into the DNA of the UN”
Ambassador Power, who is a proponent of expansive use of U.S. and UN military power throughout the world, said the closed-door Security Council palaver “was a very moving meeting” and that it was a big step toward “injecting” the LGBT issue “into the DNA” of the UN.
"Again, we’re getting this issue into the DNA of the United Nations, but until today the Security Council had never broached this topic, and so today also represents a small but historic step," Power said in a press briefing broadcast by C-SPAN.
"We just have to continue to create dedicated spaces and venues for conversations like the one we just had, raising awareness, showing LGBT people, or those being persecuted, that the UN cares, that the Security Council cares, that the General Assembly cares, that the Human Rights Council cares, that the Member States of the United Nations care — that’s extremely important," Power said. "But also each of us, as governments, has a responsibility to inject the treatment of LGBT persons into our bilateral relationships as well."
Power praised President Obama for directing all U.S. government agencies to "inject LGBT rights into our foreign policy," when it comes to funding for human rights and humanitarian assistance.
These and other efforts by the Obama administration, the EU, and UN to bully member countries into acceptance of the UN’s neo-pagan sexuality have been met with heroic resistance by many Third World nations. However, representatives of these nations are fully aware that, in spite of the fact that the SDG outcome document does not include the deceptive language sought by the sexual and reproductive rights militants, President Obama and the entire pro-abortion/pro-perversion lobby will, nevertheless, attempt to take the SDG process in that direction.
“Sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights cannot be considered to create or imply a right to abortion,” said Senegal’s representative, speaking on behalf of the 54-nation African Group, the UN’s largest regional bloc. Recognizing the UN’s perennial subversive habit of reinterpreting defined language, the African Group also rejected “any interpretation of any terms that runs counter to domestic law.”
The African Group, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and other individual countries also denied there is any basis for considering “sexual orientation and gender identity,” a phrase that does not appear in the SDG document, for implementing the UN development program.
The New York City-based Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) noted:
The Holy See went further than the African Group, qualifying the entire agenda with the hope that all countries will strive to protect life in the womb.
“The Holy See remains confident that the related pledge ‘no one will be left behind’ will serve as the perspective through which the entire Agenda will be read to protect the right to life of the person, from conception until natural death,” they said.
C-Fam also drew attention to the fact that the Obama/UN/EU pro-abortion/pro-homosexual lobby had achieved a victory of sorts by excluding any mention of “family” in the SDC document. “Unable to get recognition of homosexual and transgender rights at the UN, the United States, European countries and their allies succeeded in blocking the family altogether from the new global development goals,” C-Fam reported.
“Possibly for the first time since its founding 70 years ago, a major UN agreement involving social policy does not mention the family. At its adoption this week, several countries highlighted this flaw,” said the C-Fam analysis.
“In the absence of any substantive headway on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, the Obama administration, with the help of LGBT supporters, moved to erode the pro-life and pro-family principles that underpin the UN,” C-Fam continued.
Many UN documents have at least paid lip service to the family as the “natural and fundamental group unit of society,” even though the UN and the regimes ruling many of its member states have long been infamous for promoting totalitarian, anti-family policies and programs. “First stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every major UN agreement, and just about every UN resolution, touching on social policy has included a reference to the family,” C-Fam notes. “The Sustainable Development Goals — a 15-year, multi-billion dollar plan that will impact every country — are now an exception with the potential of becoming a harmful precedent.”
The United Nations and the Obama administration have been united in pressing an increasingly aggressive pro-abortion/pro-perversion agenda, especially during the past year.
It is undoubtedly not a coincidence that the UN SDG Summit will be starting precisely on year to the day after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a “Call to World Leaders” as part of the the UN’s “Free & Equal” project, which the UN describes as “a United Nations campaign for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.”
“On 25 September 2014, foreign ministers and other high-level representatives of UN Member States met at the United Nations to discuss next steps in the fight to end homophobia and transphobia,” the website declares. Of course, that means fighting orthodox-believing Christians, Jews, and Muslims, whose religious faiths automatically make them “homophobic” and “transphobic” in the eyes of the U.S./UN/EU political correctness police. Naturally, President Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, played a prominent role at the UN event, symbolically placing the U.S. imprimatur on the globalist efforts to legitimize (and force acceptance and approval of) sodomy, while simultaneously delegitimizing and stigmatizing Christianity. (See video here).
This year, the UN unveiled its “Free & Equal” pro-LGBT video, along with many other endorsements of the militant LGBT agenda, among which was declaring Sunday, May 17, to be International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia.
Irina Bokova, an unrepentant veteran member of the mass-murdering Bulgarian Communist Party, and now director-general of UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), announced that next year’s International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, on May 17, 2016, will include a meeting of ministers of education at UNESCO in Paris, to launch the first global report on the status of education sector responses to homophobic and transphobic violence, including bullying. Which means we can expect a ramping up of the already oppressive LGBT propaganda campaign in virtually all schools.
The Obama White House, meanwhile, highlights many of its bouquets to the lavender lobby with a web page especially dedicated to “President Obama and the LBGT Community,” which boasts:
Since taking office, the President has demonstrated that his vision for a brighter future includes greater equality for LGBT Americans. The President and his Administration are dedicated to eliminating barriers to equality, fighting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and engaging LGBT communities across the country.
This site is a tool for you to learn about how President Obama and his team are working to win the future for LGBT Americans.
Among the boasts listed on the White House’s “Obama Administration Record for the LGBT Community” we find:
Advancing and Protecting the Rights of LGBT Persons around the World: The Obama Administration continues to engage systematically with governments around the world to advance the rights of LGBT persons. The Administration’s intensive and systematic leadership has included various public statements and resolutions at the UN. President Obama has also issued a presidential memorandum that directs all Federal agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.
That has translated into the Obama administration using the full weight, prestige, and monetary resources of the United States to bully and bribe foreign governments to trash their own laws, mores, and traditions and replace them with the new UN-mandated LGBT commandments.
Link
http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/21551-obama-un-pushing-radical-lgbt-abortion-agenda-for-sustainable-goals-summit
Written by William F. Jasper
One hundred-fifty presidents, prime ministers, dictators, and other heads of state are coming. Pope Francis is coming. Thousands of journalists, diplomats, and NGO activists are coming. The United Nations Sustainable Development Summit, to be held September 25-27, at the UN headquarters in New York City, is set to become one of the global body’s biggest confabs ever. In addition to promoting global-warming fears and the UN’s Paris Summit on Climate Change in December, as well as global taxation, education, and environmental goals, the upcoming September gathering will undoubtedly be used as a springboard to impose more population control, abortion, and homosexual/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered “rights” on developing countries that are resisting the “enlightened” perversion of the United Nations and its powerful supporters in the post-Christian governments of the United States and the European Union
Despite huge media and diplomatic pressure to formally include LBGT rights, abortion, and other “sexual and reproductive rights” in the Sustainable Development Goals, the final outcome document approved by the UN General Assembly on September 1 left these items out. This was due to the insistence of an alliance of African, Latin American, and Arab nations, together with the Vatican, which had refused to cave in on these issues during the last three years of contentious negotiations.
In announcing the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised them as a “turning point” and “the start of a new era.” However, the Obama State Department expressed disappointment, stating, “We believe that we could have gone farther and broken new ground. We instead relied on agreed language.”
Samantha Power, President Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations and one of the administration’s key advocates for the LBGT cause, led a last-minute effort at the United Nations Security Council on August 24 to influence the SDG outcome vote. Regarding this LBGT “historic event” the State Department public affairs office reported:
Today, members of the UN Security Council held their first Arria-formula [off the record] meeting on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) issues, particularly in the context of ISIL’s crimes against LGBT individuals in Iraq and Syria. This historic event recognizes that the issue of LGBT rights has a place in the UN Security Council.
Around the world, the UN has documented thousands of cases of individuals killed or injured in brutal attacks simply because they are LGBT or perceived to be LGBT.
“Injecting” LGBT “Into the DNA of the UN”
Ambassador Power, who is a proponent of expansive use of U.S. and UN military power throughout the world, said the closed-door Security Council palaver “was a very moving meeting” and that it was a big step toward “injecting” the LGBT issue “into the DNA” of the UN.
"Again, we’re getting this issue into the DNA of the United Nations, but until today the Security Council had never broached this topic, and so today also represents a small but historic step," Power said in a press briefing broadcast by C-SPAN.
"We just have to continue to create dedicated spaces and venues for conversations like the one we just had, raising awareness, showing LGBT people, or those being persecuted, that the UN cares, that the Security Council cares, that the General Assembly cares, that the Human Rights Council cares, that the Member States of the United Nations care — that’s extremely important," Power said. "But also each of us, as governments, has a responsibility to inject the treatment of LGBT persons into our bilateral relationships as well."
Power praised President Obama for directing all U.S. government agencies to "inject LGBT rights into our foreign policy," when it comes to funding for human rights and humanitarian assistance.
These and other efforts by the Obama administration, the EU, and UN to bully member countries into acceptance of the UN’s neo-pagan sexuality have been met with heroic resistance by many Third World nations. However, representatives of these nations are fully aware that, in spite of the fact that the SDG outcome document does not include the deceptive language sought by the sexual and reproductive rights militants, President Obama and the entire pro-abortion/pro-perversion lobby will, nevertheless, attempt to take the SDG process in that direction.
“Sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights cannot be considered to create or imply a right to abortion,” said Senegal’s representative, speaking on behalf of the 54-nation African Group, the UN’s largest regional bloc. Recognizing the UN’s perennial subversive habit of reinterpreting defined language, the African Group also rejected “any interpretation of any terms that runs counter to domestic law.”
The African Group, the Gulf Cooperation Council, and other individual countries also denied there is any basis for considering “sexual orientation and gender identity,” a phrase that does not appear in the SDG document, for implementing the UN development program.
The New York City-based Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam) noted:
The Holy See went further than the African Group, qualifying the entire agenda with the hope that all countries will strive to protect life in the womb.
“The Holy See remains confident that the related pledge ‘no one will be left behind’ will serve as the perspective through which the entire Agenda will be read to protect the right to life of the person, from conception until natural death,” they said.
C-Fam also drew attention to the fact that the Obama/UN/EU pro-abortion/pro-homosexual lobby had achieved a victory of sorts by excluding any mention of “family” in the SDC document. “Unable to get recognition of homosexual and transgender rights at the UN, the United States, European countries and their allies succeeded in blocking the family altogether from the new global development goals,” C-Fam reported.
“Possibly for the first time since its founding 70 years ago, a major UN agreement involving social policy does not mention the family. At its adoption this week, several countries highlighted this flaw,” said the C-Fam analysis.
“In the absence of any substantive headway on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights, the Obama administration, with the help of LGBT supporters, moved to erode the pro-life and pro-family principles that underpin the UN,” C-Fam continued.
Many UN documents have at least paid lip service to the family as the “natural and fundamental group unit of society,” even though the UN and the regimes ruling many of its member states have long been infamous for promoting totalitarian, anti-family policies and programs. “First stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, every major UN agreement, and just about every UN resolution, touching on social policy has included a reference to the family,” C-Fam notes. “The Sustainable Development Goals — a 15-year, multi-billion dollar plan that will impact every country — are now an exception with the potential of becoming a harmful precedent.”
The United Nations and the Obama administration have been united in pressing an increasingly aggressive pro-abortion/pro-perversion agenda, especially during the past year.
It is undoubtedly not a coincidence that the UN SDG Summit will be starting precisely on year to the day after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a “Call to World Leaders” as part of the the UN’s “Free & Equal” project, which the UN describes as “a United Nations campaign for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality.”
“On 25 September 2014, foreign ministers and other high-level representatives of UN Member States met at the United Nations to discuss next steps in the fight to end homophobia and transphobia,” the website declares. Of course, that means fighting orthodox-believing Christians, Jews, and Muslims, whose religious faiths automatically make them “homophobic” and “transphobic” in the eyes of the U.S./UN/EU political correctness police. Naturally, President Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, played a prominent role at the UN event, symbolically placing the U.S. imprimatur on the globalist efforts to legitimize (and force acceptance and approval of) sodomy, while simultaneously delegitimizing and stigmatizing Christianity. (See video here).
This year, the UN unveiled its “Free & Equal” pro-LGBT video, along with many other endorsements of the militant LGBT agenda, among which was declaring Sunday, May 17, to be International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia.
Irina Bokova, an unrepentant veteran member of the mass-murdering Bulgarian Communist Party, and now director-general of UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), announced that next year’s International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, on May 17, 2016, will include a meeting of ministers of education at UNESCO in Paris, to launch the first global report on the status of education sector responses to homophobic and transphobic violence, including bullying. Which means we can expect a ramping up of the already oppressive LGBT propaganda campaign in virtually all schools.
The Obama White House, meanwhile, highlights many of its bouquets to the lavender lobby with a web page especially dedicated to “President Obama and the LBGT Community,” which boasts:
Since taking office, the President has demonstrated that his vision for a brighter future includes greater equality for LGBT Americans. The President and his Administration are dedicated to eliminating barriers to equality, fighting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, and engaging LGBT communities across the country.
This site is a tool for you to learn about how President Obama and his team are working to win the future for LGBT Americans.
Among the boasts listed on the White House’s “Obama Administration Record for the LGBT Community” we find:
Advancing and Protecting the Rights of LGBT Persons around the World: The Obama Administration continues to engage systematically with governments around the world to advance the rights of LGBT persons. The Administration’s intensive and systematic leadership has included various public statements and resolutions at the UN. President Obama has also issued a presidential memorandum that directs all Federal agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.
That has translated into the Obama administration using the full weight, prestige, and monetary resources of the United States to bully and bribe foreign governments to trash their own laws, mores, and traditions and replace them with the new UN-mandated LGBT commandments.
Link
http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/item/21551-obama-un-pushing-radical-lgbt-abortion-agenda-for-sustainable-goals-summit
"The Neoconservatives are overjoyed by the arrival of the “New Pearl Harbor,” the necessary catalyst for launching their pre-planned wars."
9/11 Fourteen Years Later
Paul Craig Roberts
Millions of refugees from Washington’s wars are currently over-running Europe.
Washington’s 14-year and ongoing slaughter of Muslims and destruction of their countries are war crimes for which the US government’s official 9/11 conspiracy theory was the catalyst. Factual evidence and science do not support Washington’s conspiracy theory. The 9/11 Commission did not conduct an investigation. It was not permitted to investigate. The Commission sat and listened to the government’s story and wrote it down. Afterwards, the chairman and cochairman of the Commission said that the Commission “was set up to fail.” For a factual explanation of 9/11, watch this film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA&feature=youtu.be
Here is a presentation by Pilots For 9/11 Truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Laaq44SDgg
Here is an extensive examination of many of the aspects of 9/11:http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167
Phil Restino of the Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace wants to know why national antiwar organizations buy into the official 9/11 story when the official story is the basis for the wars that antiwar organizations oppose. Some are beginning to wonder if ineffectual peace groups are really Homeland Security or CIA fronts?
The account below of the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory reads like a parody, but in fact is an accurate summary of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. It was posted as a comment in the online UK Telegraph on September 12, 2009, in response to Charlie Sheen’s request to President Obama to conduct a real investigation into what happened on September 11, 2001.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/6177194/Charlie-Sheen-urges-Barack-Obama-to-reopen-911-investigation-in-video-message.html#disqus_thread
The Official Version of 9/11 goes something like this:
Directed by a beardy-guy from a cave in Afghanistan, nineteen hard-drinking, coke-snorting, devout Muslims enjoy lap dances before their mission to meet Allah. Using nothing more than craft knifes, they overpower cabin crew, passengers and pilots on four planes.
And hangover or not, they manage to give the world’s most sophisticated air defence system the slip.
Unfazed by leaving their “How to Fly a Passenger Jet” guide in the car at the airport, they master the controls in no-time and score direct hits on two towers, causing THREE to collapse completely.
The laws of physics fail, and the world watches in awe as asymmetrical damage and scattered low temperature fires cause steel-framed buildings to collapse symmetrically through their own mass at free-fall speed, for the first time in history.
Despite their dastardly cunning and superb planning, they give their identity away by using explosion-proof passports, which survive the destruction of steel and concrete and fall to the ground where they are quickly discovered lying on top of the mass of debris.
Meanwhile in Washington
Hani Hanjour, having previously flunked Cessna flying school, gets carried away with all the success of the day and suddenly finds incredible abilities behind the controls of a jet airliner. Instead of flying straight down into the large roof area of the Pentagon, he decides to show off a little. Executing an incredible 270 degree downward spiral, he levels off to hit the low facade of the Pentagon. Without ruining the nicely mowed lawn and at a speed just too fast to capture on video.
In the skies above Pennsylvania
Desperate to talk to loved ones before their death, some passengers use sheer willpower to connect mobile calls that would not be possible until several years later.
And following a heroic attempt by some to retake control of Flight 93, the airliner crashes into a Pennsylvania field leaving no trace of engines, fuselage or occupants except for the standard issue Muslim terrorist bandana.
During these events
President Bush continues to read “My Pet Goat” to a class of primary school children.
In New York
World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein blesses his own foresight in insuring the buildings against terrorist attack only six weeks previously.
In Washington
The Neoconservatives are overjoyed by the arrival of the “New Pearl Harbor,” the necessary catalyst for launching their pre-planned wars.
Go here for hyperlinks within article:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/911-fourteen-years-later.html
Paul Craig Roberts
Millions of refugees from Washington’s wars are currently over-running Europe.
Washington’s 14-year and ongoing slaughter of Muslims and destruction of their countries are war crimes for which the US government’s official 9/11 conspiracy theory was the catalyst. Factual evidence and science do not support Washington’s conspiracy theory. The 9/11 Commission did not conduct an investigation. It was not permitted to investigate. The Commission sat and listened to the government’s story and wrote it down. Afterwards, the chairman and cochairman of the Commission said that the Commission “was set up to fail.” For a factual explanation of 9/11, watch this film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsoY3AIRUGA&feature=youtu.be
Here is a presentation by Pilots For 9/11 Truth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Laaq44SDgg
Here is an extensive examination of many of the aspects of 9/11:http://www.luogocomune.net/site/modules/sections/index.php?op=viewarticle&artid=167
Phil Restino of the Central Florida chapter of Veterans For Peace wants to know why national antiwar organizations buy into the official 9/11 story when the official story is the basis for the wars that antiwar organizations oppose. Some are beginning to wonder if ineffectual peace groups are really Homeland Security or CIA fronts?
The account below of the government’s 9/11 conspiracy theory reads like a parody, but in fact is an accurate summary of the official 9/11 conspiracy theory. It was posted as a comment in the online UK Telegraph on September 12, 2009, in response to Charlie Sheen’s request to President Obama to conduct a real investigation into what happened on September 11, 2001.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/6177194/Charlie-Sheen-urges-Barack-Obama-to-reopen-911-investigation-in-video-message.html#disqus_thread
The Official Version of 9/11 goes something like this:
Directed by a beardy-guy from a cave in Afghanistan, nineteen hard-drinking, coke-snorting, devout Muslims enjoy lap dances before their mission to meet Allah. Using nothing more than craft knifes, they overpower cabin crew, passengers and pilots on four planes.
And hangover or not, they manage to give the world’s most sophisticated air defence system the slip.
Unfazed by leaving their “How to Fly a Passenger Jet” guide in the car at the airport, they master the controls in no-time and score direct hits on two towers, causing THREE to collapse completely.
The laws of physics fail, and the world watches in awe as asymmetrical damage and scattered low temperature fires cause steel-framed buildings to collapse symmetrically through their own mass at free-fall speed, for the first time in history.
Despite their dastardly cunning and superb planning, they give their identity away by using explosion-proof passports, which survive the destruction of steel and concrete and fall to the ground where they are quickly discovered lying on top of the mass of debris.
Meanwhile in Washington
Hani Hanjour, having previously flunked Cessna flying school, gets carried away with all the success of the day and suddenly finds incredible abilities behind the controls of a jet airliner. Instead of flying straight down into the large roof area of the Pentagon, he decides to show off a little. Executing an incredible 270 degree downward spiral, he levels off to hit the low facade of the Pentagon. Without ruining the nicely mowed lawn and at a speed just too fast to capture on video.
In the skies above Pennsylvania
Desperate to talk to loved ones before their death, some passengers use sheer willpower to connect mobile calls that would not be possible until several years later.
And following a heroic attempt by some to retake control of Flight 93, the airliner crashes into a Pennsylvania field leaving no trace of engines, fuselage or occupants except for the standard issue Muslim terrorist bandana.
During these events
President Bush continues to read “My Pet Goat” to a class of primary school children.
In New York
World Trade Center leaseholder Larry Silverstein blesses his own foresight in insuring the buildings against terrorist attack only six weeks previously.
In Washington
The Neoconservatives are overjoyed by the arrival of the “New Pearl Harbor,” the necessary catalyst for launching their pre-planned wars.
Go here for hyperlinks within article:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/911-fourteen-years-later.html
What a despicable person...
Hillary Clinton says people who oppose chopping up live babies for profit are "terrorists"
by: J. D. Heyes
The word "terrorist" is a strong adjective used to describe someone or some group that uses violence and fear to pursue a political goal. It is not, however, normally used to describe someone who merely disagrees with a political position.
Nevertheless, Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton thought it was an appropriate descriptor for anyone who disagrees with her over the issue of abortion and the hideous nature of Planned Parenthood's baby-parts-for-profit schemes that are currently being exposed in a series of videos by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), a pro-life organization.
"Now, extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups," the former secretary of state said recently at a rally in Ohio. "We expect that from people who don't want to live in the modern world. But it's a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States. Yet, they espouse out of date and out of touch policies. They are dead wrong for 21st-century America. We're going forward. We're not going back."
One major pro-life organization, however, did not take the insult lying down. Marjorie Dannelfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, characterized Clinton's comment as "outrageous," noting that at least half of Americans identify as pro-life.
She ought to be distancing herself
"Hillary Clinton's outrageous comparison of pro-life Americans to terrorists is a slap in the face to every American -- whether Republican or Democrat, woman or man -- who value the gift of life and support commonsense limits on abortion. She is shockingly out of touch," Dannenfelser said in a press release cited by the Washington Free Beacon.
The issue of abortion has been front and center this presidential election cycle due in large part to the exposure of Planned Parenthood's horrific actions in harvesting and selling baby organs in the name of "science" for as much profit as possible. The videos were made by undercover journalists operating on behalf of the center earlier this year.
Initially, Clinton said nothing about the videos – and she was not hard-pressed to comment about them by the mainstream media – but eventually she was forced to address them when she told a local paper in New Hampshire that the video images were "disturbing."
However, she later backtracked, using her support for late-term abortion to attack her Republican presidential rivals, a field that is almost universally pro-life. In addition, she has opposed GOP efforts in Congress to cut off taxpayer subsidies to Planned Parenthood, which amount to roughly half a billion dollars annually.
"Over the last few weeks, America's eyes have been opened to the pain that Planned Parenthood, a top Clinton ally, inflicts on the vulnerable. Graphic undercover videos have revealed Planned Parenthood's practice of harvesting and vivisecting unborn children and then profiting off of their organs. Rather than defaming compassionate, sensible Americans who want to stop this horror, Clinton ought to be distancing herself from the abortion business," Dannenfelser said.
Doubling down
Video footage shot by CMP also revealed that the baby organ peddlers and abortionists of PP are huge fans of Clinton.
Cate Dyer, the CEO of StemExpress, a firm that has partnered with about 100 Planned Parenthood clinics to buy and sell aborted fetal organs, told an undercover video team posing as tissue buyers that she has an autographed picture of Hillary Clinton on her desk.
"I'm a huge Hillary fan ... she's getting elected this time. It's a done deal as far as I'm concerned," she said in footage obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon.
The Clinton campaign has taken in some $10,000 from Planned Parenthood employees, which is about 20 times more than any other candidate in the crowded 2016 field.
"Doubling down on her support for unlimited abortion on demand, up until the moment of birth, paid for by taxpayers, will not win voters to Clinton's cause," Dannenfelser said, noting the results of a recent Marist University poll that found that 84 percent of respondents oppose late-term abortions.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051139_Hillary_Clinton_Planned_Parenthood_terrorists.html#ixzz3lShC0fxJ
by: J. D. Heyes
The word "terrorist" is a strong adjective used to describe someone or some group that uses violence and fear to pursue a political goal. It is not, however, normally used to describe someone who merely disagrees with a political position.
Nevertheless, Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton thought it was an appropriate descriptor for anyone who disagrees with her over the issue of abortion and the hideous nature of Planned Parenthood's baby-parts-for-profit schemes that are currently being exposed in a series of videos by the Center for Medical Progress (CMP), a pro-life organization.
"Now, extreme views about women, we expect that from some of the terrorist groups," the former secretary of state said recently at a rally in Ohio. "We expect that from people who don't want to live in the modern world. But it's a little hard to take coming from Republicans who want to be the president of the United States. Yet, they espouse out of date and out of touch policies. They are dead wrong for 21st-century America. We're going forward. We're not going back."
One major pro-life organization, however, did not take the insult lying down. Marjorie Dannelfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, characterized Clinton's comment as "outrageous," noting that at least half of Americans identify as pro-life.
She ought to be distancing herself
"Hillary Clinton's outrageous comparison of pro-life Americans to terrorists is a slap in the face to every American -- whether Republican or Democrat, woman or man -- who value the gift of life and support commonsense limits on abortion. She is shockingly out of touch," Dannenfelser said in a press release cited by the Washington Free Beacon.
The issue of abortion has been front and center this presidential election cycle due in large part to the exposure of Planned Parenthood's horrific actions in harvesting and selling baby organs in the name of "science" for as much profit as possible. The videos were made by undercover journalists operating on behalf of the center earlier this year.
Initially, Clinton said nothing about the videos – and she was not hard-pressed to comment about them by the mainstream media – but eventually she was forced to address them when she told a local paper in New Hampshire that the video images were "disturbing."
However, she later backtracked, using her support for late-term abortion to attack her Republican presidential rivals, a field that is almost universally pro-life. In addition, she has opposed GOP efforts in Congress to cut off taxpayer subsidies to Planned Parenthood, which amount to roughly half a billion dollars annually.
"Over the last few weeks, America's eyes have been opened to the pain that Planned Parenthood, a top Clinton ally, inflicts on the vulnerable. Graphic undercover videos have revealed Planned Parenthood's practice of harvesting and vivisecting unborn children and then profiting off of their organs. Rather than defaming compassionate, sensible Americans who want to stop this horror, Clinton ought to be distancing herself from the abortion business," Dannenfelser said.
Doubling down
Video footage shot by CMP also revealed that the baby organ peddlers and abortionists of PP are huge fans of Clinton.
Cate Dyer, the CEO of StemExpress, a firm that has partnered with about 100 Planned Parenthood clinics to buy and sell aborted fetal organs, told an undercover video team posing as tissue buyers that she has an autographed picture of Hillary Clinton on her desk.
"I'm a huge Hillary fan ... she's getting elected this time. It's a done deal as far as I'm concerned," she said in footage obtained exclusively by the Free Beacon.
The Clinton campaign has taken in some $10,000 from Planned Parenthood employees, which is about 20 times more than any other candidate in the crowded 2016 field.
"Doubling down on her support for unlimited abortion on demand, up until the moment of birth, paid for by taxpayers, will not win voters to Clinton's cause," Dannenfelser said, noting the results of a recent Marist University poll that found that 84 percent of respondents oppose late-term abortions.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/051139_Hillary_Clinton_Planned_Parenthood_terrorists.html#ixzz3lShC0fxJ
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