Don't drink from the tap: Northeast states on alert after high levels of carcinogenic acid found in water supply
by: David Gutierrez
Even as the contaminated water crisis in Flint, Mich., continues to make headlines, communities in three separate Northeast states have been facing a crisis of their own: widespread contamination of water supplies with the toxic chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, or C8).
PFOA is one of the key ingredients in nonstick cookware and is also used in plastics, wax paper coatings and stain-resistant fabrics. It is a known toxin that accumulates and persists in the human body. Studies have linked PFOA with cancer and with immune malfunction in children.
"It stays in the body for many, many years, and it turns out to interact with processes in our body," said Harvard environmental health researcher Philippe Grandjean, as reported by NPR.
Don't drink the water
The story began in 2013, when a man named Michael Hickey began to wonder if his father's death from kidney cancer might be related to his job at a PFOA factory in Hoosick Falls, NY. Hickey worried about the plant's proximity to village wells, so he paid to have the well water tested.
The tests found PFOA levels above the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) safe threshold of 400 parts per trillion. Followup tests near the factory came up at 18,000 parts per trillion, 45 times the safe limit. In November 2015, the EPA said residents should stop drinking or cooking with local well water. That ban was recently lifted, but many residents have said they will stick with bottled water for now.
Just across the border in North Bennington, Vt., high PFOA levels were found in private wells near a former plastics factory. The soil around local homes tested at higher than 20 parts per trillion, the safe level set by the state Department of Health.
Communities in New Hampshire have also found high levels of PFOA contamination in recent months.
'In every state'
Unfortunately, the problem almost certainly goes far beyond these three Northeastern states. In recent years, PFOA manufacturers, including DuPont and 3M, have been sued for contaminating water in Alabama, Ohio and West Virginia. And the Pentagon is testing water at 664 separate military sites for contamination with PFOA used in firefighting foams.
"This is not just a local problem," Grandjean said. "This is a problem which I am sure occurs in every single state."
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 98 percent of the US public has detectable levels of PFOA in their blood.
In March, the governors of New Hampshire, New York and Vermont sent the EPA a letter, calling PFOA contamination "a national problem that requires federal guidelines and a consistent, science-based approach."
Unfortunately, the EPA has hardly been on the forefront of tackling this problem. The agency's supposedly "safe" threshold of 400 parts per trillion has been criticized as unscientific. When the standard was first passed, the Environmental Working Group accused the EPA of giving communities a "false sense of security."
The level was based on the belief that short-term exposure to PFOA in concentrations of 500 parts per trillion would cause no health effects.
"The fact is that there is no such thing as short-term drinking water exposure," EWG President Richard Wiles wrote in an open letter to the EPA administrator. "People drink tap water every day. PFOA persists in the environment, and thus in water supplies, for hundreds of years. ... Applying this short-term health advisory to long-term exposure to contaminated water directly contradicts both sound science and EPA's own principles of risk assessment and risk management."
In fact, a study conducted at the University of Pennsylvania found that drinking tap water containing 400 parts per trillion PFOA rapidly produced blood levels 10 times higher than the EPA's "safe" threshold.
Levels would almost certainly end up even higher, since most people are also exposed to PFOA daily from non-water consumer sources.
To find out how you can help citizen scientists test America's drinking water to improve water quality and protect public health, visit EPAwatch.org.
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053617_tap_water_PFOA_chemical_contamination.html#ixzz45W1hnPiX
Monday, April 11, 2016
"We’re going to owe more than our entire economy is producing and by definition this is not sustainable..."
We’re all in trouble: Government debt is about to hit hopeless levels
by Sam Rolley
The nation’s financial situation is so bad that the federal government will owe more than the entire economy can produce in a matter of years.
That’s according to Government Accountability Office auditor Gene Dodaro, who made the shocking revelation during testimony before the Senate Budget Committee last week.
“We’re very heavily leveraged in debt,” he said. “The historical average post-World War II of how much debt we held as a percent of gross domestic product was 43 percent on average; right now we’re at 74 percent.”
That’s bad news for the taxpayers and savers on the hook for the government debt. Find out why here.
“The highest in the United States government’s history of debt held by the public as a percent of gross domestic product was 1946, right after World War II,” he said. “We’re on mark to hit that in the next 15 to 25 years.”
Without significant government efforts to address the nation’s runaway spending on things like healthcare, the auditor predicts that could snowball to as high of 300 percent of GDP.
“We’re going to owe more than our entire economy is producing and by definition this is not sustainable,” he pointed out.
Part of the problem is improper payments, of which GAO auditors found the government made $136.7 billion worth of in 2016.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell exactly where else the government is wasting tons of money because agencies have obscured hundreds of billions of dollars in spending by cooking the books.
“The government-wide financial statements that the GAO audits tell us what came into the government’s coffers and what went out, what the government owns and what it owes, and if the operations are financially sustainable,” said Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.). “But can we trust the information in the statements?”
Noting that GAO says we can’t, Enzi added: “The sketchiness is such that GAO remains unable to even issue an audit opinion on the government’s books.”
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/were-all-in-trouble-government-debt-is-about-to-hit-hopeless-levels/
by Sam Rolley
The nation’s financial situation is so bad that the federal government will owe more than the entire economy can produce in a matter of years.
That’s according to Government Accountability Office auditor Gene Dodaro, who made the shocking revelation during testimony before the Senate Budget Committee last week.
“We’re very heavily leveraged in debt,” he said. “The historical average post-World War II of how much debt we held as a percent of gross domestic product was 43 percent on average; right now we’re at 74 percent.”
That’s bad news for the taxpayers and savers on the hook for the government debt. Find out why here.
“The highest in the United States government’s history of debt held by the public as a percent of gross domestic product was 1946, right after World War II,” he said. “We’re on mark to hit that in the next 15 to 25 years.”
Without significant government efforts to address the nation’s runaway spending on things like healthcare, the auditor predicts that could snowball to as high of 300 percent of GDP.
“We’re going to owe more than our entire economy is producing and by definition this is not sustainable,” he pointed out.
Part of the problem is improper payments, of which GAO auditors found the government made $136.7 billion worth of in 2016.
Unfortunately, it’s difficult to tell exactly where else the government is wasting tons of money because agencies have obscured hundreds of billions of dollars in spending by cooking the books.
“The government-wide financial statements that the GAO audits tell us what came into the government’s coffers and what went out, what the government owns and what it owes, and if the operations are financially sustainable,” said Sen. Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.). “But can we trust the information in the statements?”
Noting that GAO says we can’t, Enzi added: “The sketchiness is such that GAO remains unable to even issue an audit opinion on the government’s books.”
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/were-all-in-trouble-government-debt-is-about-to-hit-hopeless-levels/
Without government, who would create the tax havens???
How a US President and JP Morgan Made Panama: And Turned it Into a Tax Haven
In 1903 the US bullied Colombia into giving up the province that became Panama. The plan was to create a nation to serve the interests of Wall Street
By Ed Vulliamy
This goes back a long way. The Panamanian state was originally created to function on behalf of the rich and self-seeking of this world – or rather their antecedents in America – when the 20th century was barely born.
Panama was created by the United States for purely selfish commercial reasons, right on that historical hinge between the imminent demise of Britain as the great global empire, and the rise of the new American imperium.
The writer Ken Silverstein put it with estimable simplicity in an article for Vice magazine two years ago: “In 1903, the administration of Theodore Roosevelt created the country after bullying Colombia into handing over what was then the province of Panama. Roosevelt acted at the behest of various banking groups, among them JP Morgan & Co, which was appointed as the country’s ‘fiscal agent’ in charge of managing $10m in aid that the US had rushed down to the new nation.”
The reason, of course, was to gain access to, and control of, the canal across the Panamanian isthmus that would open in 1914 to connect the world’s two great oceans, and the commerce that sailed them.
The Panamanian elite had learned early that their future lay more lucratively in accommodating the far-off rich than in being part of South America. Annuities paid by the Panama Railroad Company sent more into the Colombian exchequer than Panama ever got back from Bogotá, and it is likely that the province would have seceded anyway – had not a treaty been signed in September 1902 for the Americans to construct a canal under terms that, as the country’s leading historian in English, David Bushnell, writes, “accurately reflected the weak bargaining position of the Colombian negotiator”.
Colombia was, at the time, driven by what it calls the “thousand-day war” between its Liberal and Historical Conservative parties. Panama was one of the battlefields for the war’s later stages.
The canal treaty was closely followed by the “Panamanian revolution”, which was led by a French promoter of the canal and backed by what Bushnell calls “the evident complicity of the United States” – and was aided by the fact that the terms of the canal treaty forbade Colombian troops from landing to suppress it, lest they disturb the free transit of goods.
The Roosevelt/JP Morgan connection in the setting-up of the new state was a direct one. The Americans’ paperwork was done by a Republican party lawyer close to the administration, William Cromwell, who acted as legal counsel for JP Morgan.
JP Morgan led the American banks in gradually turning Panama into a financial centre – and a haven for tax evasion and money laundering – as well as a passage for shipping, with which these practices were at first entwined when Panama began to register foreign ships to carry fuel for the Standard Oil company in order for the corporation to avoid US tax liabilities.
On the slipstream of Standard Oil’s wheeze, Panama began to develop its labyrinthine system of tax-free incorporation – especially with regard to the shipping registry – with help and guidance from Wall Street, just as the US and Europe plunged into the Great Depression. The register, for example, welcomed US passenger ships happy to serve alcohol during prohibition...
Read the rest here:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/panama-canal-president-jp-morgan-tax-haven
In 1903 the US bullied Colombia into giving up the province that became Panama. The plan was to create a nation to serve the interests of Wall Street
By Ed Vulliamy
This goes back a long way. The Panamanian state was originally created to function on behalf of the rich and self-seeking of this world – or rather their antecedents in America – when the 20th century was barely born.
Panama was created by the United States for purely selfish commercial reasons, right on that historical hinge between the imminent demise of Britain as the great global empire, and the rise of the new American imperium.
The writer Ken Silverstein put it with estimable simplicity in an article for Vice magazine two years ago: “In 1903, the administration of Theodore Roosevelt created the country after bullying Colombia into handing over what was then the province of Panama. Roosevelt acted at the behest of various banking groups, among them JP Morgan & Co, which was appointed as the country’s ‘fiscal agent’ in charge of managing $10m in aid that the US had rushed down to the new nation.”
The reason, of course, was to gain access to, and control of, the canal across the Panamanian isthmus that would open in 1914 to connect the world’s two great oceans, and the commerce that sailed them.
The Panamanian elite had learned early that their future lay more lucratively in accommodating the far-off rich than in being part of South America. Annuities paid by the Panama Railroad Company sent more into the Colombian exchequer than Panama ever got back from Bogotá, and it is likely that the province would have seceded anyway – had not a treaty been signed in September 1902 for the Americans to construct a canal under terms that, as the country’s leading historian in English, David Bushnell, writes, “accurately reflected the weak bargaining position of the Colombian negotiator”.
Colombia was, at the time, driven by what it calls the “thousand-day war” between its Liberal and Historical Conservative parties. Panama was one of the battlefields for the war’s later stages.
The canal treaty was closely followed by the “Panamanian revolution”, which was led by a French promoter of the canal and backed by what Bushnell calls “the evident complicity of the United States” – and was aided by the fact that the terms of the canal treaty forbade Colombian troops from landing to suppress it, lest they disturb the free transit of goods.
The Roosevelt/JP Morgan connection in the setting-up of the new state was a direct one. The Americans’ paperwork was done by a Republican party lawyer close to the administration, William Cromwell, who acted as legal counsel for JP Morgan.
JP Morgan led the American banks in gradually turning Panama into a financial centre – and a haven for tax evasion and money laundering – as well as a passage for shipping, with which these practices were at first entwined when Panama began to register foreign ships to carry fuel for the Standard Oil company in order for the corporation to avoid US tax liabilities.
On the slipstream of Standard Oil’s wheeze, Panama began to develop its labyrinthine system of tax-free incorporation – especially with regard to the shipping registry – with help and guidance from Wall Street, just as the US and Europe plunged into the Great Depression. The register, for example, welcomed US passenger ships happy to serve alcohol during prohibition...
Read the rest here:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/panama-canal-president-jp-morgan-tax-haven
Busting the myth of economic inequality...
Economic Inequality Is Not Increasing. Propaganda Is.
By Gary North
It never ends. We are besieged by articles on today’s increasing economic inequality. These articles have three things in common:
1. Each one has a favorite explanation/boogeyman.2. Each one calls for political reforms to make things more equal.3. Each one fails to mention Pareto’s 20/80 law.
Here is the main problem with these articles: economic inequality has not increased since at least 1897 — the year that Vilfredo Pareto published his discovery: about 20% of the people in every European nation he studied owned about 80% of the wealth.
Every year, when about 1,500 of the richest people in the world meet at Davos, Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum, a Left-wing group called Oxfam issues a report. The group rewrites the annual report and the accompanying press release, but it always conveys the same message: about 1% of the rich own 50% of the world’s wealth. I wrote a response to Oxfam and its report in 2014: “Envy Never Sleeps: Attacking the Rich.” I did this again in 2015: “Pareto Statistic: The Wealthiest 1% Will Soon Own 50% of the World’s Wealth.”
The Right also indulges in similar expressions of outrage. Here is an example.
A PARETO PYRAMID
This was offered by Charles Hugh Smith. I like it because it includes a pair of graphics. Both of them are tied to the underlying image of a pyramid: straight sides, with the same angle all the way up, from base to capstone. The image is pure Pareto...
Read the rest:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/gary-north/economic-inequality-natural-mankind/
By Gary North
It never ends. We are besieged by articles on today’s increasing economic inequality. These articles have three things in common:
1. Each one has a favorite explanation/boogeyman.2. Each one calls for political reforms to make things more equal.3. Each one fails to mention Pareto’s 20/80 law.
Here is the main problem with these articles: economic inequality has not increased since at least 1897 — the year that Vilfredo Pareto published his discovery: about 20% of the people in every European nation he studied owned about 80% of the wealth.
Every year, when about 1,500 of the richest people in the world meet at Davos, Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum, a Left-wing group called Oxfam issues a report. The group rewrites the annual report and the accompanying press release, but it always conveys the same message: about 1% of the rich own 50% of the world’s wealth. I wrote a response to Oxfam and its report in 2014: “Envy Never Sleeps: Attacking the Rich.” I did this again in 2015: “Pareto Statistic: The Wealthiest 1% Will Soon Own 50% of the World’s Wealth.”
The Right also indulges in similar expressions of outrage. Here is an example.
A PARETO PYRAMID
This was offered by Charles Hugh Smith. I like it because it includes a pair of graphics. Both of them are tied to the underlying image of a pyramid: straight sides, with the same angle all the way up, from base to capstone. The image is pure Pareto...
Read the rest:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/gary-north/economic-inequality-natural-mankind/
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Switzerland, just too smart for Bernie Sanders to use as an example...
Minimum-Wage Smartness in Switzerland
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Two years ago, Swiss voters had a national referendum that would have set the nation’s minimum wage at $25 an hour, ten dollars more than what is being proposed in the United States. I’ll bet you’ll never guess how the referendum came out. It went down to defeat, big time. 76.3 percent of voters voted no to the referendum.
Why did Swiss citizens reject that very generous minimum-wage proposal? Was it because they don’t like money? Was it because they hate the poor? Wasn’t it because they believe in the employer exploitation of the worker? Or was it because they like subsistence wages?
Actually, it was none of the above. The Swiss rejected the proposal because they’re smart, at least when it comes to economic principles. Or to be more specific, the 76.3% who voted against the proposal are smart.
I’ve got another bet for you. I’ll bet you’ll never guess what the minimum wage currently is in Switzerland.
It’s a trick question. There is no minimum wage in Switzerland. You read that right: There is no state-mandated minimum wage in Switzerland. Wages are left entirely to the free market.
Like I say, the Swiss are smart.
Now, I can already hear what minimum-wage advocates are saying. “Jacob, if there’s no minimum wage in Switzerland, then that means that every wage earner is being paid no more than a subsistence wage. That’s what employers do when the government doesn’t force them to pay a minimum wage. Employers exploit their workers. They would never pay more than just a pittance. Those poor Swiss workers. They must be barely eking out a living.”
However, according to an article in USA Today about the defeat of the minimum-wage referendum, “90% of Swiss workers earn more than the proposed minimum and are already among the highest paid in the world.”
Whoops! There goes the exploitation and subsistence-wage theory. Imagine: In a nation in which the government isn’t forcing employers to pay any minimum wage whatsoever, employers are already paying more than $25 an hour.
Is that because Swiss employers are more benevolent than employers in other nations? Nope. It means that they are simply responding to the natural laws of supply and demand within their country. The supply of labor and the demand for labor — that is, the free market — set the price for labor in Switzerland.
Take a look at my recent article “Minimum Wage Ignorance,” where I pointed out what credible economists have been saying for decades: that a state-mandated minimum-wage law locks out of the labor market every person whose labor is valued by employers at less than the state-mandated minimum. Black teenagers, who suffer from a chronic unemployment rate of 40 percent, are one example. That’s because employers value their labor at less than the state-mandated minimum. So, they go unemployed, permanently.
Unfortunately, all too many Americans still just can’t get it. They can’t comprehend the reasoning as to why a minimum-wage law is so destructive, especially for the poor. The only thing that goes through their minds is that the government can make people better off by passing laws that regulate economic activity. Any critical analysis of that notion goes right over their heads.
But not the Swiss. Like I say, when it comes to economics, those people are smart. According to the USA Today article,
The Swiss Business Federation, Economiesuisse, said the results show that the Swiss people wouldn’t tolerate government intervention in a free-market economy. “We were able to show that the initiative hurts low-paid workers in particular, the group’s president, Heinz Karrer, told the website.
Switzerland also has some smart public officials. Take a look at what Swiss Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann said: “If jobs are being cut, the weakest suffer most.”
And they are not the only smart ones in Switzerland. The smart people also include the poor — that is, those who earn less than the $25 an hour that the referendum was calling for. The USA Today article stated:
Some workers who make less than $25 an hour had opposed the referendum. Luisa Almeida is an immigrant from Portugal who works in Switzerland as a housekeeper and nanny. Almeida’s earnings of $3,250 a month are below the proposed minimum wage but still much more than she’d make in Portugal. Still, she did not support the referendum. “If my employer had to pay me more money, he wouldn’t be able to keep me on and I’d lose the job,” she told USA TODAY days before the vote.
That’s impressive! When those at the bottom of the economic ladder can see how a state-mandated minimum wage is contrary to their best interests, that reflects an enlightened or smart citizenry.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, the move toward a $15 per hour minimum wage continues apace. It’s not very smart. In fact, it’s really dumb.
Link:
http://fff.org/2016/04/07/minimum-wage-smartness-switzerland/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Two years ago, Swiss voters had a national referendum that would have set the nation’s minimum wage at $25 an hour, ten dollars more than what is being proposed in the United States. I’ll bet you’ll never guess how the referendum came out. It went down to defeat, big time. 76.3 percent of voters voted no to the referendum.
Why did Swiss citizens reject that very generous minimum-wage proposal? Was it because they don’t like money? Was it because they hate the poor? Wasn’t it because they believe in the employer exploitation of the worker? Or was it because they like subsistence wages?
Actually, it was none of the above. The Swiss rejected the proposal because they’re smart, at least when it comes to economic principles. Or to be more specific, the 76.3% who voted against the proposal are smart.
I’ve got another bet for you. I’ll bet you’ll never guess what the minimum wage currently is in Switzerland.
It’s a trick question. There is no minimum wage in Switzerland. You read that right: There is no state-mandated minimum wage in Switzerland. Wages are left entirely to the free market.
Like I say, the Swiss are smart.
Now, I can already hear what minimum-wage advocates are saying. “Jacob, if there’s no minimum wage in Switzerland, then that means that every wage earner is being paid no more than a subsistence wage. That’s what employers do when the government doesn’t force them to pay a minimum wage. Employers exploit their workers. They would never pay more than just a pittance. Those poor Swiss workers. They must be barely eking out a living.”
However, according to an article in USA Today about the defeat of the minimum-wage referendum, “90% of Swiss workers earn more than the proposed minimum and are already among the highest paid in the world.”
Whoops! There goes the exploitation and subsistence-wage theory. Imagine: In a nation in which the government isn’t forcing employers to pay any minimum wage whatsoever, employers are already paying more than $25 an hour.
Is that because Swiss employers are more benevolent than employers in other nations? Nope. It means that they are simply responding to the natural laws of supply and demand within their country. The supply of labor and the demand for labor — that is, the free market — set the price for labor in Switzerland.
Take a look at my recent article “Minimum Wage Ignorance,” where I pointed out what credible economists have been saying for decades: that a state-mandated minimum-wage law locks out of the labor market every person whose labor is valued by employers at less than the state-mandated minimum. Black teenagers, who suffer from a chronic unemployment rate of 40 percent, are one example. That’s because employers value their labor at less than the state-mandated minimum. So, they go unemployed, permanently.
Unfortunately, all too many Americans still just can’t get it. They can’t comprehend the reasoning as to why a minimum-wage law is so destructive, especially for the poor. The only thing that goes through their minds is that the government can make people better off by passing laws that regulate economic activity. Any critical analysis of that notion goes right over their heads.
But not the Swiss. Like I say, when it comes to economics, those people are smart. According to the USA Today article,
The Swiss Business Federation, Economiesuisse, said the results show that the Swiss people wouldn’t tolerate government intervention in a free-market economy. “We were able to show that the initiative hurts low-paid workers in particular, the group’s president, Heinz Karrer, told the website.
Switzerland also has some smart public officials. Take a look at what Swiss Economics Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann said: “If jobs are being cut, the weakest suffer most.”
And they are not the only smart ones in Switzerland. The smart people also include the poor — that is, those who earn less than the $25 an hour that the referendum was calling for. The USA Today article stated:
Some workers who make less than $25 an hour had opposed the referendum. Luisa Almeida is an immigrant from Portugal who works in Switzerland as a housekeeper and nanny. Almeida’s earnings of $3,250 a month are below the proposed minimum wage but still much more than she’d make in Portugal. Still, she did not support the referendum. “If my employer had to pay me more money, he wouldn’t be able to keep me on and I’d lose the job,” she told USA TODAY days before the vote.
That’s impressive! When those at the bottom of the economic ladder can see how a state-mandated minimum wage is contrary to their best interests, that reflects an enlightened or smart citizenry.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, the move toward a $15 per hour minimum wage continues apace. It’s not very smart. In fact, it’s really dumb.
Link:
http://fff.org/2016/04/07/minimum-wage-smartness-switzerland/
"Labor unions have been supporters of minimum-wage laws in countries around the world, since these laws price nonunion workers out of jobs, leaving more jobs for union members."
Why racists love the minimum wage laws
By Thomas Sowell
A survey of American economists found that 90 percent of them regarded minimum-wage laws as increasing the rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers.
Inexperience is often the problem: Only about 2 percent of Americans over the age of 24 earned the minimum wage.
Advocates of minimum-wage laws usually base their support of such laws on their estimate of how much a worker “needs” in order to have “a living wage” — or on some other criterion that pays little or no attention to the worker’s skill level, experience or general productivity. So it’s hardly surprising that minimum-wage laws set wages that price many a young worker out of a job.
What is surprising is that, despite an accumulation of evidence over the years of the devastating effects of minimum-wage laws on black teenage unemployment rates, members of the Congressional Black Caucus continue to vote for such laws.
Once, years ago, during a confidential discussion with a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, I asked how they could possibly vote for minimum-wage laws.
The answer I got was that members of the Black Caucus were part of a political coalition and, as such, they were expected to vote for things that other members of that coalition wanted, such as minimum-wage laws, in order that other members of the coalition would vote for things that the Black Caucus wanted.
When I asked what could the black members of Congress possibly get in return for supporting minimum-wage laws that would be worth sacrificing whole generations of young blacks to huge rates of unemployment, the discussion quickly ended. I may have been vehement when I asked that question.
The same question could be asked of black public officials in general, including President Obama, who have taken the side of the teachers’ unions, who oppose vouchers or charter schools that allow black parents (among others) to take their children out of failing public schools.
Minimum-wage laws can even affect the level of racial discrimination. In an earlier era, when racial discrimination was both legally and socially accepted, minimum-wage laws were often used openly to price minorities out of the job market.
In 1925, a minimum-wage law was passed in the Canadian province of British Columbia, with the intent and effect of pricing Japanese immigrants out of jobs in the lumbering industry.
A Harvard professor of that era referred approvingly to Australia’s minimum wage law as a means to “protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese” who were willing to work for less.
In South Africa during the era of apartheid, white labor unions urged that a minimum-wage law be applied to all races, to keep black workers from taking jobs away from white unionized workers by working for less than the union pay scale.
Some supporters of the first federal minimum-wage law in the United States — the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 — used exactly the same rationale, citing the fact that Southern construction companies, using non-union black workers, were able to come north and underbid construction companies using unionized white labor.
These supporters of minimum-wage laws understood long ago something that today’s supporters of such laws seem not to have bothered to think through. People whose wages are raised by law do not necessarily benefit, because they are often less likely to be hired at the imposed minimum-wage rate.
Labor unions have been supporters of minimum-wage laws in countries around the world, since these laws price nonunion workers out of jobs, leaving more jobs for union members.
People who are content to advocate policies that sound good, whether for political reasons or just to feel good about themselves, often do not bother to think through the consequences beforehand or to check the results afterwards.
If they thought things through, how could they have imagined that having large numbers of idle teen boys hanging out on the streets together would be good for any community — especially in places where most of these youngsters were raised by single mothers, another unintended consequence, in this case, of well-meaning welfare policies?
Link:
http://nypost.com/2013/09/17/why-racists-love-the-minimum-wage-laws/
By Thomas Sowell
A survey of American economists found that 90 percent of them regarded minimum-wage laws as increasing the rate of unemployment among low-skilled workers.
Inexperience is often the problem: Only about 2 percent of Americans over the age of 24 earned the minimum wage.
Advocates of minimum-wage laws usually base their support of such laws on their estimate of how much a worker “needs” in order to have “a living wage” — or on some other criterion that pays little or no attention to the worker’s skill level, experience or general productivity. So it’s hardly surprising that minimum-wage laws set wages that price many a young worker out of a job.
What is surprising is that, despite an accumulation of evidence over the years of the devastating effects of minimum-wage laws on black teenage unemployment rates, members of the Congressional Black Caucus continue to vote for such laws.
Once, years ago, during a confidential discussion with a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, I asked how they could possibly vote for minimum-wage laws.
The answer I got was that members of the Black Caucus were part of a political coalition and, as such, they were expected to vote for things that other members of that coalition wanted, such as minimum-wage laws, in order that other members of the coalition would vote for things that the Black Caucus wanted.
When I asked what could the black members of Congress possibly get in return for supporting minimum-wage laws that would be worth sacrificing whole generations of young blacks to huge rates of unemployment, the discussion quickly ended. I may have been vehement when I asked that question.
The same question could be asked of black public officials in general, including President Obama, who have taken the side of the teachers’ unions, who oppose vouchers or charter schools that allow black parents (among others) to take their children out of failing public schools.
Minimum-wage laws can even affect the level of racial discrimination. In an earlier era, when racial discrimination was both legally and socially accepted, minimum-wage laws were often used openly to price minorities out of the job market.
In 1925, a minimum-wage law was passed in the Canadian province of British Columbia, with the intent and effect of pricing Japanese immigrants out of jobs in the lumbering industry.
A Harvard professor of that era referred approvingly to Australia’s minimum wage law as a means to “protect the white Australian’s standard of living from the invidious competition of the colored races, particularly of the Chinese” who were willing to work for less.
In South Africa during the era of apartheid, white labor unions urged that a minimum-wage law be applied to all races, to keep black workers from taking jobs away from white unionized workers by working for less than the union pay scale.
Some supporters of the first federal minimum-wage law in the United States — the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 — used exactly the same rationale, citing the fact that Southern construction companies, using non-union black workers, were able to come north and underbid construction companies using unionized white labor.
These supporters of minimum-wage laws understood long ago something that today’s supporters of such laws seem not to have bothered to think through. People whose wages are raised by law do not necessarily benefit, because they are often less likely to be hired at the imposed minimum-wage rate.
Labor unions have been supporters of minimum-wage laws in countries around the world, since these laws price nonunion workers out of jobs, leaving more jobs for union members.
People who are content to advocate policies that sound good, whether for political reasons or just to feel good about themselves, often do not bother to think through the consequences beforehand or to check the results afterwards.
If they thought things through, how could they have imagined that having large numbers of idle teen boys hanging out on the streets together would be good for any community — especially in places where most of these youngsters were raised by single mothers, another unintended consequence, in this case, of well-meaning welfare policies?
Link:
http://nypost.com/2013/09/17/why-racists-love-the-minimum-wage-laws/
What if???
What if the Minimum Wage Increase Is a Fraud?
By Andrew P. Napolitano
What if the latest craze among the big-government crowd in both major political parties is to use the power of government to force employers to pay some of their employees more than their services are worth to the employers?
What if this represents an intrusion by government into the employer-employee relationship? What if this consists of the government’s effectively saying that it knows the financial worth of employees’ services better than the employers and the employees do?
What if the minimum wage, now on the verge of being raised to $15 per hour everywhere in the land, is really the government’s using threats of ruin and force to transfer wealth? What if the $15-per-hour figure is based on a political compromise rather than on free market forces or economic realities?
What if these wealth transfers will have profound unintended economic consequences and will negatively affect everyone?
What if one of the politically intended consequences is that the employees whose salaries will rise will show gratitude not to their employers, who will be paying them more than they earn, by working better but to the politicians who will have forced the employers to pay them more by voting for those politicians?
What if the right of an employee to sell labor by going to work and the right of an employer to purchase that labor by paying a salary are part of the natural right to exchange goods and services, which the Constitution was written to protect? What if during America’s most prosperous periods, that right was protected by the courts?
What if there are clauses in the Constitution that protect that right but the modern courts have ignored them? What if the Constitution prohibits the government from interfering with freely entered-into contracts but the government does so anyway? What if the courts have approved this?
What if the Constitution prohibits the government from taking property from people without charging them with wrongdoing and proving the charge to a jury but the government does so anyway? What if the courts have declined to interfere with all this theft?
What if it is none of the government’s business how an employer and an employee decide on salary? What if the employer and the employee know far more about the worth of the employee’s services and the needs of the employer than the politicians in the government do?
What if the government has fundamental misunderstandings of the way businesses earn money, create wealth and pay salaries? What if the government’s mindset is stuck on the governmental economic model? What if that model has no competition, guaranteed revenue and no creation of wealth?
What if that governmental mindset is one of control and central planning rather than appealing to the needs of consumers by providing goods and services better, faster and more cheaply than the competition? What if the government has no need to be better, faster and cheaper because taxpayers are forced to pay it for services they often don’t use and the government has no competition?
What if forcing employers to pay employees more than their services are worth results in higher prices for the goods and services the employers produce? What if the effect of the minimum wage rise is to transfer wealth not from employers to employees but from consumers to employees? What if the rising prices of goods and services, caused by the forced increase in wages, put some of those goods and services beyond the reach of some folks who rely upon them?
What if the folks who can no longer afford some goods and services on which they have come to rely are the very same people whom the politicians have boasted they are helping by the increase in the minimum wage? What if the politicians who have done this do not know what they are talking about? What if they believe they can use minimum wage increases to bribe the poor for votes — just as they bribe the wealthy with bailouts and the middle class with tax cuts?
What if there are other unintended consequences to the governmental imposition of a minimum wage? What if, rather than pay employees more than they are worth, employers stop employing some of them? What if this results in higher unemployment? What if the rise in the minimum wage has the unintended consequence of harming the folks it is supposed to help?
What if the poor are better off being gainfully employed and earning less than $15 an hour, with an opportunity for advancement, than not working, earning nothing and relying on welfare? What if that welfare burden adds to already overtaxed state budgets?
What if states raise taxes to care for the newly unemployed? What if the newly unemployed lose the self-esteem they once enjoyed when they were gainfully employed?
What if all this came about not because of market forces, such as supply and demand, and not because people worked harder and produced more but because of lawless, greedy politicians — heedless of basic economics — who think they can write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event without adverse consequences?
What if the politicians who caused this did so just to win the votes of those they promised to help? What if these politicians only helped themselves? What if the minimum wage increase is a fraud? What do we do about it?
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/andrew-p-napolitano/damaging-minimum-wage/
By Andrew P. Napolitano
What if the latest craze among the big-government crowd in both major political parties is to use the power of government to force employers to pay some of their employees more than their services are worth to the employers?
What if this represents an intrusion by government into the employer-employee relationship? What if this consists of the government’s effectively saying that it knows the financial worth of employees’ services better than the employers and the employees do?
What if the minimum wage, now on the verge of being raised to $15 per hour everywhere in the land, is really the government’s using threats of ruin and force to transfer wealth? What if the $15-per-hour figure is based on a political compromise rather than on free market forces or economic realities?
What if these wealth transfers will have profound unintended economic consequences and will negatively affect everyone?
What if one of the politically intended consequences is that the employees whose salaries will rise will show gratitude not to their employers, who will be paying them more than they earn, by working better but to the politicians who will have forced the employers to pay them more by voting for those politicians?
What if the right of an employee to sell labor by going to work and the right of an employer to purchase that labor by paying a salary are part of the natural right to exchange goods and services, which the Constitution was written to protect? What if during America’s most prosperous periods, that right was protected by the courts?
What if there are clauses in the Constitution that protect that right but the modern courts have ignored them? What if the Constitution prohibits the government from interfering with freely entered-into contracts but the government does so anyway? What if the courts have approved this?
What if the Constitution prohibits the government from taking property from people without charging them with wrongdoing and proving the charge to a jury but the government does so anyway? What if the courts have declined to interfere with all this theft?
What if it is none of the government’s business how an employer and an employee decide on salary? What if the employer and the employee know far more about the worth of the employee’s services and the needs of the employer than the politicians in the government do?
What if the government has fundamental misunderstandings of the way businesses earn money, create wealth and pay salaries? What if the government’s mindset is stuck on the governmental economic model? What if that model has no competition, guaranteed revenue and no creation of wealth?
What if that governmental mindset is one of control and central planning rather than appealing to the needs of consumers by providing goods and services better, faster and more cheaply than the competition? What if the government has no need to be better, faster and cheaper because taxpayers are forced to pay it for services they often don’t use and the government has no competition?
What if forcing employers to pay employees more than their services are worth results in higher prices for the goods and services the employers produce? What if the effect of the minimum wage rise is to transfer wealth not from employers to employees but from consumers to employees? What if the rising prices of goods and services, caused by the forced increase in wages, put some of those goods and services beyond the reach of some folks who rely upon them?
What if the folks who can no longer afford some goods and services on which they have come to rely are the very same people whom the politicians have boasted they are helping by the increase in the minimum wage? What if the politicians who have done this do not know what they are talking about? What if they believe they can use minimum wage increases to bribe the poor for votes — just as they bribe the wealthy with bailouts and the middle class with tax cuts?
What if there are other unintended consequences to the governmental imposition of a minimum wage? What if, rather than pay employees more than they are worth, employers stop employing some of them? What if this results in higher unemployment? What if the rise in the minimum wage has the unintended consequence of harming the folks it is supposed to help?
What if the poor are better off being gainfully employed and earning less than $15 an hour, with an opportunity for advancement, than not working, earning nothing and relying on welfare? What if that welfare burden adds to already overtaxed state budgets?
What if states raise taxes to care for the newly unemployed? What if the newly unemployed lose the self-esteem they once enjoyed when they were gainfully employed?
What if all this came about not because of market forces, such as supply and demand, and not because people worked harder and produced more but because of lawless, greedy politicians — heedless of basic economics — who think they can write any law, regulate any behavior and tax any event without adverse consequences?
What if the politicians who caused this did so just to win the votes of those they promised to help? What if these politicians only helped themselves? What if the minimum wage increase is a fraud? What do we do about it?
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/andrew-p-napolitano/damaging-minimum-wage/
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
It's all part of the plan, folks...
Liberal arts professor says schools should stop teaching algebra because America's children are too stupid to handle it (but will still be allowed to vote one day!)
by: J. D. Heyes
The signs that America's primary education system is collapsing are everywhere for anyone who cares to look, and one of the most recent examples ought to appall you.
As noted by The Associated Press (AP), Andrew Hacker, emeritus political science professor at taxpayer-funded Queens College in New York City, in a new book actually argues that requiring students to pass basic Algebra before they can graduate is some cruel exercise that causes millions of kids to drop out of school.
Yes, the irony is rich: An academic who had to pass rigorous coursework in order to rise to the level of professor emeritus is arguing that some aspects of public school education are too difficult.
"One out of 5 young Americans does not graduate from high school. This is one of the worst records in the developed world. Why? The chief academic reason is they failed ninth-grade algebra," Hacker told the AP.
So, what does our supposed brainiac recommend instead?
"Instead of learning how to solve rudimentary equations, Hacker argues, American high schoolers should be presented with a math curriculum concentrating on statistics and number sense," The Daily Caller reported, continuing to define number sense as "an en-vogue academic buzzword for the ability to estimate and compare numbers."
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053560_liberal_arts_professor_algebra_education_American_students.html#ixzz452io49VA
by: J. D. Heyes
The signs that America's primary education system is collapsing are everywhere for anyone who cares to look, and one of the most recent examples ought to appall you.
As noted by The Associated Press (AP), Andrew Hacker, emeritus political science professor at taxpayer-funded Queens College in New York City, in a new book actually argues that requiring students to pass basic Algebra before they can graduate is some cruel exercise that causes millions of kids to drop out of school.
Yes, the irony is rich: An academic who had to pass rigorous coursework in order to rise to the level of professor emeritus is arguing that some aspects of public school education are too difficult.
"One out of 5 young Americans does not graduate from high school. This is one of the worst records in the developed world. Why? The chief academic reason is they failed ninth-grade algebra," Hacker told the AP.
So, what does our supposed brainiac recommend instead?
"Instead of learning how to solve rudimentary equations, Hacker argues, American high schoolers should be presented with a math curriculum concentrating on statistics and number sense," The Daily Caller reported, continuing to define number sense as "an en-vogue academic buzzword for the ability to estimate and compare numbers."
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/053560_liberal_arts_professor_algebra_education_American_students.html#ixzz452io49VA
The death of the empire...
Death and dying
by John Myers
“Your prognosis is terminal.”
When I heard t hose words I looked around my doctor’s private examining room hoping he might be talking to someone else. It wasn’t to be.
I didn’t want to look like an idiot, but of the million thoughts per-second zigzagging thorough my brain, the primary one was: “What does terminal mean?”
That was two months ago. I tried to argue with him as one might argue with God. I could get a second opinion, but I had already seen two doctors with the last one sending me to this kid in a stethoscope. He is considered the city’s liver wunderkind.
“But I’m not a drinker,” I argued, as if that might change his diagnosis. “I have maybe a few beers a week.”
“Not all kidney failure is caused by alcohol,” the doctor said. And he added, “You take lots of Tylenol?”
He had me. I once read that Tylenol can be bad on the liver. I had also read that gas barbecues sometimes blow up. I had zero concern about either. But the fact is that for decades I have been taking fistfuls of Tylenol every day.
Five years ago the family doctor told me I had arthritis. Nobody was handing out prescription pain pills, so, you’ve got it, I took more Tylenol.
I wish I could give you an ending to this story, but then again some things are better unknown. What the doctor said is that “I had either months or years.” He could just kill me now and do away with the suspense. Of course he couldn’t collect his fee then could he?
This is a very personal story I’m sharing with you, and I have been told that I may experience bouts of depression.
I talked to my wife about sharing this with you and was surprised with her answer because she is a very personal person. But some of you have read me for almost eight years and I felt an urge to tell you this truth. There is also a good analogy to my illness and I thought it worth writing.
Plowing into Tylenol is a killer of persons like fiat money is a killer of all empires.
Once, when I was 14, my father asked me to check “the cash balance” on the money. It was 1971.
I had no idea what he was talking about, so he explained the details to me. We lived on a farm, so my dad drew me a map of the corner of the field where we had a backup water-pump.
There, in a cellar 25 feet in the ground and beneath the blowing snow above me, my flashlight beam found an old rusted paint can. Inside of it was a stash of Canadian bills rolled in an elastic band and sealed in plastic wrap. I counted it as ordered and found it was $50,000! I was shocked. I had never seen anything close to that much money, and certainly did not believe my dad had that much.
Years later, I learned that my dad was afraid of a devastating recession that would initiate a massive bear market in stocks. He was wrong about an overall economic collapse, but he was right about the bear market in stocks.
In 1971 the total M2 money supply was less than $2 trillion. By 1980 it was $12.4 trillion.
As for the Dow, it had gone from less than 5,000 in current inflation-adjusted value to 2,500 in inflation-adjusted money. Translated to constant money, the Dow had lost half its value. Only with the election of Ronald Reagan as president was the Dow able to break through levels set in 1966 — the end of 14 years of stagnation which in constant dollars saw the Dow’s decline.
The guns and butter policies of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the total detachment of the dollar from gold and the OPEC oil embargoes had left the U.S. economy hurting. So it began printing money the way I was swallowing Tylenol.
And just as it took away my pain short-term, it helped the U.S. economy in the short term. But every time it hurt a little more the government printed a little more money. Long-term the Tylenol was killing me and I didn’t even know it. And long-term money printing was killing the U.S. economy.
Nothing new in ancient corruption
Debasing the money is at least as old as the Roman Empire which introduced its basic currency, the silver denarius, in 211 BC. The coin was 95 to 98 percent silver, and it remained relatively stable until around 64 AD. It financed the Roman Empire to its apogee.
But there were armies to maintain, infrastructure to build and lands to be conquered. Expenditures outstripped income. The simple solution was the devaluation of the money by reducing the silver content within the coin.
By the end of Emperor Trajan’s reign, around 117 AD, the denarius had been debased to only about 85 percent silver, down from Tiberius’ 97.5 to 98 percent (14-37 AD). By the age of Marcus Aurelius, in the year 180, it was down to about 75 percent silver. In Septimius’s time it had dropped to 60 percent. By far the worst Roman Emperor was Caracalla, a leader with a blood-lust who was also corrupted by his endless avarice. He cut the silver content to just 50 percent.
It was the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire, but many other empires over the centuries would also collapse, ruined by reckless currency manipulation.
And now the United States is being killed off by elected leaders who care only for their notoriety and wealth — and who are richly rewarded — while they carelessly add debt to a county that already owes $19 trillion. Nineteen trillion!
I got started writing about the markets in 1981. Federal debt was at the cusp of $1 trillion. At the time, I was reading the work of people a lot smarter than me who said that if we ever hit $2 trillion, the bond and equity markets would collapse, that all that debt would kill the country. It did not. At least until now it has not.
But people often take years or decades to die. And eventually, empires die, too.
I’ve had to accept the inevitability of my own death. I’ll bet not one in 50 people have contemplated the death of America as we know.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/death-and-dying/
by John Myers
“Your prognosis is terminal.”
When I heard t hose words I looked around my doctor’s private examining room hoping he might be talking to someone else. It wasn’t to be.
I didn’t want to look like an idiot, but of the million thoughts per-second zigzagging thorough my brain, the primary one was: “What does terminal mean?”
That was two months ago. I tried to argue with him as one might argue with God. I could get a second opinion, but I had already seen two doctors with the last one sending me to this kid in a stethoscope. He is considered the city’s liver wunderkind.
“But I’m not a drinker,” I argued, as if that might change his diagnosis. “I have maybe a few beers a week.”
“Not all kidney failure is caused by alcohol,” the doctor said. And he added, “You take lots of Tylenol?”
He had me. I once read that Tylenol can be bad on the liver. I had also read that gas barbecues sometimes blow up. I had zero concern about either. But the fact is that for decades I have been taking fistfuls of Tylenol every day.
Five years ago the family doctor told me I had arthritis. Nobody was handing out prescription pain pills, so, you’ve got it, I took more Tylenol.
I wish I could give you an ending to this story, but then again some things are better unknown. What the doctor said is that “I had either months or years.” He could just kill me now and do away with the suspense. Of course he couldn’t collect his fee then could he?
This is a very personal story I’m sharing with you, and I have been told that I may experience bouts of depression.
I talked to my wife about sharing this with you and was surprised with her answer because she is a very personal person. But some of you have read me for almost eight years and I felt an urge to tell you this truth. There is also a good analogy to my illness and I thought it worth writing.
Plowing into Tylenol is a killer of persons like fiat money is a killer of all empires.
Once, when I was 14, my father asked me to check “the cash balance” on the money. It was 1971.
I had no idea what he was talking about, so he explained the details to me. We lived on a farm, so my dad drew me a map of the corner of the field where we had a backup water-pump.
There, in a cellar 25 feet in the ground and beneath the blowing snow above me, my flashlight beam found an old rusted paint can. Inside of it was a stash of Canadian bills rolled in an elastic band and sealed in plastic wrap. I counted it as ordered and found it was $50,000! I was shocked. I had never seen anything close to that much money, and certainly did not believe my dad had that much.
Years later, I learned that my dad was afraid of a devastating recession that would initiate a massive bear market in stocks. He was wrong about an overall economic collapse, but he was right about the bear market in stocks.
In 1971 the total M2 money supply was less than $2 trillion. By 1980 it was $12.4 trillion.
As for the Dow, it had gone from less than 5,000 in current inflation-adjusted value to 2,500 in inflation-adjusted money. Translated to constant money, the Dow had lost half its value. Only with the election of Ronald Reagan as president was the Dow able to break through levels set in 1966 — the end of 14 years of stagnation which in constant dollars saw the Dow’s decline.
The guns and butter policies of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, the total detachment of the dollar from gold and the OPEC oil embargoes had left the U.S. economy hurting. So it began printing money the way I was swallowing Tylenol.
And just as it took away my pain short-term, it helped the U.S. economy in the short term. But every time it hurt a little more the government printed a little more money. Long-term the Tylenol was killing me and I didn’t even know it. And long-term money printing was killing the U.S. economy.
Nothing new in ancient corruption
Debasing the money is at least as old as the Roman Empire which introduced its basic currency, the silver denarius, in 211 BC. The coin was 95 to 98 percent silver, and it remained relatively stable until around 64 AD. It financed the Roman Empire to its apogee.
But there were armies to maintain, infrastructure to build and lands to be conquered. Expenditures outstripped income. The simple solution was the devaluation of the money by reducing the silver content within the coin.
By the end of Emperor Trajan’s reign, around 117 AD, the denarius had been debased to only about 85 percent silver, down from Tiberius’ 97.5 to 98 percent (14-37 AD). By the age of Marcus Aurelius, in the year 180, it was down to about 75 percent silver. In Septimius’s time it had dropped to 60 percent. By far the worst Roman Emperor was Caracalla, a leader with a blood-lust who was also corrupted by his endless avarice. He cut the silver content to just 50 percent.
It was the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire, but many other empires over the centuries would also collapse, ruined by reckless currency manipulation.
And now the United States is being killed off by elected leaders who care only for their notoriety and wealth — and who are richly rewarded — while they carelessly add debt to a county that already owes $19 trillion. Nineteen trillion!
I got started writing about the markets in 1981. Federal debt was at the cusp of $1 trillion. At the time, I was reading the work of people a lot smarter than me who said that if we ever hit $2 trillion, the bond and equity markets would collapse, that all that debt would kill the country. It did not. At least until now it has not.
But people often take years or decades to die. And eventually, empires die, too.
I’ve had to accept the inevitability of my own death. I’ll bet not one in 50 people have contemplated the death of America as we know.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/death-and-dying/
Lying about unemployment...
The Boomer Retirement Meme is a Big Lie
By Jim Quinn
As the labor participation rate and employment to population ratio linger near three-decade lows, the mouthpieces for the establishment continue to perpetuate the Big Lie this is solely due to the retirement of Boomers. It’s their storyline and they’ll stick to it, no matter what the facts show to be the truth. Even CNBC lackeys, government apparatchiks, and Ivy League educated Keynesian economists should be able to admit that people between the ages of 25 and 54 should be working unless they are home raising children.
In the year 2000, at the height of the first Federal Reserve induced bubble, there were 120 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 54, with 78 million of them employed full-time. That equated to a 65% full-time employment rate. By the height of the second Federal Reserve induced bubble, there were 80 million full-time employed 25 to 54-year-olds out of 126 million, a 63.5% employment rate. The full-time employment rate bottomed at 57% in 2010 and still lingers below 62% as we are at the height of a third Federal Reserve induced bubble...
Read the rest here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/jim-quinn/feds-lie/
By Jim Quinn
As the labor participation rate and employment to population ratio linger near three-decade lows, the mouthpieces for the establishment continue to perpetuate the Big Lie this is solely due to the retirement of Boomers. It’s their storyline and they’ll stick to it, no matter what the facts show to be the truth. Even CNBC lackeys, government apparatchiks, and Ivy League educated Keynesian economists should be able to admit that people between the ages of 25 and 54 should be working unless they are home raising children.
In the year 2000, at the height of the first Federal Reserve induced bubble, there were 120 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 54, with 78 million of them employed full-time. That equated to a 65% full-time employment rate. By the height of the second Federal Reserve induced bubble, there were 80 million full-time employed 25 to 54-year-olds out of 126 million, a 63.5% employment rate. The full-time employment rate bottomed at 57% in 2010 and still lingers below 62% as we are at the height of a third Federal Reserve induced bubble...
Read the rest here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/jim-quinn/feds-lie/
The war on cash...
Cash Banned, Freedom Gone
By Thorsten Polleit
Some politicians want to ban cash, arguing that cash is helping criminals. The first steps in that direction are the withdrawal of big denomination notes and the limits imposed on cash payments.
Proponents of a ban on cash claim that this will help fight criminal transactions — involved in money laundering, terrorism, and tax evasion. These promises of salvation are used to get the general public to agree to a society without cash. But there is no convincing proof for the claim that the world without cash will be a better one. Even if undesirable behavior is indeed financed by cash, you still need to answer the question: will the undesirable behavior disappear without cash? Or will those who commit the undesirable acts take to new ways and means to reach their goal?
Take the example of the 500 euro note. If we do away with it, won’t those who wish to use cash pay with five 100 euro notes instead? Or ten 50 euro notes? And what about the costs imposed on the large majority of respectable people, if you put a ban on their cash? Using the same logic, should we ban alcohol, because some can’t handle it properly?
It’s Really about Central Banks
The plan to restrict the use of cash, or to abolish it step by step, has nothing to do with the fight against crime. The real reason is that states (and their central banks) want to introduce negative interest rates.
Although central banks have long pursued inflationary policies that devalue the debt owed by governments, negative interest rates offer a new and powerful tool to do this. But, to make negative interest rates work well, you have to get rid of physical cash.
Otherwise, if you apply negative rates on bank deposits, customers in the short or long run will try to avoid the costs that negative rates impose on their bank deposits. So, depositors will, in many cases, hoard cash. To block this last escape route, proponents of the ban on cash want to do away with it.
The Natural Rate of Interest
Incidentally, some reputable economists are supporting the plan, claiming that the “natural rate” has become a negative rate. Because of that, central banks were forced to push interest rates below zero, being the only way to foster growth and employment. The assertion that the balanced interest rate has become negative doesn’t stand up to a critical examination, though.
It is inherently impossible that the balanced interest rate is negative. Market rates, which entail the balanced rate, can fall below zero, but not the balanced rate itself. The policy of negative rates is no cure for the economy but causes massive economic problems.
Competition and Property Rights
Banning cash is infringing on the freedom of citizens on a massive scale. In withdrawing cash, the citizen is bereft of choice for his payments. After all, the state has the monopoly on the production of money. There is no competition on cash. Thus, nobody but the state can satisfy the demand for money by citizens.
If the state bans cash, all transactions must be executed electronically. For the state to see who buys what when and who travels when where is then only a small step away. The citizen thus becomes completely transparent and his financial privacy is being lost. Even the prospect that a citizen can be spied upon at any time is an infringement on his right to freedom.
Cash helps to protect the citizen from an unfettered intrusiveness by the state. If the state increases taxes too much, citizens, at least, have the option to avoid the tribulation by paying in cash. The knowledge that citizens can do so, makes states hold back a little.
States will give up any restraint once cash has been banned. The justified concern isn’t at all rendered obsolete by the cases of Sweden and Denmark, where the cashless society is said to function to its perfection. The citizens of those countries can still use foreign cash if they want.
The plan to ban cash — step by step — is a sign of the fundamental ailment of our time: the state is destroying more and more of the freedom of citizens and businesses, once it has turned into a territorial monopolist and highest judge of all conflicts.
The fight to keep cash may bring something good, though: it will shed light on the need to take the power away from the state as we know it, by applying the same principles of law on its actions as on those of each and every citizen. That way, the state’s monopoly on producing cash would come to an end and the citizen wouldn’t need to worry that he may be deprived of his cash against his will.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/thorsten-polleit/cash-banned/
By Thorsten Polleit
Some politicians want to ban cash, arguing that cash is helping criminals. The first steps in that direction are the withdrawal of big denomination notes and the limits imposed on cash payments.
Proponents of a ban on cash claim that this will help fight criminal transactions — involved in money laundering, terrorism, and tax evasion. These promises of salvation are used to get the general public to agree to a society without cash. But there is no convincing proof for the claim that the world without cash will be a better one. Even if undesirable behavior is indeed financed by cash, you still need to answer the question: will the undesirable behavior disappear without cash? Or will those who commit the undesirable acts take to new ways and means to reach their goal?
Take the example of the 500 euro note. If we do away with it, won’t those who wish to use cash pay with five 100 euro notes instead? Or ten 50 euro notes? And what about the costs imposed on the large majority of respectable people, if you put a ban on their cash? Using the same logic, should we ban alcohol, because some can’t handle it properly?
It’s Really about Central Banks
The plan to restrict the use of cash, or to abolish it step by step, has nothing to do with the fight against crime. The real reason is that states (and their central banks) want to introduce negative interest rates.
Although central banks have long pursued inflationary policies that devalue the debt owed by governments, negative interest rates offer a new and powerful tool to do this. But, to make negative interest rates work well, you have to get rid of physical cash.
Otherwise, if you apply negative rates on bank deposits, customers in the short or long run will try to avoid the costs that negative rates impose on their bank deposits. So, depositors will, in many cases, hoard cash. To block this last escape route, proponents of the ban on cash want to do away with it.
The Natural Rate of Interest
Incidentally, some reputable economists are supporting the plan, claiming that the “natural rate” has become a negative rate. Because of that, central banks were forced to push interest rates below zero, being the only way to foster growth and employment. The assertion that the balanced interest rate has become negative doesn’t stand up to a critical examination, though.
It is inherently impossible that the balanced interest rate is negative. Market rates, which entail the balanced rate, can fall below zero, but not the balanced rate itself. The policy of negative rates is no cure for the economy but causes massive economic problems.
Competition and Property Rights
Banning cash is infringing on the freedom of citizens on a massive scale. In withdrawing cash, the citizen is bereft of choice for his payments. After all, the state has the monopoly on the production of money. There is no competition on cash. Thus, nobody but the state can satisfy the demand for money by citizens.
If the state bans cash, all transactions must be executed electronically. For the state to see who buys what when and who travels when where is then only a small step away. The citizen thus becomes completely transparent and his financial privacy is being lost. Even the prospect that a citizen can be spied upon at any time is an infringement on his right to freedom.
Cash helps to protect the citizen from an unfettered intrusiveness by the state. If the state increases taxes too much, citizens, at least, have the option to avoid the tribulation by paying in cash. The knowledge that citizens can do so, makes states hold back a little.
States will give up any restraint once cash has been banned. The justified concern isn’t at all rendered obsolete by the cases of Sweden and Denmark, where the cashless society is said to function to its perfection. The citizens of those countries can still use foreign cash if they want.
The plan to ban cash — step by step — is a sign of the fundamental ailment of our time: the state is destroying more and more of the freedom of citizens and businesses, once it has turned into a territorial monopolist and highest judge of all conflicts.
The fight to keep cash may bring something good, though: it will shed light on the need to take the power away from the state as we know it, by applying the same principles of law on its actions as on those of each and every citizen. That way, the state’s monopoly on producing cash would come to an end and the citizen wouldn’t need to worry that he may be deprived of his cash against his will.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/thorsten-polleit/cash-banned/
College Idiocy, Part II...
Campus Lunacy, Part II
By Walter E. Williams
Professor Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He recently wrote an article titled “The hypocrisy behind the student renaming craze.” Students, often with the blessing of faculty, have discovered that names for campus buildings and holidays do not always fit politically correct standards for race, class and sex.
Stanford students have demanded the renaming of buildings, malls and streets bearing the name of the recently canonized Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan priest who was often unkind to American Indians. Harvard Law School is getting rid of its seal because it bears the coat of arms of the Royalls, a slave-owning family. This renaming craze is widespread and includes dozens of colleges and universities, including Amherst, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. The students have decided that some politically incorrect people from centuries ago are bad. Other politically incorrect people are not quite so bad if they were at least sometimes liberal; their names can stay.
San Diego State University students are not demanding that the school eliminate its nickname, “Aztecs,” even though the Aztecs enslaved and slaughtered tens of thousands of people from tribes they conquered — often ripping out the hearts of living victims. Should UC Berkeley students and faculty demand the renaming of Warren Hall, named after California Attorney General Earl Warren, who instigated the wartime internment of tens of thousands of innocent Japanese-American citizens? UC Berkeley students and faculty might consider renaming their Cesar E. Chavez Student Center. Chavez sent his thug lieutenants down to California’s southern border to use violence to prevent job-seeking Mexican immigrants from entering the United States. President Woodrow Wilson was a racist who, among other racist acts, segregated civil service jobs. Should Princeton University rename its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs plus rename its Woodrow Wilson fellowship program?
Most universities have a women’s studies program. Part of their agenda is to make sure men learn that “no” means “no” and condemn any form of sexual assault. Should campus feminists make clear that former President Bill Clinton, a womanizer, and exploiter of women, is unwelcome on any campus? Should they also protest any appearance by his enabler, Hillary Clinton, who helped demonize her husband’s female accusers by cracking down on “bimbo eruptions”?
Recently, Brown University changed its Columbus Day celebration to Indigenous People’s Day. By the way, many cities are following suit. There may be a problem. According to publications such as Lawrence H. Keeley’s “War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage” and Steven A. LeBlanc and Katherine E. Register’s “Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage,” we may have to rethink just how noble and peaceful American Indians were prior to Christopher Columbus. American Indians waged brutal tribal wars long before Europeans showed up. The evidence is especially strong in the American Southwest, where archeologists have found numerous skeletons with projectile points embedded in them and other marks of violence. Comanche Indians were responsible for some of the most brutal slaughters in the history of Western America.
Our military has a number of deadly aircraft named with what the nation’s leftist might consider racial slights, such as the Comanche, Apache, Iroquois, Kiowa, Lakota and the more peaceful Mescalero. Should they be renamed? Our military might also be seen as disrespecting the rights and dignity of animals. Should military death-dealing aircraft named after peace-loving animals — such as the Eagle, Falcon, Raptor, Cobra and Dolphin — be renamed? Renaming deadly aircraft might receive a sympathetic ear from our politically correct secretary of defense, Ashton Carter.
Victor Davis Hanson says that changing history through renaming is nothing new. Back in the Roman days, the practice was called damnatio memoriae, a Latin phrase meaning “condemnation of memory.” It was practiced when the Romans wanted to erase the memory of people they deemed dishonorable; it was as if they had never existed.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/walter-e-williams/student-lunatics/
By Walter E. Williams
Professor Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He recently wrote an article titled “The hypocrisy behind the student renaming craze.” Students, often with the blessing of faculty, have discovered that names for campus buildings and holidays do not always fit politically correct standards for race, class and sex.
Stanford students have demanded the renaming of buildings, malls and streets bearing the name of the recently canonized Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan priest who was often unkind to American Indians. Harvard Law School is getting rid of its seal because it bears the coat of arms of the Royalls, a slave-owning family. This renaming craze is widespread and includes dozens of colleges and universities, including Amherst, Georgetown, Princeton, Yale and the University of California, Berkeley. The students have decided that some politically incorrect people from centuries ago are bad. Other politically incorrect people are not quite so bad if they were at least sometimes liberal; their names can stay.
San Diego State University students are not demanding that the school eliminate its nickname, “Aztecs,” even though the Aztecs enslaved and slaughtered tens of thousands of people from tribes they conquered — often ripping out the hearts of living victims. Should UC Berkeley students and faculty demand the renaming of Warren Hall, named after California Attorney General Earl Warren, who instigated the wartime internment of tens of thousands of innocent Japanese-American citizens? UC Berkeley students and faculty might consider renaming their Cesar E. Chavez Student Center. Chavez sent his thug lieutenants down to California’s southern border to use violence to prevent job-seeking Mexican immigrants from entering the United States. President Woodrow Wilson was a racist who, among other racist acts, segregated civil service jobs. Should Princeton University rename its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs plus rename its Woodrow Wilson fellowship program?
Most universities have a women’s studies program. Part of their agenda is to make sure men learn that “no” means “no” and condemn any form of sexual assault. Should campus feminists make clear that former President Bill Clinton, a womanizer, and exploiter of women, is unwelcome on any campus? Should they also protest any appearance by his enabler, Hillary Clinton, who helped demonize her husband’s female accusers by cracking down on “bimbo eruptions”?
Recently, Brown University changed its Columbus Day celebration to Indigenous People’s Day. By the way, many cities are following suit. There may be a problem. According to publications such as Lawrence H. Keeley’s “War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage” and Steven A. LeBlanc and Katherine E. Register’s “Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage,” we may have to rethink just how noble and peaceful American Indians were prior to Christopher Columbus. American Indians waged brutal tribal wars long before Europeans showed up. The evidence is especially strong in the American Southwest, where archeologists have found numerous skeletons with projectile points embedded in them and other marks of violence. Comanche Indians were responsible for some of the most brutal slaughters in the history of Western America.
Our military has a number of deadly aircraft named with what the nation’s leftist might consider racial slights, such as the Comanche, Apache, Iroquois, Kiowa, Lakota and the more peaceful Mescalero. Should they be renamed? Our military might also be seen as disrespecting the rights and dignity of animals. Should military death-dealing aircraft named after peace-loving animals — such as the Eagle, Falcon, Raptor, Cobra and Dolphin — be renamed? Renaming deadly aircraft might receive a sympathetic ear from our politically correct secretary of defense, Ashton Carter.
Victor Davis Hanson says that changing history through renaming is nothing new. Back in the Roman days, the practice was called damnatio memoriae, a Latin phrase meaning “condemnation of memory.” It was practiced when the Romans wanted to erase the memory of people they deemed dishonorable; it was as if they had never existed.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/walter-e-williams/student-lunatics/
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
We're in trouble...
Clinton-Sanders White House
By Gerald Celente
We affirm our trend forecast, made one year ago, that Hillary Clinton will win the 2016 presidential race. We now forecast her Democratic challenger, Bernie Sanders, will be chosen as her vice presidential running mate.
In our Spring 2015 Trends Journal, two months prior to Donald Trump announcing his candidacy, we wrote:
“If the election were held today… we forecast Clinton as the winner. On issues of gay rights, women’s rights and abortion, Cruz, Paul, Rubio, Carson, Fiorina and Huckabee will find weak support among a sizable portion of women voters.”
In the 2008 presidential election, 70.4 million women cast ballots vs. 60.7 million men. In the 2012 race, Barack Obama won the two-party vote among female voters by 12 points, 56 percent to 44 percent.”
Indeed, in the absence of a major scandal, and as the current field of candidates stands, a Clinton victory was sealed last week when Donald Trump, already suffering “women problems” in the polls, sunk 73 percent into negative territory when he said if a woman had an abortion and they were illegal, she should be subject to “some form of punishment.”
Bernie Does Obama
With Clinton having solidly secured the women vote and holding an insurmountable delegate lead, Sanders has succeeded in attracting die-hard Democratic liberals, the financially desperate and deeply indebted millennial voters back into the party fold.
Plucking lines directly from candidate Obama’s “Change You Can Believe In” chant that rang across the nation in his 2008 campaign, Sanders simply replaced the “change” Obama never delivered on an equally boastful promise to deliver “A FUTURE TO BELIEVEIN.”
Indeed, considering Sanders’ stump-speech rhetoric that has generated strong populism popularity, he will, as Clinton’s running mate, both increase the Democratic voter turnout in November and counter Clinton’s 52 percent negative-personality rating and her pro-war policies.
Bernie does his job
Both Clinton and Sanders have strategically avoided maliciously attacking each other. And conspicuously absent in their debates and on the campaign trail are in-depth foreign-policy measures each would take if elected.
And, while Sanders monotonously rants he voted against the Iraq War, and while his supporters portray him as a man of peace, they avoid his war-hawk positions in supporting and funding a steady stream of US war policies and initiatives. Beginning with Bill Clinton’s Iraq bombing campaign and sanctions policies, his 1999 Yugoslav war and George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, to Obama’s drone-strike policy, regime change in Libya and Syria, and the $1 billion aid package for the US-backed government coup of Ukraine… Sanders voted for and/or supported these and numerous other pro-war initiatives.
Sanders also has been a strong proponent of the $1.4 trillion F-35 fighter jet cost-overrun fiasco for which he champions a squadron stationed at the Burlington Vermont Airport because “it will create jobs.”
But such facts, when presented to his liberal/millennial core base, are either dismissed or vehemently denied.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/gerald-celente/clinton-sanders/
By Gerald Celente
We affirm our trend forecast, made one year ago, that Hillary Clinton will win the 2016 presidential race. We now forecast her Democratic challenger, Bernie Sanders, will be chosen as her vice presidential running mate.
In our Spring 2015 Trends Journal, two months prior to Donald Trump announcing his candidacy, we wrote:
“If the election were held today… we forecast Clinton as the winner. On issues of gay rights, women’s rights and abortion, Cruz, Paul, Rubio, Carson, Fiorina and Huckabee will find weak support among a sizable portion of women voters.”
In the 2008 presidential election, 70.4 million women cast ballots vs. 60.7 million men. In the 2012 race, Barack Obama won the two-party vote among female voters by 12 points, 56 percent to 44 percent.”
Indeed, in the absence of a major scandal, and as the current field of candidates stands, a Clinton victory was sealed last week when Donald Trump, already suffering “women problems” in the polls, sunk 73 percent into negative territory when he said if a woman had an abortion and they were illegal, she should be subject to “some form of punishment.”
Bernie Does Obama
With Clinton having solidly secured the women vote and holding an insurmountable delegate lead, Sanders has succeeded in attracting die-hard Democratic liberals, the financially desperate and deeply indebted millennial voters back into the party fold.
Plucking lines directly from candidate Obama’s “Change You Can Believe In” chant that rang across the nation in his 2008 campaign, Sanders simply replaced the “change” Obama never delivered on an equally boastful promise to deliver “A FUTURE TO BELIEVEIN.”
Indeed, considering Sanders’ stump-speech rhetoric that has generated strong populism popularity, he will, as Clinton’s running mate, both increase the Democratic voter turnout in November and counter Clinton’s 52 percent negative-personality rating and her pro-war policies.
Bernie does his job
Both Clinton and Sanders have strategically avoided maliciously attacking each other. And conspicuously absent in their debates and on the campaign trail are in-depth foreign-policy measures each would take if elected.
And, while Sanders monotonously rants he voted against the Iraq War, and while his supporters portray him as a man of peace, they avoid his war-hawk positions in supporting and funding a steady stream of US war policies and initiatives. Beginning with Bill Clinton’s Iraq bombing campaign and sanctions policies, his 1999 Yugoslav war and George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, to Obama’s drone-strike policy, regime change in Libya and Syria, and the $1 billion aid package for the US-backed government coup of Ukraine… Sanders voted for and/or supported these and numerous other pro-war initiatives.
Sanders also has been a strong proponent of the $1.4 trillion F-35 fighter jet cost-overrun fiasco for which he champions a squadron stationed at the Burlington Vermont Airport because “it will create jobs.”
But such facts, when presented to his liberal/millennial core base, are either dismissed or vehemently denied.
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/gerald-celente/clinton-sanders/
Monday, April 4, 2016
Still wouldn't vote for the guy...
Give Trump Some Credit
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Whatever you might think about GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, he deserves some credit: At least he has raised questions about the U.S. foreign policy of perpetual war and foreign interventionism, which has thrown GOP conservatives, the neo-cons, and the Washington, D.C., establishment—including, no doubt, the CIA and the entire military-industrial complex — into an absolute tizzy.
After all, to question the philosophy of foreign interventionism is akin to heresy. It’s like a Christian saying that Jesus was great man but not God.
And Heaven help the person who speaks such heresy. The war party, both Democrats and Republicans, will come down on him with massive political fire and brimstone. That’s what they’re now doing to Trump for daring to speak publicly about what is not supposed to be spoken.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that Trump is a libertarian when it comes to foreign policy. Like his fellow candidates in both parties, he most definitely is an interventionist. It’s just that he has pointed out that he is less of an interventionist than the others. But even that slight deviation has earned him the ire of the political establishment.
Even worse, from their standpoint, is the reason he gives for why he is less interventionist than they. He points to the horrific mess that interventionism has produced in the Middle East — i.e., Iraq, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere.
For the interventionists, that is beyond the pale.
It get worse.
Trump has also questioned the need for NATO, the old post-World War II organization that has all the earmarks of a dinosaur — and a dangerous one at that. But not to the political establishment. For them, NATO is vital to international peace and U.S. security, notwithstanding the fact that it’s gobbling of Warsaw Pact countries and moving U.S.-controlled troops ever closer to Russia’s border are what provoked the crisis with Russia in Ukraine. Trump’s questioning of the legitimacy of NATO is considered prima facie evidence of his incompetence in foreign affairs.
Perhaps worst of all, from the standpoint of the statists, is that Trump is even questioning why the United States should be subsidizing the defense of other countries, such as Korea and Japan. Why, everyone knows that entangling alliances are what the United States is all about, or so say the interventionists. How else could “national security” be preserved if the U.S. warfare state wasn’t automatically committed to defending dozens of nations in conflicts with Russia?
Pardon me for asking, but isn’t that what the Cold War and the Truman Doctrine were all about? I thought that period ended 25 years ago. Are we supposed to again be looking for communists under our beds (along with the terrorists)?
Former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul can attest to the Trump phenomenon. In the first presidential debate in 2008, he pointed out that the terrorists came over here to kill Americans on 9/11 because the U.S. government had been over there killing them first. That was a cardinal sin in the eyes of the interventionists. The political establishment came after Paul with everything they had, hoping to smash him into political oblivion. Ironically, that’s when his campaign took off because lots of thinking people knew that he was telling the truth.
The last thing interventionists want is to have a major-party presidential candidate questioning U.S. foreign policy. People might listen. That’s why they did everything they could to keep Paul out of the presidential debates in 2008. If people are listening, they might begin to think. And thinking people are always dangerous to an established order. That’s why totalitarian regimes do everything they can to ensure a loyal and deferential citizenry — so that nobody makes waves against a gigantic racket in which multitudes of people are making lots of moolah.
Not only is the media reporting what Trump is saying, he’s garnering lots of support. Why, he’s actually leading the GOP presidential race! As a heretic, he poses a grave threat to the war party, both Democrats and Republicans. Is it any wonder that the war party is panicked and desperate?
Of course, when you look at things objectively, it is difficult to understand how any thinking person, including Trump, can still be an interventionist. Look at what interventionism has done to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Nothing but conflict, strife, tyranny, corruption, torture, death, and destruction.
There is no doubt about that fact that Trump is an interventionist. But by questioning important aspects of the interventionist philosophy, he has tapped a chord within hundreds of thousands of thinking Americans. And when people begin to think, they might well end up thinking as libertarians. And that, needless to say, scares the dickens out of the political establishment.
Link:
http://fff.org/2016/04/04/give-trump-credit/
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Whatever you might think about GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, he deserves some credit: At least he has raised questions about the U.S. foreign policy of perpetual war and foreign interventionism, which has thrown GOP conservatives, the neo-cons, and the Washington, D.C., establishment—including, no doubt, the CIA and the entire military-industrial complex — into an absolute tizzy.
After all, to question the philosophy of foreign interventionism is akin to heresy. It’s like a Christian saying that Jesus was great man but not God.
And Heaven help the person who speaks such heresy. The war party, both Democrats and Republicans, will come down on him with massive political fire and brimstone. That’s what they’re now doing to Trump for daring to speak publicly about what is not supposed to be spoken.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting that Trump is a libertarian when it comes to foreign policy. Like his fellow candidates in both parties, he most definitely is an interventionist. It’s just that he has pointed out that he is less of an interventionist than the others. But even that slight deviation has earned him the ire of the political establishment.
Even worse, from their standpoint, is the reason he gives for why he is less interventionist than they. He points to the horrific mess that interventionism has produced in the Middle East — i.e., Iraq, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere.
For the interventionists, that is beyond the pale.
It get worse.
Trump has also questioned the need for NATO, the old post-World War II organization that has all the earmarks of a dinosaur — and a dangerous one at that. But not to the political establishment. For them, NATO is vital to international peace and U.S. security, notwithstanding the fact that it’s gobbling of Warsaw Pact countries and moving U.S.-controlled troops ever closer to Russia’s border are what provoked the crisis with Russia in Ukraine. Trump’s questioning of the legitimacy of NATO is considered prima facie evidence of his incompetence in foreign affairs.
Perhaps worst of all, from the standpoint of the statists, is that Trump is even questioning why the United States should be subsidizing the defense of other countries, such as Korea and Japan. Why, everyone knows that entangling alliances are what the United States is all about, or so say the interventionists. How else could “national security” be preserved if the U.S. warfare state wasn’t automatically committed to defending dozens of nations in conflicts with Russia?
Pardon me for asking, but isn’t that what the Cold War and the Truman Doctrine were all about? I thought that period ended 25 years ago. Are we supposed to again be looking for communists under our beds (along with the terrorists)?
Former GOP presidential candidate Ron Paul can attest to the Trump phenomenon. In the first presidential debate in 2008, he pointed out that the terrorists came over here to kill Americans on 9/11 because the U.S. government had been over there killing them first. That was a cardinal sin in the eyes of the interventionists. The political establishment came after Paul with everything they had, hoping to smash him into political oblivion. Ironically, that’s when his campaign took off because lots of thinking people knew that he was telling the truth.
The last thing interventionists want is to have a major-party presidential candidate questioning U.S. foreign policy. People might listen. That’s why they did everything they could to keep Paul out of the presidential debates in 2008. If people are listening, they might begin to think. And thinking people are always dangerous to an established order. That’s why totalitarian regimes do everything they can to ensure a loyal and deferential citizenry — so that nobody makes waves against a gigantic racket in which multitudes of people are making lots of moolah.
Not only is the media reporting what Trump is saying, he’s garnering lots of support. Why, he’s actually leading the GOP presidential race! As a heretic, he poses a grave threat to the war party, both Democrats and Republicans. Is it any wonder that the war party is panicked and desperate?
Of course, when you look at things objectively, it is difficult to understand how any thinking person, including Trump, can still be an interventionist. Look at what interventionism has done to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, and elsewhere in the Middle East. Nothing but conflict, strife, tyranny, corruption, torture, death, and destruction.
There is no doubt about that fact that Trump is an interventionist. But by questioning important aspects of the interventionist philosophy, he has tapped a chord within hundreds of thousands of thinking Americans. And when people begin to think, they might well end up thinking as libertarians. And that, needless to say, scares the dickens out of the political establishment.
Link:
http://fff.org/2016/04/04/give-trump-credit/
We must ignore facts whne trying to deal with important issues...
“Whiteness History Month” Speaker: Talking About Black Crime Statistics is Racist
“Blacks are being villainized”
Paul Joseph Watson
According to Portland Community College’s Rut Martinez-Alicea, talking about black crime statistics is racist.
Martinez-Alicea, who is a “SAFE Coordinator” at the college, was one of the first speakers to take part in “Whiteness History Month,” an education project examining race and racism through an exploration of the construction of whiteness, its origins and heritage”.
In the video clip, a female member of the class explains how a social media meme based on the claim that “zero black women were raped or sexually assaulted by white men” makes her “want to throw up”.
“That’s physically impossible… everything about this is a lie,” she claims, before going on to talk about the high number of white women who are raped by black men, asserting that “it doesn’t matter what color you are”.
Martinez-Alicea responds by claiming that the meme contains “hidden messages” to communicate the notion that only white women deserve to be protected and that “blacks are being villainized”.
The speaker then asserts that there is a “sexist bias” and a “race bias” in people discussing these statistics.
However, the notion that black people in America are responsible for a disproportionately higher number of crimes is a statistical fact.
As Conservative Headline reports, citing DOJ statistics, “According the Department of Justice, in 2005, 37,460 white women were raped by blacks. Other non-whites accounted for 21,852 rapes. About 57% of all white female victims of rape in 2005 were raped by a non-white. The number of black women and other women raped by white men that year is statistically zero in both category. That means there were “10 or fewer cases” reported.”
As I previously discussed in my video, if we cannot even entertain the notion that blacks are responsible for a disproportionately higher number of crimes for fear of being called racist, despite the facts proving that very argument, how can we possibly begin to resolve the issue of police brutality within black communities?
Here are some more ‘racist’ facts that the politically correct media will never talk about.
– FACT: Despite making up just 13% of the population, blacks commit around half of homicides in the United States. DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, blacks committed 52% of homicides, compared to 45% of homicides committed by whites.
More up to date FBI statistics tell a similar story. In 2013, black criminals carried out 38% of murders, compared to 31.1% for whites, again despite the fact that there are five times more white people in the U.S.
– FACT: From 2011 to 2013, 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black. This figure is three times higher than the 13% black population figure. When you account for the fact that black males aged 15-34, who account for around 3% of the population, are responsible for the vast majority of these crimes, the figures are even more staggering.
– FACT: Despite the fact that black people commit an equal or greater number of violent crimes than whites, whites are almost TWICE as likely to be killed by police officers.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, between 1999 and 2011, 2,151 whites died as a result of being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks.
Critics argue that black people are overrepresented in these figures because they only represent 13% of the population, but they areunderrepresented if you factor in violent crime offenders. In other words, you would expect the number of blacks and whites killed by police to be roughly equal given that they commit a roughly equal number of violent crimes, but that’s not the case. Whites are nearly 100% more likely to be victims.
And what about black on white violence in general?
– FACT: Despite being outnumbered by whites five to one, blacks commit eight times more crimes against whites than vice-versa, according to FBI statistics from 2007. A black male is 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse. These figures also show that interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white.
Even allowing for the existence of discrimination in the criminal justice system, the higher rates of crime among black Americans cannot be denied,” wrote James Q. Wilson and Richard Hernstein in their widely cited 1985 study, Crime and Human Nature. “Every study of crime using official data shows blacks to be overrepresented among persons arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for street crimes.”
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/whiteness-history-month-speaker-talking-about-black-crime-statistics-is-racist.html
“Blacks are being villainized”
Paul Joseph Watson
According to Portland Community College’s Rut Martinez-Alicea, talking about black crime statistics is racist.
Martinez-Alicea, who is a “SAFE Coordinator” at the college, was one of the first speakers to take part in “Whiteness History Month,” an education project examining race and racism through an exploration of the construction of whiteness, its origins and heritage”.
In the video clip, a female member of the class explains how a social media meme based on the claim that “zero black women were raped or sexually assaulted by white men” makes her “want to throw up”.
“That’s physically impossible… everything about this is a lie,” she claims, before going on to talk about the high number of white women who are raped by black men, asserting that “it doesn’t matter what color you are”.
Martinez-Alicea responds by claiming that the meme contains “hidden messages” to communicate the notion that only white women deserve to be protected and that “blacks are being villainized”.
The speaker then asserts that there is a “sexist bias” and a “race bias” in people discussing these statistics.
However, the notion that black people in America are responsible for a disproportionately higher number of crimes is a statistical fact.
As Conservative Headline reports, citing DOJ statistics, “According the Department of Justice, in 2005, 37,460 white women were raped by blacks. Other non-whites accounted for 21,852 rapes. About 57% of all white female victims of rape in 2005 were raped by a non-white. The number of black women and other women raped by white men that year is statistically zero in both category. That means there were “10 or fewer cases” reported.”
As I previously discussed in my video, if we cannot even entertain the notion that blacks are responsible for a disproportionately higher number of crimes for fear of being called racist, despite the facts proving that very argument, how can we possibly begin to resolve the issue of police brutality within black communities?
Here are some more ‘racist’ facts that the politically correct media will never talk about.
– FACT: Despite making up just 13% of the population, blacks commit around half of homicides in the United States. DOJ statistics show that between 1980 and 2008, blacks committed 52% of homicides, compared to 45% of homicides committed by whites.
More up to date FBI statistics tell a similar story. In 2013, black criminals carried out 38% of murders, compared to 31.1% for whites, again despite the fact that there are five times more white people in the U.S.
– FACT: From 2011 to 2013, 38.5 per cent of people arrested for murder, manslaughter, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault were black. This figure is three times higher than the 13% black population figure. When you account for the fact that black males aged 15-34, who account for around 3% of the population, are responsible for the vast majority of these crimes, the figures are even more staggering.
– FACT: Despite the fact that black people commit an equal or greater number of violent crimes than whites, whites are almost TWICE as likely to be killed by police officers.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, between 1999 and 2011, 2,151 whites died as a result of being shot by police compared to 1,130 blacks.
Critics argue that black people are overrepresented in these figures because they only represent 13% of the population, but they areunderrepresented if you factor in violent crime offenders. In other words, you would expect the number of blacks and whites killed by police to be roughly equal given that they commit a roughly equal number of violent crimes, but that’s not the case. Whites are nearly 100% more likely to be victims.
And what about black on white violence in general?
– FACT: Despite being outnumbered by whites five to one, blacks commit eight times more crimes against whites than vice-versa, according to FBI statistics from 2007. A black male is 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse. These figures also show that interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white.
Even allowing for the existence of discrimination in the criminal justice system, the higher rates of crime among black Americans cannot be denied,” wrote James Q. Wilson and Richard Hernstein in their widely cited 1985 study, Crime and Human Nature. “Every study of crime using official data shows blacks to be overrepresented among persons arrested, convicted, and imprisoned for street crimes.”
Link:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/whiteness-history-month-speaker-talking-about-black-crime-statistics-is-racist.html
"In fact, although the Republicans are often touted as the “war party” because they are perceived to be stronger on defense, the combined contributions of three Republican candidates trail those made to the two Democrats."
Who does the Department of Defense like?
by Bob Livingston
Going by the contributions, the Department of Defense prefers Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz.
According to The Center for Public Integrity, the witch from Chappaqua has hauled in the largest share of campaign cash (at least that reported) from DoD and defense-related employees than any of the candidates. Her haul over the 14-month period ending in February was $454,994.
Senator Bernie Sanders collected $310,055 over the same period from defense-related workers even though he has in the past advocated for 50 percent cut for the Pentagon and says defense contractors are to blame for “massive fraud” and a “bloated military budget.”
Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz is the leading GOP candidate among contributions from the defense-related workers. He even trails Sanders at $307,995. Cruz has called for large increases in defense spending.
Governor John Kasich ($39,194) and Donald Trump ($10,586) lagged far behind the others. In fact, although the Republicans are often touted as the “war party” because they are perceived to be stronger on defense, the combined contributions of three Republican candidates trail those made to the two Democrats.
Of course, Kankles is the author of the Libya and Syria debacles that are keeping the military-industrial complex fat and happy. I guess killing women and children and creating terrorist organizations does have its rewards.
This is not to say that Cruz, who advocates an Israel-first foreign policy and is very belligerent toward Iran, would be loath to start a war for the neocon cabal if prodded.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/who-does-the-department-of-defense-like/
by Bob Livingston
Going by the contributions, the Department of Defense prefers Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz.
According to The Center for Public Integrity, the witch from Chappaqua has hauled in the largest share of campaign cash (at least that reported) from DoD and defense-related employees than any of the candidates. Her haul over the 14-month period ending in February was $454,994.
Senator Bernie Sanders collected $310,055 over the same period from defense-related workers even though he has in the past advocated for 50 percent cut for the Pentagon and says defense contractors are to blame for “massive fraud” and a “bloated military budget.”
Meanwhile, Senator Ted Cruz is the leading GOP candidate among contributions from the defense-related workers. He even trails Sanders at $307,995. Cruz has called for large increases in defense spending.
Governor John Kasich ($39,194) and Donald Trump ($10,586) lagged far behind the others. In fact, although the Republicans are often touted as the “war party” because they are perceived to be stronger on defense, the combined contributions of three Republican candidates trail those made to the two Democrats.
Of course, Kankles is the author of the Libya and Syria debacles that are keeping the military-industrial complex fat and happy. I guess killing women and children and creating terrorist organizations does have its rewards.
This is not to say that Cruz, who advocates an Israel-first foreign policy and is very belligerent toward Iran, would be loath to start a war for the neocon cabal if prodded.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/who-does-the-department-of-defense-like/
"Congress will stand with the banks, since they’re always looking for campaign money."
Banks working on a secret plan to change laws so you pay their $3 trillion in debt
by GS Early
I have a friend who works on the trading floor of Dominion Power’s unregulated trading business. It’s one of the largest utilities on the East Coast and in the nation.
Recently, my friend came over to visit and he saw the day’s headline in The Washington Post lying on our kitchen table. Although it has been a while since I lived around DC, it’s nice to keep tabs on what those venal fools are up to on Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Ave, in their own words. And The Post is still the best way to do that.
What many people don’t realize is that aside from having one of the largest per capita concentrations of lawyers, DC is a Mecca of PR people, or “flaks” as we call them in the press. They send up the flak to disrupt the actual information getting out.
But that helps change the way you read the paper since most of the stories are fed to the reporters — now mostly underpaid overachievers or trust fund kids that don’t need money to pay rent and eat — by flaks. That means there’s always an agenda for every story.
The story in question took two-thirds of the top of the fold (still a big deal to an old-timer like me who still measures an editor’s skill by how they build each issue of a newspaper). That’s a lot of real estate.
But what was impressive was that it wasn’t about some inside the Beltway machinations or some wonky policy issue. It was about the bankruptcies in the U.S. energy sector that are starting to hit the banks with real force.
My friend looked at it and said, “Yeah, Dominion just pulled together a working committee of energy traders to develop its plan for how these bankruptcies are going to force the banks to change bankruptcy regulations to deal with it.”
There were two things that struck me here.
First, I hadn’t expanded the consequences of the U.S. energy implosion to having an effect on major utilities. This has been one of the best sectors to be in during these slow growth, low inflation times.
Second, my blood pressure rose significantly because what my friend say in such a matter of fact way was that the banks, now that many large and mid-sized banks from all over the world are once again over leveraged in bad debt, won’t have to pay the price for their stupidity and greed.
The Financial Times, a bastion of institutional calm and perspicacity, recently reported that there is $3 trillion in debt that’s likely to be defaulted on in coming months. Not billion, trillion. And this is on top of all the bad mortgages and mortgage backed securities the banksters and the insurance companies are still holding.
What adds salt to this massive wound is the fact that these banksters will simply pay the DC politicians to create new bankruptcy laws that will keep the banks propped up even in the face of what should be a good housecleaning of bad institutions.
This is not the way the free market is meant to operate.
This is why banks won’t lend and big corporations won’t spend. There is still a lot of trouble that most (by that I mean you and me) people can’t even see.
All this artificial “assistance”’ is not allowing evolutionary market forces to do their job of creative destruction. It’s a professional political class that allows big business to know there’s always someone in Washington to help sustain their business. And that means, they don’t have to adapt; they force the rest of the world to adapt to them.
That will not last forever. Don’t forget about the second law of thermodynamics.
So, what to do will all this? Simple. Don’t be a hero. Energy companies aren’t turning around yet. Some have come through most of it, but this new bankruptcy wild card will change everyone’s hand.
Gold still remains the best investment; it’s really the only investment worth making right now. Maybe some utilities that can pass along any energy price fluctuations or minor business meltdowns.
The big banks are going to start putting their money on Hillary since she’s the only candidate they will be able to control. And she’s a known quantity. The Clinton Global Initiative has been a great cover for massive political contributions for many years now.
Congress will stand with the banks, since they’re always looking for campaign money.
And of course, you and I will be the bag holders. Gas will go up, regulators will pass along the utilities’ rate increases to consumers and we’ll be forced to take on the cost of the banks’ mistakes again.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/banks-working-on-a-secret-plan-to-change-laws-so-you-pay-their-3-trillion-in-debt/
by GS Early
I have a friend who works on the trading floor of Dominion Power’s unregulated trading business. It’s one of the largest utilities on the East Coast and in the nation.
Recently, my friend came over to visit and he saw the day’s headline in The Washington Post lying on our kitchen table. Although it has been a while since I lived around DC, it’s nice to keep tabs on what those venal fools are up to on Capitol Hill and Pennsylvania Ave, in their own words. And The Post is still the best way to do that.
What many people don’t realize is that aside from having one of the largest per capita concentrations of lawyers, DC is a Mecca of PR people, or “flaks” as we call them in the press. They send up the flak to disrupt the actual information getting out.
But that helps change the way you read the paper since most of the stories are fed to the reporters — now mostly underpaid overachievers or trust fund kids that don’t need money to pay rent and eat — by flaks. That means there’s always an agenda for every story.
The story in question took two-thirds of the top of the fold (still a big deal to an old-timer like me who still measures an editor’s skill by how they build each issue of a newspaper). That’s a lot of real estate.
But what was impressive was that it wasn’t about some inside the Beltway machinations or some wonky policy issue. It was about the bankruptcies in the U.S. energy sector that are starting to hit the banks with real force.
My friend looked at it and said, “Yeah, Dominion just pulled together a working committee of energy traders to develop its plan for how these bankruptcies are going to force the banks to change bankruptcy regulations to deal with it.”
There were two things that struck me here.
First, I hadn’t expanded the consequences of the U.S. energy implosion to having an effect on major utilities. This has been one of the best sectors to be in during these slow growth, low inflation times.
Second, my blood pressure rose significantly because what my friend say in such a matter of fact way was that the banks, now that many large and mid-sized banks from all over the world are once again over leveraged in bad debt, won’t have to pay the price for their stupidity and greed.
The Financial Times, a bastion of institutional calm and perspicacity, recently reported that there is $3 trillion in debt that’s likely to be defaulted on in coming months. Not billion, trillion. And this is on top of all the bad mortgages and mortgage backed securities the banksters and the insurance companies are still holding.
What adds salt to this massive wound is the fact that these banksters will simply pay the DC politicians to create new bankruptcy laws that will keep the banks propped up even in the face of what should be a good housecleaning of bad institutions.
This is not the way the free market is meant to operate.
This is why banks won’t lend and big corporations won’t spend. There is still a lot of trouble that most (by that I mean you and me) people can’t even see.
All this artificial “assistance”’ is not allowing evolutionary market forces to do their job of creative destruction. It’s a professional political class that allows big business to know there’s always someone in Washington to help sustain their business. And that means, they don’t have to adapt; they force the rest of the world to adapt to them.
That will not last forever. Don’t forget about the second law of thermodynamics.
So, what to do will all this? Simple. Don’t be a hero. Energy companies aren’t turning around yet. Some have come through most of it, but this new bankruptcy wild card will change everyone’s hand.
Gold still remains the best investment; it’s really the only investment worth making right now. Maybe some utilities that can pass along any energy price fluctuations or minor business meltdowns.
The big banks are going to start putting their money on Hillary since she’s the only candidate they will be able to control. And she’s a known quantity. The Clinton Global Initiative has been a great cover for massive political contributions for many years now.
Congress will stand with the banks, since they’re always looking for campaign money.
And of course, you and I will be the bag holders. Gas will go up, regulators will pass along the utilities’ rate increases to consumers and we’ll be forced to take on the cost of the banks’ mistakes again.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/banks-working-on-a-secret-plan-to-change-laws-so-you-pay-their-3-trillion-in-debt/
Not what you think...
Obamacare is working
by Bob Livingston
If one peels back the layers of deception and duplicity, it’s easy to see that Obamacare is working.
It is certainly not working for the people. But it was not designed for them. Obamacare is not healthcare, and it was never about health, and those who created it did not care about health.
All the carping Obamacare proponents gave us about their caring that the uninsured obtained coverage and that Obamacare would lower premiums and that healthcare costs would decrease and that you could keep your health insurance plan if you liked it has turned out to be — just as we and many others predicted — a large sack of hokum mixed with a heaping helping of folderol.
No. Obamacare was about power, control and wealth redistribution. It’s a big government boondoggle designed to transfer wealth, further enrich the medical-pharmaceutical-health insurance complex, limit choices and steal away medical freedom. And to that end it is working swimmingly.
It’s locking people into a socialistic redistributionist deathcare system controlled by a few cronies and thousands of bureaucrats. But it’s a huge health insurance boondoggle of corruption, waste and heartache for the people.
The Congressional Budget Office has issued a new report showing that Obamacare has missed the CBO’s own 2013 projections of those who would have health insurance in 2016 by 24 million people. On the eve of the Affordable Care Act’s 2013 kickoff, the CBO projected 201 million people would have private health insurance in any given month during 2016. But now the CBO says just 177 million will have private health insurance in 2016.
The CBO’s numbers show that Obamacare has, in fact, led to fewer people on private health plans than would have them had Obamacare not been implemented because that same 2013 report declared that without Obamacare, 186 million would have private health insurance. So Obamacare has caused a net short of 9 million people — with 5 million having lost their employer-based plans and 4 million having lost individually-purchased plans.
And running the numbers out even further, the CBO report shows that between 4 million and 9 million fewer people each year are projected to have employer-based coverage from 2017 through 2026 than would have had Obamacare never been enacted.
On top of that, those who are uninsured have little clue about their health insurance options and obligations (thanks to the mandate) despite billions of dollars of both paid and free media for Obamacare. And a survey released in January found that 11.9 percent of adults were not covered by insurance in the final quarter of 2015. That 11.9 percent comes to approximately 28.8 million adults.
According to numbers touted by Obamcare advocates in the run-up to the law’s unconstitutional passage in early 2010 (laws raising revenue must originate in the House and Obamcare — which is a tax, according to the Supreme Court — originated in the Senate), somewhere between 32 million to 47 million Americans were uninsured. That’s not to say they were uninsurable. They were just uninsured.
Whichever number you settled on, that number, of course, was completely contrived. It was a combination of people who were self-insured, those who chose not to buy insurance, those temporarily between jobs, illegal aliens and a group of about 10 million who were truly unable to purchase healthcare insurance because of pre-existing conditions.
So comparing the pre-Obamacare uninsured numbers to the post-Obamacare uninsured numbers, one can see the massive fraud perpetrated on the people for the government’s $1.2 trillion “investment” (Obamacare’s own numbers). In essence, Obamacare has done nothing to improve the health insurance options of the people, but has done much to reduce them and make them more expensive.
What Obamacare has done, through both disincentives on the one hand and incentives on the other, is drive employers out of the ability to provide insurance coverage and people out of the ability to purchase their own and into Medicaid and the failing public insurance marketplaces. And those who’ve managed to keep their employer-based or privately-purchased coverage have seen out-of-pocket expenses skyrocket.
Deductibles are now running in the range of $6,000 to $10,000 per year, with high co-pays and premiums that have jumped 200 to 500 percent or more. That’s certainly not “affordable.” But one can always count on a government program creating the opposite effect of what its name implies. The ACA is no exception.
It’s also costing jobs – 2 million jobs over the next decade, the CBO predicts.
Meanwhile, Obamacare exchanges are predicting yet another round of steep rate hikes for 2017 and for more insurers to leave the exchanges because Obamacare patients are significantly sicker and need more care than those on employer-based plans.
A study by Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found that Obamacare members have higher rates of costly illnesses such as diabetes, depression, hypertension, heart disease, HIV and Hepatitis C.
As CNN Money reports, this is putting insurers participating in the exchanges into a financial bind. Several, including the UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest insurer, say they may not participate in 2017. UnitedHealth expects that it will lose $1 billion on Obamacare in 2015 and 2016. This despite surreptitiously-provided bailouts to insurance companies written into the Obamacare law designed to cover insurance company shortfalls.
However, it seems the Feds are stiffing them, as the Obamacare co-op in Oregon, Health Republic of Oregon — which announced it was forced to close its doors — is suing the federal government for $5 billion over promised bailout funds it never received.
And then there are the more nefarious effects of government-controlled healthcare. Last month, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended all adults be screened for depression:
The USPSTF recommends screening for depression in the general adult population, including pregnant and postpartum women. Screening should be implemented with adequate systems in place to ensure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and appropriate follow-up.
This recommendation will encourage insurer payment for screening, usually done with a questionnaire. Payment will provide the clinic with an incentive to do it, more financial security — and more reasons to find (or create) the “depressed” among us.
And Medicaid also requires clinics to report on the “Percentage of Medicaid enrollees age 18 and older screened for clinical depression on the date of the encounter using an age-appropriate standardized depression screening tool, and if positive, a follow-up plan is documented on the date of the positive screen.”
A depression diagnosis can be applied very subjectively and broadly. It would serve two purposes for the elites. First, it would allow the prescribing of mind-altering drugs to a whole new host of subjects – subjects who would be forced to comply with the established plan of treatment at the point of a gun. Medicating everyone is the goal of the medical establishment and the statist, controlling central planners. A mind-numbed populace is more easily controlled.
And second, it would serve the desires of the establishment gun grabbers. It won’t be long until the Feds begin comparing depression diagnoses with the gun-buying background check lists and agents will be confiscating guns and denying further purchases by declaring people with depression diagnoses as “mentally defective,” just as they’ve done with hundreds of thousands of veterans.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/obamacare-is-working/
by Bob Livingston
If one peels back the layers of deception and duplicity, it’s easy to see that Obamacare is working.
It is certainly not working for the people. But it was not designed for them. Obamacare is not healthcare, and it was never about health, and those who created it did not care about health.
All the carping Obamacare proponents gave us about their caring that the uninsured obtained coverage and that Obamacare would lower premiums and that healthcare costs would decrease and that you could keep your health insurance plan if you liked it has turned out to be — just as we and many others predicted — a large sack of hokum mixed with a heaping helping of folderol.
No. Obamacare was about power, control and wealth redistribution. It’s a big government boondoggle designed to transfer wealth, further enrich the medical-pharmaceutical-health insurance complex, limit choices and steal away medical freedom. And to that end it is working swimmingly.
It’s locking people into a socialistic redistributionist deathcare system controlled by a few cronies and thousands of bureaucrats. But it’s a huge health insurance boondoggle of corruption, waste and heartache for the people.
The Congressional Budget Office has issued a new report showing that Obamacare has missed the CBO’s own 2013 projections of those who would have health insurance in 2016 by 24 million people. On the eve of the Affordable Care Act’s 2013 kickoff, the CBO projected 201 million people would have private health insurance in any given month during 2016. But now the CBO says just 177 million will have private health insurance in 2016.
The CBO’s numbers show that Obamacare has, in fact, led to fewer people on private health plans than would have them had Obamacare not been implemented because that same 2013 report declared that without Obamacare, 186 million would have private health insurance. So Obamacare has caused a net short of 9 million people — with 5 million having lost their employer-based plans and 4 million having lost individually-purchased plans.
And running the numbers out even further, the CBO report shows that between 4 million and 9 million fewer people each year are projected to have employer-based coverage from 2017 through 2026 than would have had Obamacare never been enacted.
On top of that, those who are uninsured have little clue about their health insurance options and obligations (thanks to the mandate) despite billions of dollars of both paid and free media for Obamacare. And a survey released in January found that 11.9 percent of adults were not covered by insurance in the final quarter of 2015. That 11.9 percent comes to approximately 28.8 million adults.
According to numbers touted by Obamcare advocates in the run-up to the law’s unconstitutional passage in early 2010 (laws raising revenue must originate in the House and Obamcare — which is a tax, according to the Supreme Court — originated in the Senate), somewhere between 32 million to 47 million Americans were uninsured. That’s not to say they were uninsurable. They were just uninsured.
Whichever number you settled on, that number, of course, was completely contrived. It was a combination of people who were self-insured, those who chose not to buy insurance, those temporarily between jobs, illegal aliens and a group of about 10 million who were truly unable to purchase healthcare insurance because of pre-existing conditions.
So comparing the pre-Obamacare uninsured numbers to the post-Obamacare uninsured numbers, one can see the massive fraud perpetrated on the people for the government’s $1.2 trillion “investment” (Obamacare’s own numbers). In essence, Obamacare has done nothing to improve the health insurance options of the people, but has done much to reduce them and make them more expensive.
What Obamacare has done, through both disincentives on the one hand and incentives on the other, is drive employers out of the ability to provide insurance coverage and people out of the ability to purchase their own and into Medicaid and the failing public insurance marketplaces. And those who’ve managed to keep their employer-based or privately-purchased coverage have seen out-of-pocket expenses skyrocket.
Deductibles are now running in the range of $6,000 to $10,000 per year, with high co-pays and premiums that have jumped 200 to 500 percent or more. That’s certainly not “affordable.” But one can always count on a government program creating the opposite effect of what its name implies. The ACA is no exception.
It’s also costing jobs – 2 million jobs over the next decade, the CBO predicts.
Meanwhile, Obamacare exchanges are predicting yet another round of steep rate hikes for 2017 and for more insurers to leave the exchanges because Obamacare patients are significantly sicker and need more care than those on employer-based plans.
A study by Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found that Obamacare members have higher rates of costly illnesses such as diabetes, depression, hypertension, heart disease, HIV and Hepatitis C.
As CNN Money reports, this is putting insurers participating in the exchanges into a financial bind. Several, including the UnitedHealth, the nation’s largest insurer, say they may not participate in 2017. UnitedHealth expects that it will lose $1 billion on Obamacare in 2015 and 2016. This despite surreptitiously-provided bailouts to insurance companies written into the Obamacare law designed to cover insurance company shortfalls.
However, it seems the Feds are stiffing them, as the Obamacare co-op in Oregon, Health Republic of Oregon — which announced it was forced to close its doors — is suing the federal government for $5 billion over promised bailout funds it never received.
And then there are the more nefarious effects of government-controlled healthcare. Last month, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended all adults be screened for depression:
The USPSTF recommends screening for depression in the general adult population, including pregnant and postpartum women. Screening should be implemented with adequate systems in place to ensure accurate diagnosis, effective treatment, and appropriate follow-up.
This recommendation will encourage insurer payment for screening, usually done with a questionnaire. Payment will provide the clinic with an incentive to do it, more financial security — and more reasons to find (or create) the “depressed” among us.
And Medicaid also requires clinics to report on the “Percentage of Medicaid enrollees age 18 and older screened for clinical depression on the date of the encounter using an age-appropriate standardized depression screening tool, and if positive, a follow-up plan is documented on the date of the positive screen.”
A depression diagnosis can be applied very subjectively and broadly. It would serve two purposes for the elites. First, it would allow the prescribing of mind-altering drugs to a whole new host of subjects – subjects who would be forced to comply with the established plan of treatment at the point of a gun. Medicating everyone is the goal of the medical establishment and the statist, controlling central planners. A mind-numbed populace is more easily controlled.
And second, it would serve the desires of the establishment gun grabbers. It won’t be long until the Feds begin comparing depression diagnoses with the gun-buying background check lists and agents will be confiscating guns and denying further purchases by declaring people with depression diagnoses as “mentally defective,” just as they’ve done with hundreds of thousands of veterans.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/obamacare-is-working/
Sunday, April 3, 2016
Friday, April 1, 2016
"Against all evidence, Americans insist that their country is “free.” We cannot build a shed on our property without buying a bureaucrat’s permission; ditto to owning guns and certain drugs. We board planes only after submitting to official sexual assault. We light our homes with the bulbs our rulers prefer, and we fill our cars with gas whose formula the EPA dictates at prices it artificially inflates. If a cop’s so inclined, he can murder us with impunity. Bureaucrats and politicians have invalidated de facto most of the Bill of Rights; they’ve curtailed and encroached on the few freedoms left until our liberties are too weak to do us any good or our rulers any harm."
Now that the government’s made toast of the others, it sticks a fork in the 1st Amendment, too
by Becky Akers
A film-maker recently revealed why he shot his movie abroad rather than at home: he fears his government. Can you identify the regime he escaped?
“We moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in _____. We felt like we were at risk [in ____]. We didn’t know what [____‘s agents] might do, so we ended up in Munich…”
Was the producer referring to North Korea? China? Russia, perhaps?
Nope. Oliver Stone was speaking about the good ol’ USSA. He “didn’t know what the NSA might do,” given that his upcoming movie, “Snowden,” presents Heroic Ed as “a historical figure of great consequence.” So he moved production overseas. Even there, the feds’ long arm shook its fist at him: “Problems arose with companies that had connections to the U.S., he said: ‘… BMW couldn’t even help us in any way in Germany.’”
Funding also posed problems. “’No studio would support [the film,’ Stone] said. ‘It was extremely difficult to finance…’ Eventually, financing came through from France and Germany. … ‘It’s a very strange thing to do (a story about) an American man, and not be able to finance this movie in America. And that’s very disturbing, if you think about its implications on any subject that is not overtly pro-American. They say we have freedom of expression, but thought is financed, and thought is controlled, and the media is controlled. This country is very tight on that, and there’s no criticism allowed at a certain level.’”
Perhaps Stone’s feigning. After all, pretending paranoia over the NSA is brilliant publicity for a picture about the agency’s arch-enemy, Ed Snowden.
But what if he isn’t? How far we’ve fallen, that two-bit politicians and bureaucrats tyrannize powerful producers into seeking asylum!
Regardless of your opinion of Stone and Snowden, a government so hostile to dissidents, to freedom of thought and of expression, should not only shame but very much worry us. If the feds can intimidate a Hollywood honcho as influential as Stone, what chance do the rest of us stand against them?
Nor is Stone the only casualty of this war on the 1st Amendment. “Conservative radio host Glenn Beck is under investigation after a comment he made on his radio show when talking about GOP front-runner Donald Trump…” It seems that Beck and his producer, Stu Burguiere, were joking on-air; the latter mocked Beck’s comment about Trump, to which Beck replied, “‘If I was close enough and I had a knife. Really. I mean the stabbing just wouldn’t stop.” Both men insist that Beck was responding to Burguiere and in no way threatening to stab Trump. But that doesn’t matter to the Secret Service. It “will conduct an appropriate follow-up investigation.”
Seriously? Have these bullies nothing better to do on our taxes? Again, regardless of our opinion of Glenn Beck, the government’s surveillance and its stifling of his speech should terrify us.
And especially so because such censorship is moving from entertainment’s moguls to us: “Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged … that there have been discussions within the Department of Justice about possibly pursuing civil action against so-called climate change deniers.”
Yep, our rulers aim to punish those who reject a discredited myth. Ergo, they are investigating “legal” theories that justify such abhorrent totalitarianism — and there is one, believe it or not, which may be even more tragic than this ham-fisted censorship: “Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) … [drew] a comparison between possible civil action against climate change deniers and civil action that the Clinton administration…”
The Clinton administration? This despotism is 25 years old?
“… pursued against the tobacco industry for claiming that the science behind the dangers of tobacco was unsettled.”
Actually, such despotism is far older than a quarter-century: it dates back a full one, to 1919 and the Supreme Court’s wickedness in Schenck v. United States.
When President Woodrow Wilson dragged reluctant Americans into World War I, he had to draft men for his army: sensible citizens refused to die in European trenches. Dissidents published pamphlets against such legalized kidnapping, urging its victims to resist. The government arrested two Socialists for distributing this literature; they protested that the 1st Amendment protected such speech.
Naturally, the judiciary defended the Feds’ warmongering: “…in many places and in ordinary times, the defendants, in saying all that was said in the circular, would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
What a false analogy! Shouting “Fire!” in a theater is an issue of property rights, not of speech; it pertains to the 1st Amendment as much as robbing a gun shop does the 2nd Amendment (and in a free country, the theater’s owner, not rulers, would decide his response to the jerk threatening his business). Yet the modern state bases much of its infringing of the 1st Amendment on this deranged decision. No wonder we endure such travesties as prosecuting trespassers on trumped-up “civil-rights charges.”
Against all evidence, Americans insist that their country is “free.” We cannot build a shed on our property without buying a bureaucrat’s permission; ditto to owning guns and certain drugs. We board planes only after submitting to official sexual assault. We light our homes with the bulbs our rulers prefer, and we fill our cars with gas whose formula the EPA dictates at prices it artificially inflates. If a cop’s so inclined, he can murder us with impunity. Bureaucrats and politicians have invalidated de facto most of the Bill of Rights; they’ve curtailed and encroached on the few freedoms left until our liberties are too weak to do us any good or our rulers any harm.
But because we can still mildly criticize those who lord it over us, Americans cooperate with our masters in calling ourselves free.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/now-that-the-governments-made-toast-of-the-others-it-sticks-a-fork-in-the-1st-amendment-too/
by Becky Akers
A film-maker recently revealed why he shot his movie abroad rather than at home: he fears his government. Can you identify the regime he escaped?
“We moved to Germany, because we did not feel comfortable in _____. We felt like we were at risk [in ____]. We didn’t know what [____‘s agents] might do, so we ended up in Munich…”
Was the producer referring to North Korea? China? Russia, perhaps?
Nope. Oliver Stone was speaking about the good ol’ USSA. He “didn’t know what the NSA might do,” given that his upcoming movie, “Snowden,” presents Heroic Ed as “a historical figure of great consequence.” So he moved production overseas. Even there, the feds’ long arm shook its fist at him: “Problems arose with companies that had connections to the U.S., he said: ‘… BMW couldn’t even help us in any way in Germany.’”
Funding also posed problems. “’No studio would support [the film,’ Stone] said. ‘It was extremely difficult to finance…’ Eventually, financing came through from France and Germany. … ‘It’s a very strange thing to do (a story about) an American man, and not be able to finance this movie in America. And that’s very disturbing, if you think about its implications on any subject that is not overtly pro-American. They say we have freedom of expression, but thought is financed, and thought is controlled, and the media is controlled. This country is very tight on that, and there’s no criticism allowed at a certain level.’”
Perhaps Stone’s feigning. After all, pretending paranoia over the NSA is brilliant publicity for a picture about the agency’s arch-enemy, Ed Snowden.
But what if he isn’t? How far we’ve fallen, that two-bit politicians and bureaucrats tyrannize powerful producers into seeking asylum!
Regardless of your opinion of Stone and Snowden, a government so hostile to dissidents, to freedom of thought and of expression, should not only shame but very much worry us. If the feds can intimidate a Hollywood honcho as influential as Stone, what chance do the rest of us stand against them?
Nor is Stone the only casualty of this war on the 1st Amendment. “Conservative radio host Glenn Beck is under investigation after a comment he made on his radio show when talking about GOP front-runner Donald Trump…” It seems that Beck and his producer, Stu Burguiere, were joking on-air; the latter mocked Beck’s comment about Trump, to which Beck replied, “‘If I was close enough and I had a knife. Really. I mean the stabbing just wouldn’t stop.” Both men insist that Beck was responding to Burguiere and in no way threatening to stab Trump. But that doesn’t matter to the Secret Service. It “will conduct an appropriate follow-up investigation.”
Seriously? Have these bullies nothing better to do on our taxes? Again, regardless of our opinion of Glenn Beck, the government’s surveillance and its stifling of his speech should terrify us.
And especially so because such censorship is moving from entertainment’s moguls to us: “Attorney General Loretta Lynch acknowledged … that there have been discussions within the Department of Justice about possibly pursuing civil action against so-called climate change deniers.”
Yep, our rulers aim to punish those who reject a discredited myth. Ergo, they are investigating “legal” theories that justify such abhorrent totalitarianism — and there is one, believe it or not, which may be even more tragic than this ham-fisted censorship: “Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) … [drew] a comparison between possible civil action against climate change deniers and civil action that the Clinton administration…”
The Clinton administration? This despotism is 25 years old?
“… pursued against the tobacco industry for claiming that the science behind the dangers of tobacco was unsettled.”
Actually, such despotism is far older than a quarter-century: it dates back a full one, to 1919 and the Supreme Court’s wickedness in Schenck v. United States.
When President Woodrow Wilson dragged reluctant Americans into World War I, he had to draft men for his army: sensible citizens refused to die in European trenches. Dissidents published pamphlets against such legalized kidnapping, urging its victims to resist. The government arrested two Socialists for distributing this literature; they protested that the 1st Amendment protected such speech.
Naturally, the judiciary defended the Feds’ warmongering: “…in many places and in ordinary times, the defendants, in saying all that was said in the circular, would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
What a false analogy! Shouting “Fire!” in a theater is an issue of property rights, not of speech; it pertains to the 1st Amendment as much as robbing a gun shop does the 2nd Amendment (and in a free country, the theater’s owner, not rulers, would decide his response to the jerk threatening his business). Yet the modern state bases much of its infringing of the 1st Amendment on this deranged decision. No wonder we endure such travesties as prosecuting trespassers on trumped-up “civil-rights charges.”
Against all evidence, Americans insist that their country is “free.” We cannot build a shed on our property without buying a bureaucrat’s permission; ditto to owning guns and certain drugs. We board planes only after submitting to official sexual assault. We light our homes with the bulbs our rulers prefer, and we fill our cars with gas whose formula the EPA dictates at prices it artificially inflates. If a cop’s so inclined, he can murder us with impunity. Bureaucrats and politicians have invalidated de facto most of the Bill of Rights; they’ve curtailed and encroached on the few freedoms left until our liberties are too weak to do us any good or our rulers any harm.
But because we can still mildly criticize those who lord it over us, Americans cooperate with our masters in calling ourselves free.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/now-that-the-governments-made-toast-of-the-others-it-sticks-a-fork-in-the-1st-amendment-too/
Yes, it surely is...
Just plain fools: Liberalism is a mental disorder
by Sam Rolley
Cultural appropriation, safe spaces, public breakdowns and cretaphobia. In honor of April Fools’ Day, here are just a few examples of how the American left is going insane.
American college students are suffering psychological breakdowns over…. sidewalk chalk.
I wish it were a joke, but it isn’t. Grown children on American college campuses are being tormented by the same dusty menace that facilitated games of hopscotch during their, presumably more comfortable, days of sippy cups and footy pajamas.
First, someone at Emory University dared to support Donald Trump in sidewalk chalk and all hell broke loose.
Via the school’s student paper:
Students protested yesterday at the Emory Administration Building following a series of overnight, apparent pro-Donald Trump for president chalkings throughout campus.
Roughly 40 students gathered shortly after 4:30 p.m. in the outdoors space between the Administration Building and Goodrich C. White Hall; many students carried signs featuring slogans such as “Stop Trump” or “Stop Hate” and an antiphonal chant addressed to University administration, led by College sophomore Jonathan Peraza, resounded “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!” throughout the Quad. Peraza opened the door to the Administration Building and students moved forward towards the door, shouting “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
After approximately ten minutes outside from the start of the demonstration, the gathered students were ushered into the Quad-facing entrance to the Administration Building and quickly filled a staircase to continue their demonstration. Pausing in the staircase, a few students shared their initial, personal reactions to the chalkings.
“I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here],” one student said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school,” she added.
The worst part is that the college’s administration actually responded to the complaints.
And over in Michigan, cretaphobia (that’s what fear of chalk is called, in case you wondered) struck again. So terrifying were the messages scrawled on the sidewalk that the police had to get involved.
From The Washington Times:
University of Michigan police were called Wednesday after students reported seeing the phrases “#Stop Islam” and “Trump 2016” scrawled in chalk at several locations on campus.
A student tweeted a photo of the chalkings on Wednesday. Police responded that evening to document the messages…
“We will continue to monitor campus and work with our campus partners to ensure our students have a safe environment to live, learn and dialogue,” said Diane Brown, U-M Division of Public Safety and Security public information officer.
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said several reports were also filed with the school’s bias response team.
“Attacks directed toward any member or group within the University of Michigan community, based on a belief or characteristic, are inconsistent with our values of respect, civility and equality,” the university said in a statement. “We all understand that where speech is free it will sometimes wound. But our message is this: We are fully committed to fostering an environment that is welcoming and inclusive of everyone. Tonight we are reminded there is much work yet to be done.”
Wow.
White people are not allowed to have nasty, unwashed hair
That’s according to the woman in this video, who attacked a San Francisco college student because of his attempt at dreadlocks.
The white San Francisco State University student wearing dreadlocks was physically assaulted by the black woman for “cultural appropriation.”
“You’re saying I can’t wear a hairstyle because of your culture? Why?” he asked.
The woman replied: “Because it’s my culture.”
She also appears to own the rights to ignorance and antisocial behavior.
A lesson in the consequences of actual assault
The anti-Trump crowd certainly knows a thing or two about claiming assault. Well, this girl in Kansas City tried her hand at the favorite pastime of non-Trump supporters who— for some reason keep showing up at pro-Trump rallies— before actually assaulting another person on camera.
Then she got pepper sprayed.
The police are reportedly investigating.
And then there’s this guy…
He hates Trump, he smokes weed—and he sucks at backflips.
A description posted alongside the video: “Donald Trump held a rally today in Janesville, Wisconsin. Police were forced to put up a fence so the Never-Trumpers wouldn’t beat and bludgeon the Donald Trump supporters. Conservative filmmakers Andrew Marcus and Jeremy Segal filmed the violent anti-Trump demonstrators. One unhinged Never-Trumper screamed “F*ck you! Fat B*tch!” – Then back-flipped into a face-plant.”
Happy April Fools’! Keep it classy.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/just-plain-fools-liberalism-is-a-mental-disorder/
by Sam Rolley
Cultural appropriation, safe spaces, public breakdowns and cretaphobia. In honor of April Fools’ Day, here are just a few examples of how the American left is going insane.
American college students are suffering psychological breakdowns over…. sidewalk chalk.
I wish it were a joke, but it isn’t. Grown children on American college campuses are being tormented by the same dusty menace that facilitated games of hopscotch during their, presumably more comfortable, days of sippy cups and footy pajamas.
First, someone at Emory University dared to support Donald Trump in sidewalk chalk and all hell broke loose.
Via the school’s student paper:
Students protested yesterday at the Emory Administration Building following a series of overnight, apparent pro-Donald Trump for president chalkings throughout campus.
Roughly 40 students gathered shortly after 4:30 p.m. in the outdoors space between the Administration Building and Goodrich C. White Hall; many students carried signs featuring slogans such as “Stop Trump” or “Stop Hate” and an antiphonal chant addressed to University administration, led by College sophomore Jonathan Peraza, resounded “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!” throughout the Quad. Peraza opened the door to the Administration Building and students moved forward towards the door, shouting “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
After approximately ten minutes outside from the start of the demonstration, the gathered students were ushered into the Quad-facing entrance to the Administration Building and quickly filled a staircase to continue their demonstration. Pausing in the staircase, a few students shared their initial, personal reactions to the chalkings.
“I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here],” one student said. “But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school,” she added.
The worst part is that the college’s administration actually responded to the complaints.
And over in Michigan, cretaphobia (that’s what fear of chalk is called, in case you wondered) struck again. So terrifying were the messages scrawled on the sidewalk that the police had to get involved.
From The Washington Times:
University of Michigan police were called Wednesday after students reported seeing the phrases “#Stop Islam” and “Trump 2016” scrawled in chalk at several locations on campus.
A student tweeted a photo of the chalkings on Wednesday. Police responded that evening to document the messages…
“We will continue to monitor campus and work with our campus partners to ensure our students have a safe environment to live, learn and dialogue,” said Diane Brown, U-M Division of Public Safety and Security public information officer.
University spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said several reports were also filed with the school’s bias response team.
“Attacks directed toward any member or group within the University of Michigan community, based on a belief or characteristic, are inconsistent with our values of respect, civility and equality,” the university said in a statement. “We all understand that where speech is free it will sometimes wound. But our message is this: We are fully committed to fostering an environment that is welcoming and inclusive of everyone. Tonight we are reminded there is much work yet to be done.”
Wow.
White people are not allowed to have nasty, unwashed hair
That’s according to the woman in this video, who attacked a San Francisco college student because of his attempt at dreadlocks.
The white San Francisco State University student wearing dreadlocks was physically assaulted by the black woman for “cultural appropriation.”
“You’re saying I can’t wear a hairstyle because of your culture? Why?” he asked.
The woman replied: “Because it’s my culture.”
She also appears to own the rights to ignorance and antisocial behavior.
A lesson in the consequences of actual assault
The anti-Trump crowd certainly knows a thing or two about claiming assault. Well, this girl in Kansas City tried her hand at the favorite pastime of non-Trump supporters who— for some reason keep showing up at pro-Trump rallies— before actually assaulting another person on camera.
Then she got pepper sprayed.
The police are reportedly investigating.
And then there’s this guy…
He hates Trump, he smokes weed—and he sucks at backflips.
A description posted alongside the video: “Donald Trump held a rally today in Janesville, Wisconsin. Police were forced to put up a fence so the Never-Trumpers wouldn’t beat and bludgeon the Donald Trump supporters. Conservative filmmakers Andrew Marcus and Jeremy Segal filmed the violent anti-Trump demonstrators. One unhinged Never-Trumper screamed “F*ck you! Fat B*tch!” – Then back-flipped into a face-plant.”
Happy April Fools’! Keep it classy.
Link:
http://personalliberty.com/just-plain-fools-liberalism-is-a-mental-disorder/
Media controlled by CIA...
Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media Is Completely Fake: "We All Lie For The CIA"
By Tyler Durden
With the increasing propaganda wars, we thought a reminder of just how naive many Westerners are when it comes to their news-feed. As Arjun Walia, of GlobalResearch.ca, notes, Dr. Ulfkotte went on public television stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job.
He recently made an appearance on RT news to share these facts:
I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.
But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia — this is a point of no return and I’m going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe...
Read the rest here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/tyler-durden/mainstream-media-completely-fake/
By Tyler Durden
With the increasing propaganda wars, we thought a reminder of just how naive many Westerners are when it comes to their news-feed. As Arjun Walia, of GlobalResearch.ca, notes, Dr. Ulfkotte went on public television stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job.
He recently made an appearance on RT news to share these facts:
I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.
But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia — this is a point of no return and I’m going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe...
Read the rest here:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/tyler-durden/mainstream-media-completely-fake/
"I find it difficult to believe that a shot-up kid, who had to be put into intensive care when he was discovered, who was hiding from execution under an upturned boat, spent what little energy and life force he had left writing a confession in the dark on the inside of a boat. What convenient instrument to write with did he happen to have on hand? "
Update on the Boston Marathon Bomb Case
By Paul Craig Roberts
Movies are used to set official stories in stone, and a movie is going to be made about the heroic capture of a badly wounded 19 year old kid, not old enough to buy a beer, who, despite being shot up and severely wounded, is alleged to have written a confession in the dark on the side of a boat under which he was hiding to escape execution. Apparently, the 10,000 troops who violated the US Constitution and searched the houses of a shutdown Boston without warrants are going to be credited for “saving America from terrorism.”
I find it difficult to believe that a shot-up kid, who had to be put into intensive care when he was discovered, who was hiding from execution under an upturned boat, spent what little energy and life force he had left writing a confession in the dark on the inside of a boat. What convenient instrument to write with did he happen to have on hand?
Why would we believe assurances of such an unlikely confession from the same lying government that assured the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction justifying a multi-trillion dollar invasion that destroyed a country? We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein most certainly did not have weapons of mass destruction as President Bush later admitted, and even if he had, such possession is no justification for illegal US aggression that destroyed a country. Why would we believe a government that assured the world that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, which we know for a fact was Washington’s made up excuse for invasion?
One wonders how much the Boston Marathon Bombing movie makers have been paid for setting the official story in stone. As one correspondent asked: “I’m wondering how they are going to portray Boston cops as heroes as they kill the older brother and then surround an unarmed teenager who is hiding under a boat. They start firing…they put a bullet through his face but the damned kid won’t die! Heroic Senator John McCain then explains how Miranda rights don’t apply in his case. Suddenly it’s discovered that while hiding in the boat he’s written a confession on the inside of the boat with a Sharpie…”
John Remington Graham has 48 years of legal experience as a defense attorney and as a prosecutor. An aunt of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is herself an attorney in the Russian Federation, requested John Remington Graham to assist her in making an amicus curiae intervention in the federal district court in Boston. Mr. Graham has since written to the US Attorney General about conflicts between the government’s evidence and the guilty conviction. After 3 months, he has received no answer, an indication that the US Department of Justice has no interest whatsoever in what appears to be a wrongful conviction carrying a death sentence.
Mr. Graham brings us up-to-date on what has the appearance of the judicial murder of another innocent in order to serve the secret agenda of the military/security complex. “America is under attack,” so we need a police state to protect us and more money for wars abroad that take the lives of massive numbers of innocents, while economic conditions at home drive the American people deeper into the ground.
Here is John Remington Graham’s statement of the miscarriage of justice:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Is Not Guilty
John Remington Graham
The government of the United States has prosecuted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the knowledge that its evidence proves he is not guilty. On August 17, 2015, Paul Craig Roberts published an account of the amicus curiae intervention by Maret Tsarnaeva, paternal aunt of the accused and a lawyer resident in the Russian Federation, before the federal district court in Massachusetts in the infamous prosecution of her nephew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, on an indictment charging him with detonating a pressure-cooker bomb on Boyston Street in Boston on April 15, 2013, causing death or injury to many persons. Mr. Tsarnaev was sentenced to death on June 17, 2015. Dr. Roberts’ account was published widely in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Russia. The report quotes verbatim from pertinent documents made part of the public record by court order. Here is the link to the said report. While a number of other serious anomalies in this prosecution have been noted by highly qualified observers, the most decisive and indisputable facts of public record are these: From evidence at the scene of the explosions, the FBI crime lab definitively established on April 16, 2013, that the culprits, whoever they were, carried large, heavy-laden black backpacks concealing pressure-cooker bombs.
This information was not a mere temporary investigative hypothesis, but was incorporated into the indictment returned on June 17, 2013, and was part of the government’s case going into trial.
On April 18, 2013, the FBI identified the culprits from a private street video, showing the brothers Tsarnaev on Boylston Street prior to the explosions. Two still-frames from this street video were used in FBI posters advising the public of the identity of the suspects. These two still-frames do not clearly portray what these young men were carrying on their backs. But a third still-frame from the same street video shows Dzhokhar from the rear, carrying over his right shoulder a small, light-weight, white backpack, with no bulging or sagging as would have appeared if he had carried a heavy pressure cooker bomb as claimed by the FBI and alleged in the indictment. Because the white backpack Dzhokhar carried is not the black backpack carried by the accused bomber as stated in the indictment, Dzhokhar stands excluded as a suspect and is necessarily not guilty as charged. Alleged confessions or statements of self-incrimination introduced against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are disproved by the findings of the FBI crime lab and the street video used by the FBI to identify the culprits. In other words, the street video shows that the backpack carried by Mr. Tsarnaev does not match and has the opposite characteristics of the backpack which the FBI crime lab determined was carried by the guilty party. Therefore, no alleged admission of guilt by Dzhokhar can be true.
In a criminal case, if the prosecution attempts to prove that the accused or a co-conspirator admitted wrongdoing, but objective evidence in the possession of public authority indicates that the accused did not commit the crime, the admission is worthless. The objective evidence stands, and the finding must be not guilty. Widely published photographs reveal that, near the crime scene, at or about the time of the explosions, there were men in military-style jackets, pants, boots, and hats with identical logos carrying large black backpacks that matched perfectly the findings of the FBI crime lab. But these men were not investigated, questioned, or charged. The presence of these individuals was never mentioned during the trial of Mr. Tsarnaev. Instead, Dzhokhar’s court-appointed lawyer forcibly told the jury he was guilty, although, as she well knew, FBI-generated evidence proved that Dzhokhar, at the time and place of the explosions, was carrying a backpack totally different from the backpack that the FBI proved was carried by the guilty party. On January 7, 2016, as directed by Maret Tarnaeva, I sent a petition to Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States who is now the legal custodian of Mr. Tsarnaev. This petition describes and includes key exhibits of public record, and requests her to intervene in the case in order to prevent wrongful conviction and execution. The attorney general is obligated to intervene under rules of legal ethics promulgated by the American Bar Association that are universally accepted throughout the United States.
The governing principle is that a public prosecutor must refuse to charge, or must seek dismissal of an accusation, when evidence in the possession of public authority shows that there is no probable cause, or that probable cause, once established, no longer exists or ceases to be credible. This principle has been faithfully observed in our time by Cyrus Vance Jr., state district attorney in New York City, in the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn when it was discovered that the main witness against the accused was a con artist trying to shake him down, and also by Jim Mattox, attorney general of Texas, once it was learned that guilty pleas of Henry Lee Lucas were false in light of undeniable, objective evidence. Federal prosecutors, court-appointed counsel for the accused, and the major news media are aware of the basic facts here outlined; yet, acting together, they have misled the general public and managed to convict an individual obviously not guilty. The attorney general of the United States has been duly advised of the situation but has failed to do anything about it or even to acknowledge or reply to my letter.
John Remington Graham of the Minnesota Bar (#3664X), jrgraham@novicomfusion.com
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/paul-craig-roberts/boston-marathon-bomb-case/
By Paul Craig Roberts
Movies are used to set official stories in stone, and a movie is going to be made about the heroic capture of a badly wounded 19 year old kid, not old enough to buy a beer, who, despite being shot up and severely wounded, is alleged to have written a confession in the dark on the side of a boat under which he was hiding to escape execution. Apparently, the 10,000 troops who violated the US Constitution and searched the houses of a shutdown Boston without warrants are going to be credited for “saving America from terrorism.”
I find it difficult to believe that a shot-up kid, who had to be put into intensive care when he was discovered, who was hiding from execution under an upturned boat, spent what little energy and life force he had left writing a confession in the dark on the inside of a boat. What convenient instrument to write with did he happen to have on hand?
Why would we believe assurances of such an unlikely confession from the same lying government that assured the world that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction justifying a multi-trillion dollar invasion that destroyed a country? We know for a fact that Saddam Hussein most certainly did not have weapons of mass destruction as President Bush later admitted, and even if he had, such possession is no justification for illegal US aggression that destroyed a country. Why would we believe a government that assured the world that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, which we know for a fact was Washington’s made up excuse for invasion?
One wonders how much the Boston Marathon Bombing movie makers have been paid for setting the official story in stone. As one correspondent asked: “I’m wondering how they are going to portray Boston cops as heroes as they kill the older brother and then surround an unarmed teenager who is hiding under a boat. They start firing…they put a bullet through his face but the damned kid won’t die! Heroic Senator John McCain then explains how Miranda rights don’t apply in his case. Suddenly it’s discovered that while hiding in the boat he’s written a confession on the inside of the boat with a Sharpie…”
John Remington Graham has 48 years of legal experience as a defense attorney and as a prosecutor. An aunt of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who is herself an attorney in the Russian Federation, requested John Remington Graham to assist her in making an amicus curiae intervention in the federal district court in Boston. Mr. Graham has since written to the US Attorney General about conflicts between the government’s evidence and the guilty conviction. After 3 months, he has received no answer, an indication that the US Department of Justice has no interest whatsoever in what appears to be a wrongful conviction carrying a death sentence.
Mr. Graham brings us up-to-date on what has the appearance of the judicial murder of another innocent in order to serve the secret agenda of the military/security complex. “America is under attack,” so we need a police state to protect us and more money for wars abroad that take the lives of massive numbers of innocents, while economic conditions at home drive the American people deeper into the ground.
Here is John Remington Graham’s statement of the miscarriage of justice:
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Is Not Guilty
John Remington Graham
The government of the United States has prosecuted Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the knowledge that its evidence proves he is not guilty. On August 17, 2015, Paul Craig Roberts published an account of the amicus curiae intervention by Maret Tsarnaeva, paternal aunt of the accused and a lawyer resident in the Russian Federation, before the federal district court in Massachusetts in the infamous prosecution of her nephew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, on an indictment charging him with detonating a pressure-cooker bomb on Boyston Street in Boston on April 15, 2013, causing death or injury to many persons. Mr. Tsarnaev was sentenced to death on June 17, 2015. Dr. Roberts’ account was published widely in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Russia. The report quotes verbatim from pertinent documents made part of the public record by court order. Here is the link to the said report. While a number of other serious anomalies in this prosecution have been noted by highly qualified observers, the most decisive and indisputable facts of public record are these: From evidence at the scene of the explosions, the FBI crime lab definitively established on April 16, 2013, that the culprits, whoever they were, carried large, heavy-laden black backpacks concealing pressure-cooker bombs.
This information was not a mere temporary investigative hypothesis, but was incorporated into the indictment returned on June 17, 2013, and was part of the government’s case going into trial.
On April 18, 2013, the FBI identified the culprits from a private street video, showing the brothers Tsarnaev on Boylston Street prior to the explosions. Two still-frames from this street video were used in FBI posters advising the public of the identity of the suspects. These two still-frames do not clearly portray what these young men were carrying on their backs. But a third still-frame from the same street video shows Dzhokhar from the rear, carrying over his right shoulder a small, light-weight, white backpack, with no bulging or sagging as would have appeared if he had carried a heavy pressure cooker bomb as claimed by the FBI and alleged in the indictment. Because the white backpack Dzhokhar carried is not the black backpack carried by the accused bomber as stated in the indictment, Dzhokhar stands excluded as a suspect and is necessarily not guilty as charged. Alleged confessions or statements of self-incrimination introduced against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are disproved by the findings of the FBI crime lab and the street video used by the FBI to identify the culprits. In other words, the street video shows that the backpack carried by Mr. Tsarnaev does not match and has the opposite characteristics of the backpack which the FBI crime lab determined was carried by the guilty party. Therefore, no alleged admission of guilt by Dzhokhar can be true.
In a criminal case, if the prosecution attempts to prove that the accused or a co-conspirator admitted wrongdoing, but objective evidence in the possession of public authority indicates that the accused did not commit the crime, the admission is worthless. The objective evidence stands, and the finding must be not guilty. Widely published photographs reveal that, near the crime scene, at or about the time of the explosions, there were men in military-style jackets, pants, boots, and hats with identical logos carrying large black backpacks that matched perfectly the findings of the FBI crime lab. But these men were not investigated, questioned, or charged. The presence of these individuals was never mentioned during the trial of Mr. Tsarnaev. Instead, Dzhokhar’s court-appointed lawyer forcibly told the jury he was guilty, although, as she well knew, FBI-generated evidence proved that Dzhokhar, at the time and place of the explosions, was carrying a backpack totally different from the backpack that the FBI proved was carried by the guilty party. On January 7, 2016, as directed by Maret Tarnaeva, I sent a petition to Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States who is now the legal custodian of Mr. Tsarnaev. This petition describes and includes key exhibits of public record, and requests her to intervene in the case in order to prevent wrongful conviction and execution. The attorney general is obligated to intervene under rules of legal ethics promulgated by the American Bar Association that are universally accepted throughout the United States.
The governing principle is that a public prosecutor must refuse to charge, or must seek dismissal of an accusation, when evidence in the possession of public authority shows that there is no probable cause, or that probable cause, once established, no longer exists or ceases to be credible. This principle has been faithfully observed in our time by Cyrus Vance Jr., state district attorney in New York City, in the prosecution of Dominique Strauss-Kahn when it was discovered that the main witness against the accused was a con artist trying to shake him down, and also by Jim Mattox, attorney general of Texas, once it was learned that guilty pleas of Henry Lee Lucas were false in light of undeniable, objective evidence. Federal prosecutors, court-appointed counsel for the accused, and the major news media are aware of the basic facts here outlined; yet, acting together, they have misled the general public and managed to convict an individual obviously not guilty. The attorney general of the United States has been duly advised of the situation but has failed to do anything about it or even to acknowledge or reply to my letter.
John Remington Graham of the Minnesota Bar (#3664X), jrgraham@novicomfusion.com
Link:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/04/paul-craig-roberts/boston-marathon-bomb-case/
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