The Chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight committee, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) paid a little visit to the IRS last week and saw something he didn’t expect: IRS agents training with AR-15s. He had to ask why? He said:
When I left there, it’s been bugging me for weeks now, why IRS agents are training with a semi-automatic rifle AR-15, which has stand-off capability. Are Americans that much of a target that you need that kind of capability?
This epiphany is especially disconcerting just weeks after the IRS was caught illegally targeting and intimidating certain 501(3)(c) applicants based on their political affiliations. If the IRS is illegally targeting people with their scrutiny, why should we not believe that they are illegally targeting people with their AR-15s as well?
But this is all beside the point because according to the Senate majority leader, taxes are voluntary:
And more recently, the outgoing IRS chief made the same claim in the House investigation hearing:
Xavier Becerra (D-CA) may have made a shocking statement, discussing the need to keep confidence in the system, saying “… because it’s a voluntary system … of payment of our taxes.”
Stephen Miller (IRS commissioner, resigned): “Agreed.”
Why would the IRS need AR-15s if they weren’t forcefully taking money from people? I guess the IRS needs those big guns just to make us feel safe when we voluntarily pay our taxes? It’s not working.
This should make it quite clear. Taxation is theft and the IRS needs heavy weaponry to insure that no one fights that theft.
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Obama’s 1984 Checklist
As an author of dystopian futures, I find it difficult to come up with scary plots involving tyrannical liberty-crushing laws and edicts before the federal government actually enacts them. It almost seems like the state has a checklist from the dystopian classic 1984 and is doing its best to turn our world into Winston Smith’s.
Obama’s 1984 Checklist By Matthew Grivich
Two minutes hate … complete … Republicans vs Democrats and Republics vs Democrats
Big brother is watching … complete … internet and telephone universal tapping
Eternal war … complete
Children committed to and dependent on state rather than parents … in process
One party state … in process. Most of the things on this list are practiced by both Democrats and Republicans.
Enemies of the state disappear … begun, kill lists for foreigners, habeas corpus suspended for citizens
There is no truth, only what the state wishes to be true … begun, some deny the existence of truth and many accept whatever their party tells them even if it directly contradicts what their party said last week.
Disordered sexuality pushed by the state … begun, but it looks very different than in 1984 as big brother represses the unitive nature of sexuality while our government represses the procreative.
Language as mind control … attempted but not particularly successful, consider “job-creators”, “pro-choice”
Eradication of history … to do
Technological decay … to do
The Constitution used to mean something. The rule of law used to mean something. This is not the case anymore.
The Guardian reports:
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an “ongoing, daily basis” to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
We don’t expect the President to give the American people every detail about a classified surveillance program. But we do expect him to place such a program within the rule of law, and to allow members of the other two coequal branches of government – Congress and the Judiciary – to have the ability to monitor and oversee such a program. Our Constitution and our right to privacy as Americans require as much.
Europe’s labor market is a mess. Now, authorities are actually looking at common-sense solutions that will actually work. Some in Spain, for instance, are calling for a suspension of the minimum wage laws. Perhaps the US should take note. After all the data show us that unemployment typically increases proportionately after minimum wage is increased:
From AEI:
The minimum wage in Spain is currently 645 euros a month. Spain’s jobless rate hit a record 27.2 percent in the first quarter, with 6.2 million people out of work, an increase of almost one million since the ruling Popular Party’s labor reform was introduced. The youth unemployment rate also reached a record 57.2 percent.
According to figures released Friday by the European Union’s statistics office, Eurostat, Spain accounted for 31.5 percent of the 19.375 million people out of work in the euro zone in April. Unemployment stood at record highs of 12.2 percent in the single-currency block and at 11.0 percent in the EU. The rate in Spain was 26.8 percent, with joblessness in Portugal 17.8 percent.
Earlier this week, the Paris-based OECD also called for further reforms in the labor market after predicting the jobless rate would hit 28 percent this year when it expects the economy to contract by 1.7 percent. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has long been an advocate of abolishing the widespread practice of including clauses in collective bargaining agreements compensating workers for a loss of spending power as a result of inflation, an arrangement known as indexation. The European Commission also asked Spain to complete an evaluation of its 2012 labor law overhaul by July, and to propose necessary modifications by September. The labor reform made it cheaper and easier for companies to sack workers, allowing firms to pay 20 days’ wages for every year worked up to a maximum of one year’s wages in situations such as falling sales. The reforms also give more flexibility to companies to negotiate collective agreements.
It makes me think of Lincoln Steffens’s quote after he got back from the newly formed Soviet Union, “I’ve seen the future, and it works.” Evidently, his future-telling only extended a couple years as he failed to see the collapse of the Soviet Union or the unsustainable unemployment in the European Soviet Light Countries. I’ve seen the future, and it has a lot of unemployment.
The governor of the Bank of Spain, Luis María Linde, on Friday called for even more flexibility in the labor market than afforded by the reforms approved in February of last year to tackle rampant unemployment, suggesting that new formulas could be found beyond the reach of collective bargaining agreements and, in some circumstances, leaving the statutory minimum wage in abeyance.
Hopefully, the Europeans can avoid unemployment catastrophe and we can learn from their lesson.
If you were wondering why housing prices are going up again while it’s clear we’re still in a recession, this may have something to do with it. According to Reuters, the Federal Reserve just bought $12.2 billion in mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) last week and didn’t sell any. If that doesn’t resonate with you, let’s break it down.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchase mortgages and package them as securities. Due to federal policy, these are sometimes unwise mortgages and have high risk of default. They buy them anyway because there’s a buyer—the Federal Reserve. But the Federal Reserve isn’t selling because no one else wants these MBSs because, after what we saw in 2008, it’s clear that these are bad investments and tend to lead the worldwide economy into free fall when prices go down.
Well, the Fed must know what it’s doing in order to risk so much money, right? Well, not really. Since the Fed doesn’t really have any wealth, it doesn’t have anything to lose. It just prints money out of thin air and gives it to the corrupt government-sponsored-enterprises Fannie and Freddie. They are inflating the currency to nothing in order to prop up a limp housing market.
WARNING! YOU ARE ENTERING A LOGIC ZONE:
This is exactly what precipitated the housing crash of 2008 and the subsequent Great Recession that we’re still digging ourselves out of. But instead of financial companies on the hook for bad investments, the American taxpayer is directly on the hook. Einstein said that doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same result is called CRAZY. Ben Bernanke just calls it the Fed’s monetary policy.
WHAT THE FED IS DOING IS CRAZY.
Notice Ben Bernanke is flipping you off in this meme. It’s representative of his behavior as Fed chair.
25% of Ohio’s 2012 Votes Were Fraudulent
From Liberty News
Yesterday, Liberty News reported that Ohio’s Secretary of State, John Husted, has confirmed that during the 2012 reelection of President Barack Hussein Obama, one in every four voters in that pivotal state was a fraud.
Today, we will take a closer look at how and why the Holder Department of Justice is still stopping Ohio’s Conservative Chief Election Officer from doing his job and eliminating voter fraud in the Buckeye State.
The Ohio Secretary of State’s website confirms that the state’s theoretical elections buck should stop with him: “The Elections Division of the Secretary of State’s office also compiles and maintains election statistics, political party records and other election-related records.”
Yet, in reality, it seems like Ohio’s Tenth Amendment rights have been trampled by the federal government, since apparently, the real Chief Elections Officer in Ohio is actually Eric Holder!
During the 2012 election, John Husted tried to do and his job and purge the voter records maintained by his office of fraudulent voter IDs, including removing the names of deceased citizens, convicted felons who are ineligible to vote, and the names of people who have simply moved away.
Husted sent a letter to Attorney General Holder nine months before the 2012 election saying:
“As Ohio’s chief elections official, it is my responsibility to ensure the votes of every eligible voter are counted and ensure the integrity and accuracy of the results. This is a difficult task when federal regulations limit Ohio’s ability to remove ineligible names, thereby increasing the chance for voter fraud.”
The federal regulations Mr. Husted is speaking of are the incumbent Attorney General’s interpretation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 and the Voter Registration Act, which are laws that protect the civil rights of minorities in particular.
Secretary Husted’s letter even included Ohio’s 2010 Census data for Holder to compare with the voter registration records, which Husted also gave to Holder, so that he could see the potential for widespread voter fraud on Election Day for himself.
Holder never replied to Husted’s request for a face-to face meeting or a letter of his own.
It could be argued that what Holder did next was wage war against the Tenth Amendment in Ohio, using these fraudulent entries as a means of statewide affirmative action.
Using taxpayer dollars, the DOJ deployed “election monitors” to polling precincts and various election districts across Ohio before, during, and after the election to “ensure minority voting rights were being upheld.” The DOJ website lists pages of announcements of such activity by its agents.
The DOJ even began filing lawsuits against individual Ohio municipalities whose local election regulations could be seen, through a liberal lens, to place economic and racial minorities, who tend to vote more in-line with Team Obama, at a disadvantage in the process.
Want an example of such a heinous abuse which required the DOJ to “rescue” the disenfranchised? The City Council of Euclid, OH had been electing representatives in an at-large manner. Holder’s DOJ thought that the city should be using a more geographic-sensitive means of electing council members so that each district would be represented by a true peer. So, the DOJ’S Civil Rights Division filed a federal lawsuit against the City Council for discrimination.
It could be said that while Mr. Husted is bound in the chains of unnecessary federal litigation designed to use voter fraud as a means of affirmative action, the Ohio Secretary of State is still unable to do his job for OH.
Not only does Holder’s extreme judicial activism make Ohio suffer, but, until this situation gets fixed; the rest of America will continue to see federal elections pivot on a state’s elections where twenty-five percent of the electorate is a federally sanctioned fraud.
In the now infamous speech, President Obama gave about business and government, he claimed that , “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” His point was that just because you started a business, you didn’t do it alone. There were teachers that helped you learn, roads to help you transport your goods, and no doubt, he would say, bureaucrats in Washington taking money from other people to pay for those teachers and roads. If you are a businessman, great job creating your business, but give credit where credit is due: government!
Well, what if we took that same philosophy and applied it to government. Mr. Obama says that it’s government that laid the foundation for all these great things like roads and bridges and the Internet, but the government didn’t just do all those things on ITS own either. In fact, a government can’t do anything on its own since it relies on the blood, sweat, and tears of its subjects in order to do anything. Government, in its most basic form, is coercion. It is the authority to force people to do what they don’t want to do—a monopoly of violence. With regard to all these positive externalities that the president talks about, the government requires funding from people who pay involuntarily. The government couldn’t pay for teachers without stealing money through taxation of private enterprise first. The government couldn’t build roads and bridges without first taking the land and paying for them with money forcefully taken from law abiding citizens. The Internet didn’t just happen on its own, rather the Defense Department spent a lot of hours and taxpayer money inefficiently to come up with it.
So, using the president’s (and Elizabeth Warren’s) sophomoric philosophy on government itself, it’s clear that sure, government does end up doing some good with the money it steals, but it can’t do anything without private enterprise in the first place. Private enterprise without government may not be the same, but government without private enterprise is nonexistent.
Let’s say you’re working your job and you’re hungry for a pizza. The government steals $50 from you and makes you a sandwich instead. That sandwich is great and you will definitely eat it, but to say that we should credit government for your production after you eat the sandwich is absurd. They took the money required to make the sandwich from you, they spent it inefficiently, and they gave you something you didn’t want in the first place! Obama patting the government on the back for schools and roads is like someone enslaving people then taking credit for the crops they produce. Bravo government, bravo.
At the very least, we should apply the same standard to government that these amateur philosophers apply to the business sector. If businesspeople didn’t build that, government sure as hell didn’t either.
I recently faced an onslaught of illogical idiocy surrounding the Austin plastic bag ban and thought everyone should know about it. I purchased a little more than I could carry in my hands on my latest trip to HEB and the checkout guy asked if I needed bags. I asked if they had paper bags since plastic bags are illegal in the Nanny State of Austin. He said sure then tacked on a whole dollar to my bill. So something that was free to consumers before the bag ban now costs a dollar. Thanks City Council! (By the way, some retailers like CVS provide paper bags at no cost because they’re not trying to scam the consumer based on a corrupt law.)
I told him that I’ll just carry the items to my car in the little red basket then bring it back and the guy said that that wasn’t allowed. Why? It’s against policy. So, you can bring a shopping cart to your car, but you can’t bring a little red basket to your car, probably because people have been stealing the little red baskets because the moronic nannies in the City Council banned plastic bags.
My lovely fiancee once brought her reusable bags to the store and the checkout people complimented her on the cleanliness of the bags. Evidently most people reuse their bags that have accumulated bacteria-ridden meat juices and decaying vegetable particles so that not only is the reusable bag process unhealthy by spreading contaminated bacteria and viruses, it also makes the formerly clean process of bagging an offensive endeavor on par with septic-tank cleaning.
And that’s if the baggers bag anymore. Before the bag ban I would bike to the store and have the baggers load my backpack with my groceries. They had no problem with that. Now, after the bag ban, the baggers won’t even touch my backpack. It’s almost as if they are too good to do what they were fine to do before the Austin City Council Nazis banned plastic bags.
There are more unintended consequences of course. The bag ban no doubt means people are buying less during each trip to the store, so they must make more trips to the store for the same amount of goods. That clogs streets more, producing more exhaust and makes checkout lines longer. There goes the environmentalist argument for the bag ban. And many people I know who used the plastic grocery bags for trash bags or doggie doo bags will have to buy those now, adding a personal tax of a couple hundred dollars a year.
Oh, but making people buy reusable bags is good for the economy, some proponents may whine. But that’s just another version of the broken window fallacy. If it weren’t for reusable bag expenses, those consumers would be spending their money on other, more beneficial things.
The bag ban is sociopathic Nanny Statism at its worst with unintended consequences galore. Hopefully the new geographically representative City Council will come to its senses and ban the bag ban.
*Note: Some people have claimed that HEB and Randall’s both provide paper bags with handles to those who need them. I’m not sure what the official policy is, but that is not what I experienced at HEB. Either the checkout person was uninformed by the policy when he charged me a dollar for one paper bag or that is not the policy.
