One cannot change reality by changing the words you use to describe reality. Look beneath the rhetoric, and glimpse the truth. Larken Rose provides a powerful parable for how democracy is akin to slavery.
You are not going to believe how much money is being spent on our former presidents. At a time when U.S. government spending is wildly out of control, a total of 3.6 million dollars is being used to support the lavish lifestyles of former presidents such as George W. Bush and Bill Clinton in 2012. For 2013, the plan is to increase that amount to 3.7 million dollars. But do any of them really need this kind of welfare? The truth is that all of them are very wealthy. ... (more)
Fox News host Geraldo Rivera revealed today how he was “manually raped” by a TSA worker while traveling to Afghanistan, explaining how he had been persecuted by the federal agency for falsely appearing on the infamous ‘no fly list’.
Rivera appeared on Fox and Friends to discuss yesterday’s story about an eighteen-month-old child appearing on the TSA’s no fly list. The parents of the toddler said that after they were "humiliated, embarrassed... (more)
We've been warning for a while about the TPP negotiations, and how the big interests who pushed SOPA were making a concerted effort to use the (very questionable and extremely secretive) nature of international trade negotiations to sneak through many of the things they wanted in SOPA, without any scrutiny. Make no mistake: while the public has no access to, or information about, what the federal government is negotiating, the big special interests are well informed. As pressure has been mount... (more)
This man should be taking The Pirate Bay public like Facebook, instead he's going to be in a government cage because he came up with an innovative business model which the government arbitrarily proclaimed illegal. - Chris
Eduardo Saverin, the billionaire co- founder of Facebook Inc. (FB), renounced his U.S. citizenship before an initial public offering that values the social network at as much as $96 billion, a move that may reduce his tax bill.
Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion through the IPO, the biggest in history for an Internet company. Saverin’s stake is about 4 percent, according to the website Who Owns Facebook. At the high end of the IPO valuation, that would be worth... (more)
What's amazing about this is he is willing to pay the gigantic "exit tax" to get the f*^k out. Of course, only the freest and most open of countries has a tax on leaving. - Chris
Two years ago today, Joe Del Rio was awakened to find city officials at the door of his lifelong home in East Austin, demanding entry. Before it was over, the Police Department's SWAT team and the Fire Department had been deployed, and Del Rio said he was detained and questioned for about 10 hours because of what officials called a multilevel bunker-like space under the house with suspicious and unusual materials.
After the city billed Del Rio in April for about $90,000 in repairs... (more)
A rogue cop from the DeKalb County Police Department in the state of Georgia is in the news for the third time in only seven months. Officer Jerad Wheeler is now being investigated after kicking a pregnant woman in the stomach.
No charges have been filed against Officer Wheeler for kicking Raven Dozier in the abdomen after the cop responded to a call involving a child custody issue, reports local television station WSBTV News. Dozier says she was trying to calm her brother down du... (more)
Itwilllbeok sez, "According to the German Police University police officers used exactly 85 bullets in 2011 - 49 warning shots, 36 shots on suspects. 15 persons were injured, 6 were killed. Germany has a population of about 80 million. (This does only take into account shots in connection with crimes. There were an additional 9000 shots on dangerous, sick and injured animals)."
An important characteristic of both crimes and fires is the impossibility of knowing where either will occur. Firemen may have a general sense of the buildings that are at a higher risk of burning down, but they have absolutely no idea about which particular house will be the next one to catch fire (unless the firemen are the arsonists). Similarly, cops may have a general sense of what neighborhoods have a higher crime rate than others, but they have absolutely no idea which person w... (more)
Four US representatives introduced an amendment to the Justice Department appropriations bill, House Resolution 5326, which would bar the agency from spending funds to attack medical marijuana operations in states where it is legal. The bill was being considered Wednesday, before failing on a voice vote Wednesday evenin... (more)
[United States House of Representatives, Committee on Financial Services, Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy & Technology, May 8, 2012]
Although it has taken nearly a century, it seems that the entire spectrum of the American political establishment has finally realized the destructive power of the Federal Reserve System. Whether left, right, or libertarian, politicians are lining up to attack Ben Bernanke and the Fed's destructive monetary policy. Where there is disagr... (more)
"I've got better things to do than broadcast a message to the world about my lunch."
An uncountable number of people have said this or something similar to me about Twitter. I've stopped responding. It's the same kind of faux snobbery that causes people to look down on Facebook, YouTube, Angry Birds, smartphones and the whole of digital life generally.
Of course, these days, hardly anyone puts down the Internet in total, but this was common 10 years ago. Today, it i... (more)
A joint drill between military and police in South Florida involving troops storming a building in the middle of the night was characterized by local media coverage not as a frightening example of how Americans are being acclimatized to accept a state of martial law but as a ‘cool tourist story’.
Panic-stricken residents in Coconut Grove were... (more)
We've all seen the crazy high claims by the legacy entertainment industry about the "costs" of infringement. Most of these reports have absolutely no basis in reality and have been widely debunked -- even by the US government itself. But, even if we grant that there are some "costs" to infringement, why is it that we rarely -- if ever -- hear about the costs of enforcement? Julian Sanchez has a great post riffing off of the news that Hulu is thinking of requiring proof of pay TV su... (more)
In perpetual financial agony, the Postal Service has announced that it no longer intends to close thousands of rural post offices, notwithstanding the fact that, according to the New York Times, such offices earn an average of $15,000 while costing $114,000 to operate. Apparently constituent political pressures in those rural areas have caused the Postal Service to change... (more)
