Reinke Faces Life

https://spectator.org/on-the-department-of-welfare-crony-subsidies-and-math-about-vegetables/

Crony Capitalism Watch
On the Department of Welfare, Crony Subsidies, and Math About Vegetables
* If the Department of Agriculture were honest, that’s what it would call itself.
JON CASSIDY October 11, 2017, 12:05 am

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The bulk of its budget, some $126 billion, is required by law to be wasted on welfare, farm subsidies, and such, but for the $25 billion remainder, the department has some discretion as to how it would like to waste the money on welfare and farm subsidies. There are massive programs for wasting the money indiscriminately, but also grant programs to spend the money in a targeted pointless way. An Austin gardener wants $100,000 to sell his hippie neighbors on the merits of organic produce? This is the place to fund that.*

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*It should be noted that organic food is a good idea. But it’s an idea that sells itself and we don’t need the Feds making the case.

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Let’s end the DoA as a bad idea whose time has past!

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FROM BEHIND THE WSJ PAYWALL

https://www.wsj.com/articles/end-of-the-social-security-number-a-white-house-official-thinks-so-1507069469

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‘I feel very strongly that the Social Security number has outlived its usefulness.’—Rob Joyce, the White House’s cybersecurity coordinator

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Identity theft would be VIRTUALLY impossible without the “Social Security Number”.

Ignore for a moment that the societal problems that the whole concept of “Social Security” has created, just look at the havoc that the “identifier” has created.

The Nazis tattooed numbers not hose they wanted to kill. Cows are ear tagged “identification purposes”. What’s the difference?

Argh!

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https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2017/09/30/not-merry-men/

Not So Merry Men
By eric – September 30, 2017

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Calling it a “fine” doesn’t legitimate the taking-by-force of someone’s money who has not damaged anyone, for the benefit of the government – which is precisely what a tax is

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These 4.2 million have become outlaws as a result of not having ponied up. Which triggers escalation by the “sheriff” – who revokes their “privilege” to drive. Very much in the way Robin and his men were forbidden to hunt the King’s deer in Sherwood Forest.

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Sorry but the “motor vehicle laws” needs a lot of revisions!

Most need imho is that a license can not be suspended without notice by certified mail return receipt requested and a court hearing that allows the “defendant” to be heard BEFORE they are penalized.

Argh!

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4959446/Houston-student-punished-sitting-Pledge-suit.html

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India Landry, 17, says she was send home from Windfern High School on Monday after refusing to stand for the pledge, event though she has sat through it hundreds of times previously.

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Sorry, for as wrong as I think the MP4B = “Millionaires Playing For Billionaires” are, this girl ABSOLUTELY has a Constitutional right to freedom of speech.

I may have a different opinion, but that is her right.

The Gooferment Skrules are just that — part of the Gooferment. As such they have no power to discipline her for that.

And, by the way, isn’t this what we criticized the Communists for doing in the 1950’s?

Maybe “We, The Sheeple” will recognize that Gooferment Skrules are merely Gooferment Reeducation Camps in disguise.

Argh!

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https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/09/new-york-voters-have-no-1st-amendment-right-to-snap-ballot-booth-selfies/#p3

New York voters have no 1st Amendment right to snap ballot-booth selfies
“The State’s interest in the integrity of its elections is paramount,” court says.
DAVID KRAVETS – 9/30/2017, 5:55 PM

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A New York federal judge is upholding New York’s ban on voters photographing their marked ballots in polling places. The judge says the First Amendment is trumped by the law’s stated goal to cut down on election fraud via vote buying and extortion.

US District Judge P. Kevin Castel said the statute deprives a perpetrator of election fraud the modern-day means to verify that a target voted a certain way. That verification method is a selfie of a voter holding a marked ballot at a polling place, which would then be posted to social media, he said.

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Then we’d have photo ids to vote and big prison terms for those who cheat.

Given that it’s the politicians and bureaucrats that “cheat” or authorize cheating, then that’s why the penalties are minimal if any.

Argh!

How about election fraud by a candidate disqualifies them from any office — now and in the future.

Argh!

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2017-Oct-01

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/42020-us-provides-military-assistance-to-73-percent-of-world-s-dictatorships

US Provides Military Assistance to 73 Percent of World’s Dictatorships
Saturday, September 23, 2017 — By Rich Whitney, Truthout | News Analysis

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For decades, the American people have been repeatedly told by their government and corporate-run media that acts of war ordered by their president have been largely motivated by the need to counter acts of aggression or oppression by “evil dictators.” We were told we had to invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator. We had to bomb Libya because Muammar Gaddafi was an evil dictator, bent on unleashing a “bloodbath” on his own people. Today, of course, we are told that we should support insurgents in Syria because Bashar al-Assad is an evil dictator, and we must repeatedly rattle our sabers at North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and Russia’s Vladimir Putin because they, too, are evil dictators.

This is part of the larger, usually unquestioned mainstream corporate media narrative that the US leads the “Western democracies” in a global struggle to combat terrorism and totalitarianism and promote democracy.

I set out to answer a simple question: Is it true? Does the US government actually oppose dictatorships and champion democracy around the world, as we are repeatedly told?

The truth is not easy to find, but federal sources do provide an answer: No. According to Freedom House’s rating system of political rights around the world, there were 49 nations in the world, as of 2015, that can be fairly categorized as “dictatorships.” As of fiscal year 2015, the last year for which we have publicly available data, the federal government of the United States had been providing military assistance to 36 of them, courtesy of your tax dollars. The United States currently supports over 73 percent of the world’s dictatorships!

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Does this upset anyone else?

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2017-Sep-30

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-18/florida-you-cant-use-your-own-solar-panels-crisis

In Florida, You Can’t Use Your Own Solar Panels In A Crisis
by Tyler Durden — Sep 18, 2017 10:05 PM
Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog

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When it comes to the U.S. economy, the “con” part offers the best description of the current relationship between business, government and the preyed upon consumer.

The way things work in early 21st century America is large businesses bribe politicians in a variety of ways at both the local and federal level, and the end result is laws that are designed to increase corporate profits at the expense of the wellbeing and freedom of the American public. Politicians end up with financial war chests to run their next campaign, while bureaucrats see a lucrative opportunity to swing through the ever spinning revolving door should they play ball with lobbyists and their patrons.

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FPL and its parent company, NextEra Energy, have for years heavily influenced state and local politics through donations, making billions in profits each year ($1.7 billion alone in 2016) thanks to favorable state laws that are sometimes literally written by the power company’s own lobbyists.

FPL’s lobbying wing has fought hard against letting Floridians power their own homes with solar panels. Thanks to power-company rules, it’s impossible across Florida to simply buy a solar panel and power your individual home with it. You are instead legally mandated to connect your panels to your local electric grid.

More egregious, FPL mandates that if the power goes out, your solar-power system must power down along with the rest of the grid, robbing potentially needy people of power during major outages.

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Once again, we find that Gooferment intervention in the free market makes the consumer / rate payer / taxpayer worse off by permitting Crony Capitalism to influence the political process.

Wonder if Tesla’s home power offering will “magically” be equally unacceptable!

Argh!

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https://www.care2.com/greenliving/does-intravenous-vitamin-c-for-terminal-cancer-patients-help.html

Does Intravenous Vitamin C Help Terminal Cancer Patients?
By: Dr. Michael GregerJune 23, 2017

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Critics understandably attacked the study for using after-the-fact controls. One can see how this could introduce bias. If researchers consciously or unconsciously chose control group patients who were sicker than the treatment group patients, the control group patients would die sooner than the treatment group patients, but it would have nothing to do with the treatment; the control group folks may have just started out in a worse place. Indeed, there is evidence that is what happened: A full 20 percent of the control group died within a few days after being declared terminal compared to none in the treatment group, which really does seem fishy.

Nevertheless, the trial was successful in finally convincing the National Cancer Institute to fund randomized controlled trials—performed by the prestigious Mayo Clinic, no less. What did they find? Stay tuned.

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Why can’t this just be immediately administered? Vitamin C has to be cheap. (Maybe that’s why there’s no impetus to use. No big profits to be made.)

If me or mine has cancer, I’d insist on this treatment.

How bad could it be?

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On June 1st, 1942, seven months after the extermination of prisoners began, the Warsaw underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, made the public announcement of the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno, a Nazi-operated death camp in Poland. The story came from a young man, Emanuel Ringelblum, who had escaped the Chelmno death camp after being forced to bury bodies as they were thrown out of the gas vans. The West now knew the horrific truth about the slaughter of Jews.

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So don’t believe any Gooferment propaganda that FDR didn’t know!

So why didn’t we bomb the railways?

And, why didn’t we catch all the Nazis?

Argh!

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