Chronicling the depravities of the State.
Apparently Obama doesn’t get enough of his bloodlust fulfilled by killing people overseas and has moved on to killing people in the United States:
A restaurant owner who served US President Barack Obama breakfast on a campaign stop has died hours later.
Yes, I was being sarcastic… I think.
It’s not your property, it’s the state’s. Any attempt to use your property outside of the permissions granted to you buy the lords state will be punished by imprisonment:
A Phoenix man has been sentenced to 60 days in jail after he refused to stop hosting Bible studies in the privacy of his home – in violation of the city’s building code laws.
However, the Phoenix city prosecutor’s office said the violations have nothing to do with religious freedom — and everything to do with public safety.
“It came down to zoning and proper permitting,” said Vicki Hill, the chief assistant city prosecutor. “Any time you are holding a gathering of people continuously as he does — we have concerns about people being able to exit the facility properly in case there is a fire — and that’s really all this comes down to.”
According to court documents provided to Fox News Radio, Michael Salman was found guilty in the City of Phoenix Court of 67 code violations. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail along with three years probation and a $12,180 fine. He could be jailed as early as next week unless the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals grants an emergency injunction.
That’s right, Mr. Salman will suffer 60 days in a cage, three years of probation, and a $12,180 fine because he was under the mistaken assumption that he owned his property. As this story demonstrates people aren’t allowed to own property in the United States (or anywhere else that I’m aware of), you can only gain permission from the state to use property for the reasons they allow.
The marriage between state and business is always interesting but get’s especially interesting when two or more politically influential cronies come into conflict. Candy and softdrink manufacturers are currently at odds with domestic sugar farmers because the former wants to eliminate sugar import restrictions while the latter wants to leave them in place to protect their artificially inflated profits:
Makers of sodas, candy bars and other sweetened snacks are taking aim at a long-standing federal program that keeps sugar prices high by restricting imports.
Doing away with the sugar program would be a “huge boost” to candy makers and help them grow, said Robert Simpson Jr., president of Jelly Belly Candy Co., which has factories in Fairfield, Calif., Chicago and Thailand.
But the efforts of manufacturers are sparking intense opposition among lawmakers from sugar-growing states and the sugar lobby, as well as from some public health advocates.
“Is this where we need Congress to spend its time, trying to make cheap candy bars?” said Mark Muller, director of the Food and Justice Program at the advocacy group Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
With high-fructose corn syrup getting more bad press every day customers are beginning to demand sugar in their sweets. Candy and softdrink manufacturers, wanting to please their customers, have a direct interest in using sugar but reluctant to do so because the costs are higher. The costs of natural sugar are higher in the United States due to import restrictions on sugar, ensuring domestic producers have less competition and can keep their prices high.
This is the only possible outcome of cronyism, eventually cronies will butt heads with one another and both demand the state’s support. When that happens you really get to see the deals cronies have to make with their state masters in order to gain favor, however temporary that favor may end up being.
One of the things that amazes me are people who cite regulations against big cigarette companies as an example of regulations working well. They believe that the state’s actions against big tobacco companies that required printing warning labels on cigarette packs, taxing cigarettes, and restring the smoking at to 18 years is undeniable proof that the state wants to protect us against companies that peddle poison. In actuality big tobacco companies, like all other businesses, receive a great deal of protection from the state. Take the recent passage of legislations that taxes owners of roll-your-own cigarette machines the same as cigarette manufacturers, it basically destroys the roll-your-own market and further protects the interests of large tobacco companies:
But a few paragraphs added to the transportation bill changed the definition of a cigarette manufacturer to cover thousands of roll-your-own operations nationwide. The move, backed by major tobacco companies, is aimed at boosting tax revenues.
Faced with regulation costs that could run to hundreds of thousands of dollars, RYO machine owners nationwide are shutting down more than 1,000 of the $36,000 machines.
Not surprisingly Philip Morris backed this legislation:
“I feel it’s kind of shaky,” Wiessen said. “The man who pushed for this bill is Sen. (Max) Baucus from Montana, and he received donations from Altria, a parent company of Philip Morris. Interestingly enough, there are also no RYO machines in the state of Montana. It really makes me question the morals and values of our elected speakers.”
It’s obvious why Philip Morris supported this bill. Large cigarette manufacturers can easily soak up the cost of additional taxes but small shops cannot. While the large cigarette companies have to pay more in taxes, which negatively affects their profits, they also don’t have to deal with many of their former competitors, which greatly increases their profits as customers of those small operations are forced to move to the larger competitors. The state giveth and the state taketh away. While they hurt the interests of large tobacco companies in some ways they’ve also moved to protect those same companies from competition on a free market.
In other words the state doesn’t care if you smoke so long as you’re buying their crony’s stuff.
We’re going back to 1987 this week with German heavy metal bang Warlock. Warlock released four albums before the lead singer, Doro Pesch, remained the only original member of the band left so she started releasing albums under her name. Effectively, due to Doro’s solo career, Warlock still lives even if the name is defunct. This song comes off of their final album, Triumph of Agony:
Education is supposed to be done for altruistic purposes, right? No, like most things, education is all about the money whether it’s provided by a private or public education facility. A private Germany school is demonstrating this very fact by suing a student for graduating early:
Marcel Pohl completed 60 examinations in 20 months, gaining a grade of 2.3, and was officially ex-matriculated in August 2011. Such a course usually takes 11 semesters, but he only needed three.
Now the Essen-based School of Economics and Management (FOM) want the 22-year-old to pay his fees up the end of 2011 – an extra €3,000.
[…]
Pohl completed his turbo degree by dividing up all the simultaneous lectures with two friends and then swapping notes. At the same time, he completed an apprenticeship in a bank.
[…]
“We’re always against slow students,” said his lawyer Bernhard Kraas. “But when someone hurries and finishes early, suddenly he has to pay. That can’t be right.”
But the FOM argues that its fees are the total price for the studies, independent of how long the studies last. But if that it is the case, it remains unclear why they are only calling for a part of the cost for 11 semesters.
The question that will arise from this is whether the students agreed to pay a fixed amount for their degree or payments were based on classes that were taken. It’s one thing if the contract says a degree will be given in exchange for passing various classes and payment of $10,000, it’s an entirely different thing if the contract says a degree will be given in exchange for passing various classes.
I’m guessing the school based payments on a per class basis and are upset that somebody found a way to game their system so they could graduate without having to actually pay for an attend all the classes.
One cannot simply perform a good deed in this world without receiving some kind of punishment:
Tomas Lopez, 21, was patrolling part of Hallandale Beach north of Miami when he was told that a swimmer was in trouble in an unguarded area of the beach.
“I wasn’t going to say no,” the lifeguard said.
But his bosses said he had broken company rules and could have put other swimmers at risk. At least two colleagues have resigned in protest.
If your company has a policy that states individuals cannot leave zones in order to save lives then your company has a stupid policy. Lopez should have been commended for taking action that was necessary to save the life of a person shouting for help. I hope he finds a good job with a company that isn’t run by ass hats.
EDIT: 2012-07-06 12:28: As Zerg539 pointed out in the comments the lifeguard was offered his job back but declined. I’m guessing public outcry was what lead the company to offer him his job back, never let it be said that companies can’t be held accountable. Also, good on the lifeguard for not taking the offer, who would want to work for a company that put their stupid polices ahead of human lives?
This isn’t news to anybody who has paid attention to the ongoings of the so-called justice system in the United States. The system isn’t about justice, it’s about punishing anybody and everybody:
From Aug. 21 until Oct. 12, Teresa Culpepper was locked in the Fulton County Jail.
And all that time she insisted she was not the woman police wanted for throwing hot water on Angelo Boyd — a man she had never met, a man who said he had never met her either.
At any time during those 53 days, the various entities in Atlanta’s and Fulton County’s justice systems could have saved her from the cracks she had fallen through.
But day after day they ignored protestations that “you’ve got the wrong person,” something most of them hear all the time.
Even with things that “didn’t add up,” police and prosecutors moved forward with a case against Culpepper. The case continued even though Boyd told police and the Fulton District Attorney’s Office several times Culpepper was not the woman who attacked him.
Even though the victim specifically said Culpepper wasn’t his attacker the case against her was pursued. Although my next statement is based purely on conjecture I have to believe there is some reason the state continues to pursue cases against obviously innocent individuals, and I believe that case is to keep the state’s slave labor entity, Federal Prison Industries, or UNICOR, stocked with laborers.
People often complain about privatizing prisons because the private entities controlling the prisons are interested in seeking profits and therefore try to exploit the prison force as cheap labor. What these people don’t realize is that the federal government does the exact same thing through it’s wholly-owned corporation UNICOR.
Under federal law the federal government must source all materials produced by UNICOR through UNICOR unless they are given permissions by UNICOR to seek a third-party supplier [PDF]:
The question of whether UNICOR is unfairly competing with private businesses, particularly small businesses, in the federal market has been and continues to be an issue of debate. The debate has been affected by tensions between competing interests that represent two social goods — the employment and rehabilitation of offenders and the need to protect jobs of law abiding citizens. At the core of the debate is UNICOR’s preferential treatment over the private sector. UNICOR’s enabling legislation and the Federal Acquisition Regulation require federal agencies, with the exception of the Department of Defense (DOD), to procure products offered by UNICOR, unless authorized by UNICOR to solicit bids from the private sector. While federal agencies are not required to procure services provided by UNICOR they are encouraged to do so. It is this “mandatory source clause” that has drawn controversy over the years and is the subject of current legislation.
What a beautiful little scam they have going on there. Not only are they able to exploit the prisoners but they also control the laws that determine who the prisoners will be. In other words the federal government has a vested interest in maintaining a large prison population so it can keep itself stocked with cheap goods and services. I’m sure many states have similar programs to UNICOR and that would give them justa s much vested interest in ensuring a large prison population is maintained. Nothing screams conflict of interest like an entity in charge of punishing individuals also reaps great rewards for punishing individuals.
Former General Stanley McChrystal recently came out in support of slavery:
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the former top commander of international forces in Afghanistan, said this week that the United States should bring back the draft if it ever goes to war again.
“I think we ought to have a draft. I think if a nation goes to war, it shouldn’t be solely be represented by a professional force, because it gets to be unrepresentative of the population,” McChrystal said at a late-night event June 29 at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival. “I think if a nation goes to war, every town, every city needs to be at risk. You make that decision and everybody has skin in the game.”
Yes, drafts are slavery. Slavery, by definition, is being forced to labor for another under the threat of violence and a draft is nothing more than the state threatening to kill you if you don’t go kill its enemies. His wording is interesting as well, he believes when a nation goes to work that “every town, every city needs to be at risk.” Couldn’t you accomplish that simply by bombing them yourself? Instead of enslaving the population why not randomly bombard a town every week? Wouldn’t that accomplish your goal of putting every town at risk?
What’s most worrisome about McChrystal’s statement is that this psychopath was in charge of the Afghanistan war. Is it any wonder why foreign nations hate ours so much?
If something doesn’t work we just need to try it again harder, right? That must be what the United Nations (UN) is thinking because the globe is in an economic recession and so far taxing the wealthy hasn’t managed to pull us out of it:
The United Nations on Thursday called for a tax on billionaires to help raise more than $400 billion a year for poor countries.
An annual lump sum payment by the super-rich is one of a host of measures including a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, currency exchanges or financial transactions proposed in a UN report that accuses wealthy nations of breaking promises to step up aid for the less fortunate.
The annual World Economic and Social Survey says it is critical to find new ways to help the world’s poor as pledged cash fails to flow.
The report estimates that the number of people around the globe worth at least $1 billion rose to 1,226 in 2012.
It’s bad enough that crackpot economists are giving every country on the planet bad advice, we really don’t need a global organization of government advocating for the same kind of insanity. At least the various country governments can claim they provide useful goods and services with the money they steal, what is the UN’s justification? Do they need more money to wage wars… yeah.