Tag: Shut Up Slave

Working for the Man

How many hours of your peasant life are spent working for the feudal lords? A lot:

This year, Americans have to work until July 15 to pay for the burden of government, more than six months.

In a new report, Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) has calculated that Americans will spend a total of 197 days toiling to pay for the cost of government.

[…]

The report, Cost of Government Day, shows that Americans will work 88 days to pay for federal spending; 40 days for state and local spending; and 69 days for total regulatory costs.

Six months of your life next year will be spent working to give a violent agency that’s spending every dollar it can get ahold of to further cement its power in order to steal even more from you. Feudalism never left, we’re the peasants while the state is the manor lord. We’re allowed to keep a portion of what we make for subsistence only because dead people don’t generate wealth that can be stolen.

Will Fast and Furious Whistleblowers be Prosecuted

Operation Fast and Furious hasn’t gone the way the current administration was hoping. Eric Holder was found in contempt of Congress when he refused to release documents related to the inquiry. Since that point the administration has been in damage control mode. Obama granted Holder executive privilege to keep the documents hidden and the Department of Justice (DoJ) said they weren’t going to prosecute Holder since he’s a member of the DoJ. Now it appears that the DoJ is looking for victims for it’s wrath:

The Justice Department’s inspector general is probing whether two federal agents could face retaliation for blowing the whistle on operation “Fast and Furious.”

In a letter to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), made public on Monday, IG Michael Horowitz said he was investigating their concerns that two federal officials could be at risk of retaliatory action for speaking out against the botched gun-tracking operation.

John Dodson and Pete Forcelli, special agents in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), testified before Congress last year about the shortcomings of Operation Fast and Furious as details of the failed program were becoming public.

Considering what’s happened in the case so far I’m betting the DoJ will find that the Fast and Furious whistleblowers can be prosecuted and will shortly afterward prosecute them. If there is one guarantee in this world it’s that a government agency, like a wild animal, with lash out at anybody and everybody when wounded. This is because, being an entity that survives entirely on violence, they must show that they are capable of causing great amounts of harm to anybody who dissents. I will actually be surprised if the DoJ says the Fast and Furious whistleblowers can’t be prosecuted.

SOPA Being Introduced in Pieces

The state has been having a difficult time passing their pet bill to punish those who violate the copyrights of their cronies. Americans won’t raise too much fuss until you go after their Internet but once that line is crossed they actually start getting incredibly angry. Needless to say passing the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) didn’t happen, attempting to rename the bill to pass it has failed to get through the Senate (but has already passed the House), and the politically well-connected copyright holders are losing patients. What’s the state to do? Easy, pass the legislation in small pieces:

While it didn’t get nearly as much attention as other parts of SOPA, one section in the bill that greatly concerned us was the massive expansion of the diplomatic corp.’s “IP attaches.” If you’re unfamiliar with the program, basically IP attaches are “diplomats” (and I use the term loosely) who go around the globe pushing a copyright maximalist position on pretty much every other country. Their role is not to support more effective or more reasonable IP policy. It is solely to increase expansion, and basically act as Hollywood’s personal thugs pressuring other countries to do the will of the major studios and labels. The role is literally defined as pushing for “aggressive support for enforcement action” throughout the world. A few years ago, we detailed how, at a meeting of these attaches, they bitched and complained about how copyright “activists” were making their lives difficult and were a “threat” who needed to be dealt with.

In other words, these people are not neutral. They do not have the best interests of the public or the country in mind. Their job is solely to push the copyright maximalist views of the legacy entertainment industry around the globe, and position it as the will of the US government.

It was good that this was defeated as a part of SOPA… but now comes the news that Lamar Smith is introducing a new bill that not only brings back this part, but appears to expand it and make it an even bigger deal.

As I said previously, “The rule of thumb with politics is this: if there is money backing a bill it will be passed.” Whether by hook or by crook the cronies will get what they want and the people will suffer under new tyrannies. Unfortunately there are 435 voting members of Congress and 50 senators whose job is to write, propose, and attempt to pass legislation. Because of the sheer number of these crooks it’s almost impossible to keep an eye on what every one of them is doing at all times.

If at First You Don’t Succeed Rename the Legislation and Try Again

What happens when you’re a power-hungry state that wants to offer up some terrible piece of legislation but the people keep expressing distate for the legislation? Rename it and try again:

Last week, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject ACTA, striking a major blow to the hopes of supporters who envisioned a landmark agreement that would set a new standard for intellectual property rights enforcement. The European Commission, which negotiates trade deals such as ACTA on behalf of the European Union, has vowed to revive the badly damaged agreement. Its most high-profile move has been to ask the European Court of Justice to rule on ACTA’s compatibility with fundamental European freedoms with the hope that a favourable ruling could allow the European Parliament to reconsider the issue.

While the court referral has attracted the lion share of attention, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) reports that there is an alternate secret strategy in which Canada plays a key role. According to recently leaked documents, the EU plans to use the Canada – EU Trade Agreement (CETA), which is nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions.

The article compares the two proposed treaties and it’s rather amusing to see how similar the language between the two is. Both treaties will effectively implement the same thing but ACTA was shot down so the promoters of the treaty had to do something, and that something was a quick name change with some minor language changes.

It’s nice to see that this kind of behavior isn’t restricted solely to the United States.

It’s not Your Property

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.

Innocence Doesn’t Matter in the American Punishment System

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.

Stanley McChrystal Wants to Bring Back Slavery

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?

Obviously a Good Use of Taxes

Of all the things to spend tax money on I’m sure this is the most crucial:

The University of California – Berkeley Police Department (UCPD) has acquired a $200,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to purchase an “Armored Response Counter Attack Truck,” a police department spokesman told Campus Reform on Friday.

The eight-ton vehicle, commonly referred to as a “Bearcat,” is used by U.S. troops on the battlefield and is often equipped with a rotating roof hatch, powered turrets, gun ports, a battering ram, and a weapon system used to remotely engage a target with lethal force.

It makes sense that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now giving armored personell carriers to campus police forces. DHS has already fully militarized state and city police departments so now they have to move on to arming campus police departments. I wonder when Berkeley will get rockets launchers?

Thou Shalt Not Interfere in the State’s Fund Raisers

In a classic example of “If you fuck with the state the state will fuck with you!” a woman has been place in jail for warning motorists of nearby speed traps:

Natalie Plummer was riding her bicycle home from the grocery store when she noticed several cars beng pulled over for speeding. Hoping to save a few drivers from a potentially pricey ticket, she turned one of her paper bags into a sign that warned of the waiting police ahead.

While she was doing so, an officer pulled up and arrested her.

“I was completely abiding by the law,” she told KRTK. “I was simply warning citizens of a situation ahead.”

The Houston police, however, were not amused by her tactics and arrested her for, believe it or not, “standing in the street where a sidewalk is present,” an offense that not only sounds ridiculous, but that Plummer also denies even doing.

Natalie attempted to prevent individuals from being victimized by the state and its fund raiser attempt. As she was interfering with the state’s wealth transfer they arrested her. While holding up a sign qualifies as free speech there is always a law that can be used to shutdown a meddlesome individual who has the audacity to help their fellow individuals.

No Dissent is Allowed at the King’s Castle

What happened when a group of individuals decided to exercise their supposed Constitutionally protected right to protest their government over Fast and Furious? They were shutdown by the Secret Service:

Maurice Lewis, a student at the University of California, Merced, who marched in the event told Campus Reform that the Secret Service had seemed on edge well before the “suspicious package” was discovered.

“Several agents seemed hostile to our march and seemed anxious for us to leave the area,” said Lewis. “The discover the ‘unidentified package’ came just as the protest began gain traction.”

The Secret Service reopened the the portion of Pennsylvania Ave. that borders the White House shortly after protesters, who had been waiting nearby on 15th street for nearly half an hour, had dispersed. Agents did not communicate with organizers during that time.

Neither the White House nor the nearby Treasury building were shutdown. Employees of both building and members of the White House media were allowed to traverse the evacuated zone while protesters were kept out.

Apparently the “unidentified package” was severe enough to stop the protest until the protesters left but not severe enough to evacuate nearby buildings. Nothing about that claim doesn’t scream suppressing the right to seek redress from the government. It’s also not surprising, the king doesn’t like it when the peasants start protesting at the castle. What is surprising is that the Secret Service didn’t arrest any of the protesters under suspicion of leaving the “unidentified package” (then again if they arrested somebody they would have to explain their reason under more scrutiny so it also makes sense that no arrests were made).