What's up with North Korea?

The first questions I always ask is why is this so newsworthy today above and beyond all else that's happening in the world today and what are they not saying.

Both North and South Korea have recently undergone changes in leadership.  They're both quite obviously simply just testing each other like a child tests the limits of his mother to see what he can get away with.  What makes this situation so important as to capture headlines today?

How is this situation any different than what goes on daily between Washington DC, various state capitols, and the citizens of the Republic, especially in regards to the current seemingly irrational focus on gun control?

Think.

Why is it so Hard to Understand Taxes?

I recently read some comments on Rand Paul's speech at CPAC about his proposal to institute a 17% flat tax.  One commenter raised the issue of a single mother making $7.25 an hour minimum wage just barely squeaking by getting her tax rate unfairly raised to 17%.

I've discussed this before in Tax Primer, intending to address it further.  Well after the wonderful sequester hysteria and now these comments from Rand Paul at CPAC stirring more misinformation out there, it's time to get to it.

The reality is that with this example of a single mother, her payroll taxes alone already add up to 15% (7.5% direct withholding and matching 7.5% the employer pays).  So out of her $7.25, she pays approximately $1.08 in tax ($.54 from her paycheck and $.54 from her employer).  Some will undoubtedly argue that her taxes are only half that and the employer pays the other half, but that still makes the $7.25 an hour of which the employee takes home $6.71 after her payroll tax is deducted cost $7.79 (rounded) an hour to the employer, possibly inhibiting him from paying her more or hiring more workers.  Those taxes are part of the total labor costs that get added into the retail price of whatever she produces, so she's effectively taxed double for buying the very thing she makes at a retail outlet.

For example, say she makes 1 coffee pot in an 8 hour day @ 7.25 an hour.  She gets paid $58 gross minus $4.35 (7.5%) deducted for payroll taxes for a total of $53.65  That total $58 she made before taxes were taken out is part of the retail price of that coffee pot at the store as well as the $4.35 the employer paid to match her payroll taxes.  So just for her part of the production chain, the effect of the payroll tax alone, it would cost her $62.35 for the labor associated part of the retail price to buy something she made for what she only received $53.65, meaning she not only paid those payroll taxes upfront in the production chain, but will have to pay that $8.70 a second time for an "effective" tax rate of 30% just because of the payroll tax alone.

Now that doesn't mean that the government gets 2x as much revenue. That extra $8.70 just pays herself and her employer back for what the government took from them up front.  It simply has the 2x the effect on her cash flow.

That's what helps make US made products that much more prohibitively expensive in that these taxes can often exceed transportation costs of importing similar products made halfway around the world with cheaper labor.

Those problems will also be a part of Paul's proposal for most income/payroll taxes have the effect of hitting you 2x, when you get it and when you spend it.  It gets even worse when sales taxes are added on top, adding insult to injury that you're now paying a tax on a (hidden) tax. 

That's why I do believe a single consumption or sales tax on all goods and services and getting rid of all income taxes, while certainly not perfect, may be a much better solution for it makes it that much harder for them to hide real tax rates and it would add the same imposed cost of our bloated government to the price of competing foreign products.  It will also help shift some of the burden to the underground markets when untaxed income of such activities as prostitution or drugs is used to purchase goods and services in the regulated markets.

While I'm at it, let me touch upon the dreaded Mitt Romney's comments on the 47% who supposedly get a free ride.  The truth is that income taxes that are imposed on the 53% who do pay them only add up to 42% of federal revenues.  Another 40% of the federal revenues come from payroll taxes.  About 9% comes in from corporate taxes, which of course, we all pay for whenever we buy any product or service from those taxed corporations.  And that's only federal taxes.

Citizens for Tax Justice put out this analysis which IMHO is woefully short on identifying anything close to the true tax burden, but is does somewhat illustrate that everyone pays taxes.  As I described above, it fails to capture hidden taxes and the fact that a portion of sales taxes amount to a tax on a tax.  It also fails to consider thousands of user and license fees and other ingenious vehicles for taking money from citizens are taxes, such as those for hunting/fishing licenses, department of motor vehicle fees, tolls, fines, forfeitures, court fees, regulatory burdens, the all too rarely discussed inflation tax and, yes, even the minimum wage is effectively a tax - imagine that.

The current tax code is a ingenious trap used by the predators to divide the herd as it seeks out victims upon which to feast.  They use it to divide and conquer to keep their bellies full.  It will never change unless we wake up and understand it for what it is and stop pointing fingers at each other claiming we pay too much and it's everyone else who is skating.

Please add your 2¢ if you see anything I missed or disagree with any points or have questions in the comments section below.  :)

McCain's Bumbling Blunders

While opening his mouth in anger without any critical thinking or forethought in an attempt to deride Sen Rand Paul's filibuster, Sen John McCain claimed Paul's actions were not only silly and worthless, but harmful to the preservation of the Senate's filibuster rules.  However, in his emotional ferver, McCain actually unwittingly acknowledged Paul's performance was successful by admitting Congressional failures over the last 12 years.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Well, Mr President, I watched some of that quote debate unquote yesterday.  I saw colleagues of mine who know better come to the floor and voice this same concern, which is totally unfounded.  I must say that the use of Jane Fonda's name does evoke certain memories with me.  And I must say that she is not my favorite American, but I also believe as odious as it was, Ms Fonda acted within her Constitutional rights.

Oh really?  She was cavorting with the enemy, John.  She wasn't just holding a sign in a protest exercising her right to speak her mind, but she was there on the battlefield, even sitting on active enemy ADA making believe she was shooting down our pilots, providing them specific aid in the form of propaganda photo ops to demoralize our troops.  North Vietnam was a country, a nation state that we were in open hostilities with at the time.  Within her Constitutional rights?  Are you mad?  And what if she did what she did with al Qaeda instead of the North Vietnamese...?  Would that be similarly within her Constitutional rights?  Funny, but today, that would bring a drone attack raining down on her head.

You know you wanted to kill her, John.  Deep down where your heart used to be, you wanted to see her burn in napalm.  But we all know to say so isn't conducive to continuing a Senate career which is well past its prime.

There is no such thing as a war against terrorism.  Terrorism is a tactic.  You declare war on countries or other nation/states that support terrorists, just like the war against the Taliban and their control over Afghanistan for refusing to comply with an ultimatum to turn over bin Laden. 

There is no world-wide battlefield. 

You went to war with the Taliban and drove them out of power and bin Laden out of Afghanistan.  You drove bin Laden into Pakistan.  But you would not, could not declare war on Pakistan, could you?  Oh, you sure wanted to.  You know you did, but you see, they have THE bomb.  Is it any wonder that Iran might like to have one with all the posturing you keep doing to attack them? 

The perception of a war against terrorism is no different than the war on tobacco, the war on drugs, the war on illiteracy, the war on... whatever you politicians want to declare a fictitious war on, it's only to further your agenda to exert control over the populace and whittle away citizens' rights.

And not only did he deride Sen Paul, but all those others like Sen Mitch McConnell who "know better".  Pffft.

He drones on...

And to somehow say anyone who disagrees with American policy and even may demonstrate against it is somehow a member of an organization who makes that individual an enemy combatant is simply false.  It is simply false! 

And how do we know that?  Al Awlaki was not part of al Qaeda, at least not until you pushed him.  After 9/11, he was preaching that terrorism was wrong and the attack on the WTC and Pentagon were wrong and that Americans should NOT be targeted by Muslims.  And what about his son?  All we know about his assassination is a snide remark by the WH press secretary, Robert Gibbs, suggesting that he "should have a far more responsible father." 

Sen McCain certainly has a lot of loiter time and more ammunition to expend.  And here is where it gets good.  As you will see in his own words, Sen McCain ADMITS Congressional failure to address EXACTLY what Sen Paul was, IMHO, actually trying to get them to address by asking President Obama a simple, limited scope question. 

Now, Mr President, I believe we need to visit this whole issue of the use of drones; who uses them; whether the CIA should become they're own Air Force; what the oversight is; what the legal and political foundations for this kind of conflict needs to be reviewed.  And the foundations rest mostly on laws designed for another task, that government lawyers have interpreted without public scrutiny to meet new challenges outside the surveillance context.   

Congress, as a body, has not debated the means or ends of secret warfare.  Because secret surveillance and targeted strikes rather than US military detention are central to the new warfare.  We need they know viable plaintiffs to test the government's authorities in court.   

In short, executive branch decisions since 2001 have led the nation to a new type of war against new enemies on a new battlefield without enough focused national debate, deliberate Congressional approval, or real judiciary review.  We probably need a new framework statute akin to the National Security Act of 1947 or the series of intelligent reforms made after Watergate or even the 2001 Authorization of Force to describe the... to define the scope of the new war, the authorities and limitations on presidential power, and forms of review of the president's actions. 

That's exactly what Rand Paul wanted, for you to admit your failures and you fell right into the trap as many soldiers did into North Vietnamese punji stick pits.  It had nothing to do with drones.  The kill list could be accomplished with guns, knives, piano wire, poison, sticks, or whatever... 

And no, John.  Warfare hasn't changed.  Terrorism hasn't changed.  No matter how you try to mold and transmogrify them into something new to suit your delusions of how to best to wield such deadly power.

There is some more in there which he again derides Sen Paul, but let's cut to the chase of the REAL source of Sen McCain's ire...

I'd also like to add an additional note, Mr President.    About 42%, as I'm told, of the members of this Senate are here for six years or less.  Everytime a majority party is in power, they become frustrated with the exercise of the minority or their rights here in the Senate.  And back some years ago, there was gonna be...  we were gonna eliminate...  when Republicans this side of the aisle was in the majority, we were gonna eliminate the ability to call for 60 votes for judges.  We... uh... confirmation of judges.  We were able to put that aside. 

There was another effort, just at the beginning of this Senate to do away with 60 votes and back down to 51, which in my view would have destroyed the Senate.  A lot of us work...  A group of us worked very hard for a long time to come up with some compromises that would allow the Senate to move more rapidly, but at the same time..., and efficiently, but at the same time preserve the 60 vote majority requirement on some pieces of legislation.  What we saw yesterday is going to give ammunition to those critics who say that the rules of the Senate are being abused.  I hope my colleagues on this side of the aisle will take that into consideration. 

That's it.  A dozen years of Congress failing to do it's job to address the scope of presidential powers w/ respect to targeted killings along with the last five years of them failing to even produce a budget while starting off this new session with a full scale assault on our individual rights to bear arms to protect our lives, families, and property...  Is Mr McCain worried about any of that? 

Mr McCain is most worried that an upstart freshman actually had the gall to use the precious rules of the Senate to demand an answer from the President on how he percieves he can act in total absence of Congress DOING IT'S DAMN JOB.  And what do you do?  You come unglued.

Thank you, Sen McCain.  You should be ashamed of yourself.

Rand Paul's Monumental Filibuster

I still see some people out there discounting this effort by bashing Paul about his actions on the Kerry and Hagel nominations. 

I believe this is the turning point many of us have all been waiting for and it's going to be remembered in history as a monumental national level discussion against governmental tyranny that's long overdue.

To the naysayers on Paul's effectiveness, all I can say is - Get over what you perceive to be weakness.  You can't fight a war wasting ammunition firing at everything that moves for random effect.

That's the reason to fight to our last breath all these efforts to infringe on our right to bear arms by limiting what type of weapons we can own and how much ammunition we can carry.

Whenever I see the #TheyDeserveaVote PSYOP from @BarackObama, I see images of a smiling crowd at a lynching. 

Basic human rights of self-defense should NEVER be allowed to be put up to the tyranny of the majority.  Minorities and individuals always lose.

It's too bad that it took fear of being attacked by drones that started waking some people up when our friends and neighbors have been executed for years by growth in use of swat team raids across the country.  Perhaps after this, that's a battle for another day.

For now - Go Rand!!!

Raw Milk: What's the Big Deal?

In this Bloomberg article about a farmer acquitted in a raw milk trial, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claims raw milk products were responsible for at least 93 disease outbreaks from 1998-2009, causing 1,837 illnesses, 195 hospitalizations, and two deaths.

Ummm, ok?  And where's the cost/benefit analysis?  Do you think the CDC might have one?  Well, I couldn't find one, but here is their scare page.  //Warning:  extremely graphic like President Obama's dire predictions of the certain armageddon of sequester - Ensure you have medical emergency devices handy to treat shock or possible cardiac events and access to call 911 for emergency services before clicking either link//

Looking at the new "report" they just issued, "Non-Pasteurized Dairy Products, Disease Outbreaks, and State Laws-United States, 1993-2006", it claims "We found 121 outbreaks for which the product’s pasteurization status was known; among these, 73 (60%) involved nonpasteurized products and resulted in 1,571 cases, 202 hospitalizations, and 2 deaths."  Of course the same report shows that those 60% of outbreaks attributed to non-pasteurized products caused only 36% of the total reported cases of illness, meaning that pasteurized products caused 64% of the reported cases of illness in a lower number of outbreaks. 

Further on, it claims 4/48 outbreaks from pasteurized products "probably resulted" from post-pasteurization contamination by infected food handlers. 

It goes on to attribute another 3/48 pasteurized outbreaks to "probable" failure of consumers to store the products at the appropriate temperature.  Hmmm...  WTF is that?!?  That may apply to individual cases of an illness or two in a family, but for an entire outbreak traced back to a specific food batch? 

Also notice that in the report, such speculations of post-farm production contaminations in the retail/food handling chain or consumer handling procedures are strangely absent for the non-pasteurized products.

Also interesting is that all 73 outbreaks from the non-pasteurized products (milk and cheese) were determined to be due to bacteria, yet 13/30 (44%) (which is kind of strange in itself, since there were 48 total outbreaks from pasteurized products, so apparently they have no idea what the cause was in 18 of them?!?) of the pasteurized product caused outbreaks were due to norovirus.  Is it safe for us to now assume that norovirus infections from non-pasteurized products are non-existant?  Of course not.  In layman's terms, what that indicates is that the CDC has not produced a real report, but rather a piece of propaganda with crappy/limited data. 

Just look at the following graph of their data:

 

Hmmmm....  What's with the years 93-97?  Are we to believe that milk related outbreaks were practically non-existant 20 years ago and all this disease is a new phenomenon or there is only a more recent pandemic developing?  Or perhaps they can convince us that the seemingly exploding number of cases may be attributable to global warming?  Naaaaaaaahhh...  Again, chalk it up to crappy data.

 

 

Imagine: What if?

 

For perspective, I always like to compare dissimilar things...  For if you look at just the situation like that with raw milk by itself, the effects may look like they warrant government action.  However, think about government incursions into other market sectors and you'll see they're spending a lot of money acting rashly for little, if any, effect.

 

So imagine, if you will, the government applying this same process they are using to attack raw milk producers to something like motorcycles.  I'd bet there are a lot more deaths attributable to motorcycles in a single month than in what we saw them report over 13 years of raw milk consumption.  What if they attacked that industry in favor of only allowing people to drive around in four wheel cages because they are so much more safe?   "But, but, but... wait a minute.  Motorcycles are much more cost efficient and burn less fossil fuels", you might say.  Similar to the war on raw milk producers, "Big deal, it will save on deaths, period.  So suck it up" is their answer.

 

Let's get even more drastic and say they ban automobiles too and force you to take trains or buses without regard to inconveniences or limitations on personal mobility.  Well, that's essentially what they are doing with raw milk.  There is absolutely no cost/benefit analysis at all, just half-assed "studies" and "reports" that highlight scary things and downplay or even just plain hide the not-so-scary facts and the personal benefits.  In effect, they're making a minor problem seem so much bigger and scarier than it really is.

 

Of course it will be hard for them to take on the motorcycle or automobile manufacturing giants.  But it sure isn't hard for the CDC, FDA and state health agencies to gang up and destroy small family farmers living on meager sales of raw milk products.  Just look at what they did to Joe and Denise Dixon from Morningland Dairy.

 

So what's the bottomline here?

 

Well, according to the data sets in that most recent report from the CDC, a total of 3 people died and a few thousand more got sick allegedly from consuming both raw and pasteurized milk products over a 13 year period.  Considering the hundreds of millions of people in the US who might drink milk and eat cheese every day, those numbers prove the overall risks to be quite miniscule. 

 

If you start looking for the number of court cases involving these small family farm raw milk producers, you'll see they're mostly farmers fighting big government, not product liability claims.  The CDC and health agencies are spending considerable resources attacking the smaller raw milk producers and trying to put them out of business apparently only because they have been associated with more outbreaks (and they also have less deep pockets to fight back), but those producers also service smaller pools of consumers.  So the effect of outbreaks attributable to them would be much more limited than those associated with the larger factory farm producers who do pasteurize their products.  They are therefore expending scarce resources attacking those who put less people at risk of major large-scale outbreaks which could probably be better used elsewhere for real problems, not these imaginary ones.

 

So, as always, believe half of what you see and none of what you hear.  Always question everything.  Especially question it if it comes from a government agency, because their sole reason for existance is a perceived problem (whether one exists or not).  So if there are no problems, you can be sure they're certainly working hard to create the appearance of one.

 

They came for our cigarettes.  Then they came for our water wasting toilets and gave us ones you have to flush more to get rid of number 2's.  Then they came for our incandescent light bulbs and gave us more toxic ones.  Now they're coming for our raw milk and even our guns.  When will it end?  Or more importantly, how will it end?

 

(Update:  5 Mar 13)

 

This "Scary Drink" May Resolve Your Troubling Health Issues, 1 Jan 12 - According to Dr Mercola the CDC may be misrepresenting those two deaths they linked to raw milk and they may be attributable to a specific type of cheese, Queso Fresco, that is illegal under FDA regulations. 

What do NY's Smoking Ban and NY SAFE Act Have in Common?

Simply put, they are both egregious infringements on individual rights to own and use property as seen fit.

Smokers have lived with numerous assaults on their personal decisions for years, but the smoking ban rose to another level and attacked small business owners throughout the state effectively denying them use of their personal property, that they worked hard for and built, for a specific purpose as if they were nothing more than caretakers of public property.

This is certainly not a partisan party issue.  The final votes in the Assembly and Senate were greatly mixed showing both parties infiltrated with control freaks.

Democrats:    Assembly  84 yes - 11 no  ~  Senate  20 yes - 4 no
Republicans:  Assembly 13 yes - 33 no  ~  Senate  37 yes - 0 no

Assemblyman Daniel Hooker’s comments made on the floor of the Assembly during debate on the smoking ban, Wednesday, March 26th, 2003:

I am from a rural district as well, and while we don’t have any cities, we do have a lot of restaurants, taverns, and diners, and this bill will hurt their business. We also have a lot of VFW Posts, American Legion Posts, and Marine Corps League Posts. I can’t help but think of the irony of the situation where a soldier or Marine comes home from the war, goes into a local VFW for a beer and a cigarette, and the bartender says "I’m sorry, young man, while you were overseas fighting for freedom, your State Assembly was quietly legislating it away here at home."

However, Mr. Speaker, I am chiefly opposed to this bill because it presumes that people are incapable of thinking and acting for themselves without the government telling them what to do.

At present, people are free to choose to work in an environment that is smoke free or not. A lot of waitresses who smoke choose to work in a bar specifically because it is a smoke-friendly environment. This bill would limit that freedom.

I don’t smoke but believe that others should be free to smoke if they choose to.

I am not insensitive to the health hazards of smoking. My Dad smoked, and he died of lung cancer. Cause and effect? Probably, but he died a free man who made his own choices.

My general philosophy is that our government spends way too much time telling people what to do and this seems like a good example of that practice.

I am opposed. 

Even though I wasn't from his district, I had written Mr Hooker to thank him for his stand, and he replied with a hand-written and personally signed note providing me with the full text of his speech.  All I got back from my own two representatives were form letters praising the great courageous stand they took standing with the majority to figuratively lynch a minority constituency.

 

We don't want to merely die like Dan Hooker's dad as free men, we want to live our lives as free men, unmolested by tyranny.

 

Why am I writing about this long dead issue now?  Well, first of all, it's NOT dead, it was just a lost squirmish in the never-ending battle for liberty.  And when it was a raging battle, we were severely chastized during that crusade for even insinuating that this assault on individual property rights would snowball down the slippery slope.  Yet today, we have Mayor Bloomberg assaulting individual rights nearly every day with stop and frisk and even denying your right to choose how big of a soft drink you'd like to buy.  Bloomberg rules NYC with an iron fist, but his crusades, especially against the 2nd Amendment are affecting people outside his jurisdiction.  We also have Gov Cuomo, rushing through the ill-conceived NY SAFE Act to attack another group of citizens to deny them their 2nd Amendment rights to own certain property to defend themselves, their families, and their property.

 

The assaults won't ever end until enough people wake up to just say NO!  We must honor the Constitution's legal framework that was set up to defend individual rights against usurpations of the collective and the tyrannical majority.  And just saying no once or twice here or there isn't enough.  We must demand that all such laws be reviewed and those that infringe on individual liberty must be rescinded or repealed.  A single such law makes a precedent for others to follow.

 

There's a reason for the many levels of government and the central powers are enumerated and severely limited.  Even statewide laws should be extremely limited.  Where freedom of association comes in is at the local level.  Don't like the colors your neighbor may paint his house, then join a local homeowners association and dictate away to attract like-minded people to your neighborhood sort of like what's going on in Kiryas Joel.

 

I can go on and on comparing the smoking ban and the NY SAFE Act to a myriad of social issues pertaining to individual rights such as one with the Defense of Marriage Act and the individual right of a citizen to marry whomever he or she pleases that is essential to maintain your right of free association.

As I continually stress, if you petition the government to limit the rights of any other individual to do anything you personally dislike, you empower them to come after you to limit yours.  Think long and hard about it and please ~ Help stop the madness!

NY SAFE Act - A Crime in Itself

My letter to my county legislator requesting support in condemning this egregious act.

-----

Sir,

I'm writing to you, as the county legislator for the district in which I reside, to register my disapproval of the NY SAFE Act and request you please support a County resolution to condemn it.

With the fast and furious loss of so many of our rights as citizens of a free republic in the past decade under the guise of necessity in the war on terror that brought us the Patriot Act, NDAA, targeted assassinations, proliferation of swat team raids, stop and frisk, TSA gropings, and DHS immigration checkpoints and suspicionless searches miles inland from our physical borders, to mention just a few, our second amendment rights are the last defense that we can ill afford to lose. When is it going to stop?
 

The right to defend ourselves, our family, and our property is a natural right. The police forces cannot physically perform such a duty, for if it is even possible to contact them during a life-threatening situation, they often arrive well after the crime has been committed and the perpetrator long gone. Even if they could always arrive in time, the Supreme Court of the US has consistently ruled that police forces have no special duty to protect anyone but themselves. Mayor Bloomberg's own NYC lawyers are using such defense in a lawsuit by Joseph Lozito against the NYPD, where officers present and actively engaged in a citywide manhunt for the murderer Maksim Gelman allegedly hid behind a locked subway door to protect themselves and watched as Gelman attacked and seriously wounded Mr Lozito until after he had subdued the culprit himself.

http://gothamist.com/2013/01/27/city_argues_nypd_had_no_special_dut.php

I find it amazingly ironic that so many like Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg are mindlessly and emotionally engaged in trying to disarm American citizens and have succeeded here in NY in rushing through this horrendous act. Yet the NY State Constitution still clearly states "The defense and protection of the state and of the United States is an obligation of all persons within the state." So our government servants expect us to be required to help defend the state and our country even after they've disarmed us from bearing any of the most effective self-defense tools, but police departments and officers they commission to enforce the laws that they've enacted have no legally binding duty to protect us citizens from criminals while we are taxed to pay for their services. That's insane.

It's even more disturbing in light of seeing Mayor Bloomberg's own security forces made up of NYPD officers follow a reporter who was armed with nothing more than a soda for simply asking the mayor a question and attempting to harrass him, demanding he show identification while acting well outside their jurisdiction .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCC-rEx81PE

Again, I request you please support condemning this egregious Act and help us keep our state and country free.

Thank you,

v/r

Frank Koza

There Just Ain't Enough Loot to Go Around!!!

After years of egregious levels of taxation on tobacco products w/ big government spurred on by the anti-smoker cabal, a consequence of the Affordable Care Act brings a new scavenger to feast on the prey and the anti-smokers don't like it one bit.  According to the Washington Post, one of the anti-smoker orgs, the American Cancer Society, "worries that the high surcharges could make health insurance unaffordable to cigarette smokers, who are disproportionately low income".   

They have to feign that they are at least somewhat concerned about the best interests of their prey, but what they are really saying is there just ain't enough loot to go around. 

This new assault on smokers comes years after the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) between seven of the tobacco companies and a number of states forcing big tobacco to disgorge some $206 billion over the course of some 25 years supposedly to pay them off for years of state medical payments they claim was for illnesses caused by smoking.  That money didn't come from the companies themselves.  No, the companies were allowed to raise prices to pull it out of their customers w/ provisions in the agreement that were designed to inhibit other companies from gaining market share which were not party to the original suit because they had no liability. 

What a nifty little deal that was.  The anti-smoker cartel, to include the newly empathetic American Cancer Society, set it up just that way so they could reap a large portion of the spoils for all their hard work churning out volumes of propaganda to justify the looting of smokers and blame it all on big tobacco as if that made it all morally right.  Of course, they started crying they were getting shorted years ago when the states started deciding to keep more of the money for themselves that they were supposed to earmark for the other thieves in their back room dealings.

Since then, both the federal government and all the states have been busy raising taxes on tobacco products here and there whenever they could to lay claim to even more loot, even though our very own Congressional Research Service published a report on the proposed MSA before the deal was struck called, "The Proposed Tobacco Settlement:  Who Pays for the Health Costs of Smoking?"  That report estimated that smokers imposed no financial costs on the rest of society at the current tax rates at the time.

The funniest thing is that the anti-smokers and government agencies have claimed they've been doing all this to smokers for their health, because of the claims that smoking shortens the average lifespan by some 7 years or so. So now they're going to be force these people they 'saved' to go up against the Obamacare "Death Panels" to decide if there's enough wealth creation left in them to make them worth saving for a few more years buy providing medical care.

So they came for the smokers and after having picked our bones clean they are still coming back to get more blood out of the stone.  They went after the drugs and imposed similarly egregious forfeiture laws to steal as much from drug users as they can.  They're going after small farmers and driving many out of business for horrendous crimes of selling raw milk and cheese products made from raw milk like they did to Morningland Dairy to steal their property from them. 

It's one huge lawless free for all feast for the predators and scavengers alike, operating under the guise of law of a corrupt government and faux legal system to perpetrate their 'legal' plunder.

If you cannot see this blatant stealing going on right in front of your face, well...  at least file it away so you can identify the process when they're done feasting on their current victims and move on to come for everything you own.

State of the Union - Ideological Subversion Nearly Complete

President Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) address was business as usual.  More government proposed to fix what more government broke.  You just can't fix a problem with the same mindset that created it in the first place.  Seriously, I was hoping Obamacare would provide him with some free contraception to slow down his procreative abilities of spawning additional government programs, but alas...

Soviet KGB defector, Yuri Besmenov, already had a better grasp of today's SOTU nearly 30 years ago than the current sitting president.  Please watch his interview with with G. Edward Griffin from back in 1984 at the link below.  It will give you a much better idea of where we are today than any of the political posturing you've heard tonight from President Obama or any of the mainstream media analysis of what we saw.  It's like he predicted everything Obama was going to say.

Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press

In that interview, Besmenov described the process of ideological subversion, a simple legitimate and overt four step process consisting of: 1) Demoralization, 2) Destabilization, 3) Crisis, 4) Normalization.   Interestingly, Besmenov used the terms of social justice and equality to describe the mindset behind what he called the useful idiots so demoralized to hate the ideology of their nation.  For destabilization, the subverter works on the main essentials such as the economy, defense systems and foreign relations.  It's purpose is to change the perception of reality, which we witnessed in the SOTU.  Besmenov pretty much predicted 30 years ago that we would allow the schmuks to bring the country to crisis and promise the people all sorts of goodies in promise of a paradise on earth to destabilize the economy, eliminate the principles of free market competition (Obamacare and bailouts, as well as the decimation of small businesses like family farms) and to put a big brother government in DC with benevolent dictators like Mondale (now Obama) who will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of a new generation of Soviet assassins (Obama's new after-election flexibility whispered to Putin)... 

IMHO, we're well into the normalization phase with the Patriot Act, NDAA, Agenda 21, drone wars, targeted killings, checkpoints, swat raids, stop and frisk, the Fed destroying the value of our currency and many other freedom stealing actions coming at us with blinding speed or already now in standard operation across the US.  Once they succeed in disarming us, it's all over...

The only solution and hope is to educate ourselves and our children to better understand what is going on around us.  We're in a state of war and have been for a long time against enemies determined to destroy the remnants of what was the last free country on the face of the earth.

The interview is about an hour and a half.  Also a worthy read is Besemov's Love Letter to America.

Enjoy...  Good luck and God Bless...

Americans Under Attack by Own Government

Morningland Dairy was raided last month and 18 tons of cheese destroyed by bureaucrats and their minions "just following orders". 

This business is not a fly-by-night operation, but a family business that operated for over 30 years with no complaints lodged against them except by government regulation makers.

This is a crime.  And so many are happy when Obamacare will come between you and your doctor because it's "free".  One has to wonder how wonderful they'll think this free service is when doctors start collecting personal information and becoming government informants and ordering you how to live your life rather than giving you recommendations.  This is what happens when the government "health" industry comes between farmers and their customers. 

We're under attack.  Wake up.

(Updated below:  9 Feb 13):

Another video shows questions asked of representatives of the county sheriff's department. 

Now this guy doesn't know about gun confiscation during Katrina.  He also doesn't know about the government's refusal to allow the business owners here to have their cheese tested before issuing a confiscate and destroy order or about the government "health nazi's" attacks on raw milk producers and other small business owners just working hard trying to make an honest living across the nation.

They aren't all just jackbooted thugs.  Many of these guys in public offices are just uninformed people following orders thinking they're doing their jobs.  The answer is education and to get the information out there like Sheriff Mack is doing with the Constitutional Sheriff's and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA).

This should go viral and hopefully honest, hard-working Americans will step up to demand that the government agencies responsible provide just compensation to what they stole from these family farmers.  Government bails out banks and corporations who get in trouble from their own incompetence and they bail out disaster victims such as those of hurricane Sandy who lived where government officials deemed it was safe for them to build, but destroy small family businesses like this example. 

Reach out, speak out, educate and overcome!

And to government officials, sheriffs, peace officers, and judges who may read this.  We are patriots who helped build this country and you work for us.  People like these farmers create wealth.   We are NOT your enemy.  Please, learn how to do your jobs and protect us from tyrannical bureaucrats.

(Update 2 - more links)

1) Interview of Joe and Denise Dixon, owners of Morningland Dairy
2) Family Farm Odered to Destroy 50,000 lbs of Cheese - 11 Oct 10
3) Morningland Dairy - The Final Solution - 18 Jan 13
4) Wisconsin Judge Rules Against Raw Milk Farmers - 23 Feb 13

Monetary Policy

I can't get this song out of my head.

War on Smokers Still Smoldering

Good afternoon, Cattle.

Ann Althouse reminds us that the war on smokers hasn't ended.

The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report, Raising the Excise Tax on Cigarettes:  Effects on Health and the Federal Budget, reminds us that the government looks at us all as cattle.   They raise us for our 'milk', but only keep us around as long as it's profitable for them to do so.  They've been doing this for smokers for the past two decades.  The war on fat has started.  After full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, they'll be monitoring all of us in a similar fashion and charging you accordingly.

May I remind you that the 1998 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report, Who Pays for the Health Costs of Smoking? determined that smokers do not appear to impose net financial costs on the rest of society.  They estimated that tobacco taxes have apparently resulted in net financial gain to both the federal and state governments at the prevailing tax rates at the time.  Governments save on old-age medical care, social security, and nursing home care due to the estimated earlier death of smokers.  And that was done at the prevailing tax rates in '98 which were much, much lower than they are today.  And they still want MORE.

Wait til the full effects of Agenda 21 hit and they start moving the population to the gulags.  Much more on that to come, so stay tuned.  Or if you want to do a little research yourself, a good place to start is looking up Rosa Koire and her site, Democrats Against UN Agenda 21.

They've sold our children into perpetual slavery.  Now they want our guns.  Our liberty is under a multi-pronged attack.  When do we make a stand?

Update: 

It appears the CDC isn't done with the shakedown.

The Battle of Athens, Tennessee, 1946

All this crap about gun control and useful idiots like Piers Morgan, who isn't even a real American, leading the Obama deception asking why do citizens need firearms like the AR-15.

How come we don't ever hear about the Battle of Athens which took place in 1946?  Returning WWII vets, some of the first Oathkeepers, took on corrupt local officials to keep local elections fair and honest after State and Federal authorities failed them.  Another account, with similar incidents in other areas, can be found here.

I just found out about it from theoldmarine1 with his posting of this video on youtube.

Keep the faith and hold on to your arms.

ARMAGEDDON - Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn gave a particularly insightful speech (links at bottom) about the decline of America as a world power in various concepts in his book, "After America, Get Ready for Armageddon", which drills down towards the roots of what we see going on today.  In it, he touches on subjects that fit neatly into the categories he has crafted into an acronym for Armageddon:

• A - Addiction
• R - Redistribution
• M - Monopoly
• A - Arteriosclerosis
• G - Global Retreat
• E - Educational Social Engineering
• D - Decay
• D - Disintegration
• O - Open Season
• N - Nuke's Away

In this speech, he talks about many things that I have been highlighting some examples here, but I still fail to capture the intrinsic interrelations as well as Mark has in this speech. 

Take a look, for it's well worth your time.  I'm not going to add anything here in this post, but if you see anything in his speech that warrants additional discussion based on what you know, feel free to leave a comment or two.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a childhood pyschological disorder that could lead to Conduct Disorder and/or Antisocial Personality Disorder later in life.  (wink, wink)

Everytime I read the DSM-IV, I'm totally amazed at how they classify natural human traits for the struggle to be free as diagnosable psychotic neuroses.  For those who don't know what DSM-IV is, it's just similar to a diagnostic manual for your car as applied to diagnosing the horrible affliction known as human behavior.

Home remedies for self-medication in adults used to include smoking tobacco and/or marijuana and imbibing alcoholic beverages. 

Psychiatrists and psychologists don't like self-medication for it cuts down on profits from office visits.  Big Pharma doesn't like self-medication, as it cuts into their profits.  Get ready for Obamacare.  And after we're all diagnosed as psychotics, then they'll come for our guns.

Oppositionally and Defiantly yours,

Uncle Joe's Shack

We have a strange slang word , Uncle Tom, in our language that has come to be a slur to mean according to on-line Merriam-Webster: 

1. : a black who is overeager to win the approval of whites (as by obsequious behavior or uncritical acceptance of white values and goals)
2. : a member of a low-status group who is overly subservient to or cooperative with authority <the worst floor managers and supervisors by far are women … Some of them are regular Uncle Toms— Jane Fonda>

That certainly was not Harriet Beecher Stowe's intent, but that is lost on the prevailing attitudes of the heavily indoctrinated minds of today.  Joan Hedrick discusses a little of how it has come about:

Grafted onto the minstrel tradition, the stage versions of Stowe’s novel often portrayed Stowe’s hero as a shuffling, humorous Sambo. 

The Christ-like pacifism that ennobled Stowe’s Tom appeared to many in the increasingly confrontational racial politics of the twentieth century as subservience, or as James Weldon Johnson wrote in 1912, “foolishly good”—behavior that became branded as “like Uncle Tom.”

Stowe’s literary reputation, very high in the nineteenth century, was also declining as modernist critics viewed the work of Stowe and other politically motivated women writers as “melodramatic” and "sentimental.”
 

Such critic's views and the slur that gained acceptance are pure poppycock.  Uncle Tom's overt subservience was simply a survival technique in the face of an unbearable situation.  It's no different than people today swallowing their pride, integrity, and opinions to please their masters and keep their job.

Unequal Justice

David Gregory, a TV news anchorman, is not prosecuted for displaying a prohibited ammunition magazine on a nation-wide broadcast conducted in Washington DC. 

Not so for at least five military veterans who were mercilessly prosecuted to include James Brinkley, an Army veteran and federal employee. 

Others include Marine Cpl Melroy Cort, former Army Specialist Adam Meckler, Sgt Matthew Corrigan, and Lt Augustine Kim (links to stories of Corrigan and Kim are in the story on Meckler).

I'm sure those are only the tip of the iceberg.  These cases indicate there is something very seriously wrong with the convoluted legal system in the US.  That's what it is, a legal system, for there is no justice.

Fun With Numbers - Sexual Psychobabble Bullshit

Every once in a while psychologists come out with another groundbreaking study on human sexual behavior and they generally claim men are more promiscuous than women for such and such a reason with various mating hypotheses trying to relate them to Darwinian theories of evolution.  A recent article in the New York Times attempts to dispel the three most generally held assumptions:

"men are less selective about whom they’ll sleep with; men like casual sex more than women; and men have more sexual partners over a lifetime."

I always considered those assumptions to be pure bunk.  Consider which sex is more likely to have a greater number of partners on average in a population with an equal amount of men to women in mated pairs.  In any such a scenario, for one of the men to be promiscuous with more than one woman then one of the women would also have to be similarly as promiscuous with more than one man.  And for each new partner a man acquires, one more of the women will have to take on a new partner. 

Let's look at a scenario where there's a population of five men and five women where four of the women are totally monogamous with one partner each and the fifth is a hooker who had intercourse with all five of the males for figuring out which sex would have more partners over a lifetime.  You would have four of the five men having two partners each and one of the five with only one partner for a total of nine different partners and divide by five for an average of 1.8 partners each over a lifetime.  The women would be the one with five partners and four with just one partner each for the exact same average of 1.8 partners over a lifetime.  So it's a wash and it always will be.  It is impossible to conclude that men have more partners over a lifetime in a society with an equal population of each sex according to the math.  Of course I'm limiting this strictly to heterosexual relationships or encounters because these studies deal with assumptions to support Darwinian theories of evolution affects our choices in mating and procreation. 

Now where the assumption that men have more sexual partners holds true is that there are no populations in geographically defined areas where the populations of men to women are exactly equal.  The real reason why women tend to have fewer partners on average than men in most modern societies has less to do with women being more selective or that men like casual sex more, but that there are generally more women than men at any given time because women live longer on average and despite that would give them more time to take on additional partners over a longer lifetime, they simply have less opportunity because there is a smaller pool for them to choose from for either prospective mates or casual sex partners.  Thus women on average would by necessity have to be less selective or risk being left out of the mating game.  It has more to do with numbers than the Darwinesque gene search for superior genes theories we're told it has to be.  Sorry, ladies, the odds are just stacked against you.  Similarly, in an isolated society where the men vastly outnumber the women, then one can expect women would on average have more sexual partners in a lifetime than the men and there they can afford to be much more selective.

It's very rarely really what it seems at face value no matter what the experts tell us.  Consider the implications of the pure numbers game, carefully read that article again, and consider how you form your opinions in relation to what the experts are trying to sell us.