Category Archives: The State

Sign-Up For Food Stamps, Y’all

Democracy, Journalism, Morality, Taxation, The State, Welfare

Fox News Reporting does superb shoe-leather reporting on “the government’s startling attempts to get even more people to sign up for the ‘Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.'” However, that the state uses the private property of one segment of the population to buy the favors of another is not startling; it’s standard operating procedure (SOP).

The special uncovers startling statistics, including:

Food stamps cost taxpayers 78.4 billion in fiscal year 2012. In 2008, the figure was $37.6 billion.
(Source: USDA: SNAP Program Data)

Simply administering the food stamp program alone costs close to $4 billion annually.
(Source: SNAP, 2012 Annual Summary)

Almost 48 million people are now on food stamps — one out of every seven people living in America.
(Source: 2013 SNAP Program data)

That ranges from six percent in Wyoming to 22 percent Mississippi.
(Source: USDA, SNAP Participation statistics)

Still, not everyone who can sign up, does. A 2012 report said that 75 percent of eligible people in the United States received SNAP benefits in fiscal year 2010.
(Source: USDA State Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Participation Rates)

In North Carolina, seventeen percent of the population receive food stamps — more than double the number a decade ago.
(Source: USDA SNAP State Program Data and Census for NC population, 2012 and 2004)

According to a Fox News poll, the majority believe that Americans are too dependent on government

Had Fox News done its bit for literacy and for the written word, rather than provide big video clips—I’d have been able to excerpt Charles Murray speak to the saddest aspect of food-stamp recruitment: the undermining of the American pride and spirit.

MORE.

More snippets from “The Great Food Stamp Binge”:

With one in seven Americans now receiving food stamps, a Fox News investigative team traveled the country to expose the government’s startling attempts to get even more people to sign up for the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”.
This documentary profiles a blissfully jobless California surfer who expects taxpayers to underwrite his life of beaches and booze, visits a Florida pastor angry over Spanish ads designed to convince reluctant immigrants to get on food stamps, and reveals how North Carolina social workers won a government award for breaking down the “Mountain Pride” that makes some Tar Heels unwilling to accept government handouts.
Reports by John Roberts and Peter Boyer also explore whether the food stamp program can ultimately make the poor dependent on government, and ask how many taxpayer dollars meant for the truly needy end up in the pockets of those able to fend for themselves.

Tidings Of The Vaguest, Least Specific, Most Geographically Inclusive Terrorism

Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Middle East, Propaganda, Terrorism, The State

Cowed into fearful submission by choice, Americans are being bombarded with the “news” of the vaguest, least specific, most geographically inclusive threat of terrorism: Terrorism is everywhere you travel. You’ve got a target on your back. And, while we’re at it, consider yourself lucky to be the recipient of this most astute and accurate news from those who look out for you.

And the reason the NSA saints can look out for you, you ingrates, is that they spy on you. Now can you see what this is about? It’s a proxy for “protecting.”

This alert—what would you do without it? Have a happy holiday?—comes to you thanks to the very “dragnet that scoops up the personal electronic communications of millions of you.”

Or so suggested John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., on Fox News today, again. Is Bolton privy to this non-specific intelligence? No. But being party to the media-military-congressional-industrial complex, he stands ready to reflexively back it up, down to the nuts and bolts of it.

This stalwart supporter of the Surveillance State gave credit to the “National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance powers,” and in particular to PRISM and “X-Keyscore,” which some of us have been protesting—these deserve credit for bringing you the tidings of terrorism. The Fox-News twit offered no cross examination.

U.S. officials have not offered many details on the nature of the threat, but apparently are taking it seriously. … John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said the alert indicates the U.S. government must have some “pretty good information” about a possible threat.

Yes, that’s logical (not): From the fact of the warning (and not the facts), we can conclude that there is a threat.

The Guardian provides the necessary skepticism absent among US major media:

US embassy closures used to bolster case for NSA surveillance programs.
Congress told that NSA monitoring led to interception of al-Qaida threats but privacy campaigners fear ulterior political motives. News of the fresh terror alert came as Congress looked increasingly likely to pursue fresh attempts to limit the NSA’s domestic powers when it returns in September.
“The NSA takes in threat information every day. You have to ask, why now? What makes this information different?” added Stepanovich.
“Too much of what we hear from the government about surveillance is either speculation or sweeping assertions that lack corroboration. The question isn’t if these programs used by this NSA can find legitimate threats, it’s if the same threats couldn’t be discovered in a less invasive manner. This situation fails to justify the NSA’s unchecked access to our personal information.”

The Latter-Day Rome Lives And Kills

Ancient History, Foreign Policy, Just War, Military, The State, War

“The Latter-Day Rome Lives And Kills” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“Libertarian extraordinaire John Stossel asks the right questions. He doesn’t always arrive at the right answers.

The questions Mr. Stossel poses on his Fox-Business TV show, small mercies, have little to do with the mindless things that busy Big Media. For the last couple of weeks, for example, the impetus among the mindless has been to provide the priapic Anthony Wiener with the boost his worthless life and life’s work have clearly needed.

The sexting antics of this engorged organism—a New-York City mayoral candidate and once a Democratic congressman—have allowed Mainstream Media to carry out its mission: knocking down one straw man (Weiner) to conceal the catastrophes of another (Obama).

Back to Stossel. To the question of ‘Are We Rome?’ posed on the July 18 segment of his eponymous show, Mr. Stossel replied, ‘Not yet.’

Wrong.

Mr. Stossel takes comfort in the fact that ‘we don’t kill people for sport. When we go to war, misguided or not, we don’t conquer or plunder. And when we win, we usually leave.’

The popular host is utterly mistaken—just as he was wrong to summarily dismiss the the threat to liberty of the ‘National Security Administration tracking patterns in our emails and phone calls,’ to quote his nonchalant column.

Who is Stossel kidding? American assassins hunt down and kill very many innocents abroad by drone. Unmanned aerial U.S. ‘drones have killed thousands, many of them civilians,’ attests Gabor Rona of Human Rights First.

And talk about a Roman spectacle! Targeted killing is even a bit of a sport—so much so that the latter-day Rome has established a “new medal that honors drone pilots and computer experts” for their long-distance killing prowess. It was to be called ‘The Distinguished Warfare Medal.’

Rome’s rulers were not early as efficient as the US is at killing. Uncle Sam has industrialized and streamlined war-time slaughter. No longer do thousands of legionnaires lay siege to a city with attack catapults; one pilots flattens it with a single ‘daisy cutter’ (and few qualms). …”

The complete column is “The Latter-Day Rome Lives And Kills.” Read it on WND.

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Glenn Greenwald: Guarding Liberty @ The Guardian

Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Technology, Terrorism, The State

More than “Smashing a CNN Government Apologist,” as EPJ’s Robert Wenzel put it, Glenn Greenwald “floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee,” Cassius-Clay style, around the unincisive, silly Jeffrey Toobin. Here Greenwald demonstrates why “Major media,” as I wrote, “is like a big amorphous amoeba. This simple, single-celled organism will instinctively act in unison to preserve its integrity.” To maintain equilibrium, morons have to keep the brilliant out.

I’ve searched in vain for follow-up headlines on ABC headline News, UPI, Drudge, Fox News & Business, on and on. US media does not wish to discuss the new twist in an “NSA program [that] reportedly allows analysts to track emails, chats, web searches.”

Liberty’s guardian at The Guardian, the American Glenn Greenwald, is responsible for revealing the following new and horrifying details:

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects ‘nearly everything a user does on the internet’

• XKeyscore gives ‘widest-reaching’ collection of online data
• NSA analysts require no prior authorization for searches
• Sweeps up emails, social media activity and browsing history
• NSA’s XKeyscore program – read one of the presentations

“I, sitting at my desk,” said Snowden, could “wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email”.
US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden’s assertion: “He’s lying. It’s impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do.”
But training materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed.
XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

Read on.