Category Archives: The State

IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity

Constitution, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, Liberty, Morality, Private Property, Taxation, The State

“IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity” is the current column, now on WND:

“House Republicans are waging a symbolic and futile battle to slash the Internal Revenue Service’s budget by $3 billion. Republicans, according to reports, want the tax-collectors to pay for ‘unfairly scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.’

As usual, the GOP finesses the matter, as does the press.

The Washington Post’s Michael Gerson understated the IRS’s abuse of ‘police power’ as a mere ‘intrusion’; an ideological targeting by federal investigation of a political movement. To its credit, the Post’s Editorial Board stepped it up, conceding, at the time of the scandal that, “Any unequal application of the law based on ideological viewpoint is unpardonable—toxic to the legitimacy of the government’s vast law-enforcement authority.”

More to the point—and likely with White-House imprimatur—the IRS persecuted American patriots for promoting the constitutional principles upon which America was founded, but which are no longer a lodestar for the country’s government. These groups were hounded for their principles—and for asking to keep more of what is rightfully theirs in the service of these values.

How perverse is that?

And how perverse is the sight of the same IRS bureaucrats getting their freak-on (as in groove-on) at your expense?

Watch this YouTube clip of a representative cross-section, no doubt, of the IRS workforce at a “training conference.” Look at these off-putting officials having a jolly good time on your dime. Chins and butts wiggling obscenely all over the show; these people belong in a Federico Fellini film.

You could not fan away the smell in that hall if you tried. …

… These repulsive IRS agents, stomping about with abandon in carnival-like conferences and getaways: Do they represent you? Do they reflect your habits, manners, demeanor, priorities or worldview?

…We are trapped in the deforming, deadly clutches of institutionalized freaks, the remedy to which is…”

The complete column is “IRS? Demolish That Den Of Iniquity.” Read it on WND.

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Turning The State Against Itself

Barack Obama, Ethics, Government, Homeland Security, Intelligence, Morality, Technology, Terrorism, The State

Morality as you and I think of it is already in short supply in government. Barack Obama has taken the initiative to weed out any vestiges of ethical impulses in government workers, the kind of urges that motivate whistleblowers, for instance.

The tyrant has launched the “Insider Threat Program,” “an unprecedented government-wide crackdown under which millions of federal bureaucrats and contractors must watch out for ‘high-risk persons or behaviors’ among co-workers. Those who fail to report them could face penalties, including criminal charges.”

Correction: The creep-in-chief issued the edict way back, after he jailed Army Pfc. Bradley Manning for exposing US war crimes. (There is a hell of a lot we don’t know about the foolish filth that is in office, as media have been unwilling to track this man’s infractions.)

The state spying on itself could turn out well for its subjects. Let the oink sector turn on itself. Let these pampered state workers be permanently consumed with and distracted by suspicion and fear, lest they end up in jail.

UPDATED: ILANA MERCER Twitter Identity Hijacked & Is Google Now A Proxy For The NSA? (DuckDuckGo.com’s NSA-Proof)

Fascism, Ilana Mercer, Internet, Media, Propaganda, Technology, The State

The ILANA MERCER handle on Twitter—name and identity—has been hijacked by at least one rogue actor on Twitter, acting maliciously to impersonate me.

The holder of this fraudulent account has, naturally, altered his account’s URL, but is otherwise masquerading as me, down to my description on the original Ilana Mercer Twitter account. This shameless fraud calls his account “Live It Up.”

Another likely bad actor using my name (ILANA MERCER) on Twitter calls herself “Ilana Mercer (Viola_ti_do).” She has not appropriated the identity/description associated with my Twitter account.

What’s really suspicious is the results of the latest Google Search for “ILANA MERCER Twitter.” On a search for “ILANA MERCER TWITTER,” Google has suddenly (literally starting today) begun to throw up first these imposter handles and their puerile postings.

Understand: The impersonators’ posts are not current. Mine are. Yet a Google sweep has placed them first up on a search for “ilana mercer twitter,” and has made it well-nigh impossible to trace the authentic “ilana mercer twitter” account on its Search.

Questioning Google operations is far from unreasonable in light of the revelation that “the National Security Agency has ‘direct access to the systems of Google.” This writer, like many other libertarians, has moreover, written of Google’s collusion with the administration in “‘Thank You For Your Service, Mr. Snowden,'” the widely read WND, EPJ and American Daily Herald column.

Well before the National Security Agency (NSA) scandal broke, when the teletwits—legal experts included—were deferring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) respectfully as a protector of rights—this column had warned against the filthy FISA Court. In “From Sexting To Snooping In Surveillance-State USA,” I cautioned, in particular, that “Companies that give up … information to the government have ‘immunity,’ which has been ‘built into a 2008 revision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.’

Name and shame impersonators and mischief-makers on social media.

Question the search engine whose search algorithms appear to favor the “Statist Quo,” as opposed to reality.

Share, Re-tweet, and Like this post on social media.

And remember, this could happen to YOU!

UPDATED: The NSA-Proof DuckDuckGo.com search engine gets it right. We are blessed with pockets of free-market innovators. One of them is an NSA-proof new search engine, DuckDuckGo.com. Guess what? Plugged into this NSA-proof search engine, the search “ilana mercer twitter” yields the authentic account, rather than the imposter accounts.

This is interesting.

Will freedom-lovers ditch Google for DuckDuckGo.com?

Government Gone Wild

Government, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Liberty, The State

Government Gone Wild
By Myron Pauli

If there is one thing that I can guarantee, it is that “the government” does not listen to ME! In 1988, I was at an “intelligence community meeting” where they wanted a consensus over doing “engineering-level-drawings” of everything that “the Soviet Union” would be deploying 62 years later in 2050, when some dissident in the rear (me!) pointed out that 62 years ago, we did not know of “…the neutron, jets, transistors, computers, lasers, DNA, penicillin, inertial navigation ….” In frustration, I said, “We don’t even know if there will be a Soviet Union in 10 years!”. A USAF Colonel responded eloquently with “shut up!”

In fact, the government cannot be listening to most Americans. It certainly did not pay any attention to Major Nidal Hasan who was carrying on for months about killing Americans. The government could not even monitor that a buck private, Bradley Manning, was downloading 750,000 documents! Did they think he was a speed-reader?? Nor can the government listen to over 300,000,000 Americans – but it CAN archive everything – to be searched later, on any pretense. The odds of some nutcase Adam Lanza posting on FACEBOOK “I am going to shoot up P.S. 84” is remote and the odds of the NSA picking that up is even remoter.

After the fact, of course, they can datamine Tsardaev, Lanza, Ron Paul, Pope Francis, Glenn Greenwald or anyone of interest. And will millions of people having who-knows-what access to these databases, who-knows-what mischief can happen. The crucial issue, in my opinion, about Edward Snowden, who “outed” himself, is: Who else has access – how do we know that Putin and Xi are not accessing the American database on Americans – what could be more convenient to China but to tap into the database that the NSA updates – if Bradley Manning can do it, why not Xi? And since Uncle Sam shares intelligence with “our allies” – do they let the Germans spy on Americans while our government spies on Germans and share the data?

Keep in mind the old movie “All the Kings Men,” where corrupt Governor Willie Stark wanted this reporter to “get the dirt” on his enemy, Judge Stanton. How much easier with billions of dollars of computers and trillions upon trillions of bytes of information to access? Remember J. Edgar Hoover who had the goods on Presidents, Congressmen, and Martin Luther King? What a field day he would have nowadays.

But the ultimate tragedy is that most Americans care not a hoot for the Fourth Amendment or the rest of the constitution. Feeling safe is what counts. Arguably, locking up drunk drivers or all black men aged 14-34 might reduce drunk driving or reduce inner-city crime. But what is more appalling is how many Americans would support such odious rubbish in the name of “safety.”

“It can’t happen here? Ask the over 100,000 Americans of Japanese descent who were locked up in “concentration camps” (FDR’s words!) without a shred of evidence and in clear violation of the 14th Amendment and supported by a Supreme Court decision, Korematsu v. US.

TSA, NSA, DEA, DHS, HHS, IRS, whatever – it is all an unaccountable bureaucratic maze – keeping track of the American subjects who vote for the same Congressmen and Presidents who promise use everything from “health care” to “security” to “world leadership” – everything but liberty (an abstraction that few have any understanding of). The problem is not Bush or Obama or Pelosi or Graham or “federal employees” or “contractors” but the Americans who empower this government gone wild.

As for monitoring “the enemy”: Walt “Pogo” Kelly said it best. “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

P.S.: I recommend that everyone watch “Judgment at Nuremberg.”

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Barely a Blog (BAB) contributor Myron Pauli grew up in Sunnyside Queens, went off to college in Cleveland and then spent time in a mental institution in Cambridge MA (MIT) with Benjamin Netanyahu (did not know him), and others until he was released with the “hostages” and Jimmy Carter on January 20, 1981, having defended his dissertation in nuclear physics. Most of the time since, he has worked on infrared sensors, mainly at Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC. He was NOT named after Ron Paul but is distantly related to physicist Wolftgang Pauli; unfortunately, only the “good looks” were handed down and not the brains. He writes assorted song lyrics and essays reflecting his cynicism and classical liberalism. Click on the “BAB’s A List” category to access the Pauli archive.