Category Archives: The State

UPDATE II: The Evergreen State’s Profligate Oink Sector

Constitution, Crime, Debt, Democracy, Government, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Private Property, Taxation, The State

“The Evergreen State’s Profligate Oink Sector” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“By now, Americans with a modicum of cerebral alacrity have a sense of the attitude among Washington State Democrats toward the immutable right of the people to keep their earnings. You all witnessed the despicable Jim McDermott’s intimidating verbal assaults, leveled at conservative property owners, during the House committee hearing on the den of iniquity and vice that is the Internal Revenue Service. For what is the seeking of ‘tax-exempt status’ if not a plea, directed at our overlords who art in D.C., to keep more of what is rightfully ours?

What Edmund Burke said about the House of Commons in his day applies in spades to a House packed with the likes of Rep. Jim McDermott D-Wash. ‘Designed as a control for the people,’ the House has become a control ‘upon the people.’

And the trend extends to local governments, gone from which are the old-fashioned county governors, once devoted to low taxes and careful spending.

Here goes.

While trying to be neighborly, I made the mistake of being less than reverential about my property taxes in ‘The Evergreen State,’ and in particular, the 51.4 percent appropriated for ‘State and Local Schools.’

I was informed in high decibels that my husband and I, hardworking both, ought to thank our lucky stars for this valuable index—thousands paid per year toward ‘State and Local Schools’—for without it we’d be clueless about … the value of our home. (If anything, taxes distort market prices. But more about the curious fallacy of the benevolent property tax, as a price signal in the housing market, in a follow-up column.)

Yes, siree. The bad tempered diatribe then swerved to the plight of local law enforcement, who, my interlocutor alleged, were powerless to police a squatter camp in the North Bend vicinity, for lack of resources. Some believe that twice did a man from this homeless encampment invade a homestead in the community.

We fork over thousands in property taxes per annum, yet, as was being asserted, the police were without the necessary funds to fulfill the State’s only constitutional duty: protecting the people. Naturally, where the State fails to carry out its sacred duty, as is almost always the case, The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution instantiates the individual’s natural right to do exactly what the heroic homeowners did to safeguard life and property: hastened the intruder’s descent into hell.

Commensurate with the value this Washington-State locality places on limited authority and republican virtues—none at all—law enforcement is not even itemized in the property-tax bill issued.

The truth is that the lion’s share of our property taxes goes toward …

Read the complete column. “The Evergreen State’s Profligate Oink Sector” is now on WND.

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UPDATE I: The “wasteful monstrosity” discussed above was celebrated by the local newspaper’s intrepid reporters. It too is local in name only—for most “local newspapers” are corporately owned. In our case, the pabulum published weekly is by permission of The Seattle Times Co. When our local rag is not reporting on a theatre that will close, a cinema that is hiring, or a pizza place that’ll host “Raise the Dough for Seattle Children’s”—the newspaper simply parrots the partyline on everything. I know, because I line my parrot’s cage with its pages.

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UPDATE II (7/24): For more of an idea of the all-pervasive profligacy of the oink sector in my state, check out the “Seattle Parasite-To-Resident Ratio.”

UPDATED: Who Is General Keith Alexander? (We Know What Charlie Rose Is)

Barack Obama, Constitution, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Intelligence, Liberty, Media, Morality, Natural Law, Propaganda, Regulation, Terrorism, The State

Charlie Rose’s little-watched public television tête-à-tête is in the news because little Obama ran scared into Rose’s loving, all-forgiving embrace, to justify his National Security Agency’s unconstitutional, naturally illicit and all-round reprehensible spying programs.

A worthier and more trustworthy guest on Charlie Rose’s show was James Bamford, who appeared days before the despicable Barack Obama put in a cameo.

Do you want to know a thing or two about FOUR-STAR GENERAL KEITH ALEXANDER—“the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar”—who dissembled his way through a House hearing today?

Ignore the “Ass with Ears,” aka Obama. Read “The Secret War: INFILTRATION. SABOTAGE. MAYHEM, on WIRED magazine.

“FOR YEARS, FOUR-STAR GENERAL KEITH ALEXANDER HAS BEEN BUILDING A SECRET ARMY CAPABLE OF LAUNCHING DEVASTATING CYBERATTACKS. NOW IT’S READY TO UNLEASH HELL.”

MORE on WIRED magazine.

UPDATE: “No Rose Can Mask the Stench of Obama’s Tyranny,” writes Brother William N. Grigg: “Like a skunk that has grown inured to its own smell, Barack Obama is oblivious to the dense musk of tyrannical arrogance that he customarily emits. As someone who is statist to down to his chromosomes, Mr. Obama considers government’s power to be illimitable, and individual freedom to be a revocable gift conferred by those who presume to rule the rest of us. This was made abundantly – and redundantly – clear in a recent interview Obama gave to the repellently sycophantic PBS host Charlie Rose regarding the totalitarian NSA surveillance program. …”

MORE.

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UPDATED: Author Of A Book About Her Vagina Faults Edward Snowden For Not Discussing His Privates (Or Hers)

Conspiracy, Feminism, Gender, Intelligence, Pseudo-intellectualism, Sex, The State

Only in America could a woman like Naomi Wolf come to be regarded as a philosopher-king. The author of a book about her own vagina has found fault with Edward Snowden for his clarity, eloquence and familiarity with the law under which he will likely be prosecuted.

Well of course Wolf would be discomfited (as indicated in her “Is Edward Snowden an agent of the state or a CyberWarrior battling for our freedoms?”) by Snowden’s piercing clarity; after all her strong suit—her comfort zone—lies not in the cerebral cortex but down South.

Actually, scratch that: Wolf’s vagina, or so I read in the unanimously bad reviews her book got, is in as bad a shape as her brain.

UPDATE (6/17): Here are excerpts from Edward Snowden’s Q & A at the Guardian. Warning to Naomi Wolf and others burdened by fishy logic: Nowhere does Snowden mention Wolf’s vagina (the title of her …book). Ergo, he is probably “Not Who He Purports to be.”

1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities?

2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?

Answer:

1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That’s not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Second, let’s be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn’t declared war on the countries – the majority of them are our allies – but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we’re not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the “consent of the governed” is meaningless.

Q: Why did you just not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred country for asylum?

Answer:

Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration.

1) Define in as much detail as you can what “direct access” means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

Answer:

1) More detail on how direct NSA’s accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on – it’s all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

Question:

What are your thoughts on Google’s and Facebook’s denials? Do you think that they’re honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they’re compelled to lie?

Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you’re presented with a secret order that you’re forbidding to reveal the existence of, what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (without revealing the order)?

Answer:

Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we’re finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception.

They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?

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Death Panels, By Any Other Name (Ask Nurse Diesel)

Government, Healthcare, Regulation, The State

The consequences of one element of the Affordable Care Act to poor, elderly Americans are too horrid and painfully obvious to be dismissed as “unintended consequences.”

Government planners plan on penalizing hospitals that suffer from a condition these vile technocrats have labeled “EXCESS READMISSIONS.”

If we are to deconstruct this Orwellian “doublespeak,” what does “EXCESS READMISSIONS” mean?

Read how the repulsive (Hispanic) Nurse Diesel (NURSE TERESA) addresses a sweet 84-year-old lady, who has been admitted to hospital with pneumonia, and, given her advanced age, will likely need to be readmitted in the future.

Ms. Kerner, you see, has been flagged from what our enlightened technocrats also call a “frequent flyer list”:

Nurse D 320775_10150374593969894_594166473_n

NURSE TERESA: My name’s Teresa. I’m one of the nurse practitioners here. How are you?

FREDDA KERNER: I’m doing well thank you.

NURSE TERESA: I’m here to see you because you came up on a special list.

FREDDA KERNER: A special list of what?

NURSE TERESA: You’re on a special list of patients who are back here. To tell you the truth Medicare is now looking at this very closely.

EMILY SENAY [narration]: THERE’S A NEW PROGRAM HERE AT ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL IN NEW BRUNSWICK, NEW JERSEY LIKE MANY OTHER HOSPITALS AROUND THE NATION. IT TARGETS PATIENTS LIKE 84 YEAR OLD FREDDA KERNER – WHO THE HOSPITAL CALLS A FREQUENT FLYER. THAT’S BECAUSE SHE KEEPS COMING BACK.
SHE WAS FIRST HOSPITALIZED IN JANUARY WITH ABDOMINAL PAIN. TEN MONTHS LATER IN NOVEMBER, SHE WAS READMITTED WITH PNEUMONIA.

EMILY SENAY: Did you know that you were getting weaker and having more trouble breathing at home?

FREDDA KERNER: Oh yes yes yes.

EMILY SENAY: Do you want to come to the hospital again?

FREDDA KERNER: No, as nice as they are, I really would rather stay home.

EMILY SENAY [narration]: THE HOSPITAL IS CERTAINLY INTERESTED IN PROVIDING BETTER CARE FOR PATIENTS…BUT THAT’S NOT THE ONLY REASON TO KEEP SOMEONE LIKE
FREDDA KERNER FROM BEING READMITTED. ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL IS ALSO TRYING TO AVOID MEDICARE PENALTIES FOR WHAT THE GOVERNMENT CALLS “EXCESS READMISSIONS.”

IT’S A NEW POLICY THAT WENT INTO EFFECT THIS PAST OCTOBER AS PART OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT – MEANT TO SAVE THE GOVERNMENT MORE THAN A QUARTER BILLION DOLLARS JUST OVER THE NEXT YEAR.

MORE.

Nurse Diesel:

Diversity Diesel:

Watch Frequent Fliers and Healthcare Reform on PBS.