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Gary Edwards

Can Americans Escape the Deception? - 0 views

www.paulcraigroberts.org/...can-americans-escape-deception

Paul-Craig-Roberts

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 11 Jul 12
     
    I've been reading Paul Craig Roberts since high school, when i used to clip his backpage columns in NewsWeek magazine. These days, you have to go to his blog to get the truth. But what a truth it is! Incredible, forceful but presented only as PCR can do. His wake up call to America is not about Republicans or Democrats. It's about our liberty and the all out assault our government, socialist and conservatives alike, has launched on the Constitution. Amerika! This is what it comes to. It's also why i'm a libertarian. Read it and weep. Excerpt is from the 9/11 section. excerpt: In a real investigation, the 9/11 evidence would not have been illegally destroyed, and the investigation would have been conducted by experts, not by government agencies assigned a cover-up and by political hacks. The NIST report is abject nonsense. It explains nothing. It is a fabricated computer simulation of a non-event. The co-chairmen and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission later wrote books in which they stated that information was withheld from the commission, the military lied to the commission, and the commission "was set up to fail." Yet, these astounding admissions by the leaders of the 9/11 Commission had no impact on Congress, the presstitute media, or the public. All heads were in the sand. Please, whatever you do, don't make us emotional weaklings face the facts. More than one hundred firefighters, police, first responders, and building maintenance personnel report hearing and experiencing scores of explosions in the twin towers, including powerful explosions in the sub-basements prior to the collapse of the towers. Distinguished scientists, authors of many peer-reviewed scientific papers, report finding unreacted nano-thermite in the dust from the towers, tested it for its explosive and high-heat producing ability, and reported the unequivocal results. Seventeen hundred architects and engineers have testified in a petition to Congress that the th
  • Paul Merrell on 12 Jul 12
     
    For a detailed and fully referenced study of how 9-11 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow's conflict of interest and how he kept Commission members in the dark and sabotaged the Commission report, see http://tinyurl.com/6tdfc56
Gary Edwards

Federal gestapo illegally raid Gibson Guitar factories, arbitrarily confiscate millions... - 0 views

www.naturalnews.com/_Gibson_Guitar_armed_raid.html

Gibson-Guitar DOJ-Gestapo

shared by Gary Edwards on 31 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • For the second time in two years, armed federal agents have illegally raided the manufacturing facilities of Gibson Guitars Corp., this time confiscating more than a million dollars worth of imported wood and ebony -- and they did so without proper notice or warning, without any valid reason, and without lawful charges of any kind.
  • Gibson, one of the world's premier guitar manufacturers, and a company that has continually tried to honestly and readily abide by domestic and international laws concerning its material sourcing while continuing to provide quality products to its customers, has for some reason landed in the cross fire of the federal gestapo
  • Though Gibson has not violated any laws, and has gone above and beyond mandated requirements for sourcing sustainable wood and other materials for its instruments, the heavy hand of a bloated and out-of-control government has decided to unlawfully target the company for extinction.According to a recent press statement made by Henry Juszkiewicz, Gibson's Chairman and CEO, armed marshals stormed the company's Nashville, Tenn., and Memphis, Tenn., manufacturing facilities on August 24, and proceeded to evacuate the buildings, shut down production, order all employees to go home, and steal more than a million dollars worth of rosewood and ebony that had been legally imported from India
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • US officials have actually refused to tell Gibson what it allegedly did wrong, and why the raid was conducted. The company was never notified of any potential violations prior to the raid, and no official charges were ever filed. By all appearances, the government simply decided one day to unlawfully storm the company's manufacturing units with loaded weapons, and is now attempting to destroy one of the last honest American manufacturers in existence
  • The fact that the US federal government is refusing to disclose why it raided Gibson, as well as its added failure to press any proper legal charges against the company, suggests that there is truly no legitimate reason at all. Every guitar manufacturer imports rosewood and ebony from India and various other countries -- and many do not even have the same high quality standards as Gibson -- and yet, for whatever reason, Gibson has become the government's chosen target, despite the fact that it has broken no laws and has never been convicted of any crimes.
  • In today's America, in other words, government officials do not even need a legitimate reason to target a company, seize its goods, and shut it down. In total desecration of the rule of law, the federal government simply targets whomever it wants to these days, without reason or cause, and sends in its taxpayer-funded minions to perform the execution
  • If you own a guitar, you too could be targeted by the Feds based on corrupted Lacey Law
  • those who own Gibson guitars, and potentially even guitars of other brands, may want to prepare themselves for potential targeting by the federal government as well. The vague wording of the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Lacey Act of 2008, which is the law that was somehow used to warrant the Gibson raids, places all guitar owners and resellers in the cross fire of potential federal scrutiny."According to [The Lacey Act], if you bought a guitar from us and you resell it, you are criminally liable," stated Juszkiewicz.
  • So there you have it. The US has literally devolved into an unbridled police state where the federal government freely raids companies, arrests innocent individuals, and performs other acts of domestic terrorism for absolutely no reason at all. The enemies of freedom that now run our government presume guilt rather than innocence, and they deny the constitutional protocols of due process that they are tasked with upholding in the process.
  • Gary Edwards on 31 Aug 11
     
    (NaturalNews) Due process under the law and assumed innocence before being proven guilty are two concepts that are apparently no longer applicable in the United States of America, at least as far as the federal government is concerned. Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033454_Gibson_Guitar_armed_raid.html#ixzz1Wd8Nf600
Gary Edwards

The Feds Criminalize Ordinary Life - 0 views

cfif.org/...feds-criminalize-ordinary-life

Civil-Liberties Gestapo-Government Jackboot-Obammunism Federal-Regulations

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Sep 11 - No Cached
  • Ordinary life should not be treated as a criminal conspiracy.
  • Former U.S. attorney generals Ed Meese and Richard Thornburgh asked Congress last winter merely to ensure that any bills carrying criminal penalties be referred to the Judiciary Committee for review.
  • To their great discredit, the House GOP leadership failed to adopt such a rule.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • In truth, Congress should do far more.
  • It should undertake a comprehensive review of the federal criminal code – and perform some radical liposuction on it.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Sep 11
     
    Looks like the issue of Civil Liberties and the Obama Gestapo Government are getting traction in the main stream media.  So far the incredible increase in Obammunism's crushing Federal Regulations has been focused on the economic destruction caused.  The flip side of the Obammunism coin is that of Civil Liberties and the 10th Amendment getting similarly crushed. excerpt: Finally, some front-page attention to a major, and frightening, American problem! Tuesday's Wall Street Journal featured an in-depth look at how federal laws increasingly apply criminal penalties for violations involving no mens rea, roughly translated as a "guilty mind." The stricture against criminal penalties for unwitting violations is an age-old, bedrock legal principle. Alas, in today's dangerously armed, bureaucratic super-state, ancient legal principles go by the wayside when politicians pretend to be "tough on crime" and when officious civil "servants" indulge their fetishes for power. U.S. governments at every level these days are prone to "overcriminalization," which means turning ordinary activity into violations of the law, turning what should be civil violations into criminal ones, and applying penalties far harsher than should be warranted. On the mens rea front, the Journal explains: "In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them…. Today, there are an estimated 4,500 crimes in federal statutes, plus thousands more embedded in federal regulations."
Paul Merrell

Exclusive: TSA's Secret Behavior Checklist to Spot Terrorists - The Intercept - 0 views

firstlook.org/...vior-checklist-spot-terrorists

war & peace politics of fear tyranny TSA behavioral-identification

shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Fidgeting, whistling, sweaty palms. Add one point each. Arrogance, a cold penetrating stare, and rigid posture, two points. These are just a few of the suspicious signs that the Transportation Security Administration directs its officers to look out for — and score — in airport travelers, according to a confidential TSA document obtained exclusively by The Intercept. The checklist is part of TSA’s controversial program to identify potential terrorists based on behaviors that it thinks indicate stress or deception — known as the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT. The program employs specially trained officers, known as Behavior Detection Officers, to watch and interact with passengers going through screening. The document listing the criteria, known as the “Spot Referral Report,” is not classified, but it has been closely held by TSA and has not been previously released. A copy was provided to The Intercept by a source concerned about the quality of the program.
  • Fidgeting, whistling, sweaty palms. Add one point each. Arrogance, a cold penetrating stare, and rigid posture, two points. These are just a few of the suspicious signs that the Transportation Security Administration directs its officers to look out for — and score — in airport travelers, according to a confidential TSA document obtained exclusively by The Intercept. The checklist is part of TSA’s controversial program to identify potential terrorists based on behaviors that it thinks indicate stress or deception — known as the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques, or SPOT. The program employs specially trained officers, known as Behavior Detection Officers, to watch and interact with passengers going through screening.
  • The document listing the criteria, known as the “Spot Referral Report,” is not classified, but it has been closely held by TSA and has not been previously released. A copy was provided to The Intercept by a source concerned about the quality of the program. The checklist ranges from the mind-numbingly obvious, like “appears to be in disguise,” which is worth three points, to the downright dubious, like a bobbing Adam’s apple. Many indicators, like “trembling” and “arriving late for flight,” appear to confirm allegations that the program picks out signs and emotions that are common to many people who fly.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • A TSA spokesperson declined to comment on the criteria obtained by The Intercept. “Behavior detection, which is just one element of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) efforts to mitigate threats against the traveling public, is vital to TSA’s layered approach to deter, detect and disrupt individuals who pose a threat to aviation,” a spokesperson said in an emailed statement.
  • Since its introduction in 2007, the SPOT program has attracted controversy for the lack of science supporting it. In 2013, the Government Accountability Office found that there was no evidence to back up the idea that “behavioral indicators … can be used to identify persons who may pose a risk to aviation security.” After analyzing hundreds of scientific studies, the GAO concluded that “the human ability to accurately identify deceptive behavior based on behavioral indicators is the same as or slightly better than chance.” The inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security found in 2013 that TSA had failed to evaluate SPOT, and “cannot ensure that passengers at United States airports are screened objectively, show that the program is cost-effective, or reasonably justify the program’s expansion.” Despite those concerns, TSA has trained and deployed thousands of Behavior Detection Officers, and the program has cost more than $900 million since it began in 2007, according to the GAO.
  • The 92-point checklist listed in the “Spot Referral Report” is divided into various categories with a point score for each. Those categories include a preliminary “observation and behavior analysis,” and then those passengers pulled over for additional inspection are scored based on two more categories: whether they have “unusual items,” like almanacs and “numerous prepaid calling cards or cell phones,” and a final category for “signs of deception,” which include “covers mouth with hand when speaking” and “fast eye blink rate. Points can also be deducted from someone’s score based on observations about the traveler that make him or her less likely, in TSA’s eyes, to be a terrorist. For example, “apparent” married couples, if both people are over 55, have two points deducted off their score. Women over the age of 55 have one pointed deducted; for men, the point deduction doesn’t come until they reach 65. Last week, the ACLU sued TSA to obtain records related to its behavior detection programs, alleging that they lead to racial profiling. The lawsuit is based on a Freedom of Information Act request the ACLU filed last November asking for numerous documents related to the program, including the scientific justification for the program, changes to the list of behavior indicators, materials used to train officers and screen passengers, and what happens to the information collected on travelers.
  • “The TSA has insisted on keeping documents about SPOT secret, but the agency can’t hide the fact that there’s no evidence the program works,” said Hugh Handeyside, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project, in a statement announcing the lawsuit. Being on the lookout for suspicious behavior is a “common sense approach” that is used by law enforcement, according to TSA. “No single behavior alone will cause a traveler to be referred to additional screening or will result in a call to a law enforcement officer (LEO),” the agency said in its emailed statement. “Officers are trained and audited to ensure referrals for additional screening are based only on observable behaviors and not race or ethnicity.” One former Behavior Detection Officer manager, who asked not to be identified, said that SPOT indicators are used by law enforcement to justify pulling aside anyone officers find suspicious, rather than acting as an actual checklist for specific indicators. “The SPOT sheet was designed in such a way that virtually every passenger will exhibit multiple ‘behaviors’ that can be assigned a SPOT sheet value,” the former manager said.
  • The signs of deception and fear “are ridiculous,” the source continued. “These are just ‘catch all’ behaviors to justify BDO interaction with a passenger. A license to harass.” The observations of a TSA screener or a Behavior Detection Officer shouldn’t be the basis for referring someone to law enforcement. “The program is flawed and unnecessarily delays and harasses travelers. Taxpayer dollars would be better spent funding real police at TSA checkpoints,” the former manager said. A second former Behavior Detection Officer manager, who also asked not to be identified, told The Intercept that the program suffers from lack of science and simple inconsistency, with every airport training its officers differently. “The SPOT program is bullshit,” the manager told The Intercept. “Complete bullshit.”
  • Paul Merrell on 04 Apr 15
     
    I've completely boycotted airlines in the U.S. since 2002 because I refuse to submit to the outrageous treatment by government that is now required to board a commercial airliner. If the airlines want my business, they need to start lobbying to end the politics of fear and the Gestapo tactics of government. plus pushing for an honest investigation of the 9/11/2001 incidents.  
Gary Edwards

The Economic Philosopher's Outcast: Mises | Steve Mariotti - 1 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...ic-philosophers_b_3787489.html

Ludwig-Von-Mises Libertarian Liberty-Tryanny

shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Mises, the modern day creator of the Classical Liberal movement (today also called libertarianism) destroyed the intellectual arguments of socialism by proving that it was impossible to allocate scarce resources effectively without private property and free-market prices. He showed that the more the state limited economic incentives to individuals, the greater the harm to low-income people and the general population.
  • Centralized planning, something that was characteristic of all three types of socialism: the Nazis, the Fascists and the Communists, led to the ruin of an economy, and resulted in more and more tyranny and the rise of the totalitarian state.
  • What economists failed to understand was that massive government spending and a authoritative centralized government would bring economic ruin to Germany, Russia, and many other countries.
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  • Sooner or later government debt has to be repaid out of tax receipts. Our current revenue base is not strong enough to sustain a viable repayment program to service the debt. Today we create money -- billions a month -- to meet the debt repayments. As new money floods the market its value declines. The country experiences inflation destroying the savings, and pensions of its citizens.
  • Similar conditions led to the downfall of the Weimar Republic. The rampant inflation of the 1920s in Germany was a contributing factor to the rise of Hitler, Himmler and the centralized planning of the ultimate socialist organization the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis).
  • The anticipation of future consumer demand impacts the output of entrepreneurs intent on meeting that demand in the future and thereby make a profit
  • Author of dozens of seminal books and hundreds of articles, Mises works were studied by the Nazis in the 1930s as part of their assault on pro-democracy individuals, particularly those who were Jewish. Mises' unparalleled contributions to economic theory, which upheld a free market over one controlled by a coercive government, later fostered a world-wide movement. His books were significant for their discussions of money, credit, Socialism, central planning, and human action.
  • Mises' most remarkable argument for the free market came in his 1922 piece, "Socialism: an Economic and Sociological Analysis." In a Socialist state, there were no prices, essential to allocating resources. Prices signaled information simultaneously to both entrepreneurs and consumers.
  • The centralized decision making over both production and consumption is impossible because of the complexity of an economy composed of hundreds millions of people and trillions of decisions every second. This insight gave Mises a greater appreciation of the value of a market economy, one that allows for the change of prices based on changes in supply and demand.
  • The recent bankruptcy of the City of Detroit is a harbinger of serious problems for the $2.9 trillion municipal bond market. Mises witnessed firsthand rampant government spending, overwhelming debt, and inflation in both Germany and Austria. The results of similar economic policies are threatening major urban centers around our country.
  • This defense of limited government and the rights of all citizens made Professor Mises a threat to the ultimate central planners and explains why the Gestapo had sped to his home to arrest him.
  • Mises, leader of the Austrian School of Economics, mentored the great Nobel Prize winner Friederich Hayek, who I studied with in 1979 at the Institute for Humane Studies. They influenced noted economists such as Israel Kirzner, Robert Higgs, Lawrence White, Peter G. Klein, Roger Garrison, Edward Stringham, Peter Boettke, and the novelist Ayn Rand who later made popular classical liberal economic policies. Mises disciples today see the threat of government intervention in our nation's economy as seriously undermining economic productivity and self-starting growth.
  • People are increasingly disenchanted with mainstream Keynesian views of the economy. Keynesians were blindsided by the housing bubble and the financial crisis. Their response was to pump the economy with cheap credit and huge government spending which has only prolonged the agony. The Austrians led by Mises offer a compelling alternative explanation in which booms and busts are caused by central-bank manipulation of interest rates in vain attempts to stimulate or stabilize the economy.
  • Klein further points out that monetary central planning, combined with misguided housing regulation led the economy to produce the wrong kinds of goods and services. For Klein recovery means getting the government out of the way and letting entrepreneurs fix the mistakes.
  • According to Paul Wisenthal, the country's leading journalist authority on entrepreneurship education for young people, America was built on new small business development, led by its forefathers who were primarly entrepreneurs. He believes the U.S. may continue to diminish small business incentives as government expands on taxpayer dollars that don't exist.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Aug 13
     
    I've said for more than 40 years that "inflation is the cruelest tax of all." In a fiat currency economy, it is robbery, pure and simple; and the poor are hardest hit because they lack the capital to make investments that can outpace inflation. The net effect is to transfer wealth from the lower economic classes to the wealthy, most of all the investment banksters and "old wealth".
Gary Edwards

Feds confiscate investigative reporter's confidential files during raid | The Daily Caller - 3 views

dailycaller.com/...confidential-files-during-raid

Audrey-Hudson Whistleblower-Protection-Act

shared by Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • A veteran Washington D.C. investigative journalist says the Department of Homeland Security confiscated a stack of her confidential files during a raid of her home in August — leading her to fear that a number of her sources inside the federal government have now been exposed. In an interview with The Daily Caller, journalist Audrey Hudson revealed that the Department of Homeland Security and Maryland State Police were involved in a predawn raid of her Shady Side, Md. home on Aug. 6. Hudson is a former Washington Times reporter and current freelance reporter. A search warrant obtained by TheDC indicates that the August raid allowed law enforcement to search for firearms inside her home.
  • But without Hudson’s knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said. Outraged over the seizure, Hudson is now speaking out. She said no subpoena for the notes was presented during the raid and argues the confiscation was outside of the search warrant’s parameter. “They took my notes without my knowledge and without legal authority to do so,” Hudson said this week. “The search warrant they presented said nothing about walking out of here with a single sheet of paper.”
  • After the search began, Hudson said she was asked by an investigator with the Coast Guard Investigative Service if she was the same Audrey Hudson who had written a series of critical stories about air marshals for The Washington Times over the last decade. The Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 13
     
    If reality is as stated, the reporter has a pretty strong civil rights case against the government officials who knowingly participated in the theft and retention of the reporter's notes, two distinct conspiracies. Under the 4th Amendment, officers executing a search and seizure warrant may lawfully seize the items particularly described in the warrant and any other evidence of crime that is in plain view during the search. It's a big push of credibility to argue that reading documents stored in a bag in search for a gun falls within the "plain view" doctrine. The officer could instead just reach his hand into the bag and feel around for a gun. Quite a few extra steps involved in removing the documents and reading them simply to determine whether the bag contains a gun. Add in the facts that: [i] the supposed recognition of government documents argument does not explain why the officers seized personal handwritten notes too; and [ii] the evidence that the officer who discovered the docs had learned that the reporter was one who had called the conduct of his agency into question, and it comes out smelling a lot more like an attempt to discover the reporters' sources than a legitimate search for guns when the bag was searched.   Only one side heard from so far, of course. But this sounds more like low-level government officials who were ignorant of their legal obligations than a White House-driven scandal. But I wouldn't want to be the government lawyer who authorized the retention of the seized notes and other documents. They should have been returned without retaining copies the instant the lawyer learned of the circumstances of their seizure. There's not only a 4th Amendment liberty interest but also a 1st Amendment freecdom to communicate anonymously right protecting those documents and notes. 
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    I listened to an interview with Audrey Hudson last night. It seems to me the key fact is in this clip; "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said." Audrey had written a series of articles describing how the Homeland Security and Transportation agency had been lying about air marshalls and the post 911 program to secure passenger flights. The documents that were stolen listed her sources - the whistle blowers inside the Homeland Security administration who leaked information about the lies and the many problems with the program that the Obama administration was covering up. This sounds to me like another example of Obama hunting down and persecuting whistleblowers. A direct violation of the 1989 - 2007 Whistleblower Protection Act. Not surprisingly, Ms Hudson had not tried to contact any of her whistleblowing sources for fear that the NSA would be watching and that this persecution would happen. Interestingly, the warrant was to seize a "potato launcher". No kidding! It seems Ms. Hudson's husband had, at one time been a licensed arms dealer. He lost that license having sold a gun with faulty paperwork. This event had occurred years earlier, and Mr. Hudson had long since moved on and was currently working for the Coast Guard as an outside contractor/consultant. So they seized the toy "potato launcher", as described in the warrant. But they also ransacked the home looking for the key documents that listed Ms Hudson's inside Homeland Security sources behind her air marshal scandal articles. These documents were the only items seized - other than the "potato launcher" that was the only item listed in the warrant. Seems we've been here before. From wikipedia, the story of Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller: ........................... Arrested on 1 July 1937, N
  • Gary Edwards on 26 Oct 13
     
    "But without Hudson's knowledge, the agents also confiscated a batch of documents that contained information about sources inside the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration, she said."
  • Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 13
     
    What troubles me the most about this event, assuming the truth of what's reported, is how well known the limitations on execution of a search warrant are within the law enforcement community. If it happened as described, it seems very unlikely that the officer who grabbed the documents did not know he was violating the 4th Amendment. Ditto for the lawyer or other official(s) who learned of what went down shortly thereafter, but kept the documents anyway. There's an arrogance that goes with government and corporate officials who don't have to personally pay damage awards. With no personal monetary liability (in reality, since the government or corporation picks up the tab), it becomes a matter of personal ethics and whether the misbehavior will anger or please the boss. If the ethics are weak, that becomes a pretty simple choice.
Gary Edwards

The Gibson Guitar Raid - HUMAN EVENTS - 1 views

www.humanevents.com/article.php

Gibson-Guitar DOJ-Gestapo government-regulation

shared by Gary Edwards on 31 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 31 Aug 11
     
    The Justice Department raided the Gibson Guitar factory in Nashville on Wednesday morning.  From a Gibson press release: On August 24, 2011, around 8:45 a.m. CDT, agents for the federal government executed four search warrants on Gibson's facilities in Nashville and Memphis and seized several pallets of wood, electronic files and guitars. Gibson had to cease its manufacturing operations and send workers home for the day, while armed agents executed the search warrants. Gibson has fully cooperated with the execution of the search warrants. This actually happened once before: In 2009, more than a dozen agents with automatic weapons invaded the Gibson factory in Nashville. The Government seized guitars and a substantial amount of ebony fingerboard blanks from Madagascar. To date, 1 year and 9 months later, criminal charges have NOT been filed, yet the Government still holds Gibson's property. Why is the Justice Department invading Gibson's factory and seizing its property, without filing any charges?  Do they think illegal materials might be hidden inside the guitars?  Or, given recent history, were they trying to hide illegal guns inside guitars headed for Mexico? No, this is all about the wood the guitars are made from.  As the Wall Street Journal explains:
Gary Edwards

Here's how big the potential 2013 tax hikes would be « The Enterprise Blog - 1 views

blog.american.com/...ential-2013-tax-hikes-would-be

James-Pethokoukis Federal-Gestapo Charts economic-armageddon tax-hikes Obammunism

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 12
     
    Stunning chart tracking from 1969 to 2013 the percentage of GDP the government seizes. The tax hikes coming in 2013 will seize over 3.5% of GDP. Previous high was in 1969, where the tax man seized 1.7%. Interesting look at the inverse relationship Government seizure of assets and productivity has with the nations economic growth and prosperity. The more the government takes, the less there is for the nation's citizens. Is that a radical economic insight? For the socialist, it's a connection they really don't want the people to make.
Gary Edwards

CHART OF THE DAY: This Is Why They Call It TAXMAGEDDON - 0 views

feedproxy.google.com/...ng-tax-hikes-in-context-2012-4

charts GDP Federal-Gestapo

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Apr 12
     
    Stunning chart tracking from 1969 to 2013 the percentage of GDP the government seizes. The tax hikes coming in 2013 will seize over 3.5% of GDP. Previous high was in 1969, where the tax man seized 1.7%. Interesting look at the inverse relationship Government seizure of assets and productivity has with the nations economic growth and prosperity. The more the government takes, the less there is for the nation's citizens. Is that a radical economic insight? For the socialist, it's a connection they really don't want the people to make.
Gary Edwards

The Impact of NSA Domestic Spying - Business Insider - 0 views

www.businessinsider.com/-of-nsa-domestic-spying-2013-6

NSA Domestic-Spying

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • NSA has collected cell records from all major mobile networks.
  • Thanks to AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein and NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Thomas Drake, we know that the NSA has been perpetually amassing not only phone records but virtually all electronic records and communications.
  • As an AT&T engineer, Klein discovered that a special NSA network actively "vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the cooperation of AT&T," emphasizing that "much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic."
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  • Binney — one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history — worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution."
  • He's detailed how, ever since 9/11, the NSA has run a top-secret surveillance program that amasses electronic data — phone calls, emails, banking and travel records, social media, entire government databases — and analyzes the information "to be able to monitor what people are doing" and who they are doing it with.
  • Thanks to AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein and NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Thomas Drake, we know that the NSA has been perpetually amassing not only phone records but virtually all electronic records and communications.
  • Binney would know — he built the original software (i.e. ThinThread) that identified, in real time, networks of connections between individuals based on their electronic communications.
  • "I can pull your entire life together from all those domains and map it out and show your entire life over time," Binney told documentarian Laura Poitras while she was investigating the NSA's $2 billion data storage facility in Bluffdale, Utah. "This is something the KGB, the Stasi or the Gestapo would have loved to have had."
  • Binney — one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history — worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution." He's detailed how, ever since 9/11, the NSA has run a top-secret surveillance program that amasses electronic data — phone calls, GPS information, emails, social media, banking and travel records, entire government databases — and analyzes the information "to be able to monitor what people are doing" and who they are doing it with.
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Jun 13
     
    Excellent coverage.  Follow the links, they are extraordinary. " Glenn Greenwald revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) is using the so-called "business records" provision of the Patriot Act to secretly collect telephone records of millions of Americans. Although the revelation doesn't surprise privacy advocates, the fact that Greenwald obtained a top secret court order compelling Verizon to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems is the first concrete piece of evidence exposing dragnet domestic surveillance. "
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