UPDATE: Can American Banks Raiding Safety Deposit Boxes Be Legal Next After they Loot their Customers Personal Accounts?

CV 1st posted 08.29.2012

"Yes, We Can! We don't need no phreakin' Constitution!"
                    ...and the people's response is:

the People say "You phreakin' DO need to obey the Federal and state constitutions!" Any actions to seize our private property by any federal agency or their law officers will be nullified by the individual states. Violators or trespassers of these personal rights can and will be arrested and judged in a state court. No federal magistrate has the granted authority to interpret or end-around our Rule of Constitutional Law.

Our own state law enforcement entities will no longer be a "team player" with tyrants, but will as they should be, do the right thing and become team players with the people, not accessories to oppression. 

Any bank likewise delegating these confiscations to third parties jeopardize their being prohibited for having any business authority or surrogates within those states.  

Questions? Watch:  ▶ Nullification a Tool We All Have by Thomas Woods - YouTube

---

August 29, 2012 by The Watchdog

It appears now that the government is aiding abetting the big banks now in every criminal act. 

The Politicians have adopted the strategy of saving the banks at all cost. Even if they have stolen homes they never owed legally in illegal foreclosures to taking money out of personal bank accounts to invest in risky ventures or move offshore out of reach of Federal Jurisdiction.

A Federal Judge has ruled banks can take segregated accounts and use the funds for anything without accountability.  Former New Jersey Governor and Former Goldman Sachs CEO John Corzine. As the head of MF Global, he stole over one billion dollars from private segregated accounts that were in the past hands off. He was not charged criminally for stealing other people’s money. Their Clients were left to take the loss.


Back in 1933 when FDR made it illegal for the American people to hold gold. Federal agents raided everyone’s’ safety deposit boxes. 

The state of California raided the people’s safety deposit boxes to fund the government to make up for their fiscal shortfall.

Recently Bank of America drilled holes in a persons safety deposit box without a court order and seized all the property and contents in the box.

The President Obama Signed the Executive Order named the National Defense Resource Preparedness. This document can be used to seize all the gold, stocks, bonds and anything valuable out of safety deposit boxes to fund the government if congress refuses to raise the debt ceiling or for some other financial crisis in the name of National security.


Regardless what reason the government or the banks use. Theft is Theft. It is stealing if it is taken without the consent of the people regardless what excuse the government comes up with. It is looting. 

Now since a Federal Judge said the Banks can take money out of segregated private accounts for any reason, the courts gave the money junkies an inch. I believe they will take a mile using this court ruling as a legal precedent. I believe this empowers the banks now to take contents out of people’s safety deposit boxes if they feel the need to do it; not just to take gold and silver coins. 

There can be jewelry and family heirlooms stolen forever to save a failing bank. They can take stock and bonds without any consequences if the government has their back using a police state to protect the thieves from the people.

Our Government is now conquered by the mega banks. The US Government at all cost will save the zombie banks because they are too big to fail at our expense if necessary. These banks are capable of anything. Do not underestimate these bankster gangsters to rob us all completely blind. Those laws that are supposed to protect our property is now disregarded for the benefit of the money junkies.

The People should take all their valuables, gold and silver coins. Family heirlooms, stocks, bonds and anything sentimental that is valuable and priceless out of these safety deposit boxes. If we keep them at the mercy of these bankers and the government, we can lose it all that is near and dear to us. 

We have no more protections from the abuses in government or the criminal banks with the blessing of the politicians to loot America. We have to protect what is ours. No one else will, not even those we are supposed to trust.

Our wealth and our property is up for grabs now. Who will steal first? Will it be the Government or the banks? Either way, we have to keep all we have out of their reach as much as possible. That means completely emptying our safety deposit boxes.  

We the people are the last line of defense from the thieving hands of the bankers and the government. Do not give corruption anymore opportunity to steal what little we have left. Let us take a bite out of crime by keeping all our property as far away from the government and the bankers as possible. It is our wealth and not theirs to steal. Do not feed the beast and keep our wealth to rebuild our nation.

Source:   Lone Star Watchdog  

Business Chiefs that Abhor Private Property

CEOs Against Private Property

March 31, 2015Ryan McMaken

The governor of Indiana last week signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, modeled on similar federal legislation. The Indiana statute states that a person’s religious beliefs may not be “substantially burden[ed]” by anti-discrimination statutes. In other words, if anti-discrimination laws could be construed as forcing a person to violate his own religious conscience, then the law allows for an exemption in that case to anti-discrimination mandates.

The response from the left has been fierce, and multiple CEOs of major firms, including Apple and Salesforce, have come out against the legislation with Salesforce announcing that it will impose a partial boycott on Indiana.

The actual points of the bill are murkier, and Gov. Pence of Indiana is now claiming that the bill does not actually allow business owners to discriminate.

Rather than get mired in a discussion of the minutiae of the Indiana law and similar laws, let it just be said that if the law allows for greater discrimination — and thus, enhances private property rights and lessens the load of government regulations — then it is good. If the new law does not do this, then it’s difficult to see what the point of it is except as a scheme to gain favor with some right-wing religious groups.

Exclusion Is a Foundation of Private Property

Even if the bill does allow for greater control over private property on the part of the owners, the new government-allowed discretion would still be far too restrictive since it would apply only to religious objections. After all, religion is merely one criteria that a property owner might employ to determine how he or she wishes to use his or her property. If an owner wishes to dispense with religious motivation in favor of the pure avaricious pursuit of profit, or wishes to use the business to forward the goal of restoring the Russian monarchy, why should those motivations be any less respected than religion?

By framing the debate as a religious matter, the advocates of regulated discrimination are able to portray many of the advocates as zealots. Meanwhile, the supporters of religious freedom in this case have reduced their argument to a discussion about the motivations behind how one uses private property, when they should really be advocating for the unhampered exercise of full private property rights.

Indeed, the debate has much in common with the Obamacare debate in which Obamacare advocates and opponents sparred over whether or not a business should be mandated by law to provide certain types of health care coverage. At the time, I noted that the while the media attempted to portray the controversy as a religious matter, it was really a debate over wages and contracts. 

Similarly, once we strip away all the culture-war grandstanding and claims of supporting enlightened free thought over Dark-Age superstition, what we find is that the debate over the Indiana law is a debate over the nature of private property, pure and simple. One group in this case advocates for a (regrettably limited) expansion of private property rights, while the other side argues for increased government regulation of private businesses and enterprises. 

Tom Cook and Marc Benioff, CEOs of Apple and Salesforce, respectively, have come out in favor of government regulation because they fear the possibility that someone somewhere might use his property in a way that Cook and Benioff find offensive. But at the core of their position is that it is good and legitimate for government to regulate the use of private property so it can be used only in ways that reflect the values of Cook’s and Benioff’s favored religious or socio-economic groups.

In spite of the perception of Cook and Benioff as capitalists of some sort, their grasp of the nature of private property appears shaky at best. If the concept of private property is to have any meaning at all, then ownership must include the ability to exclude others from using that property. In other words, if an owner of a plot of land or a device cannot exclude others from using that land or that device, then the owner does not actually own it. 

Furthermore, without the right to exclude, the “owner” is reduced to little more than a regulated caretaker.

Every Economic Act Involves Discrimination

In practice, the decision to exclude is always based on some type of discrimination. The type of discrimination can run the gamut from “you’re banned from my store because you groped customers” to “I don’t serve your (racial) kind.” In everyday life, the merchant, salesman, clerk, or owner of any kind must — because time is scarce — make constant discriminatory decisions as to whether or not he will do business with client A or client B. Indeed, every single economic act requires this sort of discrimination. A person may prefer to do business with more attractive people, or people who are friendlier. Or he may wish to work only with his co-religionists or citizens of his own nation-state. On a fundamental level, everyone knows this is the case, but many accept that it is the legitimate role of the state to decide which types of discrimination are acceptable and which are not. Hence, discrimination against unattractive people remains acceptable. Discrimination against certain racial groups is not.

Regardless of what groups end up being favored, the effect of any anti-discrimination law is to curtail the freedom of the owner and to increase the size and scope of government’s coercive power over the lives and livelihoods of property owners. Moreover, since anti-discrimination law is heavily dependent on proving intent and motivation, such regulation also puts the government in the position of investigating the thoughts and opinions of owners. Sometimes, owners make this easy for regulators by stating their motivations outright, but in other cases, private owners are investigated and inferences are made as to the feelings and views of owners. This is necessary because, since every business transaction requires some sort of discrimination, the mere act of not entering into a business transaction is not sufficient to prove not-government-approved discrimination.

The Effects of Discrimination Depend on Monopoly Power

 Finish reading

▶ ARMY and MSM Launch DisInfo Psyop Against American People – YouTube

Published on Mar 23, 2015

Alex Jones covers the current disinfo psyop being launched by the federal government in conjunction with Army Special Forces, mainstream media outlets who are afraid that the public is waking up to the fact that programs and training exercises are being launched to condition the public that troops will be placed on the streets in the event of a national emergency.

 
Related:
FEDS PREPARING TO INVADE TEXAS, LIST STATE AS ‘HOSTILE’ – http://www.infowars.com/feds-preparin…
SOCOM PLAN TO INVADE ‘HOSTILE’ TEXAS REVEALED – http://www.infowars.com/socom-plan-to…

 

The Great Fear and the Great Faith

1st pub by CV 10.29.12

By Rev. R.J. Rushdoony

Otto J. Scott, in Robespierre, The Voice of Virtue, calls attention to all important phenomenon of the French Revolution, The Great Fear.

Local, County, State Police Collude with Feds to Raid Republic Of Texas Meeting

21st century Honest Abe re-visits sovereign southern US state to maintain Washington's tyranny grip. State scalawag law enforcements & VFW complicit in Treason.

TEXIANS UNDER ATTACK # 2

At the regularly scheduled meeting of the Republic of Texas, officially starting at 9:50 a.m. and held, as usual, at the rented VFW Post 4892 in Bryan, Texas, the congenial and unimposing group was raided at 10:10 a.m. by an army of policing agencies with flashing emergency lights: Police Departments of Bryan and College Station along with their Brazos County Sheriff’s Office counterparts (northeast of San Antonio) along with deputies from the Kerr County Sheriff’s Office (west of San Antonio), The Texas Rangers, Department of Public Safety Highway Patrol State Troopers, The Texas State Attorney General’s Office, the FBI, and the US Marshall Service. Ingress and egress from Harvey Mitchell Parkway was sealed even to the media that responded two hours later from KBTX television during the four-hour ordeal.
 

How is it that a supposedly free people can be subjected to intimidating, rough and highly intrusive search and seizure when assembling lawfully and peaceably from all corners of this vast Country of Texas to educate those in attendance about the Historical 1836 Republic of Texas Constitution and celebrate a Nation wide Valentine’s Day and a fellow Texian’s 89th birthday?

The lead Kerr County deputy named in the paperwork, Jeff McCoy, who initially pretended to be a guest from Houston at the freely open-to-the-public meeting, stood up and blocked the only exit to the Republic of Texas’ rented room with armed and threatening police, announcing that he had a search warrant but he would not present it despite repeated requests stating that it would be made available AFTER the investigation. Everyone present was put on notice that they were not to leave the room without permission and escort by uniformed officers, almost all armed and wearing bulletproof vests. Some 15 to 30 minutes later a fleeting copy of the search warrant surfaced unannounced on the main table of which was never officially presented to those detained and searched.

As if dangerous criminals, many of the Texian people – generally seniors of respected middle-class business, farming, broadcasting, engineering, scientific, health, veterans and faith-based backgrounds – were one-by-one physically searched on their person and in their vehicles, finger printed, detained and then had their personal belongings and property searched and seized. Surprisingly, the warranted DNA swabbing was omitted.

A receipt (not well detailed or itemized) was issued to only SOME whose property was seized. Therefore most all seizures that day are considered LEGAL THEFT. Among the items stolen were cell phones, iPads, laptops, business papers, Republic of Texas paperwork and coinage of precious metals along with other valuables.

Some of the phones were essential to their owners in conducting business and schoolwork, safely traveling the highways and attending to emergency medical calls as health professionals. One of the senior Texians often featured in documentaries and alternative radio and known to suffer with health concerns had to be taken by emergency vehicle to a hospital as a result of the forced takeover of the peaceful assembly.

The team of investigators left with the trunk and backseat of an unmarked sedan apparently belonging to Deputy Jeff McCoy, fully packed with confiscated belongings without a copy of the Search Warrant provided to anyone associated with the Republic of Texas. Instead, the warrant was given to the Post Commander of the VFW facility who was instructed not to copy the document nor divulge its contents to anyone.

The fortuitously warrant revealed it was issued by 216th District Court Judge N. Keith Williams of Kerr County alleging an unauthorized summons had been issued by the Republic of Texas. The documents alleged to be unauthorized were a Writ of Mandamus and a Writ of Quo Warranto issued by “The Officers and Constituents of The International Common Law Court for the Republic of Texas to Melvin Rex Emerson Jr., Court Administrator, and Color of Law ID No. 24009018, 700 Main Street, Kerrville, Texas. Kerr County” and was so stated on the document “This writ is hereby served by said Petitioner upon you, Melvin Rex Emerson Jr. as an individual”. In no way was the “State of Texas” intimated to be part or parcel to the documents.

If the Writ of Mandamus and the Quo Warranto issued for the Republic of Texas International Common Law Court were purely frivolous in nature, then why did this judge call out HIS MILITIA to address this action? What instilled such fear in him?

Why was it necessary to confiscate tens of thousands of dollars, Gold and Silver Metals being private and confidential property that was unrelated to the search warrant for a allegedly Class A Misdemeanor offense? One Texian noted that one officer confided that he probably would NEVER see his property again. Just who is the guilty party here? Could it be that the people of the Republic of Texas are rightfully fully vested with the power of the paperwork served on Judge Everson? Undoubtedly, additional paperwork needs to be issued! You decide.

Contrary to patently false reports by KBTX that the Republic of Texas and its assemblage were a militia group, the truth is that the Republic of Texas is a self-determined people attempting to throw off the yoke of military occupation of Texas through peaceful and lawful process. The entire land boundaries of the United States are also under military occupation thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. If you don’t believe it, you can read it for yourself: (http://thetexasrepublic.com Select: History Tab; Select “The Non-Ratification of the 14th Amendment – Highlighted by Robert Wilson” Selection option).

John Harold Jarnecke
President of the republic of Texas
February 17, 2015
Contact: www.thetexasrepublic.com for the Secretary of State
Excerpts from:Senate Report 93-549

Senate Report 93-549 “EMERGENCY POWERS STATUTES: Provisions of Federal Law Now In Effect Delegating To The Executive Extraordinary Authority In Time of National Emergency” November 19, 1973 (cover page)

Background and History

Senate Report 93-549 entitled “EMERGENCY POWERS STATUTES: Provisions of Federal Law Now In Effect Delegating To The Executive Extraordinary Authority In Time of National Emergency” was issued on November 19, 1973 by the “Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency” pursuant to Senate Resolution No. 9 – 93rd Congress, 1st Session.^[1]

…..These proclamations give force to over 470 provisions of Federal law. These hundreds of statutes delegate to the President extraordinary powers, ordinarily exercised by the Congress, which affect the lives of American citizens in a host of all-encompassing manners. This vast range of powers, taken together, confer enough authority to rule the country without reference to normal constitutional processes.^[4]

Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens.^[5]

….The “termination” was in name only. The emergency powers are now continued in the U.S. Code as permanent everyday powers.^[8] The state of national emergency has become a permanent condition.^[9]

….Every president since Roosevelt has used emergency powers extensively, some claim falsely that the United States has been in a continual and permanent state of declared national emergency since March 9, 1933.^[14]

….The US Senate Report states: “That since March 09, 1933 the United States has been in a state of declared national emergency.”^[29]

“A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For 40 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency.” ^[30]

30^ [U.S. Congress, Senate Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency, Emergency Powers Statutes, 93rd Cong., 1st sess., S.Rept. 93-549 (Washington: GPO, 1973) | page= 1]

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The Feds Are Terrified

Napolitano: The NSA vs. the Fourth Amendment

What if the Government Fears Freedom?

By Andrew P. Napolitano

What if the current massive spying on Americans began with an innocent secret executive order signed by President Reagan in 1986? What if Reagan contemplated that he was only authorizing American spies to spy on foreign spies unlawfully present in the U.S.?

What if Reagan knew and respected the history of the Fourth Amendment? What if the essence of that history is the colonial revulsion at the British use of general warrants? What if general warrants were issued by a secret court in London and authorized British agents in America to search wherever they wished and to seize whatever they found? What if the revulsion at this British government practice was so overwhelming that it led to the Revolutionary War against the king?

What if the whole purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to outlaw general warrants? What if the Fourth Amendment specifically guarantees the right to privacy to all in America in their persons, houses, papers and effects?

What if, in order to emphasize its condemnation of general warrants, the Fourth Amendment requires the government to obtain a warrant from a judge before invading the persons, houses, papers or effects of anyone and lays down the preconditions for the issuance of such warrants? What if those preconditions are individualized suspicion and articulated evidence of crime — called probable cause — about the specific person whose privacy the government seeks to invade?

What if these principles of constitutional fidelity, privacy and probable cause and the unlawfulness of general warrants have been regarded universally and publicly as quintessentially American values, values that set this nation apart from all others?

What if the administration of President George W. Bush was so embarrassed that 9/11 happened on its watch that it fought a useless public war in Iraq — which had nothing to do with 9/11 — and a pernicious private war against American values by unleashing American spies on innocent Americans as to whom there was no individualized probable cause so that it could create the impression it was doing something to keep America safe from another 9/11-like attack?

What if the Bush folks took Reagan’s idea of spying on foreign spies and twisted it so that they could spy on not just foreign spies, but also on foreign persons? What if they took that and leapt to spying on Americans who communicated with foreign persons?

What if they then concluded that it was easier to spy on all Americans rather than just those who communicated with foreign persons? What if they claimed in secret that all this was authorized by Reagan’s executive order and two federal statutes, their unique interpretations of which they refused to discuss in public? What if the Reagan order and the statutes authorized no such thing?

What if The New York Times caught the Bush administration in its massive violation of the Fourth Amendment, whereby it was spying on all Americans all the time without any warrants? What if the Times sat on that knowledge during, throughout and beyond the presidential election campaign of 2004? What if, when the Times revealed all this, the Bush administration agreed to stop spying? What if it didn’t stop?

What if President Obama came up with a scheme to make the spying appear legal? What if that scheme involved using secret judges in secret courts to issue general warrants? What if the Obama administration swore those judges to secrecy? What if it swore to secrecy all in the government who are involved in undermining basic American values? What if it forgot that everyone in government also swears an oath to uphold the Constitution? What if Edward Snowden violated his oath to secrecy in order to uphold his oath to the Constitution, which includes the Fourth Amendment, and spilled the beans on the government?

What if all this spying by the feds has spawned spying by the locals? What if more than 50 local police departments now have received false cell towers from the FBI, but have sworn not to tell anyone about them? What if these towers trick cellphone signals into exposing the content of cellphone conversations to the police? What if the police have done this without the knowledge of the elected representatives who are their bosses? What if they do this without any warrants? What if the Supreme Court last year outlawed police invading cellphones without warrants?

What if both Bush and Obama have argued that their first job is to keep America safe, and they will twist, torture the plain meaning of and even break laws in order to accomplish that job? What if the presidential oath is to enforce all laws faithfully, including ones the president may hate?

What if Bush and Obama have been wrong about the priority of their constitutional duties as president? What if the president’s first job is to preserve the Constitution? What if that includes the Fourth Amendment? What if the president keeps us safe but unfree?

What if invading our freedoms keeps us less safe? What if the president has failed to keep our freedoms safe? What if the government doesn’t like freedoms? What if the government is afraid we will exercise them?

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

The Best of Andrew P. Napolitano

Andrew P. Napolitano [send him mail], a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written nine books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com.

source lewrockwell

FCC Net "Neutrality" Passes by a Narrow Margin

So much for sworn oaths, beyond some obtuse frothy babble expect nary a Republican statesman to stand up for the peoples' liberty.

 

Net Neutrality: Beginning of the End of the Internet?

Written by  C. Mitchell Shaw

The FCC voted yesterday to begin regulating the Internet as a public utility under a plan known as Net Neutrality. Let that sink in. The federal government will regulate the Internet in the same way the agency already regulates the telephone and cable television industries — and it calls that "neutral." Having been denied the ability to regulate the Internet in the past because of a lack of authority, the FCC has now simply reclassified the Internet under Title II, and — voilà! — they have the authority to regulate it.

One problem with this action is that the Internet does not belong in the same category as telephones and televisions. It is "other": It has its own category. 

The Internet is the most innovative, pervasive, free, and open form of communication man has ever known. Access to it is more available now than ever before, and an increasing number of people are using it as the primary method for their communications. When used properly, the Internet allows private, anonymous communication in a way that is unrivaled. But beyond that, it is also a marketplace, a research network, an alternative news source, and much, much more. And the Internet is all these things because it grew up largely unhindered by government regulation (read: interference).

With the three-to-two vote of unelected bureaucrats unaccountable to the people, that is changing. It is as sure as can be that Net Neutrality will change the Internet. As the Internet is bogged down in regulation by an agency that has no constitutional authority even to exist, let alone to regulate the Internet, the innovation that birthed and nursed the Net to youthful maturity will be replaced by concerns about compliance with regulations. Instead of answering to the concerns of consumers — as is done in a free market — ISPs (Internet Service Providers — through which a company such as Netflix provides services to Internet users) will begin focusing their attention on lobbying the FCC. The result will be an Internet that has lost its youthful energy and is mired in rules that aren't even known yet.

The reason the rules aren't yet known is that FCC Chairman Wheeler decided to keep them secret. He has hinted at the powers the new rules grant to the FCC, though, and they are frightening. In an op-ed piece for Wired on February 4, Wheeler wrote, "My proposal includes a general conduct rule that can be used to stop new and novel threats to the Internet. This means the action we take will be strong enough and flexible enough not only to deal with the realities of today, but also to establish ground rules for the as yet unimagined."

What constitutes "new and novel threats to the Internet" is left to be defined later.

Perhaps as disturbing as the secrecy of the plan is the underhanded method by which it was promoted, using — ironically — the Internet itself. In the "comments" section of many online articles, activists and bots (programs that post while appearing to be real people) posted emotional and factually erroneous appeals for regulation to "save the Internet." One example is this comment that appeared verbatim in the comments section of several stories under several different usernames:

Cable companies need to be regulated. They're working together to prevent having to provide better service or lower prices. The internet in the US is extremely slow and over priced.

My cable/internet costs me $150/month (from Time Warner). Contrast with my other expenses:

- Gym ($11/month from Planet Fitness)
- Mobile Phone ($21/month from TMobile)
- Car insurance ($25/month from Insurance Panda)
- Groceries ($90/month for me)

Yes, that's correct, my gym, cellphone, car insurance, and food COMBINED cost less than my TWC bill.

This will be a win for consumers by increasing competition and expanding infrastructure. Prices drop and speed increases. Profits drop. Aww.

In many comment platforms, visitors to the site can click on a username to see other comments posted by a commenter. Several of the usernames that posted the comment above have no other comments logged. It appears those usernames were created specifically for the purpose of posting that comment.

The purported reasons for the FCC stepping up its regulation of the Internet is that ISPs were "giving preferential treatment" to some services and "discriminating" against others and "creating paid fast lanes on the Internet." It sounds evil. It screams for relief that only Big Government can provide. 

Granted, some ISPs were slowing traffic to sites that provide streaming services for watching movies or downloading large files, while at the same time allowing faster connections to other sites. Also granted, most ISPs were providing faster services for consumers who pay more. But is that wrong? Does it require relief in the form of regulation?

These types of things are normal in a free market. Bandwidth is expensive to maintain, and ISPs must make decisions that are in their best interests as businesses. If some consumers are using a very large amount of the available bandwidth to download large files and stream movies and music, it means that either everything on that connection will slow down for everyone using it, or the ISP will have to increase the bandwidth, and pay for it. The choices are limited. The ISPs can "choke" the speeds to connections to those services that use the most bandwidth; they can charge extra to consumers who desire faster connections; they can raise rates across the board; or they can do a combination of the three.

Following the logic of the arguments in favor of Net Neutrality, a restaurant should charge the same price for an eight-ounce steak as for a 16-ounce steak. 

Just because Customer B has a bigger appetite than Customer A doesn't mean B should pay more, goes the Net Neutrality reasoning. In a free market (one that answers to the realities of cost and profits), the restaurant would have no choice but to offer only a 12-ounce steak and charge the same price as it had for the 16-ounce steak. And that is where these new regulations begin to harm consumers. We will see fewer choices and higher prices as the ISPs focus on lobbying their regulators and passing the costs along to their customers.

Many people live in areas where the demand for high speed Internet is low and have had to suffer with slow connection speeds. They have sat in Starbucks and public libraries and used their Internet connection when they needed a faster connection. Many currently pay about $100 per month for high speed Internet and home security from Comcast because they live in areas where demand is higher. These are their choices. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and as Big Government tries to force one, those who advocated for this are going to figure that out.

Thankfully, it is far from over. The courts can rule against Net Neutrality. Some in Congress are already talking about a bill to set it aside. A future FCC commission could reverse it.

It is a dire situation to be at the mercy of big government where something this important is concerned. It is time, as The New American's Joe Wolverton has observed, to force "the federal beast back inside its constitutional cage."

via thenewamerican

A Warning to Libertarians: Please Do Not End Up Like Ross Ulbricht

Monday, February 23, 2015

By Robert Wenzel

The trial of Ross Ulbricht, admitted founder of Silk Road, is over. He has been convicted on all the charges brought by the government. It is a terrible tragedy.

An anonymous commenter to the post, where the Ulbricht family expressed shock at how unfair the trial was, explained best what happens when the government has you in their crosshairs;

Having been through a federal criminal trial myself, this description sounds like standard operating procedure. While I feel badly for the mother, she does express an astonishing naivete of the system and process. A federal trial is not designed to find out the truth, or to have a discussion about the law. It is designed to get a perfunctory rubber stamp from the jury on an outcome that has already been decided.

And the appeal process is designed to rubber stamp what was determined in the district court. I hope for her sake she does not put much hope in the appeal. It's highly unlikely to be reversed.

Ubricht faces somewhere between 20 years to a life sentence. To be sure, from a libertarian perspective, there does not appear to be much that Ulbricht is guilty of. He simply provided a market for individuals willing to exchange, certainly not a violation of the libertarian non-aggression principle. (The government was allowed by the judge to bring up supposed murder-for-hire plots by Ulbricht, but never charged Ulbricht with the plots. Sounds sketchy to me.) BUT, despite the libertarian perspective, he is going to spend a a very, very long time in prison.

This is part of the reason, I find it remarkable that some libertarians are cheering on further efforts in the murky dark internet. Coin Report notes (my bold):

[I]n March of 2014, GRAMS was created.

GRAMS is the Google of the darknet. It is a cross-marketplace search engine hosted on TOR that aggregates listings from major DNMs and lists them in an easy to read, Google-like fashion. Filters sort listings by country, market, price range, and quantity. GRAMS search algorithms are constantly being updated to include more DNMs and listings. This has allowed the casual observer to discover the darknet without the hassle of creating multiple accounts. GRAMS has become so successful that it recently started selling sponsored listings, similar to Google AdSense.

Since the original Silk Road was shut down, the DNM landscape has changed dramatically. It has become more de-centralized. Yet, thanks to sites like GRAMS and the Subreddit r/darknetmarkets, it is still accessible to many people.

The Ross Ulbricht trial marks a turning point for the darknet. Originally created to combat a problem, DNMs have now become a rallying point for the adherents of Libertarian ideology. Ulbricht himself described the Silk Road as an “economic experiment.” Many see him as a martyr and have supported him through it all, from patronizing the Silk Road via contraband purchases to donating over $339,000 via Bitcoin toward his legal defense fund. His downfall was an inspiration to push further, to continue the economic experiment, for the betterment of humanity (hopefully).

A few points need to be made here. First, Silk Road 2.0 has been shut down. It was infiltrated by the government from the start. There are claims that  there are new bitcoin mixing technologies that make bitcoins completely anonymous in use. But how can we know that it is not the government that has set up these mixing exchanges, or infiltrated them after they have been set up? And keep in mind, the buying and selling of drugs on the dark net still requires physical delivery. How do we know the government isn't capturing the physical addresses where the drugs are delivered? How can we know that the government isn't running a major sting to catch sellers?

As long as a commodity needs physical delivery, there is no protection from the government, even if it is done via the dark net--and that supposes the government isn't watching on the dark net in the first place, before physical delivery.

There are just so many things that can go wrong operating in the dark net, with very heavy downside, it makes no sense for a libertarian, qua libertarian, to get involved, especially by running such an operation.

Just becasue libertarians are in favor of free exchange, where does it say they have to run  underground markets?

As Murray Rothbard put it, when discussing libertarian/agorist theory and the underground promoted by Samuel Konkin (my bold):

If the black market should develop, then the successful entrepreneurs are not going to be agoric theoreticians...but successful entrepreneurs period. What do they need with Konkin and his group?  I suggest, nothing at all.  There is a hint in the NLM that libertarians would a priori make better entrepreneurs than anyone else because they are more trustworthy and more rational, but this piece of nonsense was exploded by hard experience a long time ago.   Neither do the budding black marketeers need Mr. Konkin and his colleagues to cheer them on and free them of guilt.  Again, experience has shown that they do fine on their own, and that urging them on to black market activities is like exhorting ducks to swim...

As much as I love the market, I refuse to believe that when I engage in a regular market transaction (e.g., buying a sandwich) or a black market activity (e.g., driving at 60 miles per hour) I advance one iota nearer the libertarian revolution.  The black market is not going to be the path to liberty, and libertarian theoreticians and activists have no function in that market...

Historically, classical liberal political parties have accomplished far more for human liberty than any black markets. 

In other words, if you want to advance liberty, it makes little sense to be operating a black market web site just as it makes little sense to be selling drugs from a street corner to advance liberty. And from a practical perspective, if the government snares you while running a black market site, you are going to pay dearly.

Advancing liberty is not about selling hooch or weed, though there is no reason to condemn those who enter into these noble professions. If you want to advance liberty, you do so by writing, speaking and reading about liberty. This requires that very little be done beyond libertarian study and actual libertarian activities, even at the early stages of developing such a career. Roy Childs, a powerful libertarian speaker, who made an impact with short essays and book reviews. was a janitor before he was recognized and found work as libertarian.

As much as I disagree with a lot of Stefan Molyneux's commentary, you have to give the man credit for launching his first podcasts by recording them while he was in his car driving to work at his then-day job!

I have often thought that the ideal job for an aspiring young libertarian theoretician or essayist is as a grave yard shift security guard . Get a job at the front desk of a building on the overnight shift, where few are going to bother you--and you can read and read and read. Absorb all you can about libertariansim, and, when you are ready, start writing, creating videos or whatever.

Leave the drug dealing to drug dealers, There's this thing called the division of labor and there is no path where drug dealers and libertarians have to pass, anymore than libertarians have to cross paths with fire eaters and sword swallowers, though I doubt many fire eaters and sword swallowers are paying much in terms of taxes, something that libertarians can appreciate, as much as they can appreciate the efforts of drug dealers, without getting into the business.  .

Indeed, just because street hookers must operate on the black market doesn't mean we should be encouraging libertarian women to become hookers, even if they would only accept bitcoins.

 Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher at EconomicPolicyJournal.com and at Target Liberty. He is also author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics
via targetliberty

FedGov Agents Violate US & State Constitutions, again - by Snooping, Harassing Residents of Three States

We are certainly not one to be tolerant of anti-American radicals agitating violence or terrorist acts regardless of their political philosophies.

But, the threat we see here is the unlawful trampling of our Constitution by federal law enforcement of a state's sovereignty. The elected state representatives of these three-named states, Washington, Idaho, or Oregon with their inaction violate their own sworn oaths of office. In fact, why also have the duty-obligated county sheriffs not expelled or arrested these trespassing federal agents?

To us, it is a greater threat to our rule of law whereby our law enforcement entities respond as commanded by their corporate sponsors, and not to their voters' rights to protection of rights and property. Let them tell us. We need to know.

Has Your State taken Steps to Reclaim Your Sovereign Land from the Fed Government? Why not?

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Anti-oil sands activists in the U.S. are getting visits from the FBI

Alexander Panetta

WASHINGTON — The Canadian Press

Last updated Saturday, Feb. 07 2015, 7:35 AM EST

Unexpected visitors have been dropping in on anti-oil activists in the United States — knocking on doors, calling, texting, contacting family members.

The visitors are federal agents.

Opponents of Canadian oil say they’ve been contacted by FBI investigators in several states following their involvement in protests that delayed northbound shipments of equipment to Canada’s oilsands.

A lawyer working with the protesters says he’s personally aware of a dozen people having been contacted in the northwestern U.S. and says the actual number is probably higher.

Larry Hildes says it’s been happening the last few months in Washington State, Oregon and Idaho. He says one person got a visit at work, after having already refused to answer questions.

“They appear to be interested in actions around the tarsands and the Keystone XL pipeline,” Hildes said in an interview.

“It’s always the same line: ‘We’re not doing criminal investigations, you’re not accused of any crime. But we’re trying to learn more about the movement.“’

He’s advised activists not to talk — and they mostly haven’t. That lack of communication has made it a little complicated to figure out what, exactly, the FBI is looking for.

The bureau hasn’t offered too many clues.

One agent left his name, number, and the following message in a voicemail for Helen Yost of the group Wild Idaho Rising Tide: “I work with the FBI. Could you give me a call back — I would appreciate it.”

Is anti-oilsands activity an actual focus of the FBI investigation, or is it merely incidental? The bureau won’t say.

What it will say is that it only investigates potential crimes, not political movements.

“The FBI has the authority to conduct an investigation when it has reasonable grounds to believe that an individual has engaged in criminal activity or is planning to do so,” said FBI spokeswoman Ayn Dietrich.

“This authority is based on the illegal activity, not on the individual’s political views.”

But activists say oil sands opposition appears to be the common thread among people being contacted. Police have been in touch with people from different groups, who in some cases don’t agree on much, but one thing they share is mutual participation in the so-called megaload protests.

Those are the intermittent highway blockades set up the last few years to complicate the enormous, football-field-sized shipments of processing equipment up to the oilsands.

Yost said only two people from her group participated in that anti-oil sands action — and those are the people who’ve been contacted by the FBI. She has refused to co-operate.

The other person, Herb Goodwin, was visited at home by an FBI agent and a veteran detective from the local police force in Bellingham, Wash. He said the federal agent told him: “We’re here to ask whether you’ll answer some questions for us about Deep Green Resistance.”

That group, DGR, calls itself a radical environmental movement that believes the biggest problem with the planet is human civilization itself. It proposes a shift back from agriculture to a hunter-gatherer horticultural lifestyle.

It also proposes a four-step program called decisive ecological warfare, a long-term plan calling for the sabotage and dismantling of planet-harming infrastructure.

The group has repeatedly stated that it wouldn’t participate itself in any such actions. But Lierre Keith, one of its founders, laid out the plan in a speech last year at an environmental conference at the University of Oregon.

“I would vastly prefer to wage this struggle non-violently,” Keith said. “But my blogging will not bring forth the necessary numbers. So given a realistic assessment of what we actually have, the only viable strategy left that I can see is direct attacks against infrastructure. In the plainest terms, we need to stop them.”

There was some controversy about inviting her to the conference. Other groups wanted her event cancelled because of her views on transgender people — Keith dismisses the notion that a sex change can undo someone’s gender perspective.

Hildes said the FBI tried asking people about that Oregon speech. Since Yost’s group was among those voicing opposition to DGR, she believes the FBI might be trying to sow division in the movement.

The Canadian government said it wasn’t involved in any U.S. law-enforcement effort. A spokesman said it was aware of the megaload protests, but hadn’t discussed them with any American agency.

Goodwin said he won’t stop protesting. He’s among the nearly 100,000 people who have signed a pledge to engage in civil disobedience, should the Obama administration approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

He called it a life mission to help thwart the development of the oilsands in Canada and the Bakken fields in the U.S. “If we don’t stop that stuff we’re never going to convert to alternative energies that don’t pollute the atmosphere,” he said.

via theglobeandmail