Archive for July, 2008

28
Jul

The Police-Facilitated Murder Of Rachel Hoffman

Rachel Hoffman, Criminal

Just Another Dead Criminal

It was one of those literally unbelievable moments that seem to be happening with increasing frequency – a tax-eating public servant defending his culpability by deception, incompetence, and negligence for the bloody murder of a young female under his control essentially by implying ‘she asked for it‘:

The Tallahassee police chief says Rachel was suspected of selling drugs and she was rightly treated as a criminal.

“That’s my job as a police chief to find these criminals in our community and take them off the street, to make the proper arrests,” Jones told 20/20.”

Rachel was in a drug court diversion program when she became an informant. Due to the manipulation of the chief of the Tallahassee PD, she is now a dead informant. Yet despite his manifest culpability for her death, here he is, on TV, defending his reprehensible action of putting this peaceful dope-smoker in the literal sights of two (allegedly, a term with which he disdains to describe the unconvicted Ms. Hoffman) known murdering animals;

“I’m calling her a criminal,” Tallahassee police chief Dennis Jones told 20/20, who maintains that both drug dealers and drug users are considered criminals to his department.

It was like watching a fictional crime drama, except this guy really is on the government payroll, saying this stuff like he believes it.

If Rachel Hoffman was a “criminal, then this guy is nothing but a murderer.

28
Jul

When Good Money Goes Bad

Just flipping through today’s local newspaper and noticed a disturbing trend of how gobs of unearned cash gravitating toward unaccountable entities attracts the criminals.

Questions surround grant in Clifton Heights

CLIFTON HEIGHTS – Residents and some council members questioned the transfer of $825,000 in grant money to the Clifton Heights Economic Corp., a nonprofit entity that council has no control over, at a recent council meeting.

“I don’t know how we authorized this corporation when we never got papers on this corporation,” said Councilman Mario Alpini. A listing for the corporation at nonprofit compendium Guidestar.org could not be found.

Police: Mother stole $74,000 from Avon Grove Little League

LONDON GROVE – State police arrested a Little League mom after she allegedly stole more than $70,000 raised through hot dog and candy sales, raffles and donations.

Fresh Start program raises questions in Yeadon

YEADON – Councilman Isaac Dotson received answers to questions he raised at the July 17 council meeting concerning Fresh Start Summer Camp, a popular new program serving 43 local teens under the direction of founder Leslie Lewis-McGirth.

Dotson specifically asked, “How many checks did the finance department issue on behalf of Fresh Start and how much money was spent to date?” And “who authorized Fresh Start employees to be placed on borough payroll?” Dotson also inquired about registration fees, employees, salaries and whether they’d received background checks. He also wanted to know if Lewis-McGirth used the borough’s tax-exempt number for grant applications, and “why the borough has not seen any funds, … cash or check?”

This is all from one weekend in one county. And last but certainly not least, the dead tree version of the same paper today reported on the executive director of National Night Out (a non-profit crime watch organization) is under fire for claiming  $300,000 in compensation from his $1.2 million budget most of which, as in the stories above, flows from us to him at the point of a gun. By the way, I’m also keeping an eye on the $500,000 check my own local youth club collected from the Commonwealth of PA to build a fieldhouse. The previously-privately-funded organization is quickly becoming a highly-protected fiefdom.

26
Jul

How Zimbabwe’s Inflation Relates To Our Own

Coming To A Table Near You?

Barbecued Rat - Coming To A Table Near You?

We are having a running argument among ourselves as to what, if anything, Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation has in common with our own inflation.

Three of us say it’s relevant, one of us (the smart one – the professor in the group) says it’s bullfeathers.

I disagree with him. Here’s why I think it relates.

1) “Inflation is, always and everywhere, a monetary phenomenon” – Milton Friedman

Friedman may have invented the hated witholding tax, and been an enthusiastic enabler of autocratic and totalitarian governments (as well as obfuscating the real causes of the Great Depression), but he was right on the money here – inflation is caused by central banks’ creation of money out of nothing, for no better reason than to fund wars that the people oppose and generate profits for the banks by impoverishing everyone else. In our two cases at hand, Zimbabwe and the US, both country’s inflations are fundamentally creations of their respective central banks for the purpose of funding wars, Mugabe’s war against his own people (the productive class), and Bush’s Wars also against brown Muslim people as WELL as his own people.

2) “Thanks to a weakening dollar, companies in the United States are selling more goods and services overseas…But the biggest U.S. export right now isn’t tractors or ball bearings or computer consulting or anything else American industry does. Our biggest export is inflation.” Jim Jubak, MSN Money

Our financial structure isn’t just busy printing money, it is also judiciously packaging government debt into securities that it sells all around the world to eager buyers. In other words, trade in goods and securities with China, et al, gets a lot of the funny money out of circulation here and into China before the excess can bid up prices too overtly. Zimbabwe, while once a food exporter, now has no goods to export, thanks to Mugabe’s “Land Reform”, which consisted of little more than killing or deporting the most productive farmers, most of whom happened to be white. Those farms are idle now, and Zimbabwe has nothing to export except its bad paper, which no one wants.

So, why is this bad? Sooner or later, sellers of goods stop accepting inflated currencies at face value, because they realize that the unit has lost value. This is a major contributing cause of the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973. Even more than our support of Israel, the OPEC nations turned against our money (as evidenced by oil prices that stayed well above the pre-crisis price even after the embargo was removed), the debasement of which Nixon had previously accelerated. It’s why first Iraq and then Iran formulated plans to open oil bourses trading in euros instead of dollars. Particularly important is when foreigners stop purchasing US government paper, or start shedding our paper. This hurts the economy.

3) “Please China, Sell Your Treasury Notes” – Felix Salmon

Even worse is if those same foreign buyers of paper start selling in a panic. In this case, the flow of money out would stop, or even reverse, causing massive spikes in prices due to this reversal. Foreigners currently hold approximately $2.6 TRILLION of US-dollar-denominated debt. How much of this paper would these other countries have to shed to cause massive inflationary destruction in the economy? As bad as Zimbabwe is, everyone who ever held Zimbabwean paper has long ago cut his losses.

4) “These are my principles. If you don’t like them, I have others” – Groucho Marx

Inflation is effectively a stealth tax levied on the poor, the middle class, and the elderly by the government for the benefit of the armaments manufacturers, banks, and oil companies. Any amount of inflation does this, which means any amount of inflation is evil. Some governments are simply more evil than others.

As bad as that is, inflating into the teeth of a big recession could spell disaster. The system is so overleveraged, any significant loss of confidence in the dollar would trigger an unstoppable wave of rebound inflation that the Fed would be simply overwhelmed, an inflation that would utterly destroy the US economy. I hope I’m wrong.

18
Jul

FDA Misses Salmonella, Cripples Tomato Industry

Poison Fruit?

Poison Fruit?

Incompetent government agency fails to perform its job ((YAWNNNN)) cripples an industry ($100 billion worth), and still cannot say with any certainty what exactly happened. Yet absolutely no one in the FDA was harmed.

18
Jul

Steps Toward A Voluntary Society

Fascinating, absolutely fascinating video by voluntarist Sam Dodson, who has the temerity to ask a judge a valid, legal question;
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFpQAjYbhu8]

Try to restrain any impulse to think “this guy’s just dicking the court around”, and watch him ask fundamental questions about the charge against him, and the court’s proper role, and watch the officers of the court squirm under his polite, civil questioning.

We need many more like him;

For more entertaining legal viewing, watch Regent University Law professor James Duane demonstrate why you should never, ever talk to the police;

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik]

(Link to first video from Lew Rockwell’s blog; link to second video from skip at postal blowfish)

17
Jul

PA State Police Do Study; Think Tasers Would Be Fun

The PA State Police did an unscientific study and judged themselves to be worthy of tasers to keep the citizenry in line.

topcop

State police commissioner Jeffrey Miller (in file photo above) says his department studied the use of Tasers for two years before beginning a pilot program in 2006, which saw 18 troopers issued the non-lethal weapon.

Miller says that during the first six months of this year troopers have used their Tasers 144 times. He says there is no doubt that in some of those situations troopers would have had to use their batons or firearms to protect themselves or others.

So what would have been appropriate in the other 98% of those situations? Nothing? A stern voice? Turning the other cheek? How many involved traffic offenders simply being unfortunate enough to be pulled over by a cop with a chip on his shoulder? How many needed to be “taught a lesson” on how to respect authority?

17
Jul

Pope Benedict Shill for Enviro-Communists

From the AP:

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) — The world’s natural resources are being squandered in the pursuit of “insatiable consumption,” Pope Benedict XVI said Thursday in a speech urging followers to care more for the environment and reconnect with the principle of peace.

Benedict, speaking to more than 200,000 pilgrims gathered for the Roman Catholic church’s youth festival, expanded on a theme that has led him to be dubbed “the green pope.” The crowd, massed on a disused wharf in Australia’s largest city, regularly erupted in cheers that gave the event the feel of a sporting event.

green_pope

Gee, Mr Pope, never realized you were so plugged in to the science thing. You must have done a lot of research on this stuff.

Types of “poison” are afflicting the world’s social environment, he said, such as substance abuse, along with the exaltation of violence and sexual degradation, for which he blamed television and the Internet.

Or could it be that you’re just “green” enough to use it as a vehicle to push your own agenda…just like everyone else?

11
Jul

Hot Chick Slams Turnpike Commission

I don’t watch much teevee these days but I set aside a small bit to watch Pike TV.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RW9GzgfOHNE]

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is perhaps the most notorius playground of nepotism, patronage and outright theft (except for maybe the PALCB) in the Commonwealth. And now it’s finally being exposed for the fraud that it is.

10
Jul

Obama Is No Better Than The Rest Of Them

We Should Have Known, Really

We Should Have Known, Really

The US Senate just passed the immoral, illegal, unconstitutional FISA “Amendment” bill, which, if you haven’t been following along, includes retroactive immunity from civil prosecution for telecommunications companies that knowingly broke the law, allowing members of the Bush gang to basically route all communications through their systems directly to the NSA without warrant or legal sanction of any kind, an utter violation of the 4th Amendment as well as more than two centuries of settled law.

Throughout the process of the passage of this evil piece of filth through the Congressional colon, Democratic presidential candidate Barack H. Obama claimed he would filibuster the bill rather than accede to its passage, a feather in his cap, to our minds. But yesterday, as had been telegraphed for days prior, he turned around and voted for the immoral, lawless bill.

While not exactly Obama supporters, we had been holding out a slim reed of hope that maybe, just maybe, the charming Illinois politician would be marginally less bad than the evil, clueless John McCain. After all, he has been less strident than McCain on Iraq, and made approving noises about the recent bare 5-4 Supreme Court decision preserving a scrap of constitutional protection of habeus corpus. Even if the passage of the bill was “predetermined” as Russ Feingold said, he could have stood on the Senate floor and made a speech decrying the bill, even if he still felt like he had to vote for it. For an example, see Ron Paul’s record statement on the House bill.

But he didn’t. Obama is turning out to be a typical, immoral, evil liar
I repeat – a LIAR.

(Rollins Band video of “Liar” from YouTube, Venture Brothers video from Cartoon Network, Obama photo from some dumbass Republican’s blog)

09
Jul

Music: Personal Judas / Are We Brothers?

From the aptly-enough named Staten Island natives Happy Anarchy comes our first example of betrayal as muse; On “Personal Judas”, sounding alternately like Lloyd Cole, The Cult, and The Tubes, this wry, angry song had me pressing rewind to enjoy it’s crunchy late-70′s vibey goodness. Listen, and disregard the critic’s bias toward -archy;

“Cause you’re lonely, cause you’re poor

Cause they sent you off to war…

Dirty fingers ain’t gonna clean up this mess that we fell in
And you’ve got those stains smeared all over your face
Clean shirt. sucker
I ain’t the one so let’s go find another to pick up the pieces
You’ve lost your red letter, now don’t you feel better?
Cause we all need someone to blame”

Next up – Paper Rival‘s “Are We Brothers?” has both lyrical and instrumental outrage aplenty, but counterpointed by sweet harmonies and again, That 70′s Vibe, go listen;

“Our bones in the earth
feathers in the urn
How did we separate ourselves?

The bones in the earth
feathers in the urn
Why did we separate ourselves like this?

Do we share the same blood?
Do we wear the same cloth?
Is it all getting lost?
Are we brothers or not?”