08.29.13
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CATO Institute: Another False Arrest for Filming Police

An officer with the Leland Police Department has been suspended without pay for 28 days after a teenager recorded video of an arrest on his cell phone.

According to police reports, 19-year-old Gabriel Self tried approaching Leland Police Sergeant John Keel as he was arresting another man on drug charges. Sgt. Keel told Self to leave the area….

The charge was resisting, obstructing, or delaying a law enforcement officer. Self was interfering with an investigation, according to the arrest report….

Self said Keel was simply standing in the parking lot, so he did not see how he could be interfering with anything.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.policemisconduct.net/another-false-arrest-filming-police/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Policemisconductnet+%28PoliceMisconduct.net%29

08.27.13
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Reason.com: 5 Myths About Libertarians

The specter of libertarianism is haunting America. Advocates of sharply reducing the government’s size, scope and spending are raising big bucks from GOP donors, trying to steal the mantle of populism, being blamed for the demise of Detroit and even getting caught in the middle of a battle for the Republican Party. Yet libertarians are among the most misunderstood forces in today’s politics. Let’s clear up some of the biggest misconceptions.

1. Libertarians are a fringe band of “hippies of the right.”

In 1971, the controversial and influential author Ayn Rand denounced right-wing anarchists as “hippies of the right,” a charge still leveled against libertarians, who push for a minimal state and maximal individual freedom.

Libertarians are often dismissed as a mutant subspecies of conservatives: pot smokers who are soft on defense and support marriage equality. But depending on their views, libertarians often match up equally well with right- and left-wingers.

The earliest example of libertarian principles in partisan politics might have come in the late 19th and early 20th centuries,when Anti-Imperialist League Democrats rejected empire and war — and believed in free trade and racial equality at a time when none of that was popular. More recently, civil libertarians such as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) supported Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in his filibuster on domestic drones and government surveillance.

Libertarians are found across the political spectrum and in both major parties. In September 2012, the Reason-Rupe Poll found that about one-quarter of Americans fall into the roughly libertarian category of wanting to reduce the government’s roles in economic and social affairs. That’s in the same ballpark as what other surveys have found and more than enough to swing an election.

2. Libertarians don’t care about minorities or the poor.

As the recent discovery of neo-Confederate writings by a former senior aide to Sen. Paul shows, there sometimes is a connection between libertarians and creepy, racist elements in American politics. And given the influence of Ayn Rand among many libertarians, it’s easy to think that they care only about themselves. “I will never live for the sake of another man,” runs a characteristic line from Rand’s 1957 novel, Atlas Shrugged.

But at least two of the libertarian movement’s signature causes, school choice and drug legalization, are aimed at creating a better life for poor people, who disproportionately are also minorities. The primary goal of school choice — a movement essentially born out of a 1955 essay about vouchers by libertarian and Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman — is to give lower-income Americans better educational options. Friedman also persuasively argued that the drug war concentrates violence and law enforcement abuses in poor neighborhoods.

Libertarians believe that economic deregulation helps the poor because it ultimately reduces costs and barriers to start new businesses. The leading libertarian public-interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, which has argued Supreme Court cases for free speech and against eminent-domain abuse, got its start defending African American hair-braiders in Washington from licensing laws that shut down home businesses.

3. Libertarianism is a boys’ club.

While the stereotype of a libertarian as a male engineer sporting a plastic pocket protector and a slide rule once had more truth to it than most libertarians would care to admit, the movement is in many ways the creation of three female intellectuals.

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Click below for the full article:

http://reason.com/archives/2013/08/10/5-myths-about-libertarians

08.25.13
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Reason.com: Delete the Fed

Who should run the Federal Reserve System when chairman Ben Bernanke’s term expires next year: Vice Chair Janet Yellen or former Obama adviser Lawrence Summers?

Neither.

Who then?

No one.

The fact is, we need the Federal Reserve like we need a hole in the head. Contrary to folklore, the Fed is not needed to stabilize the economy or to prevent unemployment. As the Fed heads into its second century, we ought to realize that its record is terrible. Even if we don’t count the interwar period (which some economists call the new Fed’s practice round), America’s central bank is a flop. Monetary economists George A. Selgin, William D. Lastrapes, and Lawrence H. White wrote in “Has the Fed Been a Failure?”:

Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical research, we find the following: (1) The Fed’s full history (1914 to present) has been characterized by more rather than fewer symptoms of monetary and macroeconomic instability than the decades leading to the Fed’s establishment. (2) While the Fed’s performance has undoubtedly improved since World War II, even its postwar performance has not clearly surpassed that of its undoubtedly flawed predecessor, the National Banking system, before World War I.

The authors support that generalization with details. On inflation: “Far from achieving long-run price stability, [the Fed] has allowed the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar, which was hardly different on the eve of the Fed‘s creation from what it had been at the time of the dollar’s establishment as the official U.S. monetary unit, to fall dramatically” — by 95 percent.

Selgin, Lastrapes, and White also show that the central bank has given us longer recessions and slower recoveries.

But without the Fed, who would set interest rates to guide the economy? The first answer is that government policy and Fed manipulations can create the very recessions that the Fed then tries to reverse. If the politicians and their court economists would get over their hubristic belief that they are stewards of the economy, macroeconomic crises would disappear.

Besides, the Fed cannot set interest rates, not even its narrow federal-funds rate for overnight interbank loans. At most, it targets that rate by buying and selling government securities, but it doesn’t always hit its target. The idea that the Fed can even heavily influence mortgage and other interest rates ignores important facts.

First, the Fed’s operations are small compared to the complex U.S. and world economies. Writes monetary economist Richard Timberlake,

Traditional economics properly teaches that many complex market forces — countless investment and savings decisions not dependent on monetary factors — are essential in determining interest rates. The Fed funds rate that Fed policy can influence through its monopoly over the quantity of money is inconsequential in shaping most short-term and long-term rates in capital markets, unless that moneymaking power subsequently promotes a pervasive price inflation. [Emphasis added.]

Second, the Fed can’t lower rates through monetary inflation beyond the very short run. Why not? Because lenders will respond by raising their rates to avoid being screwed by price inflation –unless the Fed prevents the inflation, as it’s been doing, by effectively borrowing back the new money from the banks at interest.

Moreover, as monetary economist Jeffrey Rogers Hummel points out,

Globalization, with the corresponding relaxation of exchange controls in all major countries, allows [investors] easily to flee to foreign currencies, with the result that changes in central-bank policy are almost immediately priced by exchange rates and interest rates. Add to this the ability to purchase from many governments securities that are indexed to inflation, and it becomes highly unlikely investors will be caught off guard by anything less than sudden, catastrophic hyperinflation (defined as more than 50% per month) — and maybe even not then.

While inflation is not the threat it once was, the Fed is not harmless. “Bernanke has so expanded the Fed’s discretionary actions beyond merely controlling the money stock that it has become a gigantic, financial central planner,” Hummel writes.

No one should have such power.

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Click below for the full article.

http://reason.com/archives/2013/08/25/delete-the-fed

 

08.24.13
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1787 Network: US Court Orders Tyranny!

Federal Court orders confirm that you are a slave and we live in a totalitarian society. There is a difference between socialism and communism, but the totalitarian control of production and distribution of goods and services is the core of both, the USA is now a Totalitarian Republic. The US Government is saying that a company providing voluntary services to other people, of which there are many other voluntary providers, cannot go out of business. The company in question is Lavabit. It provides secure encrypted email services. Ladar Levison started Lavabit 10 years ago to capitalize on public concerns about the Patriot Act, offering paying customers encrypted email, that make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for law enforcement agents to decipher. The government gave him a court order to provide the content of ALL email from ALL his customers to the government without letting his customers know. In as much as this totally compromised the reason he created the company rather than comply he shut the company down. In an NBC Article it is reported that “James Trump, a senior litigation counsel in the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., sent an email to Levison’s lawyer last Thursday – the day Lavabit was shuttered — stating that Levison may have “violated the court order,” a statement that was interpreted as a possible threat to charge Levison with contempt of court.” NBC’s byline for the article is an appropriate “from the either-you-help-us-spy-on-people-or-you’re-a-criminal dept”If this happens it means that legally you can be required to work against your will. Isn’t that slavery? If not slavery it is clearly the actions of a totalitarian government that is not limited in any way as to what it can demand of common people. We live in a Constitutional Republic where the government has (had) limited and defined powers. Specifically the clearly stated Fourth Amendment in the Bill of Rights states that: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Modern technology has changed what papers and effect look like, but there is no reasonable way to say the government has the authority to search your every email. Rather than enable the government to violate the 4th, Lavabit choose to cease to provide services designed to protect individuals from government violation of their 4th amendment rights. – See more at: http://1787network.com/2013/08/us-court-orders-tyranny/7363#sthash.ts9dPPBb.dpuf

08.23.13
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Reuters: Documents show NSA may have collected tens of thousands of emails of Americans

U.S. intelligence officials released new documents on Wednesday showing that the National Security Agency may have unintentionally collected as many as 56,000 emailed communications of Americans per year between 2008 and 2011.

The officials revealed the documents as part of an effort to explain how the NSA spotted, and then fixed, technical problems which led to the inadvertent collection of emails of American citizens without warrants.

The move is the Obama administration’s latest response to continuing controversy over alleged electronic eavesdropping excesses by the NSA.

The documents included a formerly “top-secret,” but newly-declassified ruling by the ultra-secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in which the court itself, in an obscure footnote, estimates, based on data supplied by NSA, that between 2008 and 2011, the agency might have unintentionally collected as many as 56,000 emailed communications of Americans in each of those three years.

U.S. intelligence officials who agreed to answer questions about the documents’ contents told reporters the domestic emails were collected in the execution of a program designed to target the emails of foreign terrorism suspects.

According to the officials and a court document which the administration released, the NSA decided to “purge” the material after discovering it was inadvertently collected.

Details about the secretive surveillance programs have been brought to light in recent months by fugitive U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked classified documents to media outlets.

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Click below for the full article, as well as a few updates from Reuters.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/21/us-usa-security-nsa-idUSBRE97K14Y20130821

08.20.13
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The Huffington Post: Is Rand Paul Going Neocon on Iran?

Two years ago, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), after giving a foreign policy speech at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Service, said, “Iran has a large undercurrent of people who like the West. They like our music, our culture, our literature, and so I think we can influence people in those ways. I’d rather do that than go to war with Iran.”

This statement was lauded by those–including myself–who seek a diplomatic solution with Iran.

Less than a year later, in March 2012, Sen. Paul put his money where his mouth is by standing up to his colleagues in Senate. He attempted to block a non-binding resolution that he felt would give the President carte blanche to preemptively attack Iran.

In October, I was able–along with another fellow Iranian-American from Kentucky–to meet with one of Sen. Paul’s senior staff members.

“Sanctions don’t have a history of working. All they do is lead us down a path to war,” the staffer said, almost scoffing at the current within Congress to increase sanctions. I walked away feeling positive that diplomacy may actually get a chance.

What a difference a year makes.

Last Friday, I received an email from Rand Paul’s office. He was, ostensibly, responding to my letter urging the Senate to oppose a new resolution that would call for the U.S. to enforce sanctions and provide economic, political, and military support if Israel attacked Iran. I opened it assuming that I’d read an email about how Senator Paul remained committed to standing strong against the push for war and sanctions. Boy was I wrong.

Ten months after sitting with what I assumed was a sympathetic ear, I read the following:

Iran continues to pose a threat to the region and the world as it continues nuclear development in the face of international sanctions and pressure to halt this aggressive behavior. Though a nuclear Iran would be a threat on the global scale, there is also concern that a nuclear Iran would aggressively target our ally Israel.

The United States and Israel have a special relationship. With our shared history and common values, the American and Israeli people have formed a bond that unifies us across many thousands of miles and calls on us to work together toward peace and prosperity. This peace is not only between our two nations, but also our neighbors.

In February 2013, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced S.Res.65, a Senate resolution stating it is the sense of Congress that the United States and international organizations should continue the enforcement of sanctions against Iran. In addition, S.Res.65 reiterates the policy of the United States to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon and our continued support of our ally Israel.

I supported S.Res.65, which passed both the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the full Senate unanimously.

He goes on to mention that he got language included in the resolution stating that it does not authorize war. But I admittedly had to re-read the letter a few times. Here was a letter from Sen. Rand Paul, a supposed anti-sanctions, anti-war isolationist, that was basically doing a complete 180 degree turn away from what Paul’s been advocating since before his election.

I guess Sen. Paul is no longer an anti-sanctions, anti-war stalwart. Instead, he’s claiming sanctions and war threats are a vital part of preventing Iran from building a nuclear weapon, despite the intelligence community’s continued analysis that indicates Iran has still not decided to build one.

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Click below for the full article.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-shams/is-rand-paul-going-neocon_b_3784998.html