Author: HP McLovincraft

Seeker of rabbit holes. Pessimist. Libertine. Contrarian. Your huckleberry. Possibly true tales of sanity-blasting horror also known as abject reality. Prepare yourself. Veteran of a thousand psychic wars. I have seen the fnords. Deplatformed on Tumblr and Twitter.

Biden: ‘There’s Going to Be a New World Order’.

U.S. President Joe Biden discussed a “new world order” at a Business Roundtable CEO Quarterly Meeting on Monday, deploying a phrase often pilloried by corporate media outlets as “conspiracy theory.”

“You know we are in an inflection point, I believe, in the world economy” the Commander-in-Chief said, “Not just the economy, the world. It occurs every three or four generations. As one of the top military people said to me in a secure meeting the other day, 60 million people died between 1900 and 1946 and since then we established a liberal world order and that hadn’t happened in a long while. Lot of people dying [now], but nowhere near the chaos. And now’s the time when things are shifting. There’s gonna be a new world order out there, and we’ve gotta lead it. And we’ve gotta unite the rest of the world in doing it.”

– President Biden, Monday March 21st 2022

The statement leans in part on the “fourth turning” or Strauss–Howe generational theory, though in a clumsy fashion. It is not the first time Biden has appealed to such messaging.

In 1992, then Senator Biden wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal entitled “How I Learned to Love the New World Order.” In the article, Biden – who was also the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s European Affairs Subcommittee – said: “Having contained Soviet communism until it dissolved, we need a new strategy of “containment” – based, like NATO, on collective action–but directed against weapons proliferation.”

Keep reading

‘The streets are paved with gold!’ NYC clear-air vigilantes reveal how they’re claiming up to $225,000-a-year by reporting idling trucks to city’s green agency and taking cut of the $350 fine slapped on drivers

Sneaky New Yorkers taking advantage of a city clear-air initiative are making up to $225,000-a-year by reporting idling trucks to the city, then claiming a cut of the $350 fine. 

Leaving a truck engine idling for more than three minutes is an offense in NYC, with anyone who submits video proof to the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) handed an $85 bonus by the department, for every proven violation they submit. 

Environmental lawyer Ernest Welde, 47, says he submitted proof of thousands of violations last year, which are yet to be processed, but which he estimates will earn him between $200,000 and $225,000.  

And busybody former Marine Paul Slapikas, 81, says he netted $64,000 in 2021 by doing the same thing. Truckers caught with idling engines have been known to lash out at anyone they suspect of filming them – so Slapikas, who lives in Queens, has devised a clever routine to throw them off the scent.

He stands in front of an idling truck acting like a lost tourist- equipped with a camera hanging from his neck and a city map and a flip phone. But he is secretly recording idling trucks with a concealed iPhone and once he’s done he walks away satisfied, potentially just earning his cut of the fine. 

Welde bragged: ‘The money, it’s awesome!’ with Slapikas agreeing while joking that ‘They say the streets are paved with gold.’   

In 2018 NYC’s Department of Environmental Protection launched Citizens Air Complaint Program allowing everyday New Yorkers to file ‘citizen complaints’ of idling vehicles. 

Keep reading

The IRS already has all your income tax data – so why do Americans still have to file their taxes?

Doing taxes in the U.S. is notoriously complicated and costly. And it gets even worse when there are delays and backlogs, making it especially hard to reach the Internal Revenue Service for assistance.

But to me this raises an important question: Why should taxpayers have to navigate the tedious, costly tax filing system at all?

The case for a ‘simple return’

In 1985, President Ronald Reagan promised a “return-free” tax system in which half of all Americans would never fill out a tax return again. Under the framework, taxpayers with simple returns would automatically receive a refund or a letter detailing any tax owed. Taxpayers with more complicated returns would use the system in place today.

In 2006, President Barack Obama’s chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, suggested a “simple return,” in which taxpayers would receive already completed tax forms for their review or correction. Goolsbee estimated his system would save taxpayers more than US billion a year in tax preparation fees.

Though never implemented, the two proposals illustrate what we all know: No one enjoys filling out tax forms.

So why do we have to?

As an expert on the U.S. tax system, I see America’s costly and time-consuming tax reporting system as a consequence of its relationship with the commercial tax preparation industry, which lobbies Congress to maintain the status quo.

A costly and time-consuming system

Return-free filing is not difficult.

At least 30 countries permit return-free filing, including Denmark, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom.

Keep reading

The Only ‘Agency’ Ukraine Has Is The Central Intelligence Kind

Seemingly overnight it became not just wrong to say that the US hegemon has played a role in giving rise to this war, but actually monstrous and evil. My online notifications are currently flooded with furious empire apologists screaming at me for assigning any degree of responsibility in this conflict to western power structures with the kind of vitriol people normally reserve for Holocaust deniers or pedophelia advocates.

Imperial narrative managers have even been working overtime to make the word “westsplaining” happen, which is their progressive-sounding term for when one makes the self-evident observation that western powers influence world events. Mainstream westerners are actively trained to regurgitate lines like “Stop westsplaining to Ukrainians about coups and proxy conflicts! You’re denying their agency!”

Calling this a “proxy war” between Russia and the United States or calling Kyiv a “puppet regime” of Washington is strictly taboo now. That Ukraine has lacked independent agency in this war and the events leading up to it is something you are simply not allowed to say.

Well, I’m saying it. This is a proxy war. Kyiv is a puppet regime. Ukraine does not have independent agency in any meaningful way. This is not the fault of the Ukrainian people, who are obviously far and away the greatest victims of the Russian invasion, but of the giant western power structure which deliberately worked to take away the nation’s agency many years before the invasion took place.

I mean, my god. The US and its allies are pouring billions of dollars worth of weapons into Ukraine from around the world, the CIA has been training Ukrainians to kill Russians, the US intelligence cartel is directly sharing military intelligence with Kyiv as we speak, and this follows US-backed coups in Ukraine in 2014 and in 2004 before that.

This is a proxy war. This is exactly the thing that a proxy war is. The only “agency” Ukraine has is the Central Intelligence kind.

Keep reading

Man Told by an Officer That He Could Enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 Now Faces 20 Years in Prison

On Jan. 6, 2021, a protestor, 40-year-old Brady Knowlton, says that an officer at the Capitol told “You can go in, as long as you don’t break anything.” At 2:35 p.m., Knowlton did, entering through the Upper West Terrace doors. He looked around inside the building, walked through the Rotunda, lobby, and Senate chamber gallery, obeyed the officer’s injunction not to break anything, and left the building at 2:53 p.m. For that, Knowlton now faces twenty years in prison in Old Joe Biden’s vengeful banana republic.

On top of the possibility of being behind bars until 2042, Knowlton, a law student, has suffered numerous other consequences already. According to the Daily Wire, “his law degree has been withheld, his lawyers say, Airbnb has banned him and his wife, and, for reasons that remain undisclosed, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has stripped his Global Entry access.”

According to the charges filed against him in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Knowlton “did unlawfully and knowingly enter and remain in a restricted building and grounds.” He also “did knowingly, and with intent to impede and disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business and official functions, engage in disorderly and disruptive conduct in and within such proximity to, a restricted building and grounds, that is, any posted, cordoned-off, and otherwise restricted area within the United States Capitol and its grounds, where the Vice President and Vice President-elect were temporarily visiting.” He “willfully and knowingly engaged in disorderly and disruptive conduct within the United States Capitol Grounds. He “willfully and knowingly entered and remained in the gallery of either House of Congress, without authorization to do so.”

If Knowlton’s contention that a police officer said he could go in is true, it vitiates all these charges, and Knowlton’s claim is certainly corroborated by photographic and video evidence of cops at the Capitol opening gates, holding the doors open for protestors, and reports that police even posed for selfies with protestors. Also, when the FBI raided Knowlton’s home, they found no evidence whatsoever “concerning the breach and unlawful entry” of the Capitol, or “of any conspiracy, planning, or preparation,” or “maps or diagrams” of the Capitol, or of any “materials, devices, or tools” that Knowlton might have planned to use to get inside.

Keep reading