Tag: government overreach

‘Morality pills’ may be the US’s best shot at ending the coronavirus pandemic, according to one ethicist

It seems that the U.S. is not currently equipped to cooperatively lower the risk confronting us. Many are instead pinning their hopes on the rapid development and distribution of an enhancement to the immune system – a vaccine.

But I believe society may be better off, both in the short term as well as the long, by boosting not the body’s ability to fight off disease but the brain’s ability to cooperate with others. What if researchers developed and delivered a moral enhancer rather than an immunity enhancer?

Moral enhancement is the use of substances to make you more moral. The psychoactive substances act on your ability to reason about what the right thing to do is, or your ability to be empathetic or altruistic or cooperative.

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He Wanted To Make Some Money for School Clothes by Selling Mexican Street Corn. The Government Says He Owes $1,415 in Permit Fees.

When high school sophomore Miguel Lozano started selling elotes—Mexican street corn—he hoped to use the money he made to buy clothes for school. The Yamhill County, Oregon, teenager will have to put that goal aside, though, because last week the local government shuttered his makeshift cart.

Though Lozano already has a food service card, he will need to come up with $1,415 for a permit should he want to continue his small operation. The stratospheric cost would deter many would-be entrepreneurs, much less a teenager who just wants to sell corn on the cob for a few extra bucks.

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Nashville Councilwoman: People Who Don’t Wear Masks Should Be Charged With Murder

A Nashville, Tennessee, councilwoman suggested last week that people who refuse to wear masks in public be charged with murder.

During a Wednesday virtual meeting of committees of the Nashville Metro Council, at-large member Sharon Hurt addressed some remarks to Mike Jameson, Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s director of legislative affairs, who was also in attendance.

“I work for an organization, that if they pass a virus, then they are tried for murder, or attempted murder, if they are not told,” said Hurt, “and this person who may very well pass this virus that’s out in the air because they’re not wearing a mask is basically doing the same thing to someone who contracts it and dies from it.”

Presumably Hurt was referring to her employment as executive director of Street Works, a Nashville HIV/AIDS nonprofit. But knowingly passing HIV on to another person is considerably different from passing the coronavirus. For one thing, the number of Americans with HIV is relatively small, and the disease is transmitted in very specific ways, primarily homosexual intercourse and intravenous drug use. One can easily avoid both getting and transmitting HIV by refraining from those activities. The coronavirus, by contrast, affects a large swath of the population, many of whom do not even know they have it, and we are still not entirely certain how it is transmitted or what measures will best prevent transmission. Masks, especially when used by amateurs, are almost certainly ineffective in preventing it.

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Innocent Black Man Held at Gunpoint for 5 MINUTES for Legally Filming in Public

Filming the police is entirely legal, in every state. However, all too often, we will see police officers overstep their authority and arrest, attack, and assault innocent people for the constitutionally protected act of documenting their behavior in public. As the following case out of Clinton County, Indiana illustrates, cops will even pull their guns on people for exercising their First Amendment right to film in public.

In the land of the free, there are ostensible checks and balances which are in place to prevent corrupt and power drunk government officials from overstepping their authority and depriving people of their rights. The largest ostensible restraint on this power is the constitution. However, as TFTP has reported for years, despite the fact that police swear an oath to uphold this constitution, they are all too often the ones who ignore it.

In an exclusive interview with the Free Thought Project, activist and First Amendment auditor, Floyd Wallace tells us that this week, he went to Clinton County and was walking around filming in public. He had committed no crime but being black and filming apparently set off a resident who called police to report him — for filming.

Clinton County Sheriff’s deputy B. Knapp shows up to the call and is apparently afraid of his own shadow. Within a few seconds of arriving to Wallace’s location, he pulls his gun out and points it at the innocent man. His gun would not go back in its holster for nearly five minutes.

“I was just walking around filming in public when they pulled guns on me,” Wallace tells the Free Thought Project.

The cop demanded Wallace “drop his phone” and stop filming but this would have ended the documentation of this incident. The officer could have shot him and simply claimed he feared for his life and that, as they say, would’ve been that.

Showing just how scared these deputies are of a black man filming is the fact that deputy Knapp called for backup and another deputy arrived and pointed an AR-15 at Wallace. He was then handcuffed and interrogated — for filming.

Wallace was then handcuffed and detained as a half dozen other cops show up to investigate a black man filming.

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Evidence Is Mounting That Governor Cuomo Is Targeting Bars That Criticize Him for Suspension

A week after starting a petition calling for Governor Andrew Cuomo to reverse New York’s mandate requiring that a substantial amount of food must be served with any alcohol purchase, Abby Ehmann, the owner of East Village dive bar Lucky, found out her liquor license was suspended.

“Ehmann says that two State Liquor Authority representatives visited the bar on Monday night at 8 p.m. to observe if the bar’s eight customers had ordered food with their drinks,” according to Eater New York. “After the visit, Ehmann received her first warning from the SLA on a piece of paper that did not list out the specific violations, she says. Shortly afterward, and with no further warnings, Lucky’s liquor license was suspended.”

“No other safety measures were inspected or questioned,” Ehmann told Eater New York. “Also, no other bars or restaurants in close proximity to mine received this inspection, causing me to believe that I was intentionally targeted for selective enforcement by the Governor and State Liquor Authority.”

“I exercised my First Amendment right by petitioning my government for a redress of grievances,” Ehmann said. “I believe that this same government has selectively enforced the law I’m working to change as retaliation.”

This is now the second bar that is accusing Governor Cuomo of retaliating against it for opposing his mandate.

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