Tag: police state

All States Are Empires Of Lies

“Most economists are political apologists masquerading as economists,” wrote Doug Casey in one of his columns.

“They prescribe the way they would like the world to work and tailor theories to help politicians demonstrate the virtue and necessity of their quest for power.”

Moreover, wrote Casey, “The field of economics has been turned into the handmaiden of government in order to give a scientific justification for things the government wants to do.”

This of course is not a new development. Ludwig von Mises was calling the universities of his day “nurseries of socialism” but, thankfully, there is always a remnant of students who resist the statist brainwashing. The above quote about concocted “scientific” justifications for interventionism and socialism, by the way, sounds like a precise definition of Keynes’s General Theory.

Casey’s sound advice is that to be a good citizen one needs to “become your own economist.” Don’t rely on the state’s mouthpieces in the “media” or even academe for your economic knowledge. Educate yourself to some degree; it doesn’t take a university degree. Indeed, everything we do at the Mises Institute is geared toward helping anyone anywhere to become their own economist (preferably Austrian School and not Keynesian or Post Keynesian!) and avoid being bamboozled by the state and its court historian economists.

Mises never joined the American Economic Association, the association of academic economists founded in the 1880s. The association’s founding document provides a clue as to why. “The state is an educational and ethical agency whose positive aid is an indispensable condition of human progress,” the document purred. “The doctrine of laissez faire,” on the other hand, “is unsafe in politics and unsound in morals,” said the statist moral scolds who founded the American Economic Association.

There are exceptions, the Austrian School economists being the most prominent, but the majority of academic economists view themselves as advisors or potential advisors to the state. They are Rothbard’s “court historians” with degrees in economics instead of history. The role that they serve is the same as all “intellectuals” in our almost 100 percent state-funded universities. As Rothbard put it: “The majority [of the electorate] must be persuaded by ideology that their government is good, wise, and at least inevitable. Promoting this ideology . . . is the vital task of the ‘intellectuals.’” In return, the “intellectuals” are given government jobs, grants, placement at prestigious universities, book deals, and myriad other political payoffs. (Mises wrote that history, law, and economics are the disciplines most widely used to bamboozle the public about the supposedly good, wise, and inevitable state).

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The FBI’s Disturbing Treatment of Political Nominees

The FBI’s background investigation (B.I.) process for political nominees has allegedly been corrupted with “improper handling” of sensitive information, according to an investigation by America First Legal (AFL).  AFL’s November 7 press release asserts that the mishandling of private information is a “critical” matter” that must be addressed because of the potential to use the B.I. process as a “weapon against future nominees.”

It also appears that select staff from the Senate Judiciary Committee “appear to have shared FBI background reports and personal financial information in a breach of Senate security protocols.”  AFL rightly asserts that Americans, including administration nominees, have a right to privacy “to the greatest extent possible,” as cited in the Privacy Act of 1974.

AFL alleges that it has found “explosive new discoveries about the FBI’s flawed and unlawful background investigation process for nominees to positions that require Senate confirmation.”  The investigation goes back to late June 2021, when AFL submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the DOJ.

The June 24, 2021 FOIA request included but was not limited to requests for records related to consent from nominees to be investigated by the FBI and all communications between the FBI and the Senate Judiciary Committee members and staff.  In addition, AFL asked the DOJ to respond with “all laws, regulations, guidance and documents” that would apply to the “disclosure of judicial nominee background information files to Congress.”  Those requested documents would also include any “memorandum of understanding” (MOU) between the Biden White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee and any MOU between the White House and the DOJ related to the “background investigations of potential judicial nominees.”

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A Psychedelic Ban Would Disrupt Important Research

You have probably never heard of 2,5-dimethoxy-4-iodoamphetamine (DOI), much less worried about its possible abuse. Yet the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) wants to ban this synthetic psychedelic, a promising research chemical used in more than 900 published studies, by placing it in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), which defeated a previous DEA attempt to ban DOI in 2022, is determined to stop the agency’s interference with science again.

A DEA administrative law judge has scheduled a 10-day hearing on the proposed ban, beginning on November 12. SSDP, which filed a prehearing statement on behalf of more than 20 scientists, argues that placing DOI in Schedule I would impose “onerous financial and bureaucratic obstacles on researchers.” SSDP also opposes the scheduling of another psychedelic, 2,5-dimethoxy-4-chloroamphetamine (DOC), under the same proposed rule, which the DEA published last December.

“DOI and DOC are important research chemicals with basically no evidence of abuse,” says SSDP alum and legal counsel Brett Phelps. Phelps is working with Denver attorney Robert Rush, who represents 
University of California, Berkeley, neuroscientist Raul Ramos.

“The DEA’s attempt to classify DOI, a compound of great significance to both psychedelic and fundamental serotonin research, as a Schedule I substance exemplifies an administrative agency overstepping its bounds,” Rush says. “The government admits DOI is not being diverted for use outside of scientific research yet insists on placing this substance in such a restricted class that it will disrupt virtually all current research.”

SSDP describes the two compounds as “essential research chemicals in pre-clinical psychiatry and neurobiology,” noting that their unscheduled status has made them accessible as tools for studying serotonin receptors. It says DOI, in particular, has been “a cornerstone in neuroscience research” due to its selectivity for the 5-HT2A serotonin receptor, crucial for understanding the therapeutic effects of psychedelics. Scientists have used DOI to “map the localization of an important serotonin receptor in the brain critical in learning, memory, and psychiatric disease,” SSDP notes, and DOI studies “have shown encouraging results in managing pain and reducing opioid cravings.”

The DEA argues that DOI and DOC “have a high potential for abuse.” While the two compounds “are available for purchase from legitimate chemical synthesis companies,” the DEA concedes, “there is no evidence of diversion from these companies.” But it notes that both drugs “have been encountered by law enforcement in the United States,” indicating their “availability for abuse.” Because “DOI and DOC are not found in FDA-approved drug products,” the DEA says, people who use them must be doing so “on their own initiative, rather than based on medical advice.”

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Florida Sen. Rick Scott says he’ll vote against recreational pot after brother’s death

Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida says he’ll be voting in November against a ballot amendment to legalize recreational marijuana in his state, a deeply personal decision based on his brother’s long history of addiction.

The senator and former Florida governor said he watched his brother Roger Scott begin smoking marijuana as a teenager and then struggle with substance use for the rest of life.

“People end up with addictive personalities, and so he did,” Scott said in an interview. “It messes up your life, and so that’s why I’ve never supported legalization of drugs.”

When Roger Scott died in April at 67, the cause wasn’t substance abuse, but rather “a life of drugs and alcohol” catching up with him, the senator said. He had lived in an apartment in Dallas, Texas, where he served jail time in 1990 on a misdemeanor conviction of possessing dangerous drugs, court records show.

Rick Scott became wealthy as a lawyer and health care industry executive before entering politics. Now running for reelection, he lamented that his brother had a “tough life” and says it all began with marijuana.

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From transgenderism to transhumanism, the agenda to redefine reality for mass compliance

Western civilisation, that grand experiment of reason and Enlightenment values, now finds itself grappling with an identity crisis. From the philosophy that brought us democracy, the scientific method, and even good wine pairings, we’ve somehow arrived at a peculiar era where society is encouraged to believe that reality is less a fixed landscape and more of a political Rubik’s cube. Specifically, the landscape of gender has become a battleground of biological, cultural, and political ideals—dominating headlines, monopolising discourse, and, oddly, managing to ignore the statistical insignificance of its demographic audience. Transgender individuals constitute roughly 0.3% of the West population, and yet the world seems to revolve around their pronouns, identities, and access to public bathrooms, all in the name of progress.

Our intellectual elite, decked in designer ideology, assures us that distinguishing between biological sex and gender is sophisticated; it’s the in thing, the thinking person’s new orthodoxy. To question this, to state something as blatantly archaic as “biology is real,” is to expose oneself as backward, uninformed—a blight upon the socially conscious. But it’s hard not to wonder if we’re all just playing a grand game of ideological dress-up, where we pretend we’re making leaps forward in human understanding while, in reality, we’re toeing a line many people can’t quite bring themselves to believe. Accommodating and encouraging children that identify as animals, stigmatising other children as bullies for calling out this absurdity, and giving credence to what was once accepted as make-believe, imagination, and play. Still, most people seem to mumble along with it, lest they be the odd one out, clinging to common sense like a moth to a guttering flame.

Transgender news coverage has increased by over 1600% in the past 10 years, while the tone of these stories has gone from sensationary to militantly positive and supportive, guiding discussions toward an unprecedented level of scrutiny over the nature of identity itself. Our cognitive maps are being redrawn by the universities, media, and big business DEI with all the precision of a drunk darts player, influencing society’s concept of reality. These implications reach far beyond gender identity and into the potential future of humanity—one where human limitations and even natural family structures are increasingly questioned and redefined through technology. It appears to be clearly by design and yet another baby step towards an insidious, transhumanist control agenda.

Such blurring of reality and ideology has an unsettling historical precedent. Where other empires rewrote the annals of history, modern movements seem intent on rewriting the basics of human biology. Consider the USSR, Maoist China, and the Khmer Rouge, all of which did their best to erode the sanctity of the family unit, that most fundamental societal structure. Even the Nazis, despite pushing traditional values, encouraged loyalty not to family but to the state, with children trained to report on their parents’ non-conformist views. Today’s West doesn’t seem far off—except that the disintegration of kinship is wrapped in softer packaging. Tradition and generational wisdom are rebuffed as vestiges of oppression, and the notion of family as a guiding principle of society is branded a relic, an artifact better suited for history museums than modern culture.

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Stopping Usurpation: The Forgotten Power of Non-Compliance

You can’t comply your way out of tyranny.

This principle – central to the American Revolution – has been almost totally forgotten and ignored. And it was also forcefully repeated and reiterated a century later by Lysander Spooner.

The following are the top quotes and principles that make up this essential foundation.

VOID

To start, it was widely understood that the people are the source of all power, and government only acts as their agent. So it logically flowed from that principle that any act beyond powers delegated or authorized to government was a usurpation of power – and thus, void.

The 3rd Chief Justice, Oliver Ellsworth, put it like this:

“If they make a law which the constitution does not authorize, it is void.”

This wasn’t anything new. As James Otis Jr, in his 1761 speech against the Writs of Assistance, made the same case – the same principle even under the unwritten British constitution.

“An act against the constitution is void.”

Reiterating this principle nearly a century later, Lysander Spooner wrote, “An unconstitutional statute is no law, in the view of the constitution. It is void, and confers no authority on any one”

PRECEDENT

The old revolutionaries understood that government always grows, and even the smallest steps beyond the constitution were a precedent for even more usurpations of power in the future.

John Dickinson made this case in his influential 1765 broadside urging non-compliance with the Stamp Act.

“IF you comply with the Act by using Stamped Papers, you fix, you rivet perpetual Chains upon your unhappy Country. You unnecessarily, voluntarily establish the detestable Precedent, which those who have forged your Fetters ardently wish for, to varnish the future Exercise of this new claimed Authority.” [emphasis added]

Dickinson continued with this same warning two years later in response to the Townshend Acts.

“When an act injurious to freedom has been once done, and the people bear it, the repetition of it is most likely to meet with submission. For as the mischief of the one was found to be tolerable, they will hope that of the second will prove so too; and they will not regard the infamy of the last, because they are stained with that of the first.”

Thomas Paine warned that we should treat precedent not as law – but instead, as a warning.

“In numerous instances, the precedent ought to operate as a warning, and not as an example, and requires to be shunned instead of imitated; but instead of this, precedents are taken in the lump, and put at once for constitution and for law.”

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Were Peanut and Fred the final straws?

The vicious, unnecessary, malevolent killing of pet squirrel, Peanut, and pet raccoon, Fred, may have been the final two straws that put Trump over the top in such huge numbers. American voters were shocked that the government could come into their homes and unceremoniously murder two harmless long-time pets just because of some obscure law that didn’t apply. Laugh if you want, but I believe these two pet sacrifices put Trump over the top in larger numbers than he would have gotten had the pets not been slaughtered.

Government has been overreaching for a long time. We hated it then; we hate it now. Until the Peanut incident, the government had cover. But when you threaten a person’s beloved pet, you have gone too far. When you kill it just because you can, you have gone too far. People get extremely attached to pets. Children get attached to pets. It’s lose-lose for the government.

As with everything else the totalitarian Left does, it went a bridge too far and the voters punished them mercilessly for it. Certainly, there were other issues that precipitated a Trump victory — immigration, the economy,  DEI, abortion, men in women’s sports, Afghanistan, Iran. But none of those issues allowed the government to waltz into your house and kill your beloved pet.

When Peanut and Fred were slaughtered, it got up close and personal — in your house and in your face. At least when they raided your house for documents, no one was killed. But this time, two precious pets were.

Now voters knew — if they didn’t already know — how far Democrats would go if they won. I like to think Peanut and Fred didn’t die in vain.

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Arizona Rejects Restrictions on Governor’s Emergency Powers

Arizonans voted against Proposition 135, a ballot measure that would have enshrined an “Emergency Declarations Amendment” to the constitution limiting the ability of their governor to extend emergency declarations among others. 56.8 percent of Arizona voters went against the proposition, with 68 percent of the vote counted as of press time.

Two years ago, Governor Doug Ducey signed a similar bill limiting the duration of a state of emergency to 30-day increments, which are eligible for extensions up to 120 days without the legislature’s approval. Proposition 135 would have set a hard cap of 30 days for states of emergency and prohibited the governor from extending them without approval from state lawmakers. Absent a decision from the state legislature, the declared state of emergency would automatically end after the allotted 30 days.

Under the ballot measure, certain types of emergencies—like a state of war, fire, and floods—would not be subject to the 30-day limit. Additionally, the legislature would have had the authority to alter or limit the governor’s powers when lawmakers extend an emergency declaration.

Apart from the amendment’s effects on emergency declarations, it also required the governor to call a special session upon the petition of “at least one-third of each house of the legislature,” according to the ballot’s language. Under current law, two-thirds of lawmakers in both chambers must vote in favor of a special session to force the governor to call one. 

Republican lawmakers holding majorities in both chambers voted in 2023 for the amendment to be included on the 2024 ballot; no Democrats voted to include the ballot measure. The bill’s sponsor, state representative Joseph Chaplik (R–Scottsdale), cited the 700-day plus COVID-19 emergency order as a key reason for his support of the measure, according to The Arizona Republic. Rep. Chaplik told The Arizona Republic that the proposition would have allowed special sessions to occur immediately following a governor’s “abuses [of] their emergency power.”

Opponents of Proposition 135 cited concerns over the state’s ability to respond to emergencies. Requiring legislative approval might have slowed down the resources that states of emergency are meant to help allocate. The allocation of state resources, temporary suspension of regulations, enhanced information gathering, and speedy authorization of stricter public safety measures are all reasons states of emergency are declared.  

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Kuwait Warns Foreign Residents of Upcoming Deadline for Compulsory Biometric Registration

Kuwaiti authorities have called on foreign residents in the country to ensure that they complete an ongoing compulsory biometric registration exercise before the government-prescribed deadline at the end of this year.

The deadline for Kuwaiti citizens to comply with the requirement elapsed in September, but aliens have until December 31 to do so.

Col. Thamer Dakhin Al-Mutairi, an official from the Personnel Identification Department, is referenced by Arab Times as saying that all those who do not meet the December deadline will have their transactions disrupted.

Already, the government says citizens who failed to meet the September deadline have a block on some of their transactions such as banking services, although they still have a chance to catch up.

The government indicates that so far, slightly over three million people are already done with the process, while over 754,000 others are yet to do so.

Al-Mutairi has also reminded residents of the points where registration takes place. He says it is safer to book appointments because all those who show up without an appointment may not be attended to by identification personnel.

Kuwait mandated a compulsory collection of fingerprint biometrics from citizens and residents in May last year, saying it is part of efforts to bolster the country’s national security architecture.

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Trump criminal cases brought by Jack Smith set to be closed before he enters White House

The two federal criminal cases against Donald Trump are likely to be wound down before he gets into the White House, according to reports hours after his crushing election victory over Kamala Harris.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is in talks with the Justice Department to end the January 6 and classified documents prosecutions, NBC News reported.

The move would confirm the DOJ is sticking with the precedent that no sitting president can be prosecuted.

It’s an enormous blow for Smith who ramped up the cases in the final months of the campaigns and has spent almost three years and more than $35million in taxpayer funds trying to bring the 78-year-old to trial. 

Trump still faces sentencing in the New York hush money trial next month and the election interference case in Georgia headed by District Attorney Fani Wills has been beset by a slew of problems.

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