Tag: police state

Nebraska Lawmakers Approve 100% Tax Rate For CBD And Hemp Products To Help Offset Property Taxes

A Nebraska legislative committee has given preliminary approval to a bill that would tax hemp and CBD products in the state at a whopping 100 percent rate.

The cannabis product tax hike is part of legislation designed to bring in more money to state coffers to offset property tax bills, according to an outline of the plan from Sen. Lou Ann Linehan (R), the legislation’s sponsor, that was posted by a Nebraska Public Media reporter.

The legislature’s Revenue Committee advanced the underlying measure, LB 388, on a 7–0 vote on Thursday, according to a report in the Nebraska Examiner. The state’s full unicameral legislature could take up the bill as soon as Tuesday.

“We are going to tax hemp and CBD at 100%,” Linehan’s document says, adding that, along with other reforms—including removing sales tax exemptions on soda, candy, pet services, advertising revenue over $1 billion and lottery tickets—the change is estimated to bring in $182 million in new revenue for the state.

The changes are not currently reflected in the bill’s language as available online, nor has any relevant amendment been posted to the bill page. Linehan, who also chairs the panel that approved the measure this week, did not immediately respond to emailed questions from Marijuana Moment.

Adam Morfeld, a former Nebraska state senator who co-chairs the advocacy group Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, reacted to the proposal with shock.

“The Legislature is going to tax hemp and CBD at 100 percent!??” he posted on social media.

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The Supreme Court Should Reject Clandestine Government Censorship of Online Speech

When federal officials persistently pressured social media platforms to delete or downgrade posts those officials did not like, a government lawyer told the Supreme Court on Monday, they were merely offering “information” and “advice” to their “partners” in fighting “misinformation.” If the justices accept that characterization, they will be blessing clandestine government censorship of online speech.

The case, Murthy v. Missouri, pits two states and five social media users against federal officials who strongly, repeatedly, and angrily demanded that Facebook et al. crack down on speech the government viewed as dangerous to public health, democracy, or national security. Some of this “exhortation,” as U.S. Deputy Solicitor General Brian Fletcher described it, happened in public, as when President Joe Biden accused the platforms of “killing people” by allowing users to say things he believed would discourage Americans from being vaccinated against COVID-19.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, who echoed that charge in more polite terms, urged a “whole-of-society” effort to combat the “urgent threat to public health” posed by “health misinformation,” which he said might include “legal and regulatory measures.” Other federal officials said holding social media platforms “accountable” could entail antitrust action, new regulations, or expansion of their civil liability for user-posted content.

Those public threats were coupled with private communications that came to light only thanks to their discovery in this case. As Louisiana Solicitor General J. Benjamin Aguiñaga noted on Monday, officials such as Deputy Assistant to the President Rob Flaherty “badger[ed] the platforms 24/7,” demanding that they broaden their content restrictions and enforce them more aggressively.

Those emails alluded to presidential displeasure and warned that White House officials were “considering our options on what to do” if the platforms failed to fall in line. The platforms responded by changing their policies and practices.

Facebook executive Nick Clegg was eager to appease the president. In emails to Murthy, he noted that Facebook had “adjust[ed] policies on what we’re removing”; had deleted pages, groups, and accounts that offended the White House; and would “shortly be expanding our COVID policies to further reduce the spread of potentially harmful content.”

Facebook took those steps, Clegg said in another internal email that Aguiñaga quoted, “because we were under pressure by the administration.” Clegg expressed regret about caving to that pressure, saying, “We shouldn’t have done it.”

According to Fletcher, none of this implicated the First Amendment because “no threats happened.” He meant that federal officials never explicitly threatened platforms with “adverse government action” while urging suppression of constitutionally protected speech.

That position is hard to reconcile with the Supreme Court’s 1963 decision in Bantam Books v. Sullivan. In that case, the Court held that Rhode Island’s Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth had violated the First Amendment by pressuring book distributors to drop titles it deemed objectionable.

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Feds Can Film Your Front Porch for 68 Days Without a Warrant, Says Court

Law enforcement in Kansas recorded the front of a man’s home for 68 days straight, 15 hours a day, and obtained evidence to prove him guilty on 16 charges. The officers did not have a search warrant, using a camera on a pole positioned across the street to capture Bruce Hay’s home. A federal court ruled on Tuesday that it was fine for law enforcement to do so, in what’s potentially a major reduction in privacy law.

“Mr. Hay had no reasonable expectation of privacy in a view of the front of his house,” said the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in its decision on U.S. vs Hay. “As video cameras proliferate throughout society, regrettably, the reasonable expectation of privacy from filming is diminished.”

Hay, an Army veteran, was found guilty of lying about his disability status to collect benefits from the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA). However, the concerning part of this case stems from how VA officers collected evidence against Hay. The veteran appealed his case, arguing that the months-long surveillance of his home crossed a line. However, the federal court ruled that law enforcement can videotape the outside of your home, partially because of how prominent video cameras have become in society.

The federal court’s decision says that video cameras have become “ubiquitous,” and have therefore diminished our expectations of privacy. Police officers wear body cameras now, cellphones have cameras, and many doorbells record your porch. The court isn’t wrong that cameras are everywhere.

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“It’s Enraging”: NYPD Arrest Homeowner For Changing Locks After Squatters Break In

Adele Andaloro, 47, was placed under arrest at her $1 million home in Flushing, Queens, which she inherited from her parents after they died.

“It’s enraging,” Andaloro told the NY Post. “It’s not fair that I, as the homeowner, have to be going through this.“

Andaloro claims the ordeal erupted when she started the process of trying to sell the home last month but realized squatters had moved in — and brazenly replaced the entire front door and locks.

Fed up, she recently went to her family’s home on 160th Street — with the local TV outlet in tow — and called a locksmith to change the locks for her. -NY Post

The spat with the squatters, which was caught on camera, rapidly erupted into a verbal altercation until the cops showed up and led Andaloro away – charging her with ‘unlawful eviction.’

As the Post notes, people can claim “squatter’s rights” if they’ve been squatting for just 30 days at a property. This makes it illegal for homeowners to change the locks, turn off the utilities, or remove the squatters’ belongings.

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102-Year-Old Oakland Man Ordered to Clean Up Graffiti on the Back Fence of His Home or Face Hefty Fine

The City of Oakland, California has ordered a centenarian resident to clean up graffiti from his property or face a substantial fine, KTVU reported.

Victor Silva Sr., a 102-year-old wheelchair user who has lived and paid taxes in his Oakland neighborhood for 80 years, was shocked to receive a violation notice earlier this month ordering the cleanup by March 19th.

If he fails to comply, he faces a $1,100 penalty, with additional charges of $1,277 for each re-inspection that finds the graffiti still in place.

His daughter-in-law, Elena Silva, expressed disbelief at the city’s citation: “It was so absurd, it’s like a joke. If you drive around the city and see the graffiti everywhere, it’s just I don’t know what to say.”

The centenarian, who is approaching his 103rd birthday, reminisced about the times he could handle the cleanup himself. “Just had a roller and a paintbrush and just painted it. It was very easy because I was a contractor, you know. I’ll be 103 in two months or so. That slowed it up a little bit,” Silva Sr. told to KTVU.

Now, the responsibility of maintaining the fence graffiti-free falls on his 70-year-old son, Victor Silva Jr. He finds the task increasingly futile: “It’s hard to keep up with it because as soon as we get it painted, It’s gonna be graffiti on it again, and it won’t last.”

The Silva family also owns a nearby commercial property that has been broken into three times over the last year, exacerbating their frustrations with city services. When Silva Jr. tried to report these incidents, he found himself consistently on hold with 911.

“And I’m put on hold every time. So it’s hard to understand where our tax dollars are going. They can’t answer 911, but they can come out and hassle you about a fence?”

In response to the public backlash and media inquiries, a city inspector from Oakland contacted KTVU, indicating an immediate re-inspection would take place, with the implication that the citation would likely be rescinded.

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‘Emergency’ Spending Is Out of Control

Emergencies are, by definition, unexpected and urgent situations requiring immediate action—except in Congress, where the term is increasingly used to justify spending decisions that should be part of the normal budget process.

Congress has authorized more than $12 trillion in emergency spending over the past three decades, according to a report released in January by the Cato Institute. About half of that total was spent in direct response to the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic, but much of the other half was used for purposes that strain the definition of emergency.

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Growing secrecy limits government accountability

When I started covering crime as a reporter for small newspapers in the 1980s, I was assigned to walk to the police department lobby each morning and look through all of the previous day’s police reports, clipped to a board on the counter, containing all the details laid out for anyone to see. We were able to report to the community each day on the major events in town – to explain why people heard sirens, or saw a smoke plume.

By the 1990s, the clipboards were moved out of the lobby, so we asked at the counter to see them. Then we were told we had to review them with the sergeant on duty. Then we were told we couldn’t see them – we had to ask the police what they felt was newsworthy. Then we were told to submit a public records request, and wait for days or weeks – if we got them at all.

For decades, journalists and civic activists have lamented the increasing secrecy of government – the times, they were denied government information, particularly from public records requests. Reports have shown secrecy getting worse at the federal, state and local government levels.

But those were usually anecdotal reports of problems. Now, there is data that brings those refusals into focus and which provides a fuller picture of government agencies hiding their work from the public they ostensibly serve.

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Secret RCMP report warns Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they are

A secret RCMP report is warning the federal government that Canada may descend into civil unrest once citizens realize the hopelessness of their economic situation.

“The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” reads the report, entitled Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada.

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“For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live,” it adds.

The report, labelled secret, is intended as a piece of “special operational information” to be distributed only within the RCMP and among “decision-makers” in the federal government.

A heavily redacted version was made public as a result of an access to information request filed by Matt Malone, an assistant professor of law at British Columbia’s Thompson Rivers University, and an expert in government secrecy.

Describing itself in an introduction as a “scanning exercise,” the report is intended to highlight trends in both Canada and abroad “that could have a significant effect on the Canadian government and the RCMP.”

Right from the get-go, the report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it “will probably deteriorate further in the next five years.”

In addition to worsening living standards, the RCMP also warns of a future increasingly defined by unpredictable weather and seasonal catastrophes, such as wildfires and flooding. Most notably, report authors warn of Canada facing “increasing pressure to cede Arctic territory.”

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Federal Court Rules Firearm Restrictions on Defendants Awaiting Trial Are Constitutional

A federal court has ruled it is constitutional to block a defendant’s Second Amendment rights while they are awaiting trial.

On March 18, the three-judge panel in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that the restriction on the rights of Jesus Perez-Garcia and John Thomas Fencl to bear firearms is constitutional because it is consistent with historic legal precedent.

While these are two separate cases, with Judge Gonzalo Paul Curiel ruling on Mr. Perez-Garcia’s case on Dec. 2, 2022, and Judge Janis Lynn Sammartino ruling on Mr. Fencl’s case on Dec. 7, 2022, both men brought their legal challenge before the federal appeals court on Jan. 26, 2023.

In the 47-page appellate court opinion (pdf), Judge Gabriel P. Sanchez said, “Here, the historical evidence, when considered as a whole, shows a long and broad history of legislatures exercising authority to disarm people whose possession of firearms would pose an unusual danger, beyond the ordinary citizen, to themselves or others.

“The temporary disarmament of Fencl and Perez-Garcia as a means reasonably necessary to protect public safety falls within that historical tradition,” Judge Sanchez wrote further, adding that the court found that restricting the defendants’ right to own firearms is “consistent with our nation’s long history of temporarily disarming criminal defendants facing serious charges and those deemed dangerous or unwilling to follow the law.”

Judge Sanchez wrote that the decision to confiscate the guns owned by Mr. Perez-Garcia and Mr. Fencl was “consistent with our nation’s long history of temporarily disarming criminal defendants facing serious charges and those deemed dangerous or unwilling to follow the law.”

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J6 Political Prisoner, Dominic Pezzola, Confronts Myth of Rehabilitation in Federal Prison and the Reality of Prison Abuse

January 6TH, Prisoner Dominic Pezzola’s life within the Federal Bureau of Prisons has been anything but ‘rehabilitative.’ Each passing day of his ten-year sentence reveals a system marred by injustice and riddled with apparent apathy from those tasked with his care while in custody. Lisa, his wife, remains resolute in her role on the outside, relaying the brutal realities of Dominic’s ordeal to those willing to listen.

Earlier this year, Dominic was thrust into the cruel isolation of the Special Housing Unit (SHU) for an inexplicable 45 days. Dom told Lisa that prison authorities offered no explanation, leaving him in the dark about his alleged transgressions. After his release from the SHU, it was just two weeks later that the entire prison was placed under lockdown for more than two weeks due to a stabbing incident in a separate unit, no amount of explanation in the aftermath could undo the damage of what amounts to collective punishment. The prison walls seem impervious to reason, punishing every inmate indiscriminately, regardless of their involvement in the incident.

Dom’s confusion over the sudden confinement was compounded by the fact that he never received a formal write-up, a violation notice that typically accompanies punitive measures. For all he knew, the authorities had deemed him guilty without affording him the right to understand his supposed crimes.

Dominic’s release from the SHU was as abrupt as his initial confinement. No explanation was immediately given, and the slate was wiped clean as if the ordeal had never occurred. Through the proverbial grapevine, he learned that the prison authorities swiftly concluded the investigation of the stabbing within 48 hours. Without further explanation from BOP officials, to either Dom or his wife Lisa, motives behind the extended lockdown and solitary confinement remain unclear.

Many inmates believe that what happens with frequent and extended periods of lockdown are more than just arbitrary measures. In fact, many allege they are but one component of a systemic strategy rooted in corruption.

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