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dinky-Warren laments, “In 1958, the National Election Survey first asked Americans a simple question: Do you trust the government to do the right thing most of the time? That year, 73% of Americans said yes. In 2019, that number is just 17%. Five out of every six Americans do not trust their government to do the right thing. Why have so many people lost faith in government?”

The senator blames “right-wing politicians” for spending “a generation attacking the very idea of government,” before launching on her tired refrain about the “wealthy and the well-connected” — of which dinky-Warren herself is a prominent member. But we can think of two answers to her question that are intimately related. The first is this admonition from Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address: “A wise and frugal government … shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

The second is that the warning issued by James Madison, author of the Constitution we celebrate today, has come to pass: “The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.”

Why don’t Americans trust the government? Because it’s doing things poorly that it was never constitutionally empowered to do in the first place. Power, meet abuse. To say so is not “attacking government.” It’s advocating a limited and constitutional one.

Virtually the entire Democrat platform since, oh, about 1958 has been along the lines of the so-called “Great Society” — unconstitutional and failed welfare programs that “take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned,” only to give it to someone who didn’t earn it. Of course, Democrats really began traveling down the “progressive” road with Woodrow Wilson’s income-tax-funded administrative state and stomped on the accelerator with Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal” socialism.

Naturally, dinky-Warren only doubles down on the Democrats’ top-down, government-control approach. Regulate this, outlaw that, tax the other thing. That’s why it’s almost comical that her plan echoes Barack scumbag/liar-nObama in its call for “big, structural change to fundamentally transform our government.” How is it fundamental change to do more of what government has spent the last century doing?

In all honesty, we do indeed need a fundamental transformation — one that returns the federal government to its proper, constitutionally limited role. That means things like prioritizing national defense while ceasing the income redistribution that consumes two-thirds of the $4 trillion budget and feeds the very lobbying problem Warren claims to want to eradicate. Warren and her fellow socialists demand even more redistribution programs that would only exacerbate the corruption they claim to want to solve.

But as a final thought, the Founders thought the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” (i.e., lobbying) was important enough to place in the First Amendment. Yes, lobbyists can be corrupt, but no more so than the politicians and unelected bureaucrats crafting reams of rules dictating everything from what kind of light bulb we use to how much water our toilets flush. Warren’s plan to gut the First Amendment simply because she doesn’t want to hear from lobbyists who oppose such things isn’t removing corruption; it’s adding tyranny.

The late, great Charles Krauthammer wrote this of lobbyists in 2008:

Everyone knows the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, speech, press and assembly. How many remember that, in addition, the First Amendment protects a fifth freedom — to lobby?

Of course it doesn’t use the word lobby. It calls it the right “to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Lobbyists are people hired to do that for you, so that you can actually stay home with the kids and remain gainfully employed rather than spend your life in the corridors of Washington.

To hear the candidates in this presidential campaign, you’d think lobbying is just one notch below waterboarding, a black art practiced by the great malefactors of wealth to keep the middle class in a vise and loose upon the nation every manner of scourge: oil dependency, greenhouse gases, unpayable mortgages and those tiny entrees you get at French restaurants.

Lobbying is constitutionally protected, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it all. Let’s agree to frown upon bad lobbying, such as getting a tax break for a particular industry. Let’s agree to welcome good lobbying — the actual redress of a legitimate grievance — such as protecting your home from being turned to dust to make way for some urban development project. …

Good lobbying … is a cherished First Amendment right — necessary, like the others, to protect a free people against overbearing and potentially tyrannical government.  

~The Patriot Post

 

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65517?mailing_id=4534&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4534&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Now, let’s get one thing straight: The United States of America is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. While there are many features of a democracy, like our elections and statewide referenda, there are other features that temper its control over policy and laws. The Constitution also established a breakwater. However, the term democracy is often used as a term for countries that have free and fair elections and free people — with the United States and the United Kingdom being among them. Part of the principles of democracy also include accepting the results of elections. This last part, though, is proving difficult on both sides of the Atlantic.

For instance, let’s look at recent events in the United Kingdom regarding whether that country would remain in the European Union. In June 2016, the Brexit referendum passed with nearly 52% of the vote. It was a 3.78% margin of victory — one that pre-referendum polling did not see coming. The British people decided that they wanted out of the EU.

What has happened in the three years after the referendum should be very concerning to those who loudly proclaim to believe in democracy. In essence, while a majority of the people of the United Kingdom wanted out of the European Union, the opposite was true when it came to the political establishment, not just in London, but in Brussels (EU headquarters) as well.

In fact, to keep other countries from trying to follow the “Brexit” path, the European Union has tightened the screws on the United Kingdom, pour encourager les autres. This extortion plan was in place months before the Brexit vote.

Meanwhile, there have been efforts to either force a second referendum (with the hopes that the bullying and blanket press coverage in favor of repudiating the 2016 vote), to cancel Brexit entirely, or to come up with a supposedly “soft Brexit” that would not really be a Brexit. Boris Johnson was elected as leader of the Conservative Party on the promise that the UK would be out of the EU on Oct. 31 with or without a deal. Yet various opposition parties in Parliament, with the aid of “Remainer” Conservatives, blocked a “no deal” Brexit. Then, they blocked a snap election.

It’s pretty obvious here that the will of the British people is being thwarted. Would Brexit be painful? Voters assumed there would be some pain involved, yet they made the decision that the pain of Brexit was worth being free from Brussels bureaucrats. Now, they are seeing the majority of their elected officials try to thwart it any way they can. So, who is really killing democracy in the United Kingdom?

We now turn to America to face the same question. The Brexit referendum would rank as the biggest political upset of the past decade, if not for Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, we’ve seen serious questions about abuse of power, which included turning the intelligence community on the presidential campaign of the political party not in power. There is a search for some accountability for Spygate, but getting it is like pulling teeth.

In addition, there are many other abuses that need to be addressed. New York Democrat Gov. scumbag-Andrew Cuomo is openly trying to suppress the political activity of groups like the NRA that represent citizens who speak out against his anti-gun agenda.

Democrats have long claimed that “voter suppression” caused the defeat of Stacey Abrams in Georgia. Brian Kemp, her Republican opponent in the gubernatorial race and secretary of state at the time, denies he suppressed votes. Abrams and her supporters haven’t offered evidence to support her opposite claim, yet they are allowed to repeatedly make it, and to claim that her defeat is a sign that democracy in America is dying.

Yet the actions of scumbag-Cuomo (who has admitted publicly that he seeks to bankrupt the NRA) did suppress the political activity of the NRA in the 2018 midterms, and arguably tilted a governor’s race in Wisconsin and a Senate race in Arizona (among a number of close House races) in favor of candidates more receptive to his agenda. There is no small chance we could see similar suppression in the 2020 presidential race. scumbag-Cuomo doesn’t even bother to deny it; he proudly proclaims that such suppression is what he wants to see happen.

So is democracy dying? Well, one key aspect is clearly not in good shape: The acceptance of election results. The efforts to stymie Brexit and the investigations of President Trump are not good signs — and you can bet that these actions will see reciprocal ones in kind should better angels not prevail. Worse, in America, the string of abuses we have seen in recent years are endangering the concept of free and fair elections.

Benjamin Franklin famously told someone who asked what had come from the Constitutional Convention: “A republic, if you can keep it.” This next election cycle could wind up being very decisive in determining if America keeps its republic.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65533?mailing_id=4536&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4536&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

“You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” ―Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky

Last Wednesday, America once again commemorated the most devastating domestic attack in the history of the nation. Eighteen years ago, while the rubble was still smoldering where the World Trade Center once stood, Americans learned that a then-largely unknown terrorist group called al-Qaida, led by a man named Osama bin Laden, was responsible. They also earned that the government of Afghanistan, run by Islamist extremists called the Taliban, had allowed al-Qaida to use their country as a staging ground for the attack.

Only hours before the attack, former President scumbag/liar-Bill Clinton spoke at a business meeting in Melbourne, Australia, addressing his administration’s approach toward bin Laden. “I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” scumbag/liar-Clinton said. “I nearly got him. And I could have killed him, but I would have had to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and kill 300 innocent women and children, and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.”

scumbag/liar-Clinton made it sound like the opportunity to capture the terrorist mastermind was a one-off. It wasn’t. “President scumbag/liar-Clinton and his national security team ignored several opportunities to capture Osama bin Laden and his terrorist associates, including one as late as last year,” wrote Council on Foreign Relations member Mansoor Ijaz on Dec. 5, 2001. “I know because I negotiated more than one of the opportunities.”

Subsequently, scumbag/liar-Clinton’s stance became known as the “law enforcement” approach to terrorism. It was embraced by Barack scumbag/liar-nObama and his administration, which engendered the contemptible reality that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will finally be tried on Jan. 11, 2021. In 2008, the scumbag/liar-nObama administration rejected his willingness to plead guilty before a military commission because of their “ideological insistence on treating terrorists like common criminals and trying them in federal courts,” as columnist Marc Theissen explained in 2010.

Politics was also part of the equation. Mohammed had been “waterboarded,” which was subsequently defined as “torture” when it became expedient to do so — even though it was once part of the Navy’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (S.E.R.E.) training program. Yet many of the same Democrats and media personalities who condemned the “barbaric practice” to bash the Bush administration’s approach to terror abided the scumbag/liar-nObama administration’s summary  execution of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki with a drone strike on Sept. 30, 2011. In fact, scumbag/liar-nObama bragged about it, calling it a “major blow to al-Qaida’s most active operational affiliate.”

The U.S. military quickly ousted the Taliban government and al-Qaida in what was often referred to by the Left as the “good war,” for no other reason than to contrast it against the “bad war” that subsequently occurred in Iraq. That would be the Iraq war overwhelmingly authorized by both Houses of Congress in December 2002, including “yea” votes from loose lips liar-Joe Biden, scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, hanoi-John Kerry, and John Edwards. One month earlier, President George W. Bush won a unanimous vote from the UN Security Council for  Resolution 1441, stating Iraq was in material breach of ceasefire terms related to WMDs, prohibited missiles and the purchase of prohibited arms. All of the attention directed at Saddam Hussein was based on the assessments of British and American intel that Hussein either had, or was in the process of developing, WMDs.  So soon after 9/11, the thought of a brutal dictator possessing nukes — nukes he could give to terrorist groups to which his nation provided support — was untenable.

Thus a multinational coalition force invaded Iraq on March 19, 2003, and ousted Saddam Hussein’s government in just three weeks. While most media to this day insist no WMDs were found, 550 metric tons of “yellowcake,” a component of higher-grade nuclear enrichment, was airlifted from Iraq to Canada in 2008.

During the 2004 presidential primaries, anti-war activist Howard Dean initially vaulted into the lead. Shortly thereafter, candidates hanoi-John Kerry and John Edwards “discovered” they were against the war they initially voted for. “Bush lied, people died” — a throughly discredited lie in and of itself — became the vehicle the Left used to ignite war weariness among Americans.

In reality that weariness was almost wholly engendered by the endless, expensive, and thoroughly discredited effort to “nation build” in both Iraq and Afghanistan, long after our military objectives were achieved.

That people like Tucker Carlson, and several others on the Left and Right, conflate nation building with wars fought for national security is utterly preposterous.

That kind of war weariness is a luxury, one apparently borne of the belief that if the U.S. simply minds its own business, millions of Islamic extremists, Chinese Communists, Iranian mullahs, and other bad actors in the world will follow suit. Yet as the scumbag/liar-Clinton era reminds us, treating terrorists as a law-enforcement problem didn’t stop the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, or the initial attempt to destroy the Word Trade Center.

Where Carlson and others rightfully gain traction is with the political cowardice that has put men and women in harm’s way absent the desire to achieve unambiguous victory. It has been that way since Vietnam, and has been epitomized by such despicable concepts as the Rules of Engagement, the “winning hearts and minds” strategy that consisted of unarmed coalition troops cohabiting with armed Afghan trainees in order to “build trust,” a maniacal obsession with preventing civilian casualties even if it endangers American troops in the process, and scheduled troop withdrawals. What about breaking the enemy’s will, which is the ultimate prerequisite for achieving victory and discouraging future conflicts?

Missing in Action.

It’s easy to blame people like John Bolton and others for a hawkish approach to world affairs, but where would blame be directed if America endured another domestic attack as bad — or far worse — than 9/11? Can Carlson, et al, completely assure Americans that Iran’s ruling regime, which leads chants “death to America” on an annual basis, or Chinese Communists, who steal our intellectual property with abandon even as they amplify their military adventurism with equal fervor, are simply misunderstood characters needing only a congenial word or gesture to abandon decades of contemptible behavior?

Absent the poison of political correctness that embraces the blame game, the finger-pointing — and 20/20 hindsight most of all — it is worth remembering that Trotsky’s quote remains as relevant as ever. And while men like John Bolton may be too reflexive regarding the use of force, reflexive avoidance of its use could be immensely catastrophic.

America should look for every opportunity to avoid conflict, but it should never do so at the expense of national security.

If war is inevitable? Victory should be just as inevitable — political correctness be damned.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65478?mailing_id=4532&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4532&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

We documented one such case back in March 2017. At the time, a farmer by the name of John Duarte was handed a $2.8 million fine. His sin? Plowing and planting wheat on his own land, which was lodged in wetlands. The government concluded that Duarte had failed to obtain certain permits and was thus liable for nearly $3 million in punitive fees. This was in addition to the government’s blatantly ignoring agricultural exemptions.

It gets worse.

As The Daily Caller further reveals, “In a 2016 case … Navy veteran Joe Robertson was criminally prosecuted and served 18 months in prison because he dug ponds around his Montana home in the hopes of keeping wildfires at bay. The ponds were connected to a foot-wide ‘river,’ so the EPA determined that Robertson had been digging too close to ‘navigable water’ without a permit.”

Thankfully, sanity is being restored.

According to an op-ed published Thursday by EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and Army for Civil Works Assistant Secretary R.D. James, “Today, EPA and the Department of the Army will finalize a rule to repeal the previous administration’s overreach in the federal regulation of waters and wetlands. This action officially ends an egregious power grab and sets the stage for a new rule that will provide much-needed regulatory certainty for farmers, home builders, and property owners nationwide.”

In other words, the rule is being compressed into what Wheeler and James say is “one standard that can advance economic development and environmental protection.” Obviously, ensuring that our water remains clean is a noble endeavor. But undermining property rights through onerous regulation isn’t the way to achieve it.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65433?mailing_id=4528&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4528&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Max Eden and Andrew Pollack (whose own daughter was killed in the shooting) have co-authored a book entitled  Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies that Created the Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students. The book spells out in chilling detail how school officials turned a blind eye to behavior that should have spurred them to action many times over.

Let’s be clear: The adolescent murderer of 17 innocent people didn’t snap in a moment of rage. And nothing he did on that fateful day surprised anyone who knew him. In fact, it’s likely that many were surprised it didn’t happen sooner.

Eden and Pollack write at The New York Post, “[His] records suggest that his reign of terror at Westglades Middle School began halfway through his seventh-grade year, in February of 2013. For the next calendar year, [he] was suspended every other day. Why did the school allow him to remain enrolled despite his daily, deranged behavior for a full year? Not by negligence, but by policy.”

They add, “Students with disabilities are supposed to be educated in the ‘least restrictive environment’ possible, regardless of whether their disability is that they’re dyslexic or a psychopath, and the paperwork requirements to send them to a specialized school can take many months.”

Despite a laundry list of truly disturbing incidents, the future assailant was allowed to enroll at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High after a brief period of good behavior. And while the mainstream media tried to convince the rest of us that gun control alone would have stopped this slaughter, the facts paint a far more disturbing picture of negligence on behalf of school officials. Indeed, Eden and Pollack highlight distressing trends in public schools across the country, where the most deeply troubled students are free to do the most awful things.

Apparently, the loss of life in Parkland did little to stop California Democrats from making sure the next school shooter will have a safe place to shed more blood. There, Democrat Gov. scumbag-Gavin Newsom recently signed  into law a bill prohibiting schools from suspending students in grades 4-8 for disruptive behavior. Previously, the ban on suspensions only applied to elementary-school children. The new law also stops charter schools from taking students out of the classroom. Supporters of this ill-conceived measure claim that sending these students home disproportionately affects students of color and those with disabilities.

Florida’s Broward County, home to the Parkland massacre, is known across the nation for having followed Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s preferred policy to reduce suspensions and expulsions — without having reduced troublesome behavior. In schools like Stoneman Douglas, it’s apparently more important to appease various social and political groups than to protect students. Such policies ensured that Broward County would keep its name in the national headlines, albeit with unspeakably tragic results.

It could have been different.

Robert Verbruggen writes at National Review, “Against standard practice, the school’s principal had decided no one could call a Code Red but him, to avoid false alarms that could bring bad PR, and the principal was gone that day. Most notoriously, school resource officer Scot Peterson hid outside the building the entire time rather than confronting the shooter. The shooting could have been stopped years before it started and could have played out differently. Every step of the way, officials failed. These failures were sure to result in a catastrophe of some kind, if not necessarily a massacre.” Verbruggen notes several other key factors that contributed to the lack of security at the school.

We can’t place all the blame on the school’s officials, however. The entire community failed the victims and their families, from the local sheriff’s office to mental health professionals to the FBI.

Sure, some students can be paired with school counselors who can effectively treat them and return them to the classroom. But there are exceptions, and we should have policies in place to address those exceptions. Clearly, the Parkland killer was an exception.

It’s far too easy to blame guns for the rash of violent school shootings. Moreover, politicizing these atrocities does nothing but distract from addressing their root causes. We can only hope that Eden and Pollack’s book will lead an effective discussion about how to spot and stop these school shooters before the trigger is pulled.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65449?mailing_id=4528&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4528&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

liar-Pelosi was asked whether she regretted not bringing the House back early from its August recess “to keep the flame lit on gun violence.” She became clearly agitated, firing back, “We did our job. The Senate was supposed to come back. Why don’t you all get that straight? The Senate did not come back to pass the bill.” After expressing her anger over the “silliness of these questions,” liar-Pelosi bloviated, “Lives are at stake. Senator McConnell is standing in the way. … Don’t ask me what we haven’t done! We have done it! … Sen. McConnell hasn’t acted. Why don’t you go ask him if he has any regrets for all the people who died?”

Getting past liar-Pelosi’s emotional theatrics, the reality is that Democrats are seeking to force McConnell into taking up some of their gun-control proposals. Ironically, even with these clearly Orwellian bills that liar-Pelosi knows would never pass constitutional muster, Democrats are still backing away from passing their most loudly advocated gun-control measure: a ban on so-called “assault weapons.” Since liar-Pelosi and company know that these bills amount to little more than anti-gun virtue signaling, why not go all the way and pass their “assault weapon” ban?

The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti notes that “some moderate Democrats — especially those running for office next year in decidedly purple districts — won’t sign on to a blanket assault weapons ban, leaving Democrats around ten votes shy of getting the ban passed in a branch of Congress that they control. That’s right: the ban is so unpopular that Democrats aren’t able to marshal their own to support a bill that has no hope of passage.”   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65457?mailing_id=4528&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4528&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Beneath China’s stable headline economic numbers, there is a growing belief among economists, companies, and investors around the world that the real picture is worse than the official data. That has analysts and researchers crunching an array of alternative data — from energy consumption to photos taken from space — for a more accurate reading.

Their conclusion: China’s economy isn’t tanking, but it is almost certainly weaker than advertised. Some economists who have dissected China’s GDP numbers say more accurate figures could be up to 3 percentage points lower, based on their analysis of corporate profits, tax revenue, rail freight, property sales and other measures of activity that they believe are harder for the government to fudge.

In related news, Fox Business notes, “The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai said Wednesday U.S. companies are steering business away from China at an increasing rate amid the escalating trade war between Washington and Beijing. More than a quarter (26.5 percent) of the 333 respondents to AmCham’s annual survey said they have redirected investment away from China over the past year, up 6.9 percentage points from 2018.”

CNBC reports that China’s Ministry of Finance recently announced that it will “exempt 16 types of U.S. products from additional tariffs.” Meanwhile, China’s central bank has inserted another $126 billion into the economy, as the nation is feeling the tariffs squeeze. The New York Times observes that “the price of pork has been rising for months, and it is now nearly 50 percent higher than it was a year ago. … Consumers are frustrated, and officials are quietly expressing alarm as they fight the outbreak of a disease that is devastating the country’s pig population and causing the shortage.”

After China’s announcement, President Donald Trump announced, “At the request of the Vice Premier of China, Liu He, and due to the fact that the People’s Republic of China will be celebrating their 70th Anniversary on October 1st, we have agreed, as a gesture of good will, to move the increased Tariffs on 250 Billion Dollars worth of goods (25% to 30%), from October 1st to October 15th.” This is “Art of the Deal” maneuvering to be sure, but did Trump really have to cite the communist takeover celebration as a reason for delay?

Finally, the months-long Hong Kong freedom protests  have also had a negative impact upon the Chinese economy, as the city is an important hub of international trade for the country. Sen. Lindsay Graham argued, “We’ve just got to accept the pain that comes with standing up to China.” It’s imperative to know that isn’t for naught — that Trump’s tariffs are indeed having a significant impact.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65409?mailing_id=4526&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4526&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

“When there is no longer a free market or competition, this increases prices, even when something is marketed as free, and harms consumers,” declared Republican AG Ashley Moody of Florida. “Is something really free if we are increasingly giving over our privacy information?”

Increasingly giving over our privacy information? How about having it taken — without any choice? And what about the fact this unconscionable data heist involves children?

More than a year ago, columnist Michelle Malkin  sounded the alarm, noting “the tech-industry-supported Common Core ‘standards,’ tests, and aligned texts and curricula” promulgated in America’s classrooms was ripe for exploitation. She explained, “The recently passed Every Student Succeeds Act further enshrined government collection of personally identifiable information — including data collected on attitudes, values, beliefs, and dispositions — and allows release of the data to third-party contractors thanks to Obama-era loopholes carved into the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.”

Google is one of the principal perpetrators. “With little public oversight, Google has infiltrated schools through its ‘free’ Google Apps for Education suite,” Malkin adds. “As I’ve reported previously, Google is building brand loyalty through its questionable certification program that essentially turns teachers into tax-subsidized lobbyists for the company.”

How intrusive is the tech behemoth? The education category at the Google apps website is a cornucopia of programs designed to work in conjunction with an Android phone. That’s the same Android phone already supplying Google with reams of personal data about one’s location and habits.

Moreover, the notion that such data remains within the boundaries of education is a pipe dream. “Over the past four years,” Malkin notes, “Google has admitted ‘scanning and indexing’ student email messages sent using GAFE and data mining student users for commercial gain when they use their accounts for noneducational purposes.”

In other words, privacy is dead. Unfortunately, the elimination of privacy is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The Trump administration is reportedly looking into creating an alliance with the tech behemoths under the guise of preventing gun violence. “The proposal is part of a larger initiative to establish a new agency called the Health Advanced Research Projects Agency or HARPA, which would sit inside the Health and Human Services Department,” The Washington Post reports.

The effort is being advanced by the Suzanne Wright Foundation. It was founded by Bob Wright, former NBC head and personal friend of the president, following his wife’s death from pancreatic cancer. Wright has proposed that HARPA embrace a project called “Safe Home” — “Stopping Aberrant Fatal Events by Helping Overcome Mental Extremes.” It would ostensibly identify “neurobehavioral signs” of “someone headed toward a violent explosive act” stated Geoffrey Ling, HARPA’s lead scientific adviser.

And who will abet the four-year project costing an estimated $40 million to $60 million of taxpayer funding? “The document goes on to list a number of widely used technologies it suggests could be employed to help collect data, including Apple Watches, Fitbits, Amazon Echo and Google Home,” the Post adds.

What about privacy? “Those familiar with the project stressed it would not collect sensitive health data about individuals without their permission,” the Post states.

Once again, Malkin reminds us such assertions are bald-faced lies, noting the Federal Trade Commission just approved a settlement with Google/YouTube, which was caught data mining users — under the age of 13. It follows a similar settlement made earlier this summer regarding Google’s Street View program, where cars roaming around more than 30 countries secretly collected emails, passwords, and other personal data from Wi-Fi networks.

The YouTube settlement cost Google between $150 million to $200 million, and the Street View effort, which the company insisted was a “mistake” — until investigators revealed that “Google engineers built software and embedded it into Street View vehicles to intentionally intercept the data from 2007 to 2010” — cost them $13 million. For a company that earned more than $100 billion in 2018, both settlements amount to nothing more than a minor business cost.

Toward what end? “Under the cloak of ‘science,’ Big Tech and Big Government are on the cusp of instituting a mental-health social-credit-score system incorporating dubious predictive analytics,” Malkin warns.

The government of Communist China, which has already set up such a system — one that prevents “bad” people from getting well-paid jobs, home mortgages, and car loans, and bans one’s children from attending private schools, even as one’s profile is put on a public blacklist — would undoubtedly approve.

As for the Trump administration, it apparently aims to embrace an approach to law enforcement detailed by the 2002 sci-fi movie “Minority Report.” It is about a dystopian future where a specialized police department apprehends criminals before they commit their crimes.

Unfortunately, the future is already here. Malkin reveals, “The Pioneer Institute reported that federal, state, and local governments spent more than $30 billion in 2018 to implement social-emotional-learning monitoring in K–12 public schools.”

Searching for “neurobehavioral signs” that might reveal “someone headed toward a violent explosive act” no doubt.

Where is the national outcry? In a better nation, Google and other tech entities that data-mine children — data-mining that will attach itself to that child’s entire life — would be ushered out of America’s classrooms with extreme prejudice. In this one, it is likely nothing at all will happen, because most American adults are completely enmeshed in their own obsession with tech.

Educators? Malkin rightly refers to them as “tech-crazed, fad-addled school districts oblivious to privacy concerns.” Politicians? Google alone spent nearly $22 million in 2018 on federal lobbying. Moreover, as Tufts University political science professor Eitan Hersh explains, politicians take their cues from the public: “The firms have sway in Washington because huge numbers of consumers rely on these companies and like their products and because most politicians do not care about antitrust probably because the voters don’t care about antitrust.”

In truth, anti-trust is a diversion. Breaking up “Big Tech” isn’t going to address the assault on privacy. In the unlikely event it actually succeeds, it will merely “democratize” that assault. Far too many powerful players have a vested interest keeping the American public’s personal information as accessible as possible for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the possibility of manipulating elections.

According to Dr. Robert Epstein, who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, manipulation by Google, and other Big Tech companies could sway as many as 15 million votes in 2020. And, as he stated to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee in July, that could happen “without people’s knowledge and without leaving a paper trail for authorities to trace.”

So who’s really running the country? Don’t expect a Google search to provide an answer. As for privacy, Big Brother — times a million — is watching you.   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65424?mailing_id=4526&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4526&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The rule was added as a temporary measure, explained acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, to “reduce a major pull factor driving irregular migration to the United States and enable DHS and DOJ to more quickly and efficiently process cases originating from the southern border, leading to fewer individuals transiting through Mexico on a dangerous journey.”

On Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. District Court Judge Jon Tigar’s nationwide injunction against Trump’s asylum rule could only apply to the region of the Ninth Circuit, not the entire nation. However, the next day Judge Tigar, a Barack scumbag/liar-nObama appointee, reissued his nationwide injunction arguing that it was necessary to “maintain uniform immigration policy.”

It’s important to note that SCOTUS’s ruling was not on the merits of Trump’s asylum rule; rather it was over the legality of a district judge’s authority to issue nationwide injunctions. The case now returns to the Ninth Circuit, which is less of a bad thing than it used to be. That court has received quite the facelift since Trump’s election. As Fox News reports, “The San Francisco-based appellate court has seven Trump-appointed federal judges — more than any other federal appellate bench. The radical transformation of the court, which has 29 seats, is largely the result of Trump’s push to nominate conservative judges and bypass traditional consultations with Senate Democrats. Thirteen of the 29 seats are now occupied by GOP-appointed judges. Last year, that number stood at six.”   ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65425?mailing_id=4526&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4526&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body