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POPSChicago to pay Cash Bounties for Informants on Business Cheats Depending on your stance on tax cheats, this could be good or bad. On the one hand, tax cheats should be made to pay their fair share of the tax burden. But it brings up the issue on what is the ‘fair share’ when it comes to taxes, but that is for discussion another day. On the hand, this enforces the whole Big Brother climate. Do we really want to spy on our grocer or used car dealer, etc? Would you do it for money? What are your thoughts?
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POPSClean Water Laws Are Neglected, at the Cost in Suffering
“How can we get digital cable and Internet in our homes, but not clean water?” asked one resident. When the source of the pollutants were found, state regulators never fined or punished the offending companies. The Clean Water Act was passed nearly four decades ago to force polluters to disclose what they dump and to give regulators the power to fine or jail offenders. So why haven’t these offenders been fined or jailed? And more importantly, why is this allowed to continue? The federal govt is big on writing legislation that ‘proves to its citizens’ that they are ‘concerned for our safety’ but are sorely lacking on follow-through. The new EPA administrator says that she intends to strengthen water protections, but, given their track record what good is strengthening a regulation that does not get enforced? This is just more BS to keep her job. Meanwhile residents who have the misfortune of living downstream from well-known, blatant polluters know they will not be protected
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POPSSmall Banks Fail in Big Numbers Closures and government takeovers of failing banks have become so routine that they barely gets noticed each Friday when the FDIC makes its announcements. While the banking crisis began with escalating defaults and foreclosures on home mortgages, the increase of bank failures in recent weeks has been driven by rising losses on commercial real estate loans, which are starting to default in large numbers. Community and regional banks hold a disproportionate share of commercial real estate and construction loans. My sister-in-law works at a local bank and says they are only accepting signature loan applications, fixed 5-yr home loans, and no car loans. My brother-in-law sells commercial real estate and every loan he has setup this year has been denied. My wife works for a car dealer who is losing his lines of credit after years of pristine credit. Our home value lost $50,000 and our property taxes went up $500. How the middle class is going to survive this mess is anyone
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POPSBritain to put CCTV cameras inside private homes Britain seems to be taking George Orwell’s depiction of a future nanny state to heart. That book, 1984, was supposed to be taken as a warning of what might happen, not a blueprint. The apparent intended goal of reshaping ‘problem’ families into more socially acceptable behavior by constantly monitoring them is absurd. Yes, children do need a more stable home life in order to become more responsible citizens, but thinking that by simply monitoring their every move and having them sign a “behavior contract” is ridiculous and indicates a ‘controlling’ mentality that is poisonous to a free society.
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POPSMore than 800 gun buyers on terrorist watch list The futility of ‘government control’ The terrorist watch list is becoming a joke. There are children, a retired ANG General (and commercial pilot) on the list: http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/08/19/tsa.watch.list/index.html The sheer size of the list makes it a joke: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-03-10-watchlist_N.htm can there really be this many terrorists living in the US? This list has become a witch hunt reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Terrorists are the new Red Scare. If someone on the terrorist watch list is allowed to buy a gun and then kills people with it shouldn’t the US government be held responsible much like a bartender serving a drink to a drunk who then gets in his car a kills someone? They claim they want to protect us and then don’t communicate between departments. Seems pretty futile to me. This is a means for the FBI to get that database of everyone in the US it has wants so badly. http://www.contumacy.org/bbs/index.pl?noframes;read=7839
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POPSPolice to destroy DNA profiles of 800,000 innocent people This represents less than 18% of the 5.1 million DNA profiles they have in their database. Is this a token move to appease civil rights groups? Will they actually destroy these samples? Are these samples merely copies and therefore not really being destroyed? England is ground zero for the Big Brother scenario as described by George Orwell in the book 1984. I find it difficult to believe they would simply discard DNA data on anybody. The argument for a DNA database is that it can play a crucial role in proving innocence and overturning miscarriages of justice. Earlier this year DNA was a vital factor in proving the innocence of Sean Hodgson, who spent nearly 30 years in prison for the death of a young woman in 1979. But then again if the testing and matching is accurate in the first place innocent people would be prevented from being convicted.
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POPSThe FBI is watching on Twitter and responding It shouldn’t be surprising that our government is monitoring Twitter and other social networking sites. This type of communication is a ‘near perfect’ match to what Big Brother dreams of using to check the pulse of our nations mood. One way to make it perfect for them is if they knew exactly who was behind the masks, i.e., the online names and avatars. Another way would be if everyone used social media sites, but they don’t, so they rely on telco’s to monitor us. I find it interesting that, as one commenter stated, a corporation, in this case Allstate Insurance, intercepted a complaint against their company and responded to the complainant on behalf of Allstate. It would not surprise me to learn that political parties would gather intel from these sites to formulate plans on how to structure their next campaign.
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POPSReinventing Reagan? All the 2008 Republican presidential candidates (except perhaps Ron Paul) tried to claim a Reagan legacy. John McCain said Reagan was one of his heroes. This is hardly surprising, since Reagan was unquestionably a great vote getter; he won two elections for governor of California and two for president, and not one of them was close. California's governor Reagan stood mainly for "tear gas and police." Anyone else remember this? According to his former chief of staff, many presidential activities were strongly affected by the advice of his wife's astrologer. A president should be judged not by his personal life or his "passionate convictions," but by what his administration actually does. His legacy includes: big tax cuts for the rich and record budget deficits, he tripled the national debt, distorted the Russian threat, and pushed for a “winnable” nuclear war that would “only” cost a few million US lives.
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POPSRevenge of the "Waco Gene" This topic is getting a lot of play. In recent months we have heard of tales of FEMA concentration camps: http://forums.ebay.com/db1/topic/The-Soapbox/Fema-Has-Concentration/510085018 And U.S. Army troops to serve as U.S. policemen: http://www.newswithviews.com/baldwin/baldwin472.htm The general public thinks these are good developments, to be used to control the ‘radical element’ within our society out to disrupt our very way of life. But now with recent Homeland Security re-defining what a terrorist is, we see the cross-hairs being leveled on everyday average citizens. Earlier this month, the ERB issued a nine-page assessment of "right-wing extremism" which, basically, acknowledges that every "local" police agency in the US is now a sensory organ, and enforcement appendage, of the Homeland Security State. State and local police are now being tasked to become Big Brothers “eyes and ears” to gather intelligence on these newly defined “extremists” within their jurisdi
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POPSElites Plan to Expand Their Power Believe it or not, it gets worse. The senator goes on to say, "You need a tough, strong regulator, unified—no holes in the system— who sees the problem ahead of time, so they have complete transparency, they know exactly what's going on". In Schumer's dream world the government gets to know everything that private companies are doing, "no holes in the system ", while the same "tough, strong regulator, unified" gets to operate in secret! Transparency will only apply to the private sector, not the government. The real reason for regulation is now nakedly revealed. It's not about protecting the people, it's about controlling them. As Ayn Rand wrote, "We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."
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POPSDavid Byrne’s Snapshot of UK Police Posters Here’s a reminder for all of you who carry cameras around hoping to catch police misconduct. If they are going to watch us we need to watch them. Photography is not a crime. http://carlosmiller.com/
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POPSThe End of Privacy? Are we unwittingly inviting big brother into our lives? The darkest fears we have of big brother is that ‘he’ can reach out to any one of us and control what we think and do. This ability to reach so many of us, and for such sinister reasons, is brushed off by the majority of people as fodder for Hollywood and the lunatic fringe. But read the article and take heed as to how we voluntarily give up bits of information on a daily basis. In hard economic times data collected on any of us becomes money to marketing firms. Are there any among us who naively believe that once trusted organizations won’t sell our personal information for a buck? And if the right reason presents itself to our government you can bet privacy laws will not stand in their way of obtaining any information they want about any of us. Homeland Security was founded to ‘protect’ us but won’t think twice about using data against private citizens when it comes to ‘national security’.
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