A Libertarian-Liberal Alliance Forms to Tackle Criminal Justice Reform

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Usually bitter adversaries, Koch Industries and the Center for American Progress have found at least one thing they can agree on: The nation’s criminal justice system is broken.

Koch Industries, the conglomerate owned by the conservative Koch brothers, and the center, a Washington-based liberal issues group, are coming together to back a new organization called the Coalition for Public Safety. The coalition plans a multimillion-dollar campaign on behalf of emerging proposals to reduce prison populations, overhaul sentencing, reduce recidivism and take on similar initiatives. Other groups from both the left and right — the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the Tea Party-oriented FreedomWorks — are also part of the coalition, reflecting its unusually bipartisan approach.

— From the New York Times article: Unlikely Cause Unites the Left and the Right: Justice Reform

While I’d love to fill the pages of Liberty Blitzkrieg with positive news about how things are turning around for the better within American society, there is unfortunately little evidence that this is indeed the case. However, every now and again I do see a positive development worth pointing out. The following article from the New York Times about the recent creation of the Coalition for Public Safety, uniting the Koch brothers and the Washington D.C. based liberal Center for American Progress on the issue of reforming the nation’s criminal justice system, is one such example.

The idea that genuine libertarian types and genuine progressive types have a lot of important issues in common is a concept I have pushed for years. The following venn diagram someone created at the time of the Occupy Wall Street protests demonstrated this overlap perfectly:

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Jeb Bush Exposed Part 1 – His Top Advisors Will Be the Architects of His Brother’s Iraq War

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Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 2.29.56 PMAccording to Reuters’ Steve Holland, Bush has tapped a “diverse” roster of former George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush officials to advise his burgeoning campaign on foreign policy, including key architects of the 2002 invasion of Iraq.

The list of advisers provided to Reuters by a campaign aid includes Paul Wolfowitz and Stephen Hadley, as well as former George W. Bush Homeland Security Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, and Bush adviser Meghan O’Sullivan.

— From the Think Progress article: The Same People Who Lied To You About Iraq Are Now In Charge Of Jeb Bush’s Foreign Policy

It may be hard to believe, but either one of the two status quo choices for U.S. President currently being force-fed down the American public’s throat will be almost unquestionably more imperial and warlike than Barack Obama. The reason is simple. Any society that apathetically stands by as one President after the other tramples on the Constitution will be subject to a litany of increasingly tyrannical, and even insane, leaders. This is why the oligarchy isn’t even pretending that we live in a Republic or a Democracy anymore. They are shoving our pathetic servitude right in our face by putting up these two preposterous and dangerous candidates.

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Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Publicly Tells Citizens to “Act More Like Sheep”

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Hong Kong’s unpopular chief executive has infuriated pro-democracy campaigners by using a Chinese New Year message to urge the former colony’s citizens to act more “like sheep”. 

“In the coming year, I hope that all people in Hong Kong will take inspiration from the sheep’s character and pull together in an accommodating manner to work for Hong Kong’s future.”

In case his message had been missed, Mr Leung noted that the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac had 12 individual “character types”. “Sheep are widely seen to be mild and gentle animals living peacefully in groups,” he said.

– From the Telegraph article: Hong Kong leader tells people to act like ‘sheep’

This is simply a spectacular admission from a clueless authoritarian. No wonder things are so volatile in Hong Kong with this clown in charge. Rather than quieting the mood, CY Leung’s comments are more likely to infuriate the island’s youth and strength their resolve. Not smart.

From the Telegraph:

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Protecting and Serving – Florida Police Raid 90-Year-Old Woman’s Home; Find No Drugs but Wreck Home

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Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 11.57.01 AMI’ve taken some time off from covering excessive police violence and theft over the past few months after spending considerable energy on the topic in 2014. Nevertheless, the issue is of huge importance not only to the innocent people directly victimized by such behavior, but also to our society at large. I went into some of the reasons why this is the case recently in the post, Introducing “Physician Dispensing” – The Latest Troubling Medical Industry Scam. Here’s an excerpt:

The goal of the oligarchy is to corrupt as many useful idiots as possible, thus creating a culture of corruption so engrained it becomes virtually impossible to reverse. A great example of this relates to the plight of John Kiriakou, the only person imprisoned for CIA torture, because he was the one who blew the whistle on it. By creating these perverse incentives, you create a completely perverse society over time. The results are all around us.

Once the corruption reaches a certain level of societal saturation, you create a culture in which people simply stop trusting everyone and everything. For obvious reasons, this is a very dangerous development. There are people whom you need to trust for any civilization to function reasonably well. Police are one example…

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Chief Political Commentator of The Telegraph Resigns Over HSBC Coverage – Calls it “A Fraud on its Readers”

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Screen Shot 2015-02-17 at 3.28.56 PMThe Telegraph’s recent coverage of HSBC amounts to a form of fraud on its readers. It has been placing what it perceives to be the interests of a major international bank above its duty to bring the news to Telegraph readers. There is only one word to describe this situation: terrible. 

A free press is essential to a healthy democracy. There is a purpose to journalism, and it is not just to entertain. It is not to pander to political power, big corporations and rich men. Newspapers have what amounts in the end to a constitutional duty to tell their readers the truth.

– Peter Oborne, in his article: Why I have resigned from the Telegraph

Anyone reading this website understands that most of the mainstream media has been transformed into little more than complete propaganda over the past several decades. When the various papers and televisions stations aren’t covering up for the war crimes and corruption of politicians and intelligence agencies, they are busy protecting their corporate advertisers from any potential criticism. This isn’t just speculation anymore.

We’ve had several whistleblowers emerge over the past several years warning the public about how things really work. The most stunning of these during 2014 came from Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor of one of Germany’s main daily publications, which I covered in the post: “Non-Official Cover” – Respected German Journalist Blows Whistle on How the CIA Controls the Media.

Naturally, the UK isn’t immune from such infectious corporatist or government propaganda, and the stench emanating from the Daily Telegraph simply became too thick for Peter Oborne, who just resigned in spectacular fashion as the paper’s chief political commentator.

The Guardian covered this incredible story earlier today:

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A Warning to New York City – How Singapore’s Luxury Boom in Sentosa Cove Went Bust

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Screen Shot 2015-02-17 at 2.22.14 PMAcross Singapore, the property market was booming. Interest rates were low, prompting buyers to take on more debt. Confidence was high. Banks built regional headquarters in Singapore and jobs were created. Singapore’s skyline changed drastically. A new financial district rose and Marina Bay Sands, a three-tower building housing a casino with a boatlike structure on top, was built for a reported $5.4 billion.

With the government unable to contain the heated market, the growing presence of foreigners and the rising cost of housing became a flash point for discontent. And Sentosa, with its new villas, yachts and luxury condominium towers, became a particular symbol of the rising inequality for many citizens.

Faced with simmering discontent over rising living and housing costs, the government executed a succession of cooling measures that have hit the high-end market especially hard…

On Sentosa Cove, few people are buying. Most of the unsold units from recent developments have been taken off the market and are being leased instead.

The few recent sales paint a grim picture. Most sellers have taken sizable losses.

– From the New York Times article: A High-End Property Collapse in Singapore 

My hometown of New York City is currently ground zero for a luxury apartment building boom driven primarily by oligarchs using the units as savings accounts, and foreign criminals looking to launder wealth accumulated via corruption, fraud or worse. This isn’t a new story, I’ve been writing about it for several years (links at the end), but a recent New York Times piece titled, Stream of Foreign Wealth Flows to Elite New York Real Estate, has put the issue front and center.

Naturally, New York City isn’t the first, and certainly won’t be the last place to encourage hot foreign money to flow into its real estate sector in a haphazard and harmful manner that could have severe long-term repercussions once the boom turns to bust — which it invariably always does.

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NYU Professor Uncovers How the FDA Systematically Covers Up Fraud and Misconduct in Drug Trials

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Screen Shot 2015-02-17 at 11.12.14 AM That misconduct happens isn’t shocking. What is: When the FDA finds scientific fraud or misconduct, the agency doesn’t notify the public, the medical establishment, or even the scientific community that the results of a medical experiment are not to be trusted. On the contrary. For more than a decade, the FDA has shown a pattern of burying the details of misconduct. As a result, nobody ever finds out which data is bogus, which experiments are tainted, and which drugs might be on the market under false pretenses. The FDA has repeatedly hidden evidence of scientific fraud not just from the public, but also from its most trusted scientific advisers, even as they were deciding whether or not a new drug should be allowed on the market. Even a congressional panel investigating a case of fraud regarding a dangerous drug couldn’t get forthright answers. For an agency devoted to protecting the public from bogus medical science, the FDA seems to be spending an awful lot of effort protecting the perpetrators of bogus science from the public.

The sworn purpose of the FDA is to protect the public health, to assure us that all the drugs on the market are proven safe and effective by reputable scientific trials. Yet, over and over again, the agency has proven itself willing to keep scientists, doctors, and the public in the dark about incidents when those scientific trials turn out to be less than reputable. It does so not only by passive silence, but by active deception. And despite being called out numerous times over the years for its bad behavior, including from some very pissed-off members of Congress, the agency is stubbornly resistant to change. It’s a sign that the FDA is deeply captured, drawn firmly into the orbit of the pharmaceutical industry that it’s supposed to regulate. We can no longer hope that the situation will get better without firm action from the legislature.

From the Slate article: Are Your Medications Safe? 

In the past week or so, I’ve come across several important articles that will leave any rational observer increasingly skeptical of the entire medial industry in the U.S. This isn’t something I say lightly, and I think it’s an absolutely horrific development for our society.

Just last week, Liberty Blitzkrieg published an article titled, Introducing “Physician Dispensing” – The Latest Troubling Medical Industry Scam, which expounded on why an erosion of trust in doctors is so troubling. If you missed that piece, I suggest going back and reading it. Here’s an excerpt:

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Some Thoughts on Presidents’ Day

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Presidents’ Day is an American holiday celebrated on the third Monday in February. It was historically the celebration of George Washington’s birthday, which occurs on February 22, but in 1971 it was moved to the current date in order to create more three day weekends as part of the Uniform Monday Holiday Act, and henceforth became commonly known as Presidents’ Day (although the name was never officially changed from “Washington’s Birthday).

In 2015, Presidents’ Day shouldn’t be a time of celebration considering how far we have fallen as a Republic, and how completely awful and corrupt modern U.S. Presidents have become. Whereas the founding fathers of the nation were intellectual giants who incidentally also served as statesmen, every President since I’ve been alive has been little more than an empty suit politician. Cowardly, power-hungry, petty, bloodthirsty, vapid. These men wouldn’t know the definition of the word statesmen if their life depended on it. Even more worrisome, based on the crop of leading contenders for the Presidency in 2016 (another Bush and another Clinton), it doesn’t look as if we will be having any new Presidents to celebrate any time soon.

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In His Thirst for War, Senator Jim Inhofe Releases Fake Photos of Russian Troops in the Ukraine

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Screen Shot 2015-02-13 at 2.34.06 PMMembers of the Senate Armed Services Committee first viewed the graphic pictures in December. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.) then obtained the photos and worked to independently verify and confirm the authenticity of the photos, before providing them exclusively to the Free Beacon.

Inhofe said he hopes the images act as a wake up call to the Obama administration and American people, who largely have been spared from seeing the graphic violence inflicted upon Ukraine by the Russian-backed separatists…

Following publication of this story, serious questions have been raised about the authenticity of some of the photographs provided by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R., Okla.). Several images of the Russian convoys appear to have been taken in 2008, during Russia’s conflict with Georgia. Given the similarities between the earlier images and those provided by the senator’s office, the Washington Free Beacon is investigating further and will update as necessary.

Sen. Inhofe said in a statement: “The Ukrainian parliament members who gave us these photos in print form as if it came directly from a camera really did themselves a disservice. We felt confident to release these photos because the images match the reporting of what is going on in the region. I was furious to learn one of the photos provided now appears to be falsified from an AP photo taken in 2008. 

– From the Washington Free Beacon’s article: Updated: Provenance of Photos Showing Atrocities Questioned

This is absolutely incredible. Incredible.

First of all, I don’t claim to have any idea about what is happening in Ukraine. Many people out there feel obligated to pick a side, but I can promise you that 99% of them don’t actually have a clue. I don’t think there are many “goods guys” on either side of this fight, and my assumption is that both sides are lying as much as possible. It’s a very sad situation, but very few people really knows what’s going on. That’s why I don’t comment on it much.

I wish I could say the same thing for United States Senators, you know, the people who actually play an important role in deciding when the country goes to war (that is, when Obama decides to consult them).

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FBI Documents Show Plot to Kill Occupy Leaders If “Deemed Necessary” – Yet Details Are Kept From the Public…Why?

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Paul Kennedy of the National Lawyers Guild in Houston and an attorney for a number of Occupy Houston activists arrested during the protests said he did not hear of the sniper plot and expressed discontent with the FBI’s failure to share knowledge of the plan with the public. He believed that the bureau would have acted if a “right-wing group” plotted the assassinations, implying that the plan could have originated with law enforcement. 

“[I]f it is something law enforcement was planning,” Kennedy said, “then nothing would have been done. It might seem hard to believe that a law enforcement agency would do such a thing, but I wouldn’t put it past them.”

He added that the phrase “if deemed necessary,” which appeared in the bureau’s report, further suggests the possibility that some kind of official organization was involved in the plan.

– From the June 29, 2013 TruthDig article: Redacted FBI Documents Show Plot to Kill Occupy Leaders If ‘Deemed Necessary’ 

I don’t typically cover stories that are a few years old, but the following information is so interesting and disturbing I simply had to highlight it.

First a little background. Back in 2013, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request resulted in the discovery of a FBI document that provided knowledge of a plot to assassinate leaders of the Houston chapter of Occupy Wall Street (OWS) using snipers.

Naturally, such a plot should be big news, but the FBI and local police departments have been extremely sheepish in answering questions about it. In addition, despite evidence of such a plot, the perpetrators were never arrested or identified. This is quite bizarre, and has rightly raised a lot of questions as to whether the government, or the local police force, were behind the potential hit. If this is indeed the case, you don’t need me to tell you how disturbing that is. After all, OWS was largely a non-violent movement.

From TruthDig:

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