If the Public Shouldn’t Have Them, Why Does the IRS Need AR-15s?

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Here we go again. Stuck in the aftermath of a horrific shooting and all politicians think to do is scheme about how to take more rights from the citizenry. There are no good guys here. The Democrats want to railroad over due process by denying firearms to people on Orwellian watch lists, while Republicans plot to give the FBI more warrantless surveillance powers. This is the authoritarian knee-jerk response to tragedy we get from the U.S Congress.

Hypocritically, when it comes to foreign policy, all we hear are incessant calls for more militarism, more war and more regime change. As I warned in yesterday’s post, Is the Syrian War About to Experience a Major Escalation?  51 State Department officials just issued a cable calling for the bombing of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. An event likely to lead to direct confrontation with Russia.

While all of that is bad enough, the U.S. government continues to eagerly and aggressively arm non-defense federal employees with weapons of war.

As Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books and former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn noted in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed:

The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000).

For more, let’s take a look at a few excerpts from their piece, Why Does the IRS Need Guns?

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Caught on Video – LAPD Guns Down Homeless Man in Broad Daylight

Screen Shot 2015-01-30 at 12.44.27 PMThe following video of LAPD officers gunning down a homeless man in broad daylight is rightly getting a lot of attention. It’s not as if it was one officer dealing with a dangerous situation who panicked. There was a mob of police officers surrounding the victim, and rather than dealing with the situation like courageous, decent adults, they went ahead and treated the man like target practice. As we see with oligarch theft, this is the sort of thing you can expect more of when certain above-the-law groups in society fail to be held accountable for their actions.

WARNING: Graphic material and explicit language.

Absolutely disgusting.

For related articles, see:

The Police States of America – Elderly New Jersey Man Faces 10 Years in Jail for Possession of 18th Century Pistol

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

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

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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Land of the Free – 1 in 3 Americans Are on File with the FBI in the U.S. Police State

Screen Shot 2014-10-21 at 11.36.30 AMThe sickening transformation of these United States into an authoritarian police state with an incarceration rate that would make Joseph Stalin blush, has been a key theme of my writing since well before the launch of Liberty Blitzkrieg. One of the posts that shocked and disturbed readers most, was published a little over a year ago titled: American Police Make an Arrest Every 2 Seconds in 2012. In the event you never read it, I suggest taking a look before tackling the rest of this piece.

Fast forward to fall 2014, and the Wall Street Journal has a powerful article about how children in schools systems across the U.S. are being arrested or turned over to police custody for doing things that children have always done since the beginning of time. Things such as wearing too much perfume, sharing a classmates’ chicken nuggets, throwing an eraser or chewing gum.

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It’s Not Just the Police – The Feds are Also Militarizing Public Schools with Grenade Launchers, M16s and Tanks

Screen Shot 2014-09-17 at 12.35.53 PMEvents last month in Ferguson, Missouri (read my detailed thoughts here) forced Americans to confront the frightening reality that many of of the nation’s police departments have been quietly, but consistently, militarizing over the past couple of decades. It’s one thing to intellectually understand that this has happened, it’s quite another to see cops deploy tanks and point sniper rifles at peacefully protesting U.S. citizens.

Just as disturbing as the scenes themselves, is the fact that this has been happening for so long under the 1033 transfer program with only muted criticism. The program was originated in the late 1990’s under the National Defense Authorization Act of 1997 (recall that the NDAA is also being used to allow for the indefinite detention of American citizens without trial), and it allows for the transfer of excess Department of Defense equipment to domestic police. In other words, it has been public policy for almost two decades to militarize the police.

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Poverty Profiteering Part 2 – The Business Model of Exploiting the Poor in St. Louis County

The officer found that Bolden had four arrest warrants in three separate jurisdictions: the towns of Florissant and Hazelwood in St. Louis County and the town of Foristell in St. Charles County. All of the warrants were for failure to appear in court for traffic violations. Bolden hadn’t appeared in court because she didn’t have the money. A couple of those fines were for speeding, one was for failure to wear her seatbelt and most of the rest were for what defense attorneys in the St. Louis area have come to call “poverty violations” — driving with a suspended license, expired plates, expired registration and a failure to provide proof of insurance.

“These aren’t violent criminals,” says Thomas Harvey, another of the three co-founders of ArchCity Defenders. “These are people who make the same mistakes you or I do — speeding, not wearing a seatbelt, forgetting to get your car inspected on time. The difference is that they don’t have the money to pay the fines. Or they have kids, or jobs that don’t allow them to take time off for two or three court appearances. When you can’t pay the fines, you get fined for that, too. And when you can’t get to court, you get an arrest warrant.”

– From Radley Balko’s excellent article in the Washington Post, How Municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., Profit from Poverty

The following article is the second in a series exploring the increasing business of “Poverty Profiteering.” The first one, which stuck a particular chord with several readers can be found here: Poverty Profiteering in 2014 – Introducing Private Probation Companies

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Asset Forfeiture – How Cops Continue to Steal Americans’ Hard Earned Cash with Zero Repercussions

Screen Shot 2014-07-28 at 12.59.05 PMAlmost exactly one year ago today, I published a post which went on to become extremely popular titled: Why You Should Never, Ever Drive Through Tenaha, Texas. If you failed to read it the first time around, I suggest you take look as it provides a good outline of just what is at stake when it comes to this destructive and abusive practice increasingly utilized by police departments across these United States with zero repercussions for the offending officers. In last years article I noted that:

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The Militarization of Police Continues…Machine Guns, Grenade Launchers, Silencers and More

Screen Shot 2014-06-09 at 3.00.29 PMThe militarization of police forces across the U.S. has been a key theme here at Liberty Blitzkrieg for a long time. Despite the fact that crime rates have declined sharply across the nation since the early 1990’s, domestic police departments are arming as if they are about to confront battalions of Taliban at any given moment. It’s absurd, dangerous and ultimately very divisive as police act more like soldiers than protectors of the community. The most egregious recent example of “warrior cops” causing serious damage occurred in Georgia late last month and was covered in my post: 19-Month-Old Toddler in Critical Condition After Cops Throw Flash Bang Grenade into Playpen.

Just yesterday, The New York Times covered this terrifying trend in its article: War Gear Flows to Police Departments. We learn that:

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19-Month-Old Toddler in Critical Condition After Cops Throw Flash Bang Grenade into Playpen

Screen Shot 2014-06-01 at 1.24.59 PMJust in case you aren’t already convinced that the “war on drugs” is the biggest waste of time, energy, and money imaginable, perhaps the following tragic tale will push you over the edge. This story touches on several very important themes that I highlight quite often on this site. Specifically, it demonstrates the dangers of the militarization of the U.S. police force, combined with the increased use of SWAT raids on homes of Americans who in many cases have committed non-violent offenses and victimless “crimes.”

One of the most shocking statistics I have come across in this regard is the fact that there are now 50,000 SWAT raids happening annually in America. Many of these are in response to minor “crimes,” if you can even call them that, and provide the police with the opportunity to play warrior cop. Earlier this year, I highlighted the disturbing video of a SWAT raid in Iowa in which the cops were going after credit card fraud. Last year, I highlighted a SWAT raid against an organic farm in Texas. Is this Afghanistan, or a supposedly free country?

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An Iowa City with a Population of 7,000 Will Receive Armored Military Vehicle

I’ve covered the militarization of the domestic police force on several occasions on this website. For those of you who need a refresher, I suggest reading the following:

There are Over 50,000 SWAT Team Raids Annually in America

Retired Marine Colonel to New Hampshire City Council: “We’re Building a Domestic Army”

Video of the Day – Thuggish Militarized Police Terrorize and SWAT Team Iowa Family.

Moving along to the subject of today’s absurdity, the tiny city of Washington, Iowa with a population of 7,000 and 11 police officers, will be receiving a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle. Yes, they will be employing one of these in the field:

MRAP

These things normally cost $500,000, but will be given to Washington, Iowa for free under a Defense Department program that gives surplus military equipment to domestic law enforcement.

Matthew Byrd writes in the Daily Iowan that:

Sometimes the news is just so drearily awful that you have to sit back and almost appreciate the pure comedy induced by it.

Take this item from Washington, Iowa, where the local police have recently acquired an MRAP vehicle (short for Mine Resistance Ambush Protected) through a Defense Department program that donates excess vehicles originally produced for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to local police departments across the United States, including other Iowa towns such as Mason City and Storm Lake.

The MRAP weighs an impressive 49,000 pounds, stands 10-feet tall, and possesses a whopping six-wheel drive. Originally designed to resist landmines and IEDs, it sure seems like the MRAP will come in handy for the notorious war zone otherwise known as Washington County, Iowa.

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