When one reads about stolen votes the people who have been cheated are not brought out front and center. You don’t see their faces. Yesterday we got to see some of their faces. They brought themselves out front and center, and someone shot a woman in the neck, and she bled to death. Witnesses say the shooter was wearing a suit, shooting through a window from below on the other side of a wall. I didn’t see any protestors in suits. The victim, Ashli Babbitt, was a married 14-year Air Force veteran from San Diego. I would think she would qualify as a true patriot, meaning someone who, being a member of the military, was prepared to put her life on the line defending the Constitution. She was doing exactly that when she was murdered.
Yesterday, January 6, President Trump delivered a powerful speech on the White House lawn. Trump is mostly a great cheerleader. He says things a lot of people like to hear. Free marketers rightfully cringe at many of his comments. But that’s nothing compared to what they hear from his political opponents.
He did not lay out a plan for gaining legitimate control of the federal government. Voting should have worked but it didn’t. Even if he had a plan it would’ve been a mistake to talk about it then. His audience, which was massive, wanted to hear more about the fraud that stole their votes. He gave it to them.
(How do honest people beat cheaters? They don’t. If they’re smart they have nothing to do with them. But politics demands participation if only for self-defense. So they have to participate and in doing so lose. Biden boasted about their fraudulent system, and for once he was right. It will get more sophisticated, more resistant to deciphering.)
After the speech Trump was to lead them to the Capitol to get the attention of Congress. I did not see him personally walking the streets or in any other manner head to the Capitol. But a great many of his followers did walk there and the police opened the gates to let them pass.
From what I have found so far, none of the protesters were armed. But when they got inside the Capitol building members of Congress, including Pence, scurried for their lives instead of confronting the people who had been cheated.
When one reads about stolen votes the people who have been cheated are not brought out front and center. You don’t see their faces. Yesterday we got to see some of their faces. They brought themselves out front and center, and someone shot a woman in the neck, and she bled to death. Witnesses say the shooter was wearing a suit, shooting through a window from below on the other side of a wall. I didn’t see any protestors in suits. The victim, Ashli Babbitt, was a married 14-year Air Force veteran from San Diego. I would think she would qualify as a true patriot, meaning someone who, being a member of the military, was prepared to put her life on the line defending the Constitution. She was doing exactly that when she was murdered.
When Congress reconvened there was no talk of a fraudulent election. No, sir — they had seen the real soul of the Deplorables. Before the break-in we heard some of them using their powers of persuasion describing the fraud that happened in certain states, particularly with regard to the assertion that only state legislatures could change voting rules, which in the contested states did not happen. After the protesters were cleared all that talk vanished. We heard indignant vows that this country would not tolerate violence as a means to overturn a legitimate election. In other words we heard the hypocrites lie, one after another, RINOs and Democrats.
In 2008 Dr. Anthony Fauci said the 1918 Spanish flu deaths were not caused by a virus but rather a bacterium. Today the COVID-19 pandemic may not be caused by a virus but rather by re-coding mycobacteria TB cases as COVID-19. Or due to imposed lockdowns, due to a diet-induced vitamin B1 deficiency.
“But electricity prices will be 3% lower, says Gov. Wolf. How will electricity prices be lower if the cost to produce is going to increase every year? That’s easy. Pennsylvanians would be paying slightly less for electricity because they will be using a lot less electricity.”
Comrade Wolf apparently isn’t familiar with the concept of electric vehicles. Even going for a walk takes electricity, charging the cell phone before you go out. Unless you are in lockdown where you are stuck in front of your TV or computer.
Look to Australia for what cap and trade does to a person. A scheme was initiated there a few years ago. Electric costs skyrocketed. The government had to supplement the unwashed masses so they could pay their bills. Their Green party got what they asked for.
Steve Milloy Guest columnist Gov. Tom Wolf has started the process to enlist Pennsylvania in the battle to stop climate change.
He has proposed for Pennsylvania to join something called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI, pronounced ‘Reggie’). RGGI is an agreement between Northeast states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions via a cap-and-trade system.
If Pennsylvania joins RGGI, power plants in the state will be required to purchase permits for every ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted. The scheme is for the price of the permits to go up and their availability go down every year so that it becomes more and more expensive for power plants to emit CO2.
What could go wrong a plan to make electricity cost steadily more?
If you listen to Wolf administration, the answer is nothing. Gov. Wolf estimates that emissions will decline by a cumulative 188 million tons by 2030, electricity prices will be 3% lower than they otherwise would be by 2030, personal income will be slightly lower by 2030 (-0.02%) but state revenue will be slightly higher (0.02%), and there will be public health benefits worth an estimated $6.3 billion by 2030.
The whole idea of this scheme is to ‘combat climate change.’ Will it? Regardless of whether you believe United Nations science on climate, an indisputable reality is that human activities produce about 55 billion tons of emissions ever year and the UN has projected that those emissions are increasing with no end in sight.
So by 2030, when RGGI membership supposedly will have reduced state CO2 emissions by a total of 188 million tons, the world will have emitted more than 550 billion tons. So RGGI in Pennsylvania will reduce global emissions by a not-so-whopping 0.034%. The insignificance to the global climate and weather of that level of emissions cut is obvious. So RGGI will accomplish nothing for the climate or environment.
But electricity prices will be 3% lower, says Gov. Wolf. How will electricity prices be lower if the cost to produce is going to increase every year? That’s easy. Pennsylvanians would be paying slightly less for electricity because they will be using a lot less electricity.
Gov. Wolf wants to reduce cumulative electricity use in Pennsylvania by a whopping 27,822 gigawatt-hours by 2030. The other word for this so-called ‘demand reduction’ policy is ‘rationing.’ Though the world is awash in cheap energy, electricity will be arbitrarily rationed by government decree in Pennsylvania.
And let’s not forget that compared with states without excessive CO2 emissions regulations, Northeast states already in RGGI have seen their electricity prices rise 64% faster, according to the Commonwealth Foundation.
What about the projections for personal incomes and state revenues? I know of no state government that can successfully predict your or its income 10 years in the future. But if you work in, or depend on the coal or fracking industry, RGGI is not designed to be a job security program for you. Such high-paying jobs are earmarked to be redistributed to much lower wage wind and solar workers.
Although the Wolf administration projects the state to come out ever so slightly ahead by 2030 because of RGGI’s cap-and-tax design, this is questionable. There will be offsetting lost tax revenues from reduced coal mining and fracking. Also, it’s hard to imagine how making people pointlessly poorer will boost state tax revenues.
Finally, there is the claim that RGGI’s emissions cuts will bring public health benefits that, if hypothetically monetized, are worth billions of dollars. This is nonsense.
Pennsylvania’s air quality is already clean and safe.
There is no scientific or medical evidence indicating that the historically low levels of power plant emissions across Pennsylvania are harming anyone’s health or that lowering them further will make anyone healthier.
In contrast, it is well known that unemploying people or otherwise making them poorer negatively affects their health. That is certain to happen as Pennsylvania’s RGGI membership shutters coals mines, fracking fields, power plants and their support industries.
What’s the bottom line? Pennsylvania’s participation in RGGI will accomplish nothing for the environment, climate or public health. Instead, energy prices will increase. Personal income and state tax revenues will be put at risk. Electricity rationing will only move Pennsylvania’s standard of living in the wrong direction.
The cap-and-tax wolf is at the door, Pennsylvania. Don’t open it.
Steve Milloy publishes JunkScience.com. He served on the Trump EPA transition team and is the author of ‘Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA.’Work continues at a shale gas well drilling site in St. Mary’s, Pa., in March. The fracking process has raised environmental concerns while turning the state into a major energy producer.Keith Srakocic/ap/File
Kicking the fear factor up a notch. The 6 feet rule was supposedly based on the physics of particulate travel in air. Whatever emanates from your nose, mass, velocity and drag cause it to drop to the ground in 6 feet.
This new virus strain gives your nose super powers allowing particulates to double their range. Maybe this is the New Physics.
David Bruce Erie Times-News USA TODAY NETWORK The arrival of a new COVID-19 variant in Pennsylvania likely means that people will need to take stricter precautions to reduce their risk of catching it.
A confirmed case of the variant, which was first discovered in England in December, was found in the south-central portion of the state, Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine, M.D., said Thursday. The infected person had traveled internationally.
This new variant is more highly contagious than the most common COVID-19 strain seen, said Howard Nadworny, M.D., a Saint Vincent Hospital infectious diseases specialist.
‘Whereas (staying) six feet (apart) might have been a way to decrease your risk with the old strain, you probably need to be 10 to 12 feet away,’ Nadworny said. ‘And (instead of) a 15-minute exposure, an eight- or 10-minute exposure might be enough for infection.’
Fortunately, preliminary studies show that the new strain isn’t immune from the COVID-19 vaccines, Nadworny said.
Erie County Executive Kathy Dahlkemper on Thursday reported 168 new cases of COVID-19 and one additional death due to the new coronavirus.
Erie County has 12,599 total cases of COVID-19 and 299 deaths since the pandemic started.
A total of 102 county residents with COVID-19 were hospitalized Wednesday evening, an increase from 60 residents from Tuesday night, the state health department reported. However, 100 county residents were reported hospitalized Monday evening, so the Tuesday night total might not have been accurate.
Forty-seven of the hospitalized COVID-19 patients were in intensive care units Wednesday night and 11 of them needed ventilators.
A total of 51,546 negative COVID-19 tests have been reported in the county through Wednesday evening.
Statewide, 9,698 new cases were reported, increasing Pennsylvania’s total number of cases to 693,087. There were 265 new deaths across the state.
Contact David Bruce at dbruce@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNBruce.
Today, of course, the bureaucracy continues to be characterized by ideological leanings of its own. For example, government workers, from the federal level down, skew heavily Democrat. They have more job security. They’re better paid. They’re less rural. They have more formal education. It’s a safe bet the bureaucracy isn’t chock full of Trump supporters. Civil service reform didn’t eliminate corruption and bias. It simply created a different kind.
Perhaps not since the nineteenth century have so many American voters so fervently doubted the outcome of a national election.
A Slate headline from December 13 reads: “82 Percent of Trump Voters Say Biden’s Win Isn’t Legitimate.” If even half true, this poll means tens of millions of Americans believe the incoming ruling party in Washington got its political power by cheating.
The implications of this are broader than one might think. Under the current system, if many millions of Americans doubt the veracity of the official vote count, the challenge to the status quo goes beyond simply thinking that Democrats are cheaters. Rather, the Trump voters’ doubts indict much of the American political system overall and call its legitimacy into question.
For example, if Trump supporters are unwilling to accept that the vote count in Georgia was fair—in a state where Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion—this means skepticism goes well beyond mere distrust of the Democratic Party. For Trump’s vote-count skeptics, not even the GOP or the nonpartisan election officials can be trusted to count the votes properly.
Moreover, unlike the general public, Trump supporters appear to have adopted a keenly suspicious view toward these administrators and the systems they control. This is all to the best, regardless of the true extent of voter fraud in 2020. After all, government administrators—including those who count the votes—are not mere disinterested, efficiency-obsessed administrators. They have their own biases and political interests. They’re not neutral.
Trump as Outsider
How did Trump supporters become such skeptics? Whether accurately or not, Trump is viewed as an antiestablishment figure by most of his supporters. He is supposed to be the man who will “drain the swamp” and oppose the entrenched administrative state (i.e., the deep state).
In practice, this means opposition must go beyond mere partisan opposition. It was not enough to simply trust the GOP, because, either instinctively or intellectually, many Trump supporters know he has never really been a part of the GOP establishment. The opposition from within the Republican Party has always been substantial, and the old party guard never stopped opposing him. For Trump’s supporters, then, the two-party system isn’t enough to act as a brake on abuse by the administrative state—at least when it comes to sabotaging the Trump administration. In the minds of many supporters, Trump embodies the anti-establishment party while his opponents can be found in both parties and in the nonpartisan administrative state itself.
This view has formed over time in a reaction to real life experience. Trump supporters have been given plenty of reasons to suspect that anti-Trump sentiment is endemic within the bureaucracy. For example, from the beginning, high-ranking “nonpartisan” officials at the FBI were actively seeking to undermine the Trump presidency. Then there was Alexander Vindman, who openly opposed legal orders from the White House and lent aid to House officials hoping to impeach Trump. Then there were those Pentagon officials who apparently lied to Trump in order to avoid drawing down US troops in Syria. All this was on top of the usual bureaucrats, who already tend to be hated by conservative populists: education bureaucrats, IRS agents, environmental regulators, and others responsible for carrying out federal edicts.
Health technocrats like Fauci came to be hated by Trump supporters, not just for seeking to shut down churches and ruin the lives of countless business owners, but for setting themselves up as political opponents of the administration through daily press releases and other means of contradicting the White House.
It only makes sense that Trump’s supporters would extend this distrust of the bureaucracy to those who count the votes. After all, who counts the votes has always been of utmost importance. It’s why renowned political cartoonist Thomas Nast had Boss Tweed utter these words in an 1871 cartoon: “As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?”
This has always been a good question.
Old party bosses like Tweed are now out of the picture, but the votes nowadays are calculated and certified instead by people who, like Tweed, have their own ideological views and their own political interests. The official vote counts are handed down by bureaucratic election officials and by party officials, most of whom are outside the circles of Trump loyalists.
Given the outright political and bureaucratic opposition Trump has faced from other corners of the administrative state, there seems to be little reason for his supporters to trust those who count the votes.
Learning to Mistrust the Administrative State
Thus, whether facing FBI agents or election officials, Trump supporters learned to take official government reports and pronouncements with a healthy dose of skepticism. The end result: for the first time, under Trump, the American administrative state came to be widely viewed as a political force seeking to undermine a legitimately elected president, and as a political interest group in itself.
Naturally, the media and the administrative state itself have reacted to this with outrage and disbelief that anyone could believe that the professional technocrats and bureaucrats could have anything in mind other than selfless, efficient service to the greater good. The idea that lifelong employees of the regime might be biased against a man supposedly tasked with dismantling the regime was—we were assured—absurd.
Civil Service Reform and the Rise of the Permanent Bureaucracy
Although Trump’s supporters may get some of the details wrong, the distrustful view of the bureaucracy is the more accurate and realistic view. The view of the American administrative state as impartial, nonideological, and aloof from politics has always been the naïve view, and one pushed by the Progressive reformers who created this class of permanent government “experts.”
Before these Progressives triumphed in the early twentieth century, this permanent class of technocrats, bureaucrats and “experts” did not exist in the United States. Prior to civil service reform in the late nineteenth century, most bureaucratic jobs—at all levels of government—were given to party loyalists. When Republicans won the White House, the Republican president filled bureaucratic positions with political supporters. Other parties did the same.
This was denounced by reformers, who maligned this system as “the spoils system.” Reformers insisted that American politics would be far less corrupt, more efficient, and less politicized, if permanently appointed experts in public administration were put into these positions instead.
The Administrative State as an Interest Group
But the rub was that in spite of claims by the reformers, there was never any reason to assume this new class of administrators would be politically neutral. The first sign of danger in this regard was the fact that those who wanted civil service reform seemed to come from a very specific background. Murray Rothbard writes:
The civil service Reformers were a remarkably homogeneous group. Concentrated almost exclusively in the urban Northeast, including New York City and especially Boston, the Reformers virtually constituted an older, highly educated and articulate elite. From families of old patrician wealth, mercantile and financial rather than coming from new industries, these men despised what they saw as the crass materialism of the nouveau riche, as well as their lack of good breeding or education at Harvard or Yale. Not only were the Reformers merchants, attorneys, and educators, but they virtually constituted the most influential “media elite” of the day: editors, writers, and scholars.
In practice, as Rothbard has shown, civil service reform did not eliminate corruption or bias in the administration of the regime. Rather, the advent of the civil service only shifted bureaucratic power away from working-class party loyalists, and toward middle-class and university-educated personnel. These people, of course, had their own socioeconomic backgrounds and political agendas, as suggested by one anti-reform politician at the time who recognized that civil service exams would be employed to direct jobs in a certain direction:
So, sir, it comes to this at last, that…the dunce who had been crammed up to a diploma at Yale, and comes fresh from his cramming, will be preferred in all civil service appointments to the ablest, most successful, and most upright business man of the country, who either did not enjoy the benefit of early education, or from whose mind, long engrossed in practical pursuits, the details and niceties of academic knowledge have faded away as the headlands disappear when the mariner bids his native land good night.
Gone were the old party activists who had worked their way up to a position of power from local communities in which they had skin in the game. The new technocrats were something else entirely.
Today, of course, the bureaucracy continues to be characterized by ideological leanings of its own. For example, government workers, from the federal level down, skew heavily Democrat. They have more job security. They’re better paid. They’re less rural. They have more formal education. It’s a safe bet the bureaucracy isn’t chock full of Trump supporters. Civil service reform didn’t eliminate corruption and bias. It simply created a different kind.
Trump supporters recognize that these people don’t go away when “their guy” wins. These are permanent civil “servants” whom Trump supporters suspect—with good reason—have been thoroughly opposed to the Trump administration.
So, if the FBI and the Pentagon have already demonstrated their officials are willing to break and bend rules to obstruct Trump, why believe the administrative class when they insist elections are free and fair and all above board? Many have found little reason to do so. Author:
Like me you are probably looking over photos of supposed Trump supporters breaching the ramparts and storming the Capitol today. That is if you can find them. To “protect” us from viewing these incredibly “disturbing” scenes, Twitter has helpfully announced that it will severely restrict their distribution across its network. We can all rest easier, I suppose. Though even memory-addled Americans may recall the free-for-all in posting BLM and Antifa violence on Big Tech’s Big Platforms.
“Gee that’s not fair! Twitter is discriminating!”
Conservative politicians and “responsible” Beltway libertarians are wringing their hands over the supposedly horrible optics of people breaking through police lines and violating that Most Holy of Sanctuaries, the Senate Floor! The religion of America is politics and any violation of the sanctity of that Holy Body is to be condemned.
Many of us, myself included, are not concerned about weirdos in buffalo horns occupying that sacred space reserved for Saint Mitch McConnell. “Oh no! It will give CNN something to say about how horrible is the opposition to the incoming robber Administration, whose ‘victory’ is doubted even by almost one in five Democrat voters!”
Because absent that, they’d provide balanced coverage.
The mainstream media and whinging Republicans are having a panic attack over those evil people who don’t like the feeling that their vote was stolen! The opportunities for “responsible” Republican virtue-signaling are endless and too intoxicating to resist.
So do we support the “occupation” of the Senate Chambers as an expression of righteous anger over the feeling that the election was stolen? Not really, because it will not achieve anything. As we said in today’s Liberty Report, the Republicans have lost both chambers of Congress mostly because they are devoid of ideas. They scream about socialism while voting for insane spending bills that only benefit the rich and well-connected. They decry the Democrat obsession with Russia as the enemy not because they know it’s bogus, but only because they want their own enemy: China! They dream of war with Iran and endless occupation of the Middle East. They drool over the prospect of more “American global leadership” without pausing for a moment to think that the rest of the world has had quite enough “leadership” from US neocons and “humanitarians.”
Is anyone shocked that Republican empty minds were rejected at the polling place?
So let’s look for a silver lining. Opposition to Leviathan must be based on principle. The Democrats and Republicans are nearly identical in their view that only the political elites, from the Sacred Throne of Democracy recently defiled by the unwashed masses, can save us from ourselves. We don’t know how to manage our lives, we don’t know how to manage our health, we are far too stupid to simply live without their constant guidance.
Remember the monster Victoria Nuland? Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State who was the prime mover behind the murderous coup in Ukraine? Where thousands died unnecessarily because Obama’s foreign policy geniuses thought bringing Ukraine into the US orbit – regardless of what Ukrainians actually wanted – would be a great idea? The nasty woman who actually walked amongst the most violent US-sponsored thugs and offered them cookies to keep them energized as they murdered their fellow citizens?
Remember Nuland’s intercepted phone call where she did not even try to hide the fact that the United States had arrogated to itself the authority to determine who would run post-coup Ukraine? “‘F’ the EU,” she said. Yeah, that’s “American global leadership,” neocon style.
How many Republicans supported this most idiotic and pointless policy? Most. Because they have no principles.
Well the big failure Nuland is back, demonstrating that there is nothing like being catastrophically wrong in foreign policy to boost your career in Washington’s foreign policy establishment! Incoming Biden has announced that he would reward neocon Nuland for her incompetence with an Assistant Secretaryship for Policy at the State Department.
There are many areas wide open for us – we non-interventionist, non-partisans – to affect the debate in the coming people. It has in a way fallen into our laps: we oppose interventionism on principle and we have no opposition because no one else has any principles! It’s only about empty-headed power.
Schumer is drooling all over himself with his newfound power, Tweeting “buckle up” earlier today. But he has no real power because he has no ideas. We have the ideas and as Dr. Paul always says no army can stop an idea whose time has come. Our time has come!
In deleting the mainstream British broadcaster, YouTube has crossed a line. Tom Slater Deputy Editor
The deletion of talkRADIO’s YouTube channel this morning – reportedly due to its platforming of lockdown-sceptical views – is among the most chilling cases of Big Tech censorship we’ve seen yet.
talkRADIO is a mainstream British political radio station, interviewing cabinet ministers on a daily basis, with a sizable social-media presence. Prior to its deletion, its YouTube account had tens of millions of views and more than a quarter of a million subscribers, where its radio shows were livestreamed every day.
But no more. At a stroke, Silicon Valley oligarchs have decided to punish talkRADIO for its editorial decisions, depriving it of one of the primary ways it reaches its audience and presumably a big source of its revenue. That talkRADIO and its output has been memory-holed by YouTube, when it is already stringently regulated by Britain’s own broadcast regulator, Ofcom, makes this even more alarming.
The precise reasons for this stark act of censorship remain unclear, as is so often the case. YouTube has only said the account was ‘terminated’ for violating ‘community guidelines’. A statement released by talkRADIO says it ‘await[s] a detailed response’ from YouTube and its parent company, Google, about the ‘nature of the breach’.
But early reports point to YouTube’s ‘Covid-19 Medical Misinformation Policy’, which bans ‘medical misinformation that contradicts local health authorities’ or the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) medical information about Covid-19’.
Such a rule is alarmingly broad on the face of it – not least because, by almost anyone’s estimation, health authorities have got a lot wrong over the course of this pandemic. And in its implementation YouTube has censored dissenting journalists and medical experts, who simply question the efficacy of lockdown, as well as outright conspiratorial cranks.
That a British broadcaster – which has not to date been reprimanded by Ofcom for its content on Covid and lockdown – now seems to have been caught in the net reminds us that we are in a new phase of Big Tech censorship.
Just as with the Hunter Biden case in the run-up to the US election – in which a New York Post exposé was suppressed by Twitter and Facebook, over claims it was ‘misinformation’ – it seems social media is, in effect, extending its censorious writ over older forms of media, which are increasingly reliant on the internet to disseminate their work and make money.
Yes, Google and Facebook are private companies. But they also monopolise large parts of what now constitutes the public square. Anyone who is genuinely comfortable with these tech behemoths setting the terms for acceptable debate, deciding even what is true, simply hasn’t been caught in its crosshairs yet.
But they will. Censorship once it has been justified can only spread. What began a few years back among Silicon Valley firms as a clampdown on hate speech and genuine misinformation on their platforms has morphed into routine censorship of dissent. Now even of mainstream broadcasters.
Those who defend such censorship today give up their right to complain about it tomorrow.
Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_
The armor is purely defensive in nature, and people should always have the ability and right to defend themselves against attack.
The right to self-defense is the right from which all other rights are derived. As John Locke stated, self-defense is the first law of nature. Each person owns his or her own life and no other person has a right to take that life, or hinder the preservation thereof.
Lawmakers in New York have proposed one of the most tyrannical and utterly worrisome pieces of legislation we’ve seen. They want to ban citizens from having body armor to protect themselves from bullets. As no one has ever beaten anyone to death with a bullet proof vest, the intentions behind this bill are clear and have no other purpose other than making it easier for government to kill citizens and harder for citizens to protect themselves from bullets.
New York, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, now wants to make it a misdemeanor and potential felony for people to purchase or possess a passive means of resistance to bullets.
Unlike other attempts to ban body armor like we’ve seen in the past, this bill does not grandfather people in who already own it. In fact, the bill says that it must be turned over to the state for disposal, or you are guilty. After the passage of the bill, citizens will have 15 days to turn it in before they are declared criminals.
Assembly Bill A352 was introduced and cosponsored by David McDonough, Richard Gottfried, and Michael Montesano. It reads as follows (emphasis added.)
§ 270.21 Unlawful purchase or possession of a body vest. A person is guilty of the unlawful purchase or possession of a body vest when he or she knowingly and unlawfully purchases or possesses a body vest, as such term is defined in subdivision two of section 270.20 of this article. This section shall not apply to active law enforcement officers or those whose occupations require the use of body vests as determined by the department of state.
Unlawful purchase or possession of a body vest is a class A misdemeanor for a first offense and a class E felony for any subsequent offense.
§ 2. Any person currently in possession of a body vest, as such term is defined in subdivision two of section 270.20 of the penal law, shall have 15 days from the effective date of this act to dispose of such body vest at any local or state law enforcement agency.
On the government’s website, they allow comments from citizens. Naturally, this piece of legislation is not being well received. One person pointed out the obvious, saying, “The only legitimate reason for this bill is to make it easier for the State to murder the disarmed subjects of New York.”
“I cannot believe that such a bill would even be introduced in our state. The government here wants to control every aspect of our lives, even such a purely defensive item. Shame on our lawmakers for even considering such a bill,” another commenter wrote.
“This is a vile and wicked bill! Body armor is the most passive form of self protection possible that a person can use and you want to take that away from law-abiding citizens?! You should be disgusted with yourselves for ever proposing such a thing!” another person pointed out.
We agree with all of them.
The reality is America has less major crime than at any point in the last 40 years, and yet we have cops patrolling American streets as if they are in the Korengal or Fallujah, and treating the citizens as such, with absolutely no regard for the Constitution.
Perhaps if these lawmakers put as much effort into disarming the overly militarized police, as attempting to take away law-abiding citizens’ ability to defend themselves from would-be shooters, people wouldn’t have the impetus to wear body armor.
The armor is purely defensive in nature, and people should always have the ability and right to defend themselves against attack.
The right to self-defense is the right from which all other rights are derived. As John Locke stated, self-defense is the first law of nature. Each person owns his or her own life and no other person has a right to take that life, or hinder the preservation thereof.
Moreover, the Supreme Court has held that the police have no duty to protect citizens, so that responsibility now falls squarely on the shoulders of individuals themselves.
To take away people’s ability to access defensive armor, after telling them that they are on their own and are owed no protection by law enforcement, almost seems like a cruel joke.
Why should a law-abiding American, who takes steps to defend themselves passively, be criminalized?
Where is the sense in government banning something that provides people protection from harm?
The logic of this bill is so askew that it wouldn’t be surprising if perhaps next they will try and pass a bill that outlaws hiding behind things while being shot at.
When the state attempts to make it illegal to protect yourself from bullets, it may be time to start purchasing gear to protect yourself from bullets.
Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Minds.
It is hard to understand the continued presence of Jonah Goldberg as a conservative icon. Goldberg has the right to criticize Trump, yet he has turned himself into a nonstop Trump-hating machine, who manages to condemn anyone who still defends the president as a lunatic or criminal.
Nietzsche once said mischievously that a good war may justify any cause; for neoconservatives such as Goldberg, Steve Hayes, and David French at The Dispatch, it seems that any stick may be useful if it can be used to beat Trump. If memory serves, Goldberg was among the first to announce that Trump was “stealing” the election, after claiming that he deservedly lost it.
Most recently Goldberg has gone after Sen. Ted Cruz as a lackey of Trump’s, noting Cruz’s reservations about opening the country to Chinese dissenters. Both Cruz and Trump have expressed concern that our excessive hospitality could lead to opening the country to a flood of immigrants at a time when the U.S. is hurting economically.
This all confirms something that has seemed obvious to me for decades and highlights what contributors to The Vanishing Tradition recounted in detail. The establishment Conservative Inc. happily expels members for right-wing deviation, even helping to destroy a right-wing target professionally, as in the case of the Southern literary scholar M. E. Bradford. Yet it never expels anyone who makes a leftist fool of himself. Thus Con Inc. has clung to Obamacons, Trump-haters, and LGBT activists.
Con Inc. has also never found a way of dealing with nutjobs on the left. It is therefore now stuck with the mouthy, fatuous Jonah, who still swaggers in his seat on Fox News, while Bret Baier and other news anchors overwhelm him with good will.
In the case of Goldberg, I have no idea what ever qualified him as a “conservative,” other than his tendency to identify himself on election off-years with centrist Republicans, who are sensitive to immigration and sexual identity issues. That, and the fact that Jonah’s mother outed Bill Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Perhaps I am grasping at straws to make sense of what I have trouble understanding, namely the fabulous career that the conservative movement has made available to Lucianne Goldberg’s not very bright son, and whom it continues to favor even after he has become an embarrassment. No, I am not overlooking Jonah’s supposed piece of scholarship, Liberal Fascism (2009), which is a GOP screed ridiculously advertised as a study about a dangerous political movement that has traveled from Hitler to Hillary Clinton. As a scholar of fascism, let me assure my readers that Jonah’s tome is among the worst books ever produced on that subject.
This leads back to my initial reflections about why Con Inc. has no tradition of expelling vocal left-wingers who enjoy its patronage. Neoconservative leftists such as Bill Kristol, Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, David Frum, etc., all hung around Con Inc. halls of power until they decided to rebrand themselves as something other than conservatives. Gradually these luminaries grew tired of assuming a fictitious right-of-center identity, even if the leaders of the movement they left may well have regretted their loss.
In my considered view, the conservative establishment puts up with and even celebrates faux conservatives like Goldberg because they represent the general course the movement is already on. Media conservatives are trying to impress not very conservative sponsors, who may loathe Trump every bit as much as they care about the defense industry and other economic interests. In many cases conservative publicists are also interested in pleasing the liberal establishment, with which they hope to establish useful professional relations. Jonah does not offend these interests, unlike those unlucky few who take a hard line on immigration, gay rights, or some other unfashionable issue.
Even after having pointed out the obvious, I remain intrigued by the movement’s tendency to treat Jonah with gushing respect. But perhaps there is more to the story than has been thus far revealed. The unmistakably leftist local newspaper in my Pennsylvania town features Jonah as its token “conservative” columnist, an honor that the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other newspapers across the country have bestowed on him. If I were on the left and looking for a token “conservative,” I too would pick Jonah as a perfect fit, along with perhaps David Brooks and Ross Douthat. Why choose someone more difficult when your readers can be feasting their eyes on columnists who mostly agree with the paper’s left-of-center editors? But Jonah also enjoys the favors of the Murdoch empire: He is regularly syndicated in the New York Post and maintains a very conspicuous presence on Fox News. This makes me think that he and other members of Con Inc. are forever in clover unless they go to the dark side, which is of course the right.
Paul Gottfried is editor in chief of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is also the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years, a Guggenheim recipient, and a Yale Ph.D. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents.
