Apparently, it’s because Johnson and a good share of the Washington GOP have succumbed wholesale to neocon paranoia, stupidity, lies and hollow excuses for warmongering.
Speaker Johnson’s ignominious betrayal of fscal sanity might well be the death knell for the GOP. He is apparently risking his speakership on behalf of $95 billion of foreign aid boondoggles that Uncle Sam cannot remotely aford, and which actually provide zero beneft to the homeland security of America. And we do mean zero, as in nothing, nichts, nada, nyet and nugatory, as we amplify below.
What Johnson’s impending Waterloo means, therefore, is not merely the prospect of another wild and wooly succession battle, but actually that there is no point at all in the preservation of a Republican majority and GOP House Speaker. Afer all, the Washington GOP has become so infected with neocon warmongers and careerist pols who spend a lifetime basking in the imperial projects and pretensions of the world’s War Capital that apparently the best the House GOP caucus could do when it ejected the previous careerist deep stater from the Speaker’s chair was to tap the dim-witted nincompoop who currently occupies it.
The Republican party is thus truly beyond redemption. As JFK once said about the CIA, its needs to be splintered into a thousand pieces and swept into the dustbin of history.
Indeed, when you look at the calamitous fscal trajectory embedded in the CBO’s latest 30-year fscal outlook, you truly have to wonder about what miniature minds like Congressman Johnson’s are actually thinking. That is to say, the latest CBO report published in March presumes that there will never be another recession and no infation fare-up, interest rate spike, global energy dislocation, prolonged Forever War or any other imaginable crisis ever again—just smooth economic sailing for the next 30 years.
And yet, and then. Even by the math of this Rosy Scenario on steroids the public debt will reach $140 trillion at minimum by 2054. In turn, that would cause interest payments on the public debt with rates no higher than those which prevailed between 1986 and 1997 to reach $10 trillion per year.
You simply don’t need paragraphs, pages and whole monographs worth of analysis and amplifcation to understand where that is going. The nation’s fsc is now on the cusp of descending into the maws of a doomsday machine. So how in the world do these elements of Johnson’s ofering make even the remotest sense?
Speaker Johnson’s Foreign Aid Boondoggle:
Indo-Pacifc aid: $8.1 billion.
Israel: $26.4 billion.
Ukraine: $60.8 billion.
Total: $95.3 billion.
Apparently, it’s because Johnson and a good share of the Washington GOP have succumbed wholesale to neocon paranoia, stupidity, lies and hollow excuses for warmongering.
Contrary to what a naïve reading of the First Amendment might suggest, the federal government has never been especially keen on respecting the right to free speech.
In real life, people can be found guilty of conspiring with people with whom they have never been in the same room, or with whom the “conspirator” expressed any actual violent intent.
Over the past three years, the word “sedition” has again become popular among regime agents and their friends in the media. It’s certainly not the first time the word has enjoyed a renaissance. It’s frequently employed whenever the ruling class wishes us to become hysterical about various real and imagined enemies, both domestic and foreign.
This time, the regime’s paranoia about sedition was prompted by the Capitol Riot in January 2021, when we were told that Trump supporters nearly carried out a coup d’etat. Since then, regime operatives have frequently referred to Trump supporters and Trump himself as seditionists.
Yet, out of the approximately 850 people charged with crimes of various sorts, only a very small number have been charged with anything even close to treason or insurrection. Rather, most charges are various forms of infractions related to vandalism and trespassing. However, because these charges have to do with the regime’s sacred office buildings, the penalties are outrageously harsh compared to similar acts, were they to occur on private property.
For a small handful of defendants, however—the ones the Justice Department has most enthusiastically targeted—the federal prosecutors have brought the charge of “seditious conspiracy.”
Why not charges of treason, rebellion or insurrection? Well, if federal prosecutors though they could get a conviction for actual rebellion, insurrection, or treason for the January 6 riot, they would have brought those charges.
But they didn’t.
What they did do is turn to seditious conspiracy, which is far easier to prove in court, and is—like all conspiracy charges in American law—essentially a thought crime and a speech crime. Seditious conspiracy is not actual sedition, or rebellion, or insurrection. That is, there is no overt act necessary, nor is it necessary that the alleged sedition or insurrection actually take place or be executed. What really matters is that two or more people said things that prosecutors could later claim were part of a conspiracy to do something that may or may not have ever happened.
Moreover, the regime now routinely employs other types of conspiracy charges for prosecuting Americans supposedly guilty for various crimes against the state. At the moment, for example, Donald Trump faces three different conspiracy charges for saying that the 2020 election was illegitimate.
As we shall see, purported crimes like seditious conspiracy are crimes based largely on things people have said. They are a type of speech crime.
Now, some may ask how that is even possible if there is freedom of speech in this country.
Contrary to what a naïve reading of the First Amendment might suggest, the federal government has never been especially keen on respecting the right to free speech.
NASCAR star Kyle Larson, who’s looking to become the first driver in a decade to complete “The Double” with Arrow McLaren and Hendrick Motorsports, talks about getting adjusted from stock cars to INDYCAR and his experience at the Indy 500 Open Test ahead of May.
CAMBRIDGE, MA — In the wake of claiming the moon is made of gas and the sun is “almost” too hot to get close to, Texas Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee has been named the new head of Harvard University’s Astronomy Department.
The Board of Overseers at the prestigious Ivy League institution was reportedly wowed by Jackson Lee’s insights into the cosmos, with the school immediately seeking to get in touch with her about the department head position.
“Her knowledge blew us away,” said Harvard Interim President Alan Garber. “When she said, ‘The moon is made up of mostly gasses. That’s why the question is why or how could we humans live on the moon’ — that’s when we knew she was Harvard material.”
While some have raised questions about Jackson Lee’s qualifications to lead the school’s Astronomy Department after her comments about the moon being comprised of gases, the board was willing to overlook any criticism. “It’s not about qualifications here at Harvard,” Garber said. “She hasn’t been qualified to serve in Congress all these years, but she’s done it. That says a lot about her ability to overcome adversity and general misunderstandings about basic elements. She literally watched a flag be planted on the moon, thinking it’s being planted in gas – and yet, she got elected to Congress. What a leader!”
Jackson Lee’s office said she would join the school’s faculty within a few weeks and that due to normal legislative inaction, it would not interfere with her ability to continue serving in Congress.
At publishing time, Jackson Lee was planning her first lecture to educate students about the fact that asteroids are made of chocolate.
In 1945, [Julian] Huxley noted that it is too early to propose outright a eugenic depopulation program but advised that it will be important for the organization “to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”
“Freedom faces a new enemy. The tyranny comes under the disguise of expert rule and benevolent dictatorship. The new rulers do not justify their right to dominance because of divine providence but now claim the right to rule the people in the name of universal health and safety based on presumed scientific evidence.”
…Under the leadership of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, twenty-six nations agreed in January 1942 to the initiative of establishing a United Nations Organization (UNO), which came into existence on October 24, 1945.
Since its inception, the United Nations and its branches, such as the World Bank Group and the World Health Organization (WHO), have prepared the countries of the world…[for] a world government…
The next decisive step toward the global economic transformation was taken with the first report of the Club of Rome. In 1968, the Club of Rome was initiated at the Rockefeller estate Bellagio in Italy. Its first report was published in 1972 under the title “The Limits to Growth.” The president emeritus of the Club of Rome, Alexander King, and the secretary of the club, General Bertrand Schneider, inform in their Report of the Council of the Club of Rome that when the members of the club were in search of identifying a new enemy, they listed pollution, global warming, water shortages, and famines as the most opportune items to be blamed on humanity with the implication that humanity itself must be reduced to keep these threats in check.
Since the 1990s, several comprehensive initiatives toward a global system of control have been undertaken by the United Nations with Agenda 2021 and Agenda 2030.
The 2030 Agenda was adopted by all United Nations member states in 2015. It launched its blueprint for global change with the call to achieve seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs). The key concept is “sustainable development” that includes population control as a crucial instrument. Saving the earth has become the slogan of green policy warriors. Since the 1970s, the horror scenario of global warming has been a useful tool in their hands to gain political influence and finally rule over public discourse.
In the meanwhile, these anti-capitalist groups have obtained a dominant influence in the media, the educational and judicial systems, and have become major players in the political arena. In many countries, particularly in Europe, the so-called green parties have become a pivotal factor in the political system. Many of the representatives are quite open in their demands to make society and the economy compatible with high ecological standards that require a profound reset of the present system.
In reality, the refunds sent to them by the Internal Revenue Service are nothing more than the belated repayment of interest-free loans made to the government in the form of excessive taxes withheld from their paychecks. They’re getting back money they never owed in the first place. That doesn’t represent a windfall, it represents a loss — the loss of everything they could have done with their money if they’d had access to it, and the loss of purchasing power eroded by inflation. It shouldn’t make anyone happy to overpay their taxes.
If, as has been said, taxation is the art of plucking the goose without making it squeal, then the Treasury Department policymakers who implemented tax withholding were virtuosi.
LIKE MOST Americans, I got my taxes filed before this week’s Tax Day deadline. And like most Americans, I got money back from the IRS. You probably did too. After all, nearly two-thirds of tax returns result in a refund.
That’s not a good thing.
Many Americans have come to regard their tax refund as a plum to look forward to each spring, a windfall that compensates to some degree for the hassle of getting their tax returns completed and filed. In reality, the refunds sent to them by the Internal Revenue Service are nothing more than the belated repayment of interest-free loans made to the government in the form of excessive taxes withheld from their paychecks. They’re getting back money they never owed in the first place. That doesn’t represent a windfall, it represents a loss — the loss of everything they could have done with their money if they’d had access to it, and the loss of purchasing power eroded by inflation. It shouldn’t make anyone happy to overpay their taxes.
This wouldn’t be an issue if Americans were free to pay their taxes the way they pay for electricity, tuition, child care, groceries, or anything else — namely, by drawing money from their bank account and remitting the amount due to their creditors. But when it comes to paying the bill for government, that isn’t an option. The vast majority of American workers are never paid the full compensation they’re entitled to. Instead their employers are required by law to withhold some of their earnings and send it directly to the IRS.
Most of us are so used to this way of doing things that we hardly notice what a rip-off it is. But Chris Rock noticed. “You don’t even pay taxes — they take taxes,” the celebrated comedian fumed during his “Bigger & Blacker” standup routine. “You get your check, money gone. That ain’t a payment, that’s a jack.”
On the eve of World War II, when only the highest-earning Americans were subject to the federal income tax, fewer than 4 million individual returns were filed.
Libertarians and conservatives share a common enemy. Whether it is described as liberalism, progressivism, collectivism, or socialism; whether its adherents term themselves liberals, progressives, Democrats, or democratic socialists — the agenda is the same: paternalism, universal health care, free college tuition, more gun-control laws, social justice, green energy, environmentalism, climate-change alarmism, affirmative action, government-mandated family leave, government-funded child care, more antidiscrimination laws, privileges for organized labor, an ever-increasing minimum wage, increased taxes on “the rich,” easier access to welfare with fewer work requirements, and abortion on demand (at taxpayer expense for low-income women). The result of all of these things is a larger and more intrusive government and increased government regulation of the economy and intervention in society.Conservative internationalism is just a smokescreen for an interventionist foreign policy with all the trimmings. [Click to Tweet]
Conservatism
Although libertarians and conservatives may share a common enemy, this does not mean that the two groups are ideological cousins — no matter what President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) thought. In a 1975 Reason magazine interview, Reagan said: “If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism…. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.” The reality, of course, is that conservatism desires less government interference, less centralized authority, and more individual freedom in just certain areas, only on select issues, and concerning just some subjects. Conservatives are big on reforming government programs or replacing them with other government programs instead of repealing them lock, stock, and barrel. Just because there is some overlap in the desires of conservatives and libertarians and in the progressive policies that they oppose doesn’t mean that conservatism and libertarianism are two sides of the same coin.
The other problem with conservatives is that they often say the same things as libertarians but with a somewhat or entirely different meaning. Consider the conservative mantra of fidelity to the Constitution, federalism, limited government, private property, less government, lower taxes, less regulations, individual freedom, fiscal conservatism, traditional values, the free market, free enterprise, and a strong national defense.
Libertarians certainly believe that the federal government should actually follow its own Constitution and the federal system of government put in place by the Founders. Limiting the government, lowering taxes, and reducing regulations are music to the ears of libertarians. Individual freedom and private property are the twin pillars of libertarianism. There is nothing inherent in libertarianism that is in opposition to fiscal conservatism or traditional values. Free enterprise and the free market is the cry of every libertarian. And libertarians undoubtedly believe in the legitimacy of defense against aggression.
But regardless of how many times they recite their mantra, conservatives don’t follow the Constitution in many areas. They believe in federalism except when they don’t. The only limited government they seek is a government limited to control by conservatives. They don’t accept the freedom of individuals to do anything that’s peaceful. They don’t believe in the inviolability of private property. They think traditional values should be legislated by government. Fiscal conservatives they are not. They don’t yearn for free enterprise and a free market in everything. And conservatives confound national defense with national offense.
The conservative mantra is simply a ruse to persuade grass-roots conservatives to continue to vote Republican in order to keep those evil Democrats out of office.
The current approach to drug policy in the United States has significant consequences for our economic health and individual freedom.The War on Drugs interferes with the natural functioning of the market. Prohibition creates black markets, leading to higher prices and increased violence as illegal suppliers compete for control.The War on Drugs represents an infringement on individual liberty. It criminalizes personal choices and leads to the over-policing and over-incarceration of nonviolent individuals.If you know the dangers of the War on Drugs, give to our Record High Four Twenty Challenge Here >>>A more effective approach would be to get the government out of drug regulation and focus on private harm reduction and treatment programs. This would empower individuals to make choices about their own lives without undue government interference.Changing our approach to drug policy is crucial for protecting our freedom and ensuring a more prosperous future.
At the same time, CIA Director William Burns has filed a State Secrets Privilege demand to withhold information in a lawsuit against the agency by four American journalists and attorneys who were spied on during their visits to Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
So they’re really doing it. The Biden administration is really ignoring Australia’s request to end the case against Julian Assange, and they’re proceeding with their campaign to extradite a journalist for telling the truth about US war crimes.
In order to move the extradition case forward, per a British high court ruling US prosecutors needed to provide “assurances” that the US would not seek the death penalty and would not deprive Assange of his human right to free speech because of his nationality. The US provided the assurance against the death penalty (which they’d previously opposed doing), and for the free speech assurance they said only that Assange will be able to “raise and seek to rely upon” US First Amendment rights, adding, “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.”
Which is basically just saying “I mean, you’re welcome to TRY to have free speech protections?”
UPDATED WITH TEXT OF DIPLOMATIC NOTE: The U.S. Tuesday filed assurances on the death penalty and the 1st Amendment, the latter of which Stella Assange called a “non-assurance.” pic.twitter.com/KQNNeIQNYD
At the same time, CIA Director William Burns has filed a State Secrets Privilege demand to withhold information in a lawsuit against the agency by four American journalists and attorneys who were spied on during their visits to Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. State secrets privilege is a US evidentiary rule designed to prevent courts from revealing state secrets during civil litigation; the CIA began invoking it with the Assange lawsuit earlier this year.
Burns argues:
“I am asserting the state secrets and statutory privileges in this case as I have determined that either admitting or denying that CIA has information implicated by the remaining allegations in the Amended Complaint reasonably could be expected to cause serious — and in some cases, exceptionally grave — damage to the national security of the United States. After deliberation and personal consideration, I have determined that the complete factual bases for my privilege assertions cannot be set forth on the public record without confirming or denying whether CIA has information relating to this matter and therefore risking the very harm to U.S. national security that I seek to protect.”
Which is obviously a load of horse shit. As Assange himself tweeted in 2017, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.” Burns isn’t worried about damaging “the national security of the United States,” he’s worried about the potential political fallout from information about the CIA spying on American lawyers and journalists while visiting a journalist who was being actively targeted by the legal arm of the US government.
Political security is also why the US is working to punish Julian Assange for publishing inconvenient facts about US war crimes. The Pentagon already acknowledged years ago that the Chelsea Manning leaks for which Assange is being prosecuted didn’t get anyone killed and had no strategic impact on US war efforts, so plainly this isn’t about national security. It’s just politically damaging for the criminality of the US government to be made public for all to see.
They’re just squeezing and squeezing this man as hard as they can for as long as they can get away with to keep him silent and make an example of him to show what happens when journalists reveal unauthorized information about the empire. Just like Gaza, the persecution of Julian Assange makes a lie of everything the US and its western allies claim to stand for, and reveals the cruel face of tyranny beneath the mask of liberal democracy.
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President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers including William Randolph Hearst and Moses Annenberg, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer. FDR also dropped the IRS hammer on political critics such as Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin and prominent Republicans like former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Perhaps Roosevelt’s most pernicious tax skulduggery occurred in 1944 when he spiked an IRS audit of massive illegal campaign contributions from a government contractor to Congressman Lyndon Johnson. LBJ’s career would likely have been destroyed if Texans had learned of his dirty-dealing. Instead, LBJ survived and scores of thousands of Americans and more than a million Vietnamese died as a result.
One hundred years ago, Senator James Couzens, a Michigan Republican, took to the Senate floor to denounce the Bureau of Internal Revenue for abusing its power and trampling innocent taxpayers. Couzens launched a sweeping Senate investigation of federal tax collectors. One year later, Internal Revenue Commissioner David Blair personally delivered a demand for $10 million in back taxes as Couzens stepped out of the Senate chamber. Couzens fought the case, and eventually proved that he had actually overpaid his taxes by roughly one million dollars, as David Burnham noted in his 1989 classic, A Law Unto Itself: The IRS and the Abuse of Power. But the precedent of the IRS exploiting its power to attack its critics was firmly established.
President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS to harass newspaper publishers including William Randolph Hearst and Moses Annenberg, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer. FDR also dropped the IRS hammer on political critics such as Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin and prominent Republicans like former Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon. Perhaps Roosevelt’s most pernicious tax skulduggery occurred in 1944 when he spiked an IRS audit of massive illegal campaign contributions from a government contractor to Congressman Lyndon Johnson. LBJ’s career would likely have been destroyed if Texans had learned of his dirty-dealing. Instead, LBJ survived and scores of thousands of Americans and more than a million Vietnamese died as a result.
President John F. Kennedy raised the political exploitation of the IRS to an art form. Shortly after capturing the presidency, JFK denounced “the discordant voices of extremism” and derided people “who would sow the seeds of doubt and hate” and make Americans distrust their leaders.
At a news conference a few days later, a reporter sought his views on the legality of campaign contributions supporting ”right-wing extremist groups.” Kennedy replied “As long as they meet the requirements of the tax law, I don’t think that the Federal Government can interfere or should interfere with the right of any individual to take any position he wants. The only thing we should be concerned about is that it does not represent a diversion of funds which might be taxable to—for nontaxable purposes. But that is another question, and I am sure the Internal Revenue system examines that.”
Actually, JFK heavily elbowed the IRS to make sure that they targeted the tax-exempt status of conservative organizations that had criticized Kennedy or his agenda. The IRS launched the Ideological Organizations Audit Project which targeted numerous right-leaning groups, including the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade and the American Enterprise Institute. Shortly before his assassination, Kennedy specified that he wanted an “aggressive program” against the IRS targets. JFK also used the IRS to bolster compliance with “voluntary” price controls, targeting steel executives who defied the administration for audits.
A 1976 Senate report noted, “By directing tax audits at individuals and groups solely because of their political beliefs, the Ideological Organizations Audit Project established a precedent for a far more elaborate program of targeting ‘dissidents.’” After Richard Nixon took office, his administration quickly created a Special Services Staff (SSS) to mastermind “all IRS activities involving ideological, militant, subversive, radical, and similar type organizations.” More than 10,000 individuals and groups were targeted because of their political activism or slant between 1969 and 1973, including Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling and the John Birch Society. The IRS was also given a list of Nixon’s official enemies to, in the words of White House counsel John Dean, “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” Contributors to the Democratic Party were also high on Nixon’s target list as were many left-leaning organizations.
The Nixon administration also vastly expanded a secret computer database—the “Intelligence Gathering and Retrieval System” the IRS began in 1963 to sweep up information on individual Americans and groups. By 1975, the IRS had stockpiled data on almost half a million persons and groups; the program was abolished after its existence became known outside of official circles.
The exposure of Nixon’s IRS abuses profoundly weakened him during the uproar after the Watergate hotel break-in. The second article of his 1974 impeachment charged him with endeavoring to “obtain from the IRS…confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposed not authorized by law, and to cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner.” Congress enacted legislation to severely restrict political contacts between the White House and the IRS.
But the IRS continued its freelance work. After Senator Joe Montoya of New Mexico announced plans in 1972 to hold hearings on IRS abuses, the agency added his name to a list of tax protestors who were capable of violence against IRS agents. When IRS Commissioner Donald Alexander was challenged on the listing at a 1975 Senate hearing, he replied, “The only connection that I can think of immediately is that Senator Montoya is, after all, the Chairman of the IRS Appropriations Subcommittee, and some one might have thought that he did violence to our appropriation.” Information from the an IRS investigation of Montoya was leaked to The Washington Post. Partly as a result of the IRS leak, Montoya lost his reelection bid.
In the following decades, the IRS regularly sparked outrage by abusing innocent taxpayers but there was scant controversy about the agency’s politicalization until Bill Clinton took office. In 1995, the White House and the Democratic National Committee produced a 331-page report entitled “Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce” which attacked magazines, think tanks, and other entities and individuals who had criticized President Clinton. In the subsequent years, many organizations mentioned in the White House report were hit by IRS audits. More than twenty conservative organizations—including the Heritage Foundation and The American Spectator—and almost a dozen high-profile Clinton critics were audited.
After Barack Obama was elected president, conservative groups mobilized to resist his policies. By mid-2010, conservative organizations were complaining of harassment by the IRS. IRS officials created a BOLO list—“Be On the Look Out”—for conservative organizations applying for nonprofit tax status.
If, as has been said, taxation is the art of plucking the goose without making it squeal, then the Treasury Department policymakers who implemented tax withholding were virtuosi.
MCViewPoint 