September 23, 2018

Trump's latest tariffs are about to hit you where it really hurts

fromBusinessInsider: For the first time, consumer goods are going to be directly hit by the new 10% duty, likely causing an immediate increase in prices for US shoppers.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

China's chilling 'social credit system' is straight out of dystopian sci-fi, and it's already switched on

fromScienceAlert: Coming to a tyranny near you?
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Meet the robot lawyer fighting fines, fees, and red tape

fromReason: DoNotPay is launching a "denial of service attack on the legal system to make it better."
Regulation Nation

State migration increasingly driven by taxes

fromReason: Tax competition between states is alive and well. Taxpayers in California, considered domestic livestock by the ruling class, must choose if living in a beautiful state is worth relentless exploitation.
Economic Policy: Statism Versus The Free Market

Why electric vehicles are paper straw dumb

fromEricPetersAuto: Car companies no longer build cars for the market; they build them to satisfy the government.
Regulation Nation

Marine Le Pen furious after being ordered to undergo psychiatric tests

fromReason: The attack on free speech hits another level in France. Psychiatric test ordered in response to politically incorrect truth. Not even an allegation of falsehood. Coming to a police state near you?
Individual Liberty: America's First Principle      Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

March 28, 2016

March madness, Washington-style

fromTheWashingtonTimes: The whole purpose of the Constitution is to restrain the government and to protect personal liberty. FISA and its enablers in both major political parties have done the opposite. 
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

VIDEO: Walter E Williams - The Art of Legalized Theft

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: Professor Williams explains what drives the political world. 
Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption

VIDEO: Rand Paul - An Unholy Alliance Against the People

fromLibertyPen/YouTube: Rand Paul identifies why economic malfeasance is routinely delivered to the American people.  http://www.LibertyPen.com

Economic Policy: Statism Versus the Free Market

People are freaking out that Facebook's Android apps collect call and text data

fromBusinessInsider: Apple does not have this problem because they sell directly to customers. Their customers want privacy. Android phones are sold to service providers and service providers like data collection.
Government is Watching Every Move You Make

Gun country

fromTheNewYorker: A new generation of American kids embraces firearms. 
2nd Amendment Assaults

The psychology of progressive hostility

fromQuillette: Every new point of view we encounter can enrich our understanding even if we don’t embrace it entirely. But this comes with the risk of self-effacement and growing uncertainty. 
Political Correctness and Other Nitwittery

Daily Bell Staff: Elites Link Anti-Government Thought To Mental Illness, Lay The Groundwork For Incarceration

A chilling attack on dissent.    Believe in conspiracy theories? You’re probably a narcissist: People who doubt the moon landings are more likely to be selfish and attention-seeking … Psychologists from the University of Kent carried out three online studies … -UK Daily Mail  We are seeing an increasing number of academic studies analyzing the psychology  ... MORE

The Stupid Things People Do When Society Breaks Down

by Brandon Smith. A frequent mistake that many people make when considering the concept of social or economic collapse is to imagine how people and groups will behave tomorrow based on how people behave today. It is, though, extremely difficult to predict human behavior in the face of terminal chaos. What we might expect, or what         ... MORE

Robert Epstein: The New Mind Control

What you don't know can hurt you.    The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence that can flip elections and manipulate everything we say, think and do. Over the past century, more than a few great writers have expressed concern about humanity’s future. In The Iron Heel (1908), the American writer Jack London pictured a world in which a    ... MORE

Michael J. Hurd: The Psychological Cost Of Socialism

Ruining lives of the poor.    Bernie Sanders is an outwardly socialist candidate running for president who might actually get somewhere. In some polls, he’s neck-and-neck with Hillary Clinton for his party’s nomination. No, he will probably not get the nomination in the end. But he could, and he’s having an impact on his party. Thanks in part to  ... MORE

Danny Vinik: Obama’s Effort To ‘Nudge’ America

Government using behavioral science to shape behavior.  For the past year, the Obama administration has been running an experiment: Is it possible to make policy more effective by using psychology on citizens? The nickname is “nudging”—the idea that policymakers can change people’s behavior just by presenting choices or information      ... MORE

Tweaking The Propaganda: Obama Administration To Deploy "Behavioral Science" To Pimp Gov't Programs

by Charlie Spiering.       A new executive order from President Obama directs all government agencies to use psychological science and data to help connect more Americans to government programs. The order instructs government agencies to use “behavioral science”— a tactic used by Obama’s political campaigns to harness data from their         ... MORE

VIDEO: Why You Should Want To Limit Government

The Likely Cause Of Addiction Has Been Discovered

by Johann Hari.    And, it is not what you think. It is now one hundred years since drugs were first banned -- and all through this long century of waging war on drugs, we have been told a story about addiction by our teachers and by our governments. This story is so deeply ingrained in our minds that we take it for granted. It seems obvious. It seems     ... MORE

VIDEO: Secrets Of The Slave State

Students Are Now Literally 'Hiding from Scary Ideas,' Or Why My Mom's Nursery School Is Edgier Than College

by Robby Soave.  My mother is a nursery school teacher. Her classroom is a place for children between one and two years of age—adorable little tykes who are learning how to crawl, how to walk, and eventually, how to talk. Coloring materials, Play-Doh, playful tunes, bubbles, and nap time are a few of the components of her room: a veritable "safe space" ... MORE

Psychiatrists Now Say Non-Conformity Is A Mental Illness

Only sheeple are ‘sane.’   The nail that sticks up will be hammered down.  Modern psychiatry has become a hotbed of corruption, particularly the kind that seeks to demonize and declare mentally ill anyone who deviates from what is regarded as the norm.  This is abundantly evident in the latest installment of the industry’s Diagnostic and Statistical ... MORE

Scientology Scheme: Foundation For A Drug-Free America

Propaganda machine is religious front group.     Pamphlets passed out with Halloween candy. The Foundation for a Drug-Free World -- at drugfreeworld.org -- is an anti-drug organization with links to and funded by the Church of Scientology. As such it is considered one of the cult's front groups. The Church of Scientology has a history of  ... MORE

Edward Cline: Our Sociopathic Political Class

Deranged or just wrong about everything?      In his March 10^th FrontPage column, “Obama’s Appeasement Leads to War,” about how appeasing tyrants has and will continue to lead to war and more international strife, Daniel Greenfield wrote: On the shield of the Strategic Air Command a steel mailed fist grips a lightning bolt   ... MORE

Brian Doherty: Higher Is Healthier?

Surprising findings from psychedelic science.      Despite what you might have learned from old government-sponsored black-and-white educational films or hippie-era exploitation flicks, psychedelic drugs do not drive you inexorably insane. A new study in PLoSOne, an online peer-reviewed journal from the Public Library of Science,          ... MORE

VIDEO: Seven Surprising Truths About The World

VIDEO: John Stossel - Personal Austerity

Joel F. Wade: Phony Vs. Earned Self-Esteem

Self-esteem is a result, not a vehicle.    A study by Jean Twenge of San Diego State University, published in the current issue of Social Psychological and Personality Science, is getting a lot of news this week. Twenge found that college kids today are more likely to call themselves gifted and driven to succeed, while their test scores and hours    ... MORE

VIDEO: John Stossel - God Or No God?