The 'Woke' Fed

President Joe Biden has ordered the Financial Stability Oversight Council to prepare a report on how the financial system can mitigate the risks related to climate change. The Financial Stability Oversight Council was created through the Dodd-Frank financial regulatory reform act and is supposed to identify and monitor excessive risk to the financial system. The council is composed of the heads of the major federal financial regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve. Federal Reserve...

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from The 'Woke' Fed

Pentagon Revolving Door Strikes Again - RPI's Daniel McAdams Interviewed

Frank Kendall, President Joe Biden's nominee for Air Force Secretary, when he answered questions before Congress on Monday ahead of his expected confirmation in the role. He faced a disturbing dearth of serious scrutiny about his very lucrative entanglements with defense contractors who've made him rich. The absence of criticism from an apparently apathetic US Congress makes his nomination all-the-more an illustration that the infamous Washington "swamp" is dirtier than ever. Daniel McAdams of...

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from Pentagon Revolving Door Strikes Again - RPI's Daniel McAdams Interviewed

CIA (Dis)Information Operations Come Home to the US

Reporters joke the easiest job in Washington is CIA spokesman. You need only listen carefully to questions and say “No comment’ before heading to Happy Hour. The joke, however, is on us. The reporters pretend to see only one side of the CIA, the passive hiding of information about itself. They meanwhile choose to profit from the other side of the equation, active information operations designed to influence events in America. It is 2021 and the CIA is running an op against the American people. ...

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from CIA (Dis)Information Operations Come Home to the US

Hunter Biden Is Back In The News. . . So The Media Goes Again For The Scoop

It seems like whenever Hunter Biden is in the news, the Biden staff screams, the media screams, “we all scream for ice cream.” On October 19, 2020, the Biden campaign and its protective cocoon of media faced the discovery of Hunter’s presumed laptop with details of his (and his uncle’s) influence peddling while Joe Biden was Vice President. The solution? Joe Biden went for ice cream and the media peppered him with questions about his confectionary choice (Spoiler: he ordered a two-scoop...

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from Hunter Biden Is Back In The News. . . So The Media Goes Again For The Scoop

Should Syria Care What the US Says About its Elections? - Interview w/RPI's Daniel McAdams

Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad has just been returned for another term in office by a very wide margin and with significant voter turnout. EU and US officials began condemning the vote from before the election even took place, determining that there was no way it could be free or fair. Do they have a leg to stand on considering their "Assad must go" policy of the past nine years? RPI Director Daniel McAdams talks to RT International:



from Should Syria Care What the US Says About its Elections? - Interview w/RPI's Daniel McAdams

CDC's Walensky To Kids: 'Put Yer Masks On!'

Despite overwhelming evidence that the vast majority of children do not become seriously ill or pass on the virus, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky testified before Congress yesterday that they must continue to wear their masks! Even as everyone else is taking masks off. Is this science...or a power trip? Or child abuse? Today on the Liberty Report:



from CDC's Walensky To Kids: 'Put Yer Masks On!'

Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity?

“It’s like we created another industry in our state. The amount of money is staggering,” Andrew Schaufele, director of Maryland’s Bureau of Revenue Estimates, happily declared last week. The Biden stimulus plan is deluging governments across America with hundreds of billions of dollars of extra revenue that will allow politicians to stretch their power in ways that vex citizens long after the pandemic is over. 

One year ago writing for AIER, I asked, “Will the Political Class Be Held Liable For What They’ve Done?” Lockdowns at that point had already destroyed more than ten million jobs without thwarting the virus – a debacle that “should be a permanent black mark against the political class and the experts who sanctified each and every sacrifice.” No such luck. The article warned that “sovereign immunity… almost guarantees that no politician will face any personal liability for their shutdown dictates.”

The political class is coming out of the pandemic with far more power and prerogatives. Biden’s stimulus windfalls for lockdown governors is like giving $100,000 bounties to drunk drivers who crashed their cars. Government employees have been the ultimate privileged class during Covid-19, collecting full paychecks almost everywhere while many of them stayed home and did little or no work.

Maryland will receive between $55 billion to $60 billion in federal stimulus funds – equal to “11 percent of the state’s entire economy.” The Maryland legislature “celebrated” by giving bonuses to government employees and by funding many new programs. Many other states have similarly used federal windfalls to launch new initiatives. 

Biden and his Democratic congressional allies are exploiting the pandemic to change the reality of work in America. Biden’s stimulus package included a $300 per week bonus for unemployment compensation that means that anyone who earned less than $32,000 is better off on the dole than taking a job. The unemployment bonuses were provided even while many states had canceled any requirement for claimants to actively seek a job. Alexa Tapia, the unemployment insurance campaign coordinator at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, derided work search requirements as “just another barrier being put to claimants, and it can be a very demoralizing barrier.” To assume that people are too fragile to look for a job sounds like a vast expansion of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Federal “generosity” to individuals who choose not to work is devastating small businesses unable to hire employees. 

Schools are some of the biggest beneficiaries of Biden’s handout bonanza. Biden’s Education Department is stocked with zealots who will likely exploit federal funding to dictate new curricula and mandate “equity” rules that could undermine local control of education. The same thing happened during the Obama administration when federal aid was used to bribe states into adapting “Common Core” standards that undermine students’ math competence. 

Teachers’ unions used their clout to keep schools shut down long after it was clear that reopening was safe. The Chicago Teachers Union declared, “The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism, and misogyny,” while the president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles declared that reopening schools “is a recipe for propagating structural racism.” But many teachers are collecting windfall bonuses thanks to the profusion of federal aid regardless of their unions blocking schoolhouse doors. 

Politicians are also exploiting the pandemic to seek to abolish fares for public transit. The Washington Post noted last week, “Transit systems for decades have been saddled with an obligation to partly support themselves through chasing ridership to increase revenue.” “Chasing ridership” is a euphemism for persuading people to voluntarily pay for a service. Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) is pushing the Freedom to Move Act for federal subsidies to end local transit fares. But this is simply “Freedom to Move At Other People’s Expense.” 

Free fares could quickly become a Trojan horse. Turning riders from customers into beggars would remove some of the last incentives to provide reliable service. If public transit is made “free,” then the only people that transit officials will need to please are federal bureaucrats, members of Congress, and transit union bosses. Transit systems won’t need to worry about keeping travelers safe; a survey of lapsed New York subway riders found that “nearly 90%… said crime and harassment were important factors in determining whether they return to the system.” 

Making subway rides free would also distract attention from the miserable performance of public transit systems that were losing ridership long before the pandemic. When the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority received a huge boost in subsidies from the Maryland and Virginia state governments a few years ago, it promptly responded by shutting down many subway stations for seemingly eternal maintenance since it no longer needed fare revenue. Many of the same activists who want to make public transit zero cost for users also want to sharply curtail the use of private transit: citizens who refuse to abandon their cars for “free” transit could be next on the enemies list.

The Biden administration is sparing no expense to make parents grateful to Washington. Beginning July 15, the feds will begin delivering up to $300 per child to Americans’ bank accounts and mailboxes. The Washington Post noted that the administration “estimates 88 percent of all American children are slated to receive new monthly payments — with no action required.” Congress enacted a temporary program scheduled to end after December. But a temporary handout shifts the argument: instead of debating whether a program that deluges non-needy families with cash, the question will be whether needy children can be thrown into the street by cutting off aid. The Post noted that the handouts could “have significant political consequences as the White House seeks to reshape the US economy.” Actually, this is an attempt to vastly change the relationship of the federal government to the American people. 

Throughout history, rulers have used cash to buy submission. “Money is my most important ammunition in this war,” said Gen. David Petraeus, the supreme US commander in Iraq. Presidents and members of Congress have long relied on “money as a weapon system” to buy votes or undermine resistance to Washington. 

Government restrictions almost always follow government handouts. In 1942, the Supreme Court ruled, “It is hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.” Because the Roosevelt administration had decided to drive up wheat prices, the Secretary of Agriculture acquired veto power over the use of every acre of cropland in the nation. In 1991, in a case involving federal subsidies, Chief Justice William Rehnquist declared that “when the Government appropriates public funds to establish a program, it is entitled to define the limits of that program.” 

Every subsidy creates a power vacuum that will eventually be filled by bureaucratic or political ambition. The more things are financed by subsidies, the more activities become dependent on bureaucratic approval and political manipulation. To depend on government subsidies means either to be currently restricted – or to be only one Federal Register notice away from being restricted. Subsidies are the modern method of humane conquest: slow political coups d’etat over one swath of American life after another. The only way to assume that subsidies are compatible with individual liberty is to assume that politicians and bureaucrats do not like power. 

Biden’s profusion of new handouts put a halo over his tax hike proposals and, perhaps more importantly, his plans to unleash the IRS to be far more aggressive against Americans. The more politicians promise to give some people, the more they entitle themselves to seize from everyone else. French philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenal wrote, “Redistribution is in effect far less a redistribution of free income from the richer to the poorer, than a redistribution of power from the individual to the state.” “Reciprocal plunder,” in economist Frederic Bastiat’s phrase, becomes the soul of political life.

Post-pandemic policies are far more perilous because few Americans yet recognize how badly their rulers failed them. Instead, “temporary” programs will be extended and further divide Americans into two classes—those who work for a living and those who vote for a living. The more people who view government as their personal savior, the easier it becomes for politicians to demagogue to ever greater power. But as economist Warren Nutter warned, “The more that government takes, the less likely that democracy will survive.”

Reprinted with permission from American Institute for Economic Research.

from Will the Pandemic Promote Political Power in Perpetuity?

Robert Wenzel, RIP

It is with great personal sadness and a profound realization of the intellectual loss to the cause of liberty that I announce the death of our dear friend Robert Wenzel, publisher of the Economic Policy Journal and Target Liberty. Robert Wenzel's two outlets, for the many in the know, were among the first websites to visit each and every morning. His Target Liberty was as eclectic and iconoclastic (when it comes to the statist status quo) as it was didactic and, yes, even entertaining. Every day, readers were left with a challenging mental lesson and also a great chuckle. Shaking our heads with Bob at the absurdities of the new "woke" movement.

Bob was as great at pointing out the comical absurdities of post-modern life as he was at explaining complex economic concepts. He was a rarity in that he was a serious intellectual but he was also always able to see the comical and absurd nature of our current times. He was a brave man, often writing about challenging people on the streets of his native San Francisco on their wearing of masks and other things he found absurd in our steady descent into authoritarianism. He would very often share some of the tricks and turns of phrase he would use on people under the spell of the state.

He was a thinker, to be sure, but he also was a doer!

I had the sad task this evening of informing Dr. Paul (and Lew Rockwell) of Bob's passing, which Bob's close friend Chris Rossini had earlier passed on to me. Dr. Paul made one excellent observation about Bob - something rare in the world of intellectuals and thought leaders: though Bob rigidly adhered to the ideas of freedom and liberty, though he was very settled in the philosophy, he was also not unwilling to change his mind about certain things as circumstances warranted. While a vocal critic of Rand Paul the presidential candidate, for example, he later became of the most ardent supporters of Senator Paul as the most libertarian Member of the US Senate. Only the very smart and most confident are willing to factor in new inputs and adjust accordingly.

I started reading Bob's Economic Policy Journal way, way back while working for Ron Paul on the Hill. I have a distinct memory of driving back from a little jaunt with our then very young children while living in Springfield VA and reading my wife, who was driving, some particularly amazing post from Bob's Journal (Target Liberty was launched several years later). "Can you believe this??? Wow!!"

Bob and I had a kind of running joke as Dr. Paul and I did our daily Liberty Report: Hardly a week would pass without Dr. Paul and I bringing in something from Target Liberty, giving him full credit, and all of a sudden in the afternoon I'd get an email from Bob with the subject line "I'm watching!" and a link to where we mentioned him.  He was also generous in promoting our Liberty Report. It was the best kind of symbiosis.

I only met Bob in person one time. He was in DC while I was working for Dr. Paul and he suggested we meet for drinks at an open air pub in the city. The conversation was rapid-fire and sharply intellectual (at least on his part!!!), as I remember it. Strangely I know nothing about Bob's personal life - which in these days of "letting it all hang out" is quite refreshing - but he kind of struck me as a New Yorker. May have been. I had no idea. He kept his privacy, which I admired.

The death of Robert Wenzel has not really begun to sink in. But the entire movement of pro-liberty people and free-thinkers has suffered what feels like a devastating loss. 

I cannot imagine waking up tomorrow morning and not having Target Liberty to visit. The world is a darker place without Robert Wenzel. Rest in peace, liberty warrior!



from Robert Wenzel, RIP

Life Insurance and Covid-19; Something Doesn’t Make Sense

You would think that during the worst Pandemic since the 1918 Spanish Flu life insurance companies would be hedging their bets to avoid major losses from Covid-19. I haven’t written a life policy for several years so I was wondering what was going on? I called one of the brokers I deal with that interacts with hundreds of big life insurers to get an inside look into how the Covid crisis has changed their business. Imagine my surprise when she said it was pretty much business as usual! Last...

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/may/26/life-insurance-and-covid-19-something-doesn-t-make-sense/

Equal Justice? Jan. 6 'Insurrectionists' Rot In US Gulag

Why are the people who trespassed in the US Capitol Building on January 6th being detained for months in solitary confinement? Why have they been denied bail for mostly minor crimes? Why are they being held in particularly inhuman conditions despite for the vast majority no previous criminal charges? Is this justice...or political revenge? Also today: Press hypocrisy on Wuhan lab "conspiracy theory." And...some justice for Newsom's victims. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Equal Justice? Jan. 6 'Insurrectionists' Rot In US Gulag

Greetings from 'New Normal' Germany!

On April 1, 1933, shortly after Hitler was appointed chancellor, the Nazis staged a boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany. Members of the Storm Troopers (“die Sturmabteilung,” or the “Storm Department,” as I like to think of them) stood around outside of Jewish-owned stores with Gothic-lettered placards reading “Germans! Defend yourselves! Do not buy from Jews!” The boycott itself was a total disaster — most Germans ignored it and just went on with their lives — but it was the beginning of the official persecution of the Jews and totalitarianism in Nazi Germany.

Last week, here in “New Normal” Germany, the government (which, it goes without saying, bears no resemblance to the Nazi regime, or any other totalitarian regime) implemented a social-segregation system that bans anyone who refuses to publicly conform to the official “New Normal” ideology from participating in German society. From now on, only those who have an official “vaccination pass” or proof of a negative PCR test are allowed to sit down and eat at restaurants, shop at “non-essential” stores, or go to bars, or the cinema, or wherever.

Here’s a notice from the website of Prater, a popular beer garden in Berlin:


(bigger)

Of course, there is absolutely no valid comparison to be made between these two events, or between Nazi Germany and “New Normal” Germany, nor would I ever imply that there was. That would be illegal in “New Normal” Germany, as it would be considered “relativizing the Holocaust,” not to mention being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimizing the state in a way that endangers security,” or whatever. Plus, it’s not like there are SA goons standing outside shops and restaurants with signs reading “Germans! Defend yourselves! Don’t sell to the Unvaccinated and Untested!” It’s just that it’s now illegal to do that, i.e., sell anything to those of us whom the media and the government have systematically stigmatized as “Covid deniers” because we haven’t converted to the new official ideology and submitted to being “vaccinated” or “tested.”

Protesting the new official ideology is also illegal in “New Normal” Germany. OK, I think I should probably rephrase that. I certainly don’t want to misinform anyone. Protesting the “New Normal” isn’t outlawed per se. You’re totally allowed to apply for a permit to protest against the “Covid restrictions” on the condition that everyone taking part in your protest wears a medical-looking N95 mask and maintains a distance of 1.5 meters from every other medical-masked protester … which is kind of like permitting anti-racism protests as long as the protesters all wear Ku Klux Klan robes and perform a choreographed karaoke of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama.

Who says the Germans don’t have a sense of humor?

I don’t mean to single out the Germans. There is nothing inherently totalitarian, or fascist, or robotically authoritarian and hyper-conformist about the Germans, as a people. The fact that the vast majority of Germans clicked their heels and started mindlessly following orders, like they did in Nazi Germany, the moment the “New Normal” was introduced last year doesn’t mean that all Germans are fascists by nature. Most Americans did the same thing. So did the British, the Australians, the Spanish, the French, the Canadians, and a long list of others. It’s just that, well, I happen to live here, so I’ve watched as Germany has been transformed into “New Normal Germany” up close and personal, and it has definitely made an impression on me.

The ease with which the German authorities implemented the new official ideology, and how fanatically it has been embraced by the majority of Germans, came as something of a shock. I had naively believed that, in light of their history, the Germans would be among the first to recognize a nascent totalitarian movement predicated on textbook Goebbelsian Big Lies (i.e., manipulated Covid “case” and “death” statistics), and would resist it en masse, or at least take a moment to question the lies their leaders were hysterically barking at them.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Here we are, over a year later, and waiters and shop clerks are “checking papers” to enforce compliance with the new official ideology. (And, yes, the “New Normal” is an official ideology. When you strip away the illusion of an apocalyptic plague, there isn’t any other description for it). Perfectly healthy, medical-masked people are lining up in the streets to be experimentally “vaccinated.” Lockdown-bankrupted shops and restaurants have been converted into walk-in “PCR-test stations.” The government is debating mandatory “vaccination” of children in kindergarten. Goon squads are arresting octogenarians for picnicking on the sidewalk without permission. And so on. At this point, I’m just sitting here waiting for the news that mass “disinfection camps” are being set up to solve the “Unvaccinated Question.”

Whoops … there I go again, “relativizing the Holocaust.” I really need to stop doing that. The Germans take this stuff very seriously, especially with Israel under relentless attack by the desperately impoverished people it has locked inside an enormous walled ghetto, and is self-defensively ethnically cleansing.

But, seriously, there is no similarity whatsoever between Nazi Germany and “New Normal” Germany. Sure, both systems suspended the constitution, declared a national “state of emergency” enabling the government to rule by decree, inundated the masses with insane propaganda and manipulated “scientific facts,” outlawed protests, criminalized dissent, implemented a variety of public rituals, and symbols, and a social segregation system, to enforce compliance with their official ideologies, and demonized anyone who refused to comply … but, other than that, there’s no similarity, and anyone who suggests there is is a dangerous social-deviant extremist who probably needs to be quarantined somewhere, or perhaps dealt with in some other “special” way.

Plus, the two ideologies are completely different. One was a fanatical totalitarian ideology based on imaginary racial superiority and the other is a fanatical totalitarian ideology based on an imaginary “apocalyptic plague” … so what the hell am I even talking about? On top of which, no swastikas, right? No swastikas, no totalitarianism! And nobody’s mass murdering the Jews, that I know of, and that’s the critical thing, after all!

So, never mind. Just ignore all that crazy stuff I just told you about “New Normal” Germany. Don’t worry about “New Normal” America, either. Or “New Normal” Great Britain. Or “New Normal” wherever. Get experimentally “vaccinated.” Experimentally “vaccinate” your kids. Prove your loyalty to the Reich … sorry, I meant to global capitalism. Ignore those reports of people dying and suffering horrible adverse effects. Wear your mask. Wear it forever. God knows what other viruses are out there, just waiting to defile your bodily fluids and cause you to experience a flu-like illness, or cut you down in the prime of your seventies or eighties … and, Jesus, I almost forgot “long Covid.” That in itself is certainly enough to justify radically restructuring society so that it resembles an upscale hospital theme park staffed by paranoid, smiley-faced fascists in fanciful designer Hazmat suits.

Oh, and keep your “vaccination papers” in order. You never know when you’re going to have to show them to some official at the airport, or a shop, or restaurant, or to your boss, or your landlord, or the police, or your bank, or your ISP, or your Tinder date … or some other “New Normal” authority figure. I mean, you don’t want to be mistaken for a “Covid denier,” or an “anti-vaxxer,” or a “conspiracy theorist,” or some other type of ideological deviant, and be banished from society, do you?

Reprinted with permission from Consent Factory.

from Greetings from 'New Normal' Germany!

The Bogus January 6 Commission Poses a Real Threat to Freedom

“Truth will out” is the most popular fairy tale in Washington. Members of Congress are clashing over whether politicians will appoint an “independent” commission to reveal the facts behind the January 6 Capitol ruckus. Proponents are portraying the issue as a simple choice between “truth or Trump.”

Recent history provides no reason to expect a politically controlled process to expose facts that undermine powerful politicians. Congress has long been worse than useless as a fact-finding agency. “Oversight” is a euphemism for stupefying congressional procedures designed to avoid discovering information that might embarrass their allies. A senior House Republican admitted in 2004: “Our party controls the levers of government. We're not about to go out and look beneath a bunch of rocks to cause heartburn.” Most members of Congress are more likely to grovel before federal agencies than to challenge their power. “How are you so great and how can we help you?” is the usual response when the FBI director testifies, as Guardian columnist Trevor Timm noted in 2016.

There is no reason to presume that a commission investigating January 6 would not be hogtied official stonewalling. Former Senate Intelligence Committee staff director Andy Johnson observed in 2014: “The fog of secrecy made a mockery of oversight” of the CIA torture scandal. The Obama administration did not object even when the CIA illegally spied on a congressional committee to thwart the torture investigation. Both Bush and Obama administration officials repeatedly lied during congressional testimony on war on terror policies but faced no consequences. But everything would be different in this investigation, right?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her team want a congressionally appointed commission in lieu of disclosing what actually happened on January 6. Cameras posted in and around the Capitol recorded fourteen hundred hours of film on January 6, but very little of the evidence has been publicly disclosed. Fourteen news organizations have requested that the Justice Department publicly release key videos on the federal court’s electronic dockets but no such luck. Capitol Police chief lawyer Thomas DiBiase warned that “providing unfettered access to hours of extremely sensitive information to defendants who already have shown a desire to interfere with the democratic process will … [cause that information to be] passed on to those who might wish to attack the Capitol again.” But it is also “interfering with the democratic process” to withhold evidence of actions which have been endlessly demonized by the president, top congressional leaders, and their media allies. 

Disclosing the video could settle the question of whether most protestors behaved like violent attackers or gaping tourists. Julie Kelly, writing for American Greatness, recently posted a forty-five-second video clip of protestors after they entered the Capitol that day. Capitol Police officer Keith Robishaw tells a group of protestors: “We’re not against … you need to show us … no attacking, no assault, remain calm.” The citizens shown in that clip don’t appear to have been hell-bent on overthrowing the government that day.

The media is touting the fact that Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the cochairs of the 9/11 Commission, have endorsed a commission to investigate January 6. But invoking Kean and Hamilton is like relying on the Three Stooges as references for a job application at a pie factory. 

Kean and Hamilton issued a joint statement boasting about the 9/11 Commission: “We put country above party to examine, without bias, the events before, during, and after the attacks…. The January 6th attack on the US Capitol was one of the darkest days in our history. Americans deserve an objective and accurate account of what happened. As we did in the wake of September 11, it is time to set aside partisan politics and come together as Americans in common pursuit of truth and justice.”

The 9/11 Commission “pursued truth and justice” by permitting the White House to edit the final version of their report before it was publicly released. Despite its canonization inside the Beltway, that report would not be admissible in a court of law, because it relied on torture for many of its key assertions. The New York Times’s Philip Shenon, the author of The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, noted that “more than a quarter of the report’s footnotes—441 of some 1,700—referred to detainees who were subjected to the CIA’s ‘enhanced’ interrogation program.” Shenon reported that commission members “forwarded questions to the CIA, whose interrogators posed them on the panel’s behalf. The commission’s report gave no hint that harsh interrogation methods [including waterboarding] were used in gathering information.” The commission’s report was released months after shocking photos from Abu Ghraib and key Justice Department and Pentagon memos leaked out, exposing the Bush administration’s torture regime. Yet, as Shenon noted, “The commission demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions.” The 9/11 Commission became profoundly complicit in the torture at the same time it pretended to objectively judge the Bush record.

The commission report was released in July 2004 at the same time that Bush was exploiting the 9/11 attacks and the Iraq War for his reelection campaign. The commission ignored evidence compiled by a joint House-Senate investigation revealing that Saudi government agents bankrolled multiple Saudi hijackers in the US prior to the attacks (fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis). But the Bush administration suppressed those twenty-eight pages of that congressional report and they were not released until 2016. Bush embraced Saudi leaders while insisting that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was somehow to blame for 9/11. If the 9/11 Commission had quoted the 2002 FBI memo stating that there was “incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these [9/11 hijacker] terrorists within the Saudi Government,” Bush might have been seriously damaged, but 9/11 commissioners chose to serve the White House rather than truth. Kean and Hamilton remain venerated by the media, because their kowtowing buttressed public trust in the political system.

Would an investigation of January 6 be more honest than the investigation of September 11? President Biden and Democratic congressional leaders are vested in the “terrorist attack/Pearl Harbor” narrative that they established within hours of the fracas. Democrats still refer to the protestors murdering a Capitol Police officer long after the belated revelation that he died of natural causes. The New York Times noted that that advocates of a January 6 commission insist it is "an ethical and practical necessity to fully understand the most violent attack on Congress in two centuries." Tell that to the Puerto Rican nationalists who shot up Congress in 1954 or to Congressman Steve Scalise and two other Capitol employees who were shot by a Democratic Party zealot in 2017. If such “facts” are the baseline for accuracy, then citizens can start scoffing long before a commission issues a final report.

The biggest illusion behind the push for a January 6 commission is that there is a political constituency in Washington for truth. But that hasn’t been the case for decades. As French essayist Paul Valery warned long ago, “At every step, politics and freedom of mind exclude each other.”

In the same way that it took almost fifteen years for some key facts about the 9/11 attacks to be revealed, it may be months or years until key damning revelations about the Capitol clash are extracted from federal agencies or private individuals and groups. Creating a pseudoindependent commission is more likely to codify a deceptive but politically profitable storyline than to expose facts that undercut powerful Washingtonians or government agencies. 

A façade of political “truth” can be more dangerous than no disclosure at all. Biden and congressional Democrats are seeking to turbocharge their push for a new domestic terrorism law to permit widespread federal crackdowns on their opponents. Any rigged commission would likely pour gasoline on a fire that could singe far more American rights and liberties.

Reprinted with permission from Mises.org.

from The Bogus January 6 Commission Poses a Real Threat to Freedom

Sen. Paul Attacked Again...Left Wing Twitter Encourages Violence

Just a day after a formerly famous singer sent a Tweet encouraging more violence on Sen. Rand Paul, a package with a suspicious substance and a death threat was delivered to the Senator's house. Twitter has not banned or even restricted the violent Tweet...or others that followed it. Also today: AOC is in therapy - you'll never guess why. BLM flags to hang at US Embassies overseas. Hypocrisy over Belarus forcing down plane over its airspace. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Sen. Paul Attacked Again...Left Wing Twitter Encourages Violence

The Dogs Of Covid: Canines Better Than PCR Test At Sniffing Out Virus

A new study has suggested that man's best friend is 90 percent accurate in sniffing out people infected with the coronavirus. The New York Times reported last year that the PCR test widely used currently may be reporting 90 percent false positives! So why aren't dogs being used? Is it because they cannot be manipulated like the tests can be? Also today, Fauci does another flip-flop - this time on the origin of the virus. And more from the hypocrite hall of shame. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from The Dogs Of Covid: Canines Better Than PCR Test At Sniffing Out Virus

COVID, Learned Helplessness, and Control

In the post-vaccination era, why don’t people remove their masks? Learned helplessness, employed as a control tool.

Learned helplessness is well-documented. It takes place when an individual believes he continuously faces a negative, uncontrollable situation and stops trying to improve his circumstances, even when he has the ability to do so. Discovering the loss of control elicits a passive reaction to a harmful situation. Psychologists call this a maladaptive response, characterized by avoidance of challenges and the collapse of problem-solving when obstacles arise. You give up trying to fight back.

An example may help: you must keep up with ever-changing mask and other hygiene theatre rules, many of which make no sense (mask in the gym, but not the pool; mask when going to the restaurant toilet but not at your table, NYC hotels are closed while Vegas casinos are open, Disney California closed while Disney Florida was open) and comply. You could push back, but you have been made afraid at a core level (forget about yourself rascal, you’re going to kill grandma if you don’t do what we say) and so you just give in. Once upon a time we were told a vaccine would end it all, yet the restrictions remain largely in place. You’re left believing nothing will fix this. Helpless to resist, you comply “out of an abundance of caution.”

American psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier created the term “learned helplessness” in 1967. They were studying animal behavior by delivering electric shocks to dogs (it was a simpler time.) Dogs who learned they couldn’t escape the shock simply stopped trying, even after the scientists removed a barrier and the dog could have jumped away.

Learned helplessness has three main features: a passive response to trauma, not believing that trauma can be controlled, and stress.

Example: you are being stalked by a killer disease which often has no outward symptoms. There is nothing you can do but hide inside and buy things from Amazon. The government failed to stop the virus initially, failed to warn you, failed to supply ventilators and PPE gear, and failed to produce a vaccine quick enough. You may die. You may kill your family members along the way. You have lost your job by government decree and are forced to survive on unemployment and odd stimulus check, manufactured dependence. It is all very real: WebMD saw a 251 percent increase in searches for anxiety this April.

Americans, with their cult-like devotion to victimhood, are primed for learned helplessness. Your problems are because you’re a POC, or fat, or on some spectrum. You are not responsible, can’t fix something so systemic, and best do what you are told.

The way out is to allow people to make decisions and choices on their own. This therapy is used with victims of learned helplessness such as hostages. During their confinement all the important decisions of their life, and most of the minor ones, were made by their captors. Upon release, many hostages fear things as simple as a meal choice and need to be coaxed out of helplessness one micro-choice at a time.

Example: you cannot choose where to stand, so follow the marks on the floor. Ignore the research saying three feet apart is as useful/useless as six feet apart. Don’t think about why the rules are the same inside a narrow hallway and outside in the fresh air but don’t apply at all on airplanes.

Kin to learned helplessness are enforcers. Suddenly your waitress transitions from someone serving you into someone ordering you to wear a mask, sit alone, eat outside, etc. Flight attendants morph from delivering drinks to holding the power to have security haul you to jail for unmasking when not actively eating. Companies once run by entrepreneurs are today controlled by the harassment stalking undead from HR. We’ve become a republic of hall monitors. And there it is. The wrong people are in charge.

One of the better examples of learned helplessness is One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a great book made into an impressive movie starring a lean Jack Nicholson. Nurse Ratched cows a group of mentally ill men into complete learned helplessness, encouraging them to rat each other out for small offenses, and to follow her every order no matter how absurd. The kicker comes near the end when we learn all of the men (except Nicholson) are free to leave the hospital at any time. They just… can’t.

It is amazing how fast people stepped into the Nurse Ratched roll. Within moments of COVID’s arrival in the national conscience, officials like California’s Gavin Newsom, and New York’s power bottom twins Andrew Cuomo and Bill De Blasio raced to assume dictatorial emergency powers. They spent not one moment assessing the impact of their decisions to lock down against the effects of the lockdown. They ignored information questioning the value of lockdown. They turned topsy-turvy the idea in a free society the burden of proof is on those who would restrict freedom and not on those who resist such restrictions.

They were aided in manufacturing learned helplessness by the most sophisticated propaganda operation ever created. Already engorged with the coin of three years of fake news, the legacy media saw the value of a new crisis toward their two real goals: make as much money as possible garnering clicks, and defeating Donald Trump. Previous shows, Russiagate with a hat tip to 9/11 when Americans demanded fewer freedoms to feel safer, illustrated the way. On a 24/7 basis America were injected: you are helpless and Donald “COVID” Trump will kill you. Your only hope is to comply fully with the people at CNN who are administering the electric shocks.

Truth is useless to propagandists, actually a threat. Look at what turned out to be false (in addition to Russiagate): we never ran out of ventilators or PPE or nurses or ICU beds or morgues. Masks were not really needed outdoors. We did in fact develop a vaccine, several in fact, in less than a year. Almost everyone who died was elderly or had serious comorbidities but we salivated over “new case numbers” as the primary metric anyway because they went up so much faster. When people questioned the real world view against the media portrayal, they were told about “asymptomatic COVID” or shunned as hoaxers. Everyone makes mistakes. But just as with Russiagate, all the media mistakes swung one way.

It worked. Condo boards boarded up their gyms. Restaurants forced diners to eat outside in the rain. Entire industries, such as tourism and hospitality, disappeared overnight. New groups were shoved into poverty and unemployment. Children were denied education, criminals released from jails. People were told not to hug their loved ones. Saving Grandma meant she died untouched in a hospital room. The government denied you the chance to say one final goodbye to the person who raised you and you didn’t fight back? Now that’s control.

Every time a bit of dissenting information popped up — Florida opening its beaches for Spring Break, for example — the media rushed in to declare everyone was gonna die. Texas was declared dead, South Dakota was declared dead, and Americans believed it all even when reports of survivors started drifting out of Disney World. Learned helplessness is hard to unlearn. One Harvard professor explains our brains evolved to encode fear so well, it’s hard to turn off.

Americans are not comfortable accepting their lives being manipulated at this level, the way for example many Russians assume it to be so. We tend to dismiss such things as conspiracy theories and make an Oliver Stone joke. But ask yourself how many of the temporary security and surveillance measures enacted after 9/11 are still controlling our lives almost 20 years later. Is the terror threat still so real the FBI needs to monitor our social media in bulk? Was it ever?

Nothing here is to say vaccines don’t work, or are themselves dangerous. That’s another debate. This is about the politics of mass control. Add up the “doesn’t really make sense but we do it anyway” COVID rules and try to make sense of them. Why would otherwise smart leaders implement such rules, for example in New York’s case, purposely impoverishing a city or seeking to defund the police in the midst of triple digit rises in crime? Every time your answer is “it just doesn’t make sense” consider a scenario beyond coincidence where it would make sense however out there that might be. It might be the most important thing you can do.

Then look out the window. Remember “10 days to flatten the curve?” With no voting or debate, a system based on a medical procedure capable of controlling our travel, which businesses we can visit, which hotels we can stay in, what jobs we can hold, what education we can access, at which point it is no more “voluntary” than breathing, was put into place. We no longer need to ask what is happening. The real question is always why.

Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com.

from COVID, Learned Helplessness, and Control

How Texas Killed Covid

In March, Governor Greg Abbott announced that Texas would open for business 100 percent without a statewide mask mandate. The pro-lockdown “experts” were shocked. If a state as big as Texas joined Florida and succeeded in thumbing its nose at “the science” – which told us that for the first time in history healthy people should be forced to stay in their houses and wear oxygen-restricting face masks – then the lockdown narrative would begin falling apart.

President Biden famously attacked the decision as “Neanderthal thinking.” Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilberto Hinojosa warned that, with this order, Abbott would “kill Texans.” Incoming CDC Director Rochelle Walensky tearfully told us about her feelings of “impending doom.”

When the poster child for Covid lockdowns Dr. Fauci was asked several weeks later why cases and deaths continued to evaporate in Texas, he answered simply, “I’m not sure.” That moment may have been a look at the man behind the proverbial curtain, who projected his power so confidently until confronted with reality.

Now a new study appearing as a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper, highlighted recently in Reason Magazine, has found “no evidence that the reopening affected the rate of new COVID-19 cases in the five-week period following the reopening. ...State-level COVID-19 mortality rates were unaffected by the March 10 reopening."

In other words, not only did the doom and gloom predicted by the lockdown fanatics fail to materialize, but the steady, seasonal downward trend of the virus toward extinction continued regardless of government action. As we have repeated for a year on the Liberty Report, the virus was going to virus regardless of anything we did about it. And Texas proved it.

However, some very important questions remain to be answered as the Covid panic across the United States is finally starting to recede.

First, will anyone be held responsible for the thousands who died because of the prohibition on safe treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin that have since been shown to be effective against Covid-19? As soon as Donald Trump mentioned that hydroxychloroquine might be effective against the virus, the “experts” circled the wagons. It was banned for use, until it later was quietly un-banned.

The politicization of medicine is anti-science, anti-human, and anti-American. Will those who needlessly died due to this politicization finally get their justice?

Second, though Abbott deserves credit for taking the bold step, shouldn’t he be held accountable for closing the state in the first place? After all, when someone has been punching you in the face and then they stop, do you thank them for letting up or do you ask why they punched you in the first place? Will all the tyrannical rule-by-decree orders across the United States be stricken from the books? Or will they just be allowed to do this again for any reason they choose?

Third, thanks to Senator Rand Paul, we are now all aware of Dr. Fauci’s role in funding gain-of-function research on viruses in China. Will we be able to find out exactly why we are being forced to pay for the mad scientist research into how to create more deadly viruses? Can we opt-out of this funding?

Though Greg Abbott deserves much criticism for shutting Texas down, his re-opening decree effectively ended Covid tyranny across the country. We are thankful for that. Now we must resolve to never let this happen again.

from How Texas Killed Covid

How the CDC is manipulating data to prop-up 'vaccine effectiveness'

The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) is altering its practices of data logging and testing for “Covid19” in order to make it seem the experimental gene-therapy “vaccines” are effective at preventing the alleged disease.

They made no secret of this, announcing the policy changes on their website in late April/early May, (though naturally without admitting the fairly obvious motivation behind the change).

The trick is in their reporting of what they call “breakthrough infections” – that is people who are fully “vaccinated” against Sars-Cov-2 infection, but get infected anyway.

Essentially, Covid19 has long been shown – to those willing to pay attention – to be an entirely created pandemic narrative built on two key factors:

1) False-postive tests. The unreliable PCR test can be manipulated into reporting a high number of false-positives by altering the cycle threshold (CT value)

2) Inflated Case-count. The incredibly broad definition of “Covid case”, used all over the world, lists anyone who receives a positive test as a “Covid19 case”, even if they never experienced any symptoms.

Without these two policies, there would never have been an appreciable pandemic at all, and now the CDC has enacted two policy changes which means they no longer apply to vaccinated people.

Firstly, they are lowering their CT value when testing samples from suspected “breakthrough infections”.

From the CDC’s instructions for state health authorities on handling “possible breakthrough infections” (uploaded to their website in late April):

For cases with a known RT-PCR cycle threshold (Ct) value, submit only specimens with Ct value ≤28 to CDC for sequencing. (Sequencing is not feasible with higher Ct values.)

Throughout the pandemic, CT values in excess of 35 have been the norm, with labs around the world going into the 40s.

Essentially labs were running as many cycles as necessary to achieve a positive result, despite experts warning that this was pointless (even Fauci himself said anything over 35 cycles is meaningless).

But NOW, and only for fully vaccinated people, the CDC will only accept samples achieved from 28 cycles or fewer. That can only be a deliberate decision in order to decrease the number of “breakthrough infections” being officially recorded.

Secondly, asymptomatic or mild infections will no longer be recorded as “covid cases”.

That’s right. Even if a sample collected at the low CT value of 28 can be sequenced into the virus alleged to cause Covid19, the CDC will no longer be keeping records of breakthrough infections that don’t result in hospitalisation or death.

From their website:

As of May 1, 2021, CDC transitioned from monitoring all reported vaccine breakthrough cases to focus on identifying and investigating only hospitalized or fatal cases due to any cause. This shift will help maximize the quality of the data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public health importance. Previous case counts, which were last updated on April 26, 2021, are available for reference only and will not be updated moving forward.

Just like that, being asymptomatic – or having only minor symptoms – will no longer count as a “Covid case” but only if you’ve been vaccinated.

The CDC has put new policies in place which effectively created a tiered system of diagnosis. Meaning, from now on, unvaccinated people will find it much easier to be diagnosed with Covid19 than vaccinated people.

Fair use excerpt. Read the rest here.

from How the CDC is manipulating data to prop-up 'vaccine effectiveness'

How We Got Omnipotent Government

We have all been born and raised under a government that wields the power of assassination. State-sponsored assassinations at the hands of the US government — and specifically the Pentagon and the CIA — have become a rather ho-hum affair. They have become fully accepted as part and parcel of American life. 

Yet, when we stop to reflect on this phenomenon, we can’t help but come to the realization that this is truly an extraordinary power. It is an omnipotent power that enables the federal government to snuff out a person’s life simply on a determination that he is a communist, a terrorist, a threat to “national security,” or whatever other designation the government establishes.

The Framers and the American people in 1789 were totally opposed to living under a government that wielded the power of assassination. Don’t forget, after all, that after the break from England, Americans had lived under the Articles of Confederation for some ten years. Under the Articles, the federal government’s powers were so weak that it didn’t even have the power to tax, much less the power to assassinate.

That’s the way our American ancestors wanted it. They believed that the biggest threat to their freedom and well-being lay not with some foreign regime but rather from their very own government. That’s why they chose to live under a government with very few and very limited powers. In doing so, they felt safer and more secure.

When the delegates met in Philadelphia in what became known as the Constitutional Convention, it was with the purpose of simple amending the Articles to make the system work more efficiently. Instead, they came up with a proposal for a different type of governmental system — a limited-government republic — which would replace the Articles. 

The American people were leery because the federal government under this new system would have more powers, including the power to tax. They were concerned that this new government would end up destroying their freedom and their well-being.

But proponents of the Constitution assured Americans that this would not be a government that wielded general powers — that is, powers that would enable federal officials to do whatever they wanted in the best interests of the nation. Instead, its powers would be limited to the few powers enumerated in the Constitution itself.

The American people were especially concerned about the power of assassination. The last thing they wanted was to live under a government that wielded the power to snuff out people’s lives for arbitrary reasons. In fact, if Americans had been told that this new federal government would wield the power of assassination, they never would have approved the deal. They would instead have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation.

Americans ended up approving the deal and accepting the new government under the assumption that its powers would be limited to those enumerated in the Constitution, which did not include the power of assassination.

To ensure that federal officials got the message, however, Americans demanded the enactment of the Bill of Rights, which included an express prohibition against assassination within the Fifth Amendment, which reads in part: “No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law.”

Due process of law is a term that stretches all the way back to Magna Carta in the year 1215. Over many centuries of resistance by British subjects against their own kings, due process came to encompass two principles: notice and trial. 

Thus, under the Fifth Amendment before the federal government could assassinate someone, it would be required to provide him with formal notice of the offense for which they wish to assassinate him and then guarantee him a trial to determine whether he in fact was guilty of committing the offense. 

Notice something important about the Fifth Amendment: Its protections apply to everyone, not just American citizens.

With the Sixth Amendment, the accused could elect to have a jury of ordinary citizens, rather than a judge or tribunal, determine his guilt or innocence. Our American ancestors simply didn’t trust judges or tribunals to make that decision. 

Since a jury’s verdict of acquittal was final and non-appealable, juries were also empowered with the ability to judge the law itself in criminal cases. If they found the purported offense unconscionable, they could elect to acquit even if the accused had actually committed it, in which case there was nothing the judge or the government could do about it. The accused would walk out of the courtroom a free person.

After World War II, the federal government was converted into a third type of governmental system — a national-security state. Under this type of government, the federal government — specifically the CIA and the Pentagon — acquired the omnipotent power of assassination. 

The conversion to a national-security state was justified under the rubric of the Cold War. The idea was that since the Soviet Union and the communist world were able to operate with omnipotent powers, including the power of assassination, the only way to prevent America from being conquered by the communists would be to adopt their same type of governmental structure — a national-security state, which came with the omnipotent power of assassination. 

The conversion to a national-security state was done through legislation, not through constitutional amendment. Nonetheless, owing to the overwhelming and ever-growing power of the national-security establishment — i.e., the military, the CIA, and the NSA — the legislative conversion to a national-security state was held to operate as a nullification of the Fifth Amendment. 

Today, the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s power of assassination is omnipotent. They are the final determiners of whether any particular person is going to have his life snuffed out. Their power of assassination is non-reviewable by any court in the land, including the nation’s highest court, the US Supreme Court.

And that’s how we have come to live under omnipotent government, a type of governmental structure that wields the power to assassinate anyone it wants with impunity, simply by designating a person a communist, a terrorist, a threat to “national security,” or whatever. 

Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.

from How We Got Omnipotent Government

Dallas Schools Are Busing Students to Coronavirus Vaccine Injection Sites

Driving several times over the last week by a large, and lately virtually bereft of visitors, outdoor site for administering coronavirus tests and experimental coronavirus vaccine shots in Dallas, Texas, I was surprised to see school buses on the premises. In the well over a hundred times I had driven by the site before, I had never seen school buses there. No way, schools couldn’t be busing in students to the site so the students can be given experimental coronavirus vaccine shots? It turns...

Read the full report by clicking the title, below...

from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/may/21/dallas-schools-are-busing-students-to-coronavirus-vaccine-injection-sites/

Papers, please! Oregon now requires ‘proof of vaccination’

If you want to participate in Oregon society without being forced to wear a mask, you better have your paperwork in order.

The state is now requiring individuals to display “proof of vaccination” if they’d like to take their masks off indoors, Oregon’s Health Authority has announced.

Fully vaccinated people in Oregon will have to show proof of their vaccination status in order to enter businesses and other facilities without a mask.

Businesses who don't check vaccination status will need to maintain a mask mandate.https://t.co/6pFCZpLptK

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) May 20, 2021

In rejecting the more practical and individual liberty embracing “honor system” approach that we’ve seen across the United States, the authorities in Salem are taking the fascist policy route. 

“Oregon will allow people to go maskless outside but will require them to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 — and be able to prove it — to forgo masks in most public indoor settings,” the Oregonian reports.

Yes, you read that correctly. Oregon finally ended its *outdoor* mask mandate, a full year and a half into Covid Mania. And in exchange for “granting” systems the freedom to breathe fresh air, they will now be forced to show “proof of vaccination” if they want to participate in society. 


Oregon Health Authority website
(bigger)

“We hope that Oregonians will not lie or cheat and put others at risk by forging a vaccine record if they aren’t vaccinated,” Oregon’s state epidemiologist, Dean Sidelinger, said in a presser with local journalists. Sidelinger, a power drunk quack, made a name for himself in the state by demanding long term closures of businesses and faith institutions. He has recently perpetuated the falsehood that schools are vectors for transmission.

It would be worth seriously debating the merits of this authoritarian insanity if in fact Oregon could demonstrate that they were “following the science” on this issue, but it’s clear that this order has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with power and control.

The idea that there is any science backing a “papers, please” approach to “stopping the spread” is entirely baseless. 

Two important points:

First and foremost, there is no comprehensive trial that shows masks actually work at preventing COVID-19, so the premise for the mask policy is false. There is no evidence that cloth masks help stop the spread of a submicroscopic infectious particle. In fact, there is more evidence demonstrating that masks may act as a vector for disease transmission.

Second, if vaccines work to protect people from serious outcomes related to COVID-19, what exactly is the point of demanding that businesses force customers to show their vaccine papers? Yes, that was rhetorical. COVID Mania has largely been nothing more than an excuse for politicians and oligarchs to accumulate more power. If the vaccine protects individuals from people who choose not to take the COVID-19 vaccine, then there is no particular threat to anyone but those who choose to opt out. There is zero science behind the idea of a COVID-19 vaccine passport.

It seems that the next steps for Oregon are obvious. That may come in the form of a more streamlined digital vaccine passport system, as we’ve seen in places like New York and Hawaii (the good news is that these systems are struggling big time). Small businesses may not be able to find resources to manually check vaccine cards, as many companies with thinner margins simply don’t have the resources to add a vaccine passport doorman to their roster. Therefore, companies will be forced to automate and use corporate authoritarian vaccine passport systems like those designed by companies like IBM, Common Pass, and Clear, among others.

Another side effect of this fascistic dystopian policy is the reality that people will be encouraged to wear their “vaccine credentials” to complement their mask, as a “practical measure” to be allowed entry into a business. It will be understood as the ultimate virtue signal, and a sign of complete obedience to authority, should Oregonians have both a mask on and a vaccine card readily on display. 

With the corrupt policies being pursued by the authorities in statewide office, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that not everyone in the state is thrilled with the policies being pushed by Salem. On Tuesday, 5 Oregon counties voted in favor of leaving the state and becoming part of Idaho.

Reprinted with permission from The Dossier.
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from Papers, please! Oregon now requires ‘proof of vaccination’

A Pantry Full of Marijuana

Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed into law on Thursday legislation that doubles to two ounces the amount of marijuana individuals age 21 and older may legally possess in the state. This is a welcome expansion of respect for the freedom of people in Colorado. Still, isn’t it ridiculous that people across America can legally fill their pantries with beer, wine, and other alcoholic beverages but need to limit the amount of marijuana they posses to a small quantity to comply with the law? ...

Read the full report by clicking the title, below...

from http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/may/20/a-pantry-full-of-marijuana/

Pre-Crime: Is The Pentagon Spying On Soldiers?

The Pentagon is denying reports in The Intercept from earlier this week that it is contracting with outside firms to monitor the social media postings of US soldiers to weed out "extremism" in the ranks. Is "white nationalism" really a problem in the military, or is this an attempt to purge those not adhering to the emerging cultural Marxism and "woke-ism" that is plaguing the country? Also today: Uniformed US soldiers giving the covid jab at bars? Mayor Lori "Racist" Lightfoot. And Ted Cruz goes "Russiagate" conspiracy theorist. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Pre-Crime: Is The Pentagon Spying On Soldiers?

Why Unvaccinated Kids are Less at Risk Than Vaccinated Adults

It's official. Children are less at risk of serious illness from COVID than literally any other ailment that afflicts them, yet they are the last people our government is setting free from the clutches of COVID tyranny. We have always known that children tend to get less sick from COVID than from a seasonal flu. But two new studies from California demonstrate that the risk is even lower than previously thought.

Yesterday, New York magazine published a story highlighting new studies showing that the pediatric hospitalization numbers for COVID have likely been dramatically inflated throughout the country. The first study, published in the official journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was conducted by Stanford researchers and examined 117 reputed COVID hospitalizations among those under 18 at a children's hospital in Northern California. They found that just 7.7% exhibited severe illness and 12.8% critical illness. Overall, 45% were classified as "unlikely to be caused by SARSCoV2," and it appears that most of the others weren't suffering life-threatening illness.

The second study, published in the same journal, found in America's fifth-largest hospital that, among patients younger than 22, 40% had "incidental infection," only 47% were "potentially symptomatic," and just 14% were "significantly symptomatic." They further found that "Fifty-five percent of incidental and 47% of potentially symptomatic patients had at least one identified comorbidity, while 90% of significantly symptomatic patients had at least one."

As Drs. Monica Gandhi and Amy Beck wrote in a commentary for Hospital Pediatrics that accompanied the two studies, "Taken together, these studies underscore the importance of clearly distinguishing between children hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 found on universal testing versus those hospitalized for COVID-19 disease." They further conclude that the data also "greatly overestimate the true burden of COVID-19 disease in children."

If so many of the pediatric hospitalizations are wrongly ascribed to COVID, then how many of the already very few pediatric COVID deaths are also among individuals who died with COVID, not because of it? The CDC has already stated based on an analysis of death certificates that 35.2% of all reputed pediatric COVID deaths "could not be plausibly categorized as either a chain-of-event or significant contributing condition."

Yet, appallingly, so many schools are still requiring children to remain masked until they get an experimental vaccine that can only potentially harm them and not help them.

Fair use excerpt. Read the whole article here.

from Why Unvaccinated Kids are Less at Risk Than Vaccinated Adults

Texas Governor Greg Abbott Says President Joe Biden Has Not Apologized to Him. When Will Abbott Apologize to Texans?

Texas Governor Gregg Abbott said in an interview this week with host Bill Hemmer at Fox News that Abbott has not yet received an apology from United States President Joe Biden for some negative things Biden said when Abbott on March 2 announced the ending of state-level coronavirus-related mandates in Texas.

Maybe it would be nice for Biden to give Abbott a conciliatory call. But more important than this squabble between big-shot politicians, how about Abbott apologize to the people of Texas for putting them through a coronavirus crackdown that imposed draconian restrictions on the exercise of freedom without even providing any measurable net benefit for Texans’ health?

On March 2, Abbott finally rescinded his mask mandate, along with other state-level tyrannical restrictions he had subjected Texans to for many months in the name of countering coronavirus. In response, Biden criticized Abbott’s move toward respecting freedom, calling it “a big mistake” and “Neanderthal thinking” that would lead to deaths from coronavirus. But, it turns out, contrary to predictions of Biden and many other politicians and people in the media, a coronavirus catastrophe did not strike Texas after the removal of the state mask mandate and other restrictions of Abbott’s coronavirus crackdown.

After removal of the restrictions, as Abbott relates in the Fox New interview, common measures of coronavirus problems in the state, such as the numbers of “cases,” hospitalizations, and deaths with a coronavirus connection, have kept falling. It was as if the mask mandate and other coronavirus crackdown measures were useless in protecting people from coronavirus. Indeed, before the coronavirus fearmongering went into full force, such was commonly understood by scientists who had considered whether mask wearing and dictates including forced business closures and occupancy limits designed to isolate people would protect against a coronavirus.

Abbott removed his coronavirus crackdown restrictions only after imposed them for nearly a year on the basis of deceitful or ignorant claims that they would significantly reduce harm to people’s health. He has not apologized for the suffering those restrictions have caused people in Texas. He has not apologized for trampling on Texans’ freedom. Instead, Abbott has claimed his mandates had been needed, declaring in his statement announcing the March 2 recision:

Make no mistake, COVID-19 has not disappeared, but it is clear from the recoveries, vaccinations, reduced hospitalizations, and safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed.

Abbott declared victory and went home. But, in Abbott’s war on coronavirus the victory was against the people of Texas who had their lives forcibly upended based on his whimsical decrees. Coronavirus — the purported enemy — just went about its business irrespective of Abbott’s tyrannical, yet farcical, orders.

When will Abbott admit his fault to the people he harmed?

Would Texans be willing to accept an apology, especially one so late in coming and regarding such a grand transgression?

The most likely time Abbot will apologize to his victims is the same time Biden will apologize for saying something rude about Abbott — never.

from Texas Governor Greg Abbott Says President Joe Biden Has Not Apologized to Him. When Will Abbott Apologize to Texans?

Do We Need A '9/11 Commission' To Investigate The Fake 'Insurrection'?

Partisan calls for a 9/11-type commission to look into what Democrats still claim was an "insurrection" on January 6th are being resisted by Republicans in Congress. Is it partisan theater? Would any investigation actually get to the bottom of the farce? Also today: Fauci admits Rand was right - his mask-wearing was theater. TX Gov Abbott says "no masks!" And...another insurrection on the House Floor??? Watch today's Liberty Report:

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from Do We Need A '9/11 Commission' To Investigate The Fake 'Insurrection'?

'Governing as Looting' in Washington and Beyond

At what point does a democracy become a kleptocracy? That type of degeneration routinely happens in Third World regimes but the same blight can occur in the United States. Few things epitomize “governing as looting” like the automated traffic ticket cameras that hundreds of local governments have inflicted on drivers across the nation. In 2015, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down St. Louis’s red light camera ticket regime for violating the US Constitution because drivers were forced to...

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from 'Governing as Looting' in Washington and Beyond

How Team Biden ended COVID Mania overnight

How was the Biden Administration able to flip the switch on COVID Mania and turn off the Safety Regime virtually overnight, after 15 months of a ruthless propaganda and fear campaign claiming that America was in the midst of a perpetual pandemic of endless death and destruction? Luckily for Team Biden, the current White House are beneficiaries of Democrat, or D.C. insider privilege. And because they are part of the insider’s club, they have the ability to control and manipulate the power...

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from How Team Biden ended COVID Mania overnight

How The US Can Bring Peace To Israel/Palestine

As the death toll mounts in the latest Israel/Palestine flare-up, Americans find themselves taking sides on whether Israel is really "defending" itself or whether the Palestinian "militants" are again up to their old tricks. Today we present another view; one that could actually help diminish the violence. Also today: Whitmer getting her due? Cultural Marxism in NoVa. What's up with OSHA covid vax guidelines. And some fun with Thomas Massie's Tweets. Today on the Liberty Report:

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from How The US Can Bring Peace To Israel/Palestine

Ohio’s Vaccine Lottery: How DeWine Converted Federal Funds Into A State Giveaway

Below is my column in USA Today on the announcement that Ohio will be using federal relief funds for a lottery giveaway to lure people to take the vaccine. In the meantime, New York City announced it would give out an array of free items, including a seven-day free Metro card. Here is the column: Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has announced that Ohio is about to run a vaccine lottery with federal funds. The state will give away millions in federal stimulus dollars for people who have received...

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from Ohio’s Vaccine Lottery: How DeWine Converted Federal Funds Into A State Giveaway

Ban Paternalistic Government

What is it about paternalists that prevents them from minding their own business? They are obsessed with minding everyone else’s business and, even worse, using the power of government to force people to live their lives the way paternalists want them to live them. Look at the war on drugs. For our entire lives, paternalists have used the force of government, at the both the federal and state level, to punish people for putting substances in their mouths that haven’t been approved by our...

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We Won! Trader Joe’s was the First Crack in the Armor

For more than a year, Trader Joe’s has been a particularly troubling store for some readers of these pages.  Trader Joe’s has some excellent quality products at a consumer friendly price with a quirky corporate style. What’s not to like about such a place?  When corona communism was implemented after the Ides of March 2020, we saw exactly what was not to like about such a place.  Trader Joe’s became one of many private companies that enforced the terrible one-sized-fits-all health...

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The Fall Of The Covid Berlin Wall

The CDC's surprise Friday announcement that vaccinated people no longer need masks indoors or outdoors caught the Covid cultists off-guard. Suddenly major US grocery chains like Costco and Trader Joe's announced "no masks" for vaccinated customers - and a policy of "don't ask, don't tell." Has the pandemic panic run its course? Where to from here? Watch today's Liberty Report:

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Big Government and Big Inflation

April’s 4.2 percent past year increase in the Consumer Price Index is not likely to dissuade the Federal Reserve from continuing its policy of near-zero interest rates. Fed Chairman Jerome Powell believes the rising prices are just a temporary phenomenon caused by the ending of lockdowns releasing pent-up consumer demand. Powell may be right that the ending of lockdowns would inevitably be accompanied by a rise in prices. However, this is just the latest reason the Fed has given for putting...

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Liz Cheney Lied About Her Role in Spreading the Discredited CIA 'Russian Bounty' Story

In an interview on Tuesday with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) denied that she spread the discredited CIA "Russian bounty” story. That CIA tale, claiming Russia was paying Taliban fighters to kill US troops in Afghanistan, was cooked up by the CIA and then published by The New York Times on June 27 of last year, right as former President Trump announced his plans to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Times story, citing anonymous intelligence officials, was then continually...

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Big Tech’s Censors Come for Science

The free speech controversies roiling Big Tech have now reached the scientific sphere. In mid-February, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece by John Hopkins professor of medicine and public health  Martin Makary arguing that a combination of vaccines and natural infections would result in herd immunity in many parts of the United States by the end of April. Facebook quickly flagged the editorial as “misleading” and having “very low overall scientific credibility.” Whatever...

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The Media Wants You to Trust Washington Again Now That Trump Is Gone

Former CNN White House correspondent Michelle Kosinski declared on Twitter last week that American journalists would “never expect … Your own govt to lie to you, repeatedly” and “Your own govt to hide information the public has a right to know.” Kosinski denounced “Trump’s unAmerican regime” and declared, “No one should accept this.” Kosinski’s comments epitomize the “Trump-washing” of American history that explains much of the media’s rage, hypocrisy, and follies in the last five years. ...

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from The Media Wants You to Trust Washington Again Now That Trump Is Gone

It's May 15th: This is Why It Is Ron Paul Day

Today, May 15, is the 14th anniversary of the famous debate moment between Ron Paul and Rudy Giuliani that launched the liberty movement of tomorrow. I would venture, conservatively, that 25 percent of the libertarians on the planet are libertarians because of the 2007-8 presidential run of Dr. Paul and his willingness to speak truth. Here is a great appreciation by Jack Hunter: Republished with permission from Target Liberty.

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from Peace and Prosperity http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/peace-and-prosperity/2021/may/15/its-may-15th-this-is-why-it-is-ron-paul-day/