November 6, 2013
- Sexual assault, legalized in Police State USA
- Big Government vs. small farmers
- No good deed goes unpunished, NSA version
- Defying the aforementioned outrages: A manual of “practical liberty”
- Latest “Zero Hour” signal, courtesy the U.S. Mint
- Jim Rogers’ advice turned on its head… junk silver as a local currency… Obamacare loopholes… and more!
The story is so horrifying, we can only resort to dark humor to begin today’s episode: Whatever you do in life, don’t run a stop sign in Deming, N.M.
David Eckert did precisely that on Jan. 2 of this year. A cop pulled him over right away.
New Mexico’s KOB-TV picks up the story from there: “Eckert’s attorney, Shannon Kennedy, said in an interview with KOB that after law enforcement asked him to step out of the vehicle, he appeared to be clenching his buttocks. Law enforcement thought that was probable cause to suspect that Eckert was hiding narcotics in his anal cavity.”
For real.
“According to his lawsuit,” writes The Huffington Post’s Radley Balko, “he was first subjected to abdominal X-rays (no drugs), two anal penetrations with fingers (no drugs), three enemas (no drugs), another round of X-rays (no drugs) and, finally, sedation, followed by a colonoscopy of his ‘anus, rectum, colon and large intestines.’ No drugs. All of this was of course done without Eckert’s consent.
“If we’ve reached the point,” Mr. Balko concludes, “where perceived butt clenching is probable cause for repeated anal probes, then the Fourth Amendment truly is an anachronism.”
It might renew your faith in humanity to know that the first doctor police asked to perform a cavity search refused. Then again, others agreed.
“Shannon Renee McNeal, was torn from her screaming children by police who were seeking a woman with a similar name,” reports the St. Louis Post-Dispatch — “a woman who they should have known had been murdered seven months before.”
Ms. McNeal’s ordeal likewise began with a “routine traffic stop” on a day she was taking her kids to the zoo. The dead woman for whom she was mistaken had been wanted on an outstanding drug charge. “Two routine fingerprint comparisons,” the Post-Dispatch continues, “showed [McNeal] was not the person wanted, but she was booked anyway in a humiliating process that forced her to shower in front of two female guards and be sprayed with a delousing solution.”
She spent more than a day in custody. Then her employer found out about her arrest and fired her. Then she lost her car and her home and had to move in with friends.
The newspaper found that over the last seven years, more than 100 people have been wrongly arrested in St. Louis, and it took an average of three weeks to clear up each mistake.
The city has begun a top-to-bottom review to clean up and reform the system to prevent such outrages in the future.
Just kidding. “There’s almost always complicity on the part of the person who spent more time [in jail] than they should have,” says Eddie Roth, an aide to the mayor of St. Louis. “I worry about a lot of things. I don’t worry about this.”
It’s not just the police-state stuff that might make you shake your head and wonder what the country’s coming to. Consider something as simple as the vegetables you might buy from a local farmer’s market.
Much like Obamacare, Congress passed a “food safety” bill in 2010 whose impact is only now starting to make itself felt. We warned at the time the Food Safety Modernization Act could destroy small farmers.
The law includes an exemption on operations with annual sales of less than $500,000. But as the FDA draws up the regulations to implement the law, the devil is starting to emerge from the details. “The proposed rules as currently written,” writes Tom Philpott at Mother Jones, “represent a significant and possibly devastating burden to small and midsized players.
“The new law’s less-than-$500,000 exemption applies only to farms that sell at least half of their produce directly to consumers. But a growing number of small farms earn a significant amount of their income selling to third-party local enterprises like food hubs and food co-ops — and if revenue from those sources exceeds half of total revenue, these farms would lose their exemption and become subject to costly requirements.”
Worse, the compost and manure rules would have the effect of “making the fertility programs that drive organic farming essentially illegal,” Philpott continues. “In a recent national survey by the Organic Trade Association and the Washington State Department of Agriculture, 55% of respondents said the manure rule would prevent them from maintaining their current crop rotations and crop diversity.”
“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing,” wrote John Stuart Mill.
But sometimes good men speak up and evil prevails anyway. Thus is Drudge picking up this morning on the story of William Binney. If you’ve been with us for a while, you already know about Binney’s chilling warning of “a turnkey totalitarian state” enabled by the NSA’s massive new Utah Data Center.
Mr. Binney was a code-breaker who went to work at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, in Maryland, after the Sept. 11 attacks. He thought he was helping track down terrorists — until he realized “the data that was being taken in was all about United States citizens,” he tells Baltimore’s WJZ-TV. “They’re destroying our democracy is what they’re doing.”
Apologists for NSA spying say Edward Snowden should have “gone through channels” to sound the alarm, instead of going to the media. Binney did exactly that. For his trouble, he was raided by the FBI in 2007. “They pushed their way in with guns drawn and pushed my son out of the way and came upstairs and pointed guns at my wife and me. They took our computers and all the electronic equipment we had.” But he faced no criminal charges; it was sheer harassment.
“I think they’re violating the foundation of this country,” Mr. Binney now says. “The thing that makes this country strong are the rights and freedoms that we have in the Constitution.”
Remember the map of the “Constitution-Free Zone” we ran a while back? The one that says you have no rights within 100 miles of the border or the coastline? Seems the zone is expanding to swallow up all of us.
No, it’s not the same country it used to be. And we hope you realize by now nothing you can do at the ballot box is likely to change that.
At this stage, restoring “the foundation of this country” begins one household, one individual at a time — with practical steps to shield yourself from the NSA, to lessen the blow of Obamacare on your family and to shrink your tax bill as much as possible. After all, it’s those tax dollars that enable the feds to do all they do, right?
The Laissez Faire Club has just published a 166-page book — a manual, if you will, of “practical liberty” that begins at home. It’s packed with the proverbial 101 ways to reclaim the freedom you’ve lost bit by bit. Learn how to secure your free copy at this link.
Another day of “backing and filling” for the major U.S. stock indexes. Most of them are treading water, as they have all week.
The one outlier — the Dow. The blue chip index powered to an intraday record this morning; at last check, it’s still above 15,700.
All’s quiet among the precious metals, too. Gold is hanging in there at $1,316, silver at $21.79.
U.S. Gold Eagle sales for 2013 have already surpassed the 2012 total. Through yesterday, the U.S. Mint has shipped out 761,000 ounces of Gold Eagles. Last year’s total was 752,000.
October sales of 48,500 ounces tripled the September number. The financial media, in their amusing quest to find a reason for everything, have settled on the debt ceiling showdown — never mind that October’s total was less than that of October 2012.
But an interesting tidbit slipped through a Wall Street Journal account of the numbers: “While demand for gold coins is climbing, investors are cutting back on their holdings of gold futures and other gold-linked financial instruments as they seek higher-yield investments, analysts said.”
Sounds a lot like the “Zero Hour” scenario we’ve been mooting much of this year — the moment when the price of physical metal in your hand runs away from the “paper price.” Stay tuned…
“I think the American accent,” says Hong Kong resident Sam Yu, “is getting more and more important and is maybe taking over the dominance of British English, so I’m willing to learn.”
Go figure: Jim Rogers’ long-standing advice to Americans about teaching their kids Mandarin is being stood on its head. Not only are English lessons the rage in Hong Kong, but the emphasis is on perfecting a U.S. accent.
“Language tutors,” reports the AFP newswire, “say wealthy mainlanders are helping fuel demand, crossing into Hong Kong for a pick of the myriad educational opportunities on offer in an increasingly competitive market.”
Kids as young as 5 are packed into classrooms reciting everything from Robert Frost poems to Hillary Clinton speeches (seriously), teachers quickly correcting any errors in enunciation.
Even in Hong Kong, run by the British until 1997, interest in a British accent is waning. “There’s no doubt that the American accent is becoming more prevalent here,” says Rodney Jones, the acting head of English at Hong Kong’s City University. “It may make you sound more contemporary, or modern, or may fit in with the international business world better.”
“So what is going to happen,” a reader writes, “when QE3 pushes us over the ‘cliff,’ and can we go to silver to save our town?
“I see the USA will eventually go bankrupt, the dollar will have little value, if any. It is now half a cent per dollar based on prices in 1941 for a man’s custom wool three-piece suit, advertised then for $1.52, valued today at over $300.00.
“So what if we could convince people in our town to use silver coin at spot? If we all priced everything we normally sell at a fraction of an ounce, kept that price for that item and a silver coin cup in the register for silver purchases?
“Yes, we would still have to buy with dollars until everyone came on board, and that may never happen, but selling silver would generally be profitable. No inflation would affect us, and the Fed could do what they wanted, or even cease to exist, and we’d do fine.
“We are a small, mostly rural town, and I see no downside to going to a silver standard as much as is possible for us to do locally. Can you see a side of this that may bite us that I’m not seeing?”
The 5: Hmmm…
“For the longest time,” writes one of our regulars, “I was pissed at the politicians for ACA, Obamacare. But lately I have changed my mind.
“Who the heck voted for and demanded this legislation, and who is responsible for health care being so expensive in the first place? It all goes back the welfare handout, big business, lawyers and insurance companies.
“It seems to me that health care has little to do with this program.
“Who voted for and mandated this system, who asked for it? Who is it that decided to bankrupt the retired, bankrupt the system, bankrupt small business and issue death sentences to anyone who gets sick after retirement?
“Who benefits from this program? It is not the public. Whether you are in the 47% or not, no one benefits in this system and everyone suffers. If you’re going to tax us, tax us. It would have cost a whole lot less. Now you have built an entire new level of bureaucracy to manage and enforce this program. And since the real objective is to nationalize health care, just do it. Quit screwing around.
“Here is the point: My income over the last 20 years has increased a fair amount. But my standard of living has not increased one iota, and it is falling faster than I can increase my income. Go figure.”
The 5: Hear, hear. Thing is, Obamacare does have its loopholes. Said the economist Ludwig von Mises in a different context: “Capitalism breathes through those loopholes.”
Cheers,
Dave Gonigam
The 5 Min. Forecast
P.S. To learn about truly affordable free-market health care solutions still available despite the advance of Obamacare, look here.
P.P.S. Thanks to Chris Campbell of our research team for shouldering much of the burden of producing your daily 5 Mins. yesterday and the day before. Your editor was away with Addison Wiggin and the rest of the Agora Financial “brain trust” at a placid and stately colonial mansion tucked away on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.
Away from the hubbub of our Baltimore office, we bruited many ideas to help you capitalize on the opportunities and avoid the pitfalls the markets will likely throw your way during 2014. We’ll keep you posted as these ideas come to fruition — starting as early as next week!