Authored by John and Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“When plunder turns into a lifestyle for a gaggle of males in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a authorized system that authorizes it and an ethical code that glorifies it.”
– Frédéric Bastiat, French economist
Pay no heed to the circus politics popping out of Washington DC. It’s simply extra of the identical grandstanding by tone-deaf politicians oblivious to the plight of the citizenry.
Don’t permit yourselves to be distracted by the competing information headlines cataloging the antics of the ruling courses. Whereas they’re filled with sound and fury, they’re totally missing in substance.
Tune out the blaring noise of meaningless babble. It’s supposed to drown out the very actual menace of a authorities which is consumed with squeezing each final penny out of the inhabitants.
Focus as a substitute on the regular march of the police state at each the nationwide, state and native ranges, and the important freedoms which can be being trampled underfoot in its single-minded pursuit of energy.
Whereas the overt and dear indicators of the despotism exercised by the more and more authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the US authorities are throughout us—warrantless surveillance of People’ non-public cellphone and electronic mail conversations by the FBI, NSA, and many others.; SWAT crew raids of People’ houses; shootings of unarmed residents by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren within the title of zero tolerance; drones taking to the skies domestically; countless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a revenue incentive for jailing People; fusion facilities that acquire and disseminate information on People’ non-public transactions; and militarized companies with stockpiles of ammunition, to call a few of the most appalling—you hardly ever hear something about them from the politicians, the firms or the information media.
So what’s behind the blackout of actual information?
Certainly, if correctly disclosed and persistently reported on, the sheer quantity of the federal government’s actions, which undermine the Structure and dance near the sting of outright illegality, would give rise to a sea change in how enterprise is performed in our seats of energy.
But after we’re being bombarded with wall-to-wall information protection and information cycles that change each few days, it’s tough to remain targeted on one factor—specifically, holding the federal government accountable to abiding by the rule of regulation—and the powers-that-be perceive this.
As with most issues, if you wish to know the true motives behind any authorities program, observe the cash path.
If you dig down far sufficient, you rapidly discover that those that revenue from People being surveilled, fined, scanned, searched, probed, tasered, arrested and imprisoned are none aside from the police who arrest them, the courts which attempt them, the prisons which incarcerate them, and the firms, which manufacture the weapons, gear and prisons utilized by the American police state.
These injustices, petty tyrannies and overt acts of hostility are being carried out within the title of the nationwide good—towards the pursuits of people, society and finally our freedoms—by an elite class of presidency officers working in partnership with megacorporations which can be largely insulated from the ailing results of their actions.
In every single place you go, all the things you do, and each which approach you look, we’re getting swindled, cheated, conned, robbed, raided, pickpocketed, mugged, deceived, defrauded, double-crossed and fleeced by governmental and company shareholders of the American police state out to make a revenue at taxpayer expense.
Not solely are People compelled to spend more on taxes than the annual financial burdens of food, education and clothing combined, however we’re additionally being performed as straightforward marks by hustlers bearing the imprimatur of the federal government.
Examples of this legalized, profits-over-people, government-sanctioned extortion abound.
On the roads: Not glad with merely padding their budgets by issuing rushing tickets, police departments have turned to asset forfeiture and rushing and red light camera schemes as a method of rising their earnings. Regardless of revelations of corruption, collusion and fraud, these money-making scams have been being inflicted on unsuspecting drivers by revenue-hungry municipalities. Now legislators are hoping to get in on the revenue sharing by imposing a vehicle miles-traveled tax, which might cost drivers for every mile behind the wheel.
Within the prisons: States now have quotas to fulfill for what number of People go to jail. Growing numbers of states have contracted to keep their prisons at 90% to 100% capacity. This profit-driven type of mass punishment has, in flip, given rise to a $70 billion non-public jail trade that depends on the complicity of state governments to maintain the cash flowing and their privately run prisons full, “regardless of whether crime was rising or falling.” As Mom Jones stories, “non-public jail corporations have supported and helped write … laws that drive up prison populations. Their livelihoods rely upon cities, cities, and states sending extra folks to jail and protecting them there.” Personal prisons are additionally doling out harsher punishments for infractions by inmates as a way to preserve them locked up longer in order to “boost profits” at taxpayer expense. All of the whereas, prisoners are being compelled to offer cheap labor for private corporations. No marvel the US has one of the largest prison populations on the planet.
Within the faculties: The general public faculties have turn into a microcosm of the entire surveillance state which presently dominates America, adopting a number of surveillance applied sciences, together with video cameras, finger and palm scanners, iris scanners, in addition to RFID and GPS monitoring units, to maintain fixed watch over their scholar our bodies. Likewise, the navy industrial advanced with its navy weapons, steel detectors, and weapons of compliance corresponding to tasers has succeeded in remodeling the faculties—at nice taxpayer expense and private revenue—into quasi-prisons. Rounding issues out are school truancy laws, which come disguised as well-meaning makes an attempt to resolve attendance points within the faculties however in fact are nothing lower than stealth maneuvers aimed toward enriching college districts and courtroom programs alike by extreme fines and jail sentences for “unauthorized” absences. Curiously, none of those efforts appear to have succeeded in making the faculties any safer.
Within the countless wars overseas: Fueled by the profit-driven navy industrial advanced, the federal government’s countless wars are wreaking havoc on our communities, our funds and our police forces. Having been co-opted by grasping protection contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent authorities officers, America’s increasing navy empire is bleeding the nation dry at a fee of greater than $93 million per hour. Future wars and navy workouts waged across the globe are anticipated to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053. Speak about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. authorities is spending cash it doesn’t have on a navy empire it could actually’t afford. Battle spending is bankrupting America.
Within the type of militarized police: The Division of Homeland Safety routinely arms out six-figure grants to allow native municipalities to buy military-style autos, in addition to a veritable struggle chest of weaponry, starting from tactical vests, bomb-disarming robots, assault weapons and fight uniforms. This rise in navy gear purchases funded by the DHS has, in accordance with analysts Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz, “paralleled an apparent increase in local SWAT teams.” The top outcome? An explosive progress in using SWAT groups for in any other case routine police issues, an elevated tendency on the a part of police to shoot first and ask questions later, and an general mindset inside police forces that they’re at struggle—and the citizenry are the enemy combatants. Over 80,000 SWAT crew raids are performed on American houses and companies every year. Furthermore, government-funded military-style training drills proceed to happen in cities throughout the nation.
In profit-driven schemes corresponding to asset forfeiture: Underneath the guise of combating the struggle on medication, authorities brokers (often the police) have been given broad leeway to grab billions of {dollars}’ value of personal property (cash, automobiles, TVs, and many others.) they “suspect” could also be linked to prison exercise. Then—and right here’s the kicker—whether or not or not any crime is definitely confirmed to have taken place, the federal government retains the citizen’s property, usually divvying it up with the native police who did the preliminary seizure. The police have truly being trained in seminars on how to seize the “goodies” which can be on police departments’ want lists. In line with the New York Occasions, seized monies have been utilized by police to “pay for sports tickets, office parties, a home security system and a $90,000 sports car.”
By the safety industrial advanced: We’re being spied on by a home military of presidency snitches, spies and techno-warriors. Within the so-called title of “precrime,” this authorities of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, studying all the things we write, listening to all the things we are saying, and monitoring all the things we spend. Watch out for what you say, what you learn, what you write, the place you go, and with whom you talk, as a result of it’s all being recorded, saved, and catalogued, and might be used towards you ultimately, at a time and place of the federal government’s selecting. This far-reaching surveillance, carried out with the complicity of the Company State, has paved the way in which for an omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government—the Surveillance State—that got here into being with none electoral mandate or constitutional referendum. That doesn’t even contact on the federal government’s daring forays into biometric surveillance as a method of figuring out and monitoring the American folks from delivery to loss of life.
By a authorities hooked on energy: It’s a given you can at all times depend on the federal government to reap the benefits of a disaster, professional or manufactured. Emboldened by the citizenry’s inattention and willingness to tolerate its abuses, the federal government has weaponized one nationwide disaster after one other as a way to broaden its powers. The struggle on terror, the struggle on medication, the struggle on unlawful immigration, asset forfeiture schemes, highway security schemes, college security schemes, eminent area: all of those packages began out as professional responses to urgent issues and have since turn into weapons of compliance and management within the police state’s arms. Now that the federal government has gotten a style for flexing its police state powers by means of a bevy of COVID-19 lockdowns, mandates, restrictions, contact tracing packages, heightened surveillance, censorship, overcriminalization, and many others., “we the folks” could properly discover ourselves burdened with a Nanny State inclined to make use of its draconian pandemic powers to guard us from ourselves.
This perverse combination of presidency authoritarianism and company earnings has elevated the attain of the state into our non-public lives whereas additionally including a revenue motive into the combination. And, as at all times, it’s we the folks, we the taxpayers, we the gullible voters who preserve getting taken for a trip by politicians keen to vow us the world on a plate.
This can be a far cry from how a consultant authorities is meant to function.
Certainly, it has been a very long time since we might declare to be the masters of our personal lives. Relatively, we are actually the themes of a militarized, company empire through which the overwhelming majority of the citizenry work their arms to the bone for the advantage of a privileged few.
Including damage to the continued insult of getting our tax {dollars} misused and our so-called representatives purchased and paid for by the moneyed elite, the federal government then turns round and makes use of the cash we earn with our blood, sweat and tears to focus on, imprison and entrap us, within the type of militarized police, surveillance cameras, non-public prisons, license plate readers, drones, and cellphone monitoring know-how.
With each new tax, advantageous, price and regulation adopted by our so-called representatives, the yoke across the neck of the typical American appears to tighten just a bit bit extra.
All of these nefarious deeds by authorities officers that you simply hear about every single day: these are your tax {dollars} at work.
It’s your cash that enables for presidency brokers to spy in your emails, your cellphone calls, your textual content messages, and your actions. It’s your cash that enables out-of-control cops to burst into harmless folks’s houses, or probe and strip search motorists on the aspect of the highway. And it’s your cash that results in People throughout the nation being prosecuted for innocuous actions corresponding to rising vegetable gardens of their entrance yards or daring to talk their reality to their elected officers.
As I clarify in my guide Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this isn’t freedom, America.
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