Liberterrorism?

The notion that the Government is cracking down on freedom in general and preparing to freeze our accounts and restrict movement of money because of that elusive financial apocalypse the right wing has been predicting since Obama was elected, is the bread and butter of such opinion sources as the Daily Paul,  Natural News, and Alex Jones' Infowars.com  who amongst too many others to count are celebrating the false report that Chase Bank is limiting cash withdrawals and outgoing international wire transfers.  The story lacks only truth to be shocking. You can read a more honest appraisal at Forbes.  True, Chase is upping fees on certain kinds of business checking accounts, but pace the Liberterrorists, no one in Government is forcing them to do it and what we're seeing is Capitalism at work. Chase simply wants to make more money. Don't we all?

According to an e-mail from PT Shamrock.com, a Libertarian organization dedicated to misleading people about the need to get their money out of the country before the Liberals confiscate it and give it to "the takers," Chase customers have received the following letter:

Dear Business Customer,

Starting November 17, 2013:
- You will no longer be able to send international wire transfers. 

You will still be able to send domestic wires and receive
both domestic and international wires. We'll cancel any international
wire transfers, including reccurring [sic] ones, you scheduled to be sent
after this date.

- Your cash activity limit for these accounts(s) will be $50,000 per
statement cycle, per account. Cash activity is the combined total
of cash deposits made at branches, night drops and ATMs and cash
withdrawals made at branches (including purchases of money orders)
and ATMs.

These changes will help us more effectively manage the risks involved
with these types of transactions. 

No they haven't.  Unfortunately devotees of Paul and Jones and all the other panic profiteers will take it at face value without taking a moment to check the facts. Some won't even notice the misspelling and poor wording, the urge to believe being as strong as it is.  The confusion between the artifacts of free market capitalism and  Federal authoritarianism  continues to be the medium in which the fungus of  Right Wing politics is grown -- and grown in the dark, of course.

Boiling the Tea kettle

"The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government."

-US Supreme Court Justices Hugo Black and William Douglas-

Anyone in the US with more political awareness than a telephone pole knows that there's a whole lot of loosely related and sometimes contradictory stuff hidden under the camouflage blanket of "we're for smaller, less intrusive government," including the somewhat contrary and certainly not Libertarian opinion that that government may, at its own discretion, hide its actions, its statements and defend its deceptions and coverups, making the exercise of protected rights a crime. That so many who feel concern about paternalistic government can none the less defend it passionately and thus sanctify subterfuge is puzzling. That members of that government can ask that we treat the media and its sources as traitors and terrorists with all the extra-legal powers it possesses, is hardly puzzling at all. That the need to cover its ass supersedes any respect for the Constitution it pretends to worship: that government can be in terror of being exposed, hardly makes the case, in my opinion, for Terrorism. Perhaps the test of being a true and loyal Republican is not to think of Richard Nixon at this point.

So how do we feel about Wikileaks release of leaked State Department documents yesterday? Well at least one Republican congressman recommends that we move that organization under another one of those capacious and convenient camo blankets: the one we call terrorism, or 'terrism' in the dialect spoken by a great number of self-styled conservatives. So, by the gerrymandering of ill-defined symbols, we manage to expose -- or at least the horrifically hyperbolic Rep. Peter King (R-NY) hopes to expose Wikileaks and perhaps anyone revealing that which slithers through the wires to and from Washington, to the dire and drastic treatment we afford "foreign terrorist organizations." To expose embarrassing diplomatic cables showing many world leaders at their scurrilous antics, is "worse than a military attack" he said last night.

King, says CBS News, New York, has written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Attorney General Eric Holder asking that Julian Assange of Wikileaks be prosecuted as a spy for publishing 'sensitive' information given him by a whistleblowing soldier, even though that's what the mainstream media does, is supposed to do and the Court has affirmed their constitutional right to do.

It will be interesting to see the Tea Party reaction to this -- if there is one. They'll be torn between maintaining support for the First Amendment and the role of a free press and the treasured myth of its untrustworthy liberal bias. I'd like to think that it might increase pressure to actually define what they mean by a smaller, less intrusive and more limited government, but as they say - a watched teapot never boils.

AMERICAN JACKBOOTS ON THE MARCH

It seems our vaunted American news media has turned into the three monkeys that hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil. A British news source is covering this story, but not the MSM within these United States of Amerika?

PIGS “R” US

By Octopus

Early this morning, I walked my fabled beach to partake of what little time may be left before the sludge arrives. My beach is one of the most beautiful on the Atlantic coast ... a wide expanse of fine white sand that crunches beneath your feet, and an infinite emerald green vista beyond the breakers. Here, you can walk for miles before encountering another person.

On any given day, beachcombers will see herons, egrets, sandpipers, and plovers teasing the surf, or black skimmers and pelicans strafing the waves.

The Gulf oil leak disaster comes on the heals of an unseasonably cold winter that left hundreds of manatees and endangered marine turtles cold stunned, dead, or dying. For decades, marine biologists have warned: Our coral reefs are vanishing; our fish stocks are depleted; storm runoff is destroying our wetlands; and floating garbage will bring our ocean ecosystem to the verge of collapse.

Public opinion is a pendulum that swings between fads and confabulations, a rhythm and discord orchestrated by sociopaths. When gas hit $4 at the pump, everyone chanted: Drill, baby, drill. When corporations threatened to close factories and move operations overseas unless the government eased environmental regulations, everyone chanted: Down with tree huggers - they kill jobs.

Nobody listened. How soon we forget past transgressions. How soon we forgot about the tragedy of Love Canal where a housing community was built upon a waste dump containing 21,000 tons of toxic chemicals. In short order, residents reported acrid liquids leaching into their basements, and higher than normal prevalence rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer. Children who played outdoors came home with burns on their skin. Eventually, the government evacuated 800 families and reimbursed them for their homes; however it took another 18 years before the successor corporation agreed to pay restitution.

How soon we forgot about the succession of fires along the Cuyahoga River: The first in 1912 that killed five, a fire in 1936 that burned five days, another in 1952 that burned three days and caused millions of dollars in damage, and the last in 1969 when accumulated trash and debris trapped in heavy black ooze was ignited by a sparks from a passing train.

How soon we forget the epidemic known as Minamata Disease, a severe neurological disorder resembling cerebral palsy caused by the release of methyl mercury in industrial wastewater. This highly toxic chemical accumulated in the seafood harvested from Minamata Bay, which when eaten by the populace resulted in mercury poisoning. By 2001, over 2,265 victims had been officially recognized, of whom 1,784 had died. At least 10,000 others still await compensation.

Major Industrial Polluters

(Click on image to enlarge)

Each year, the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) publishes information and analyses on major polluters in America. This study relies on EPA Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI), which assesses the toxicity of chemicals released, impacts on human health, the risk to exposed populations, and the burden borne by local municipalities. How toxic is toxic?

The EPA tracks 600 toxic chemicals released into the environment as measured in millions of pounds per year. It should be noted that toxicity is not merely a measure of the quantity of pollutants released each year but the toxicity of each compound in relative terms. Toxicity varies by seven orders of magnitude meaning, pound-for-pound, some chemicals are ten million times more toxic than others. The EPA database includes known carcinogens such as asbestos (toxicity index = 1 million), benzidine (TI= 480,000), and bis chloromethyl ether (TI= 440,000), highly toxic industrial solvents, and millions of pounds of heavy metals such as cadmium (TI = 90,000), chromium (TI = 86,000), arsenic (TI = 60,000), lead (TI = 8,000), and mercury (TI = 6,000).

One would think the term Environmental Justice would place Mother Nature and the right of all citizens to clean air and water on an equal footing along with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” In fact, Environmental Justice is a ploy used by polluters to spread the impact of pollution without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, or station in life.

Pollution is good for business. It saves owners and shareholders the cost and inconvenience of cleanup and puts more money in their pockets. “Lets allow more arsenic in public drinking water,” says the coal lobby, “and who gives a damn if your worthless kid gets leukemia.” The perks and privileges of the few outweigh the health concerns of the many because public welfare, as Glenn Beck has told you, is tantamount to socialism.

“Have another Double Whopper with bacon and cheese,” says McDonalds, “Who who gives a damn if you die of diabetes. Shareholder value, baby!, that’s what’s its all about.”

“Go ahead. Beat your children and traumatize the crap out of them,” spouts Herr Doctor Freud, “Es ist goot fur beezniss.”

Corporate responsibility is an oxymoron. The titans of industry don’t want environmental regulations, banking reform, consumer product monitoring, food inspections, or workplace safety standards, because regulations are bad, big government is bad, and what’s good for business is good for America!  The 19th Century mindset of social Darwinists, libertarians, and the discontents of civilization are anachronisms living in the post-modern world.  And who the hell needs healthcare when you have no heart and no brain, and your head and your ass are interchangeable.

Inevitably, the cost of cleanup and compensation will be borne by the consumer as energy costs rise. Eventually taxpayers will get stuck with the bills when push comes to pay, because BP’s lawyers will delay and delay. When gas hits $4 at the pump, the pendulum will swing once again with chants of “drill, baby, drill,” because nothing in the human Universe ever changes, while Mother Nature suffers one more incremental death blow.

The longer the Louisiana oil leak persists, the more inevitable this becomes:  Oil will enter the Gulf of Mexico Loop Current that will transport it to the east coast of Florida … thus impacting our beaches and coastal ecosystems. The oil slick arribada may be weeks or months away. Heartbroken, livid, outraged, there are no words to describe what I feel.