Local Regulations Keep You Unemployed

Local politicos and their backroom "business partners" are creating phoney licensing scams to keep you out of work. Check out your local licensing regulations and see if any of them are based in reality. Fight for your right to work!

Amplify’d from www.ncpa.org

Proponents of such requirements justify these barriers by endlessly parroting the same worn-out phrase: public health and safety.  Yet if public health and safety were truly at risk, we would expect to see florists regulated in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., not just in Louisiana as they are now.

State legislators largely seem oblivious to the counterproductive effects of the licensure schemes they create.  This spring there was a ray of sunshine in the gloom of occupational licensure when Florida's new governor, Rick Scott, proposed a list of 20 occupations ripe for deregulation. Read more at www.ncpa.org

 

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EFF Campaign Increases the Number of TOR Relays

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

There is an acute need for circumvention technologies in authoritarian regimes - and even activists in many would-be progressive societies may feel safer if they can avoid the electronic gaze of authorities.

Our gratitude goes out to the hundreds of individuals who set up relays and donated bandwidth to help strengthen the network. They are true defenders of online freedoms. Read more at www.eff.org

 

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The Stimulus that Didn't

It should also be noted that 'official' unemployment figures ignore the completely disenfranchised who do not 'qualify.'

Amplify’d from www.ncpa.org

Myth 1: Stimulus spending can jump start the economy and fix unemployment.

Since the enactment of the stimulus bill in February 2009, the unemployment rate has not approached pre-American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) levels, even though $382 billion has been made available by government departments and agencies (on top of tax credits and other tax-related items).

In fact, unemployment recently edged up, from 9 percent in April to 9.1 percent in May.

Myth 2: Additional infrastructure spending is an effective way to stimulate the economy and create jobs.

politicians rarely include infrastructure spending in stimulus bills.

Instead, they spend money on items like transfers and tax cuts.

Only 3 percent of the last stimulus went to infrastructure. Read more at www.ncpa.org

 

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The War on Food: are we Winning or Losing?

Federal, State and Local governments continue to pour money and manpower into the War on Food, but who's winning?

Here's a brief selection of examples from 2011 to 2008:



"Government regulation ... requires costly procedures that drive small producers out of the market without necessarily improving the quality of food." http://drewt333.amplify.com/2010/12/21/get-a-taste-of-some-nutritious-freedom/



“Mandatory menu labeling did not promote healthier food-purchasing behavior.” http://reason.com/blog/2011/07/07/washington-post-food-nannyism



"Growing too many vegetables is illegal" http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/10/weird_zoning_laws



The War on Lunch: http://blog.mises.org/13894/the-great-food-truck-lobbying-race/



Hot Dog Wars http://reason.com/blog/2008/02/08/las-bacon-wrapped-hot-dog-wars



"Nationwide, fancy juices and venti mocha Frappuccinos remain almost completely untouched by sin surcharges, while a bodega bottle of Sprite brings down the wrath of the taxman. " http://reason.com/archives/2009/09/29/5-myths-we-need-to-can-about-s



Regulation and enforcement? Failed.

Minimalist "education?" Failed.

"Sin tax?" Failed.



While waving the flag of "health concerns" Federal, State and City governments grow steadily more "obese" at the tax trough while protecting their business partners.

Small business, local producers and tax-payers are not welcome at the table.

Amplify’d from www.latimes.com

America continues to get fatter, according to a comprehensive new report on the nation's weight crisis. Statistics for 2008-2010 show that 16 states are experiencing steep increases in adult obesity, and none has seen a notable downturn in the last four years. Read more at www.latimes.com

 

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Privitized Oppression

You may think this is about Xe, or Blackwater, or top secret torture camps. It's not.

Amplify’d from wikileaks.org

For six months now, five major US financial institutions, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Western Union and the Bank of America have tried to economically strangle WikiLeaks as a result of political pressure from Washington. The attack has blocked over 90% of the non-profit organization’s donations, costing some $15M in lost revenue. The attack is entirely outside of any due process or rule of law. In fact, in the only formal review to occur, the US Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy C. Geithner found, on January 12, that there were no lawful grounds to add WikiLeaks to a financial blockade. Read more at wikileaks.org

 

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OECD Draft of Internet Policy-Making Principles Raises Questions with Civil Society Coalition

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

EFF has joined with a coalition of more than 80 global civil society groups which have declined to endorse a set of Internet Policy Principles presented today in Paris by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). EFF and the other members of the OECD’s Civil Society Information Society Advisory Council (CSISAC) were unwilling to accept the high profile OECD Communiqué on Internet Policy-making because it could encourage states to use Internet intermediaries to police online content, undermining freedom of expression, privacy and innovation across the world. Read more at www.eff.org

 

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The Greek Bailout: Who Profits?

Defaults and bailouts. The dominoes are falling.

Amplify’d from esr.ibiblio.org

Lost in the eye-glazing babble about maturity extensions, haircuts, and which acronymic organization is going to funnel the money into place is the real magnitude of the stakes here. It’s not just the Greeks’ opera-bouffé parody of the modern redistributionist state that is circling the structural-insolvency drain; what really terrifies our political class is the prospect that, very soon, the investors simply won’t buy government bonds anymore – and massive borrowing through bond issues is the only thing keeping the redistributionist state afloat.

Everywhere, the gap between political spending commitments and revenue has been covered by borrowing. The entire system of redistributionism, in which the political class buys the consent of the governed with ever-increasing handouts, has come to depend on the assumption that the bond markets will always be there to be tapped for cash to fund next week’s bread and circuses. Read more at esr.ibiblio.org

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Know Your Rights: Protect Yourself from Illegal Searches

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects you from unreasonable government searches and seizures, and this protection extends to your computer and portable devices. In EFF's "Know Your Digital Rights" guide, we outline various common scenarios and explain when and how the police can search the data stored on your computer or portable electronic device -- or seize it for further examination somewhere else -- and give suggestions on what you can and can't do to protect your privacy. Read more at www.eff.org

 

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U.S. Personal and Economic Freedom Index

The Mercatus Institute ranks the American states on public policies that affect individual economic, social and personal freedoms.

Amplify’d from mercatus.org

Purpose of the Index

This project develops an index of economic and personal freedom in the American states. Specifically, it examines state and local government intervention across a wide range of public policies, from income taxation to gun control, from homeschooling regulation to drug policy.

Measuring Freedom & Government Intervention

We explicitly ground our conception of freedom on an individual-rights framework. In our view, individuals should be allowed to dispose of their lives, liberties, and properties as they see fit, as long as they do not infringe on the rights of others. Read more at mercatus.org

 

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This Week in Internet Censorship

Top stories from EFF

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

Canadian Filtering Tool Used in Middle East

Crackdowns on ‘Anonymous’

Tunisian Activists Speak Out Against Porn Blocking Read more at www.eff.org

 

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Protecting the Economic Elite

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

When the state seems to “tighten the screws” on commercial power, limiting its range of motion for (supposedly) the consumer, the outcome is to reduce the field of competitors. Only the savviest, richest and most well-connected business players will be able to afford compliance with the state’s largely arbitrary rules, so only small businesses — those without K Street suits hovering about Congress — end up losing.

It’s true that regulations cost Big Business money, but all of those added costs are more than recouped through the monopoly prices huge corporations are able to charge as a result of state intervention. At bottom, the state has never been anything but a money machine for economic elites, erecting barriers and tolls throughout our commercial interactions to make sure that the “free” part of “free enterprise” never actually reaches the people it would help most. Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Intellectual Property as Licensed Monopoly

Is thought property? Without expression thought is a pretty solitary pastime.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

“Intellectual property,” like tariffs and all other monopolies, is a barrier to the free movement of labor and capital into certain legally defined areas of production, which has the effect of maintaining artificially high prices that would not exist under free market competition.  “Intellectual property,” in our corporate global economy, performs exactly the same function the tariff did in the old national industrial economies:  It regulates the conditions under which one is allowed to produce a particular good for a particular market, so that the beneficiaries are able to charge a monopoly premium.  Rather than erecting territorial barriers around particular nations like the tariff, “intellectual property” builds walls around global corporations. Read more at c4ss.org

 

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The War on Drugs has Failed

Fight drug related violence and drug abuse with the only weapon proven to be effective: education.

Amplify’d from www.msnbc.msn.com

A new report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy argues that the decades-old worldwide "war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." The 24-page paper was released Thursday.

The commission called for drug policies based on methods empirically proven to reduce crime, lead to better health and promote economic and social development. Read more at www.msnbc.msn.com

 

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Fight Internet Censorship, take the Tor Challenge

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

Activists worldwide use Tor to protect their anonymity online and to circumvent Internet censorship. But they all rely on a limited number of user-provided "relays" to protect themselves and communicate with others. Internet users worldwide need your help to make the Tor network stronger and faster, so take the Tor Challenge today! Read more at www.eff.org

 

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Spinning the Political Compass

A political indoctrination tool turns out to be inaccurate.

Who knew.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

The Political Compass, a popular online quiz, was supposedly designed to remedy the simple-mindedness of the left-right spectrum by replacing it with two axes:  political and social libertarianism vs. authoritarianism, and economic Left vs. Right.  Basically, everything nice you say about big business puts you further to the economic Right — which the quiz equates to a preference for free markets — and everything negative you say about corporate power puts you further to the Left (i.e. collectivism).

Some of the questions have a “have you stopped beating your wife?” quality to them.  For example:  “Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.”  Or “A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.”

This wretched quiz  takes for granted all the worst assumptions of our dumbed-down political culture.  In so doing, like Newspeak, it reinforces all the ways in which our corporatized political culture obscures critical thought. Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Encrypted currencies and darknet economies

Bitcoin ushers in the Diamond Age.

Amplify’d from c4ss.org

Jason Calacanis and his colleagues at LAUNCH describe it as “The Most Dangerous Project We’ve Ever Seen” (May 15, 2011).  Not only is it “the most dangerous open-source project ever created,” but “possibly the most dangerous technological project since the Internet itself.”  It “could topple governments, destabilize economies and create uncontrollable global bazaars for contraband.”

The beauty of it is there’s no central server network to shut down. Just as with file-sharing, Bitcoin is traded from one desktop or mobile device to another via public key encryption.  So short of catching and prosecuting end-users with harsh punishments, there’s no way to stop it.  And we all know how well that’s worked out for the proprietary content companies. Read more at c4ss.org

 

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Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse

The CDC uses zombie madness to present emergency preparedness.

Amplify’d from emergency.cdc.gov

The rise of zombies in pop culture has given credence to the idea that a zombie apocalypse could happen. In such a scenario zombies would take over entire countries, roaming city streets eating anything living that got in their way. The proliferation of this idea has led many people to wonder “How do I prepare for a zombie apocalypse?”

Well, we’re here to answer that question for you, and hopefully share a few tips about preparing for real emergencies too! Read more at emergency.cdc.gov

 

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Get a Warrant Before Searching Cell Phones

Make those folks on CSI work a little harder, support SB 914.

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

EFF is proud to support SB 914, a bill that requires the police to obtain a warrant before searching a recent arrestee’s cell phone.

The bill is expected to be on the Senate floor soon. All Californians should ask their state lawmakers to support SB 914 and tell law enforcement that if they want access to the personal and private data stored on cell phones, they need to come back with a warrant. Read more at www.eff.org

 

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Fight Internet Censorship

Check out "Documenting Tools for Beating Internet Censorship" on the EFF blog.

Amplify’d from www.eff.org

Network censorship and surveillance is a booming business. Censorship schemes continue to fragment the Internet and new censorship proposals are constantly introduced around the world, including in liberal democracies. (Lately governments have gotten fascinated by the idea of forcing ISPs to censor particular sites from the DNS, so users can't find them even though the sites are still there.) Censors usually assume that most Internet users don't know how to bypass the censorship (or, often, that many users won't even realize the censorship is going on!).

Unfortunately, the censors are often right, at least in broad strokes: many Internet users get used to censorship and rarely or never try to bypass it. And censorship doesn't always take the form of simply blocking sites and services. But there are still major efforts to beat technical censorship by technical means, and motivated users can generally take advantage of them. Millions of people are at least occasional users of censorship circumvention services, but it's a perennial challenge to broaden this pool and give people the tools to maintain uncensored access over time. Read more at www.eff.org

 

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Rationalizing and Reason: Unbelievable Beliefs

Why does the mind challenge fact with fiction?

Amplify’d from m.motherjones.com

The theory of motivated reasoning builds on a key insight of modern neuroscience (PDF): Reasoning is actually suffused with emotion (or what researchers often call "affect"). Not only are the two inseparable, but our positive or negative feelings about people, things, and ideas arise much more rapidly than our conscious thoughts, in a matter of milliseconds—fast enough to detect with an EEG device, but long before we're aware of it. That shouldn't be surprising: Evolution required us to react very quickly to stimuli in our environment. It's a "basic human survival skill," explains political scientist Arthur Lupia of the University of Michigan. We push threatening information away; we pull friendly information close. We apply fight-or-flight reflexes not only to predators, but to data itself.

Consider a person who has heard about a scientific discovery that deeply challenges her belief in divine creation—a new hominid, say, that confirms our evolutionary origins. What happens next, explains political scientist Charles Taber of Stony Brook University, is a subconscious negative response to the new information—and that response, in turn, guides the type of memories and associations formed in the conscious mind. "They retrieve thoughts that are consistent with their previous beliefs," says Taber, "and that will lead them to build an argument and challenge what they're hearing." Read more at m.motherjones.com

 

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