Thursday, February 26, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #794
February 27, 2015 - Issue #794"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." - Ronald Reagan |
 FL: Boca Raton decides not to jail e-cigarette users, for now. The Region 13 representative from the Libertarian Party of Florida spoke at the meeting explaining that the proposed ordinance would take yet another right away from businesses and individuals when no health threat has been proven. The proposed ordinance was introduced by Deputy Mayor Constance Scott after smelling someone vaping near her in a public place and was reportedly annoyed enough to put a stop to it through government force. KY: Smoking-ban pollster issues challenge. By Ken C. Moellman Jr. Folks, we live here - we know this number is bogus. Tinkering with your sample to get a desired result is smoke and mirrors. Which one of the following six statements best reflects how you feel about the proposed statewide smoking ban? UK Majority of public favour smoking rooms in pubs. The majority of the public agree that pubs should be allowed to have private rooms for customers to smoke in if they want to, according to new research. Canada Contraband. Police, convenience store owners at odds over contraband cigarette charges. George Israel of Israel Grocery told Metro he had not purchased any cigarettes from Bridgeview Grocery, but once borrowed five cartons from the owner when his tobacco shipment didn't arrive on time. "Unbelievable. I was shocked," Israel said about seeing his name next to contraband charges. Israel emphasized the cigarettes were "legal, legal, legal" and assumed the term contraband meant the cigarettes themselves were illegal or smuggled. |
 For The Good Of The Children! Texas Legislation Would Allow Teachers to Kill Students. Teacher's Protection Act, H.B. 868, would authorize teachers to use "force or deadly force on school property, on a school bus, or at a school-sponsored event... Even more disturbing is that the school staff members who engage in deadly force would be granted Civil immunity. Teachers who apply deadly force would not be liable for the injury or death of a student. It's bad enough that police officers can indiscriminately kill without facing consequences or the scrutiny of due diligence, but expanding this blanket of unaccountability to teachers, not trained in engaging or assessing true threats, could prove to be catastrophic. For The Good Of The Children! School Cops Ask Judge To Let Them Pepper-Spray and Arrest 'Unruly' Students For 'Misbehaving.' Since 2006, Howard explains that there have been hundreds of incidents where high school students have been pepper-sprayed for being "unruly" even though no laws were broken. "We want it to be declared unconstitutional because it allows officers to spray people, specifically students, without considering a wide variety of factors—such as whether they are in a school environment, the fact that they are in a closed environment, and the fact that these things that they are accusing kids of doing and acting on are actually just student misconduct issues," Ebony Howard, the SPLC staff attorney said. For The Good Of The Children! Mom says school sent home letter claiming child was overweight. Cacdac said her daughter was able to read the letter and asked her mom if the school thought she was overweight. But trips to the doctor have shown the first grader is healthy and not overweight. "My child's favorite foods are avocados, broccoli and apples...she is perfectly healthy in every way: emotionally, physically, and academically," Cacdac says. For The Good Of The Children! Teacher Attacked Little Boy For Having Too Much Food, "You only need one taco!" "A sheriff's deputy who reviewed camera footage of the incident wrote in an arrest report that as the student walked by Lemelle in the school's cafeteria, she could be seen kicking him in the rear," reported The Advocate. "The video also showed her slapping the boy on the back of the head, the deputy wrote." Apparently Lemelle said that "he only needed one taco." Witnesses reported that Lemelle would frequently bring an empty lunch plate to the cafeteria to fill with food from her students. For The Good Of The Children! 9-Year-Old Boy Suspended for Using Lord of the Rings Magic on Fellow Student. One ring to bring them all, and in the stupidity of zero tolerance bind them. This doesn't even appear to rise to the level of mischief. Only under a culture of zero-tolerance discipline and safety paranoia, where every small act is assumed to carry maximum ill-intent, could Steward's actions be considered wrong. |
Thursday, February 19, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #793
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February 20, 2015 - Issue #793 "There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill, and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle." - Deepak Chopra |
Four U.S. Senators Propose Tobacco Tax Changes. The tax parity would be created by establishing the tax rate on all tobacco products at the same per unit level as cigarettes, which is currently $1.01 per pack. While small cigars and RYO products are taxed at the same rate as cigarettes, cigars, smokeless tobacco, and pipe tobacco are taxed at lower and different rates. Because of this, some businesses rebrand their products to get them classified into a lower-tax category. For instance, RYO tobacco, which is taxed at $1.55 per ounce, is often labeled as pipe tobacco, which is taxed at 17.7 cents per ounce.
'Death cult' ISIL bans cigarettes. Middle-Eastern 'Death Cult' Islamic State has banned cigarette smoking in the areas that it controls, punishing nicotine addicts by breaking their fingers, flogging them in public and even beheading them. Residents of the ISIL-controlled Syrian city of Raqqa are unable to enjoy a cigarette without fear of physical harm. Recently, a senior ISIL police officer was found beheaded with a cigarette stuffed in his mouth and anti-smoking messages scrawled on his body. New Orleans: Five Characters in Search of a Reason. "It's certainly about freedom and choice," I responded. "You were free to choose to walk into this casino, and you did, knowing that there'd be smoke. What about the freedom for business owners to offer their products and services to clients who prefer to smoke? What about the rights of the smokers who wish to have the freedom to choose to go to places where they can be free to smoke?" "This is America. And you're not going to tell me how to live." Fr. Jack Kearney: In Defense of Stanton Glantz, The ANTZ, and Electronic Cigarettes. The Church of Anti Nicotine and Tobacco. Zealotry is not limited to mere questions of God, but everyday matters. Those in the field of Public Health, where tobacco is concerned, act with a dogmatic fervor, admit no apostates to their echo chamber of worship. Most importantly they *never* deviate from their primary purpose: to eradicate tobacco from the whole of society. SC City of Conway: Strikes down smoking ban in indoor public places. "A couple of council members noted that the merchants and property owners and business owners will do it on their own." 
PA Beer Tax: Lancaster County Drug and Alcohol Commission director wants a beer tax. The Commission was out of money this year, faster than at any time in its history because of the deluge of heroin addicts seeking treatment. He suggests lawmakers raise the state tax on beer and smokeless tobacco products to give more money for drug and alcohol programs.
Bill would tax sugary drinks, candy. Connecticut would become the first state to create a special tax on sugary drinks and candy under a bill aimed at cutting childhood obesity, Type II diabetes, hypertension and other health problems.
But the beverage industry and state grocers opposed the proposal during a public hearing Tuesday, calling it social engineering that is unfounded in science and economics while threatening Connecticut businesses. "We have some major concerns with this nanny-state legislation," Sorkin said. "With 20,000 new products introduced to the market each year, who is going to figure out what is candy? Who will be responsible for managing the database? Where will the tax be collected? What's next on the list of items to be taxed based on the agendas of interest groups?"
Direct Taxes On Body Weight. "Ultimately, what may be needed to address the obesity problem are direct taxes on body weight." The quote comes from a 2010 article written by Johnathan Gruber the "architect" of Obamacare. Such taxation may be happening indirectly through health insurance surcharges. Feds May Finally Ditch Cholesterol Warning. The committee is in the midst of updating federal dietary guidelines for 2015; the last update was in 2010. These guidelines are used to set school lunch standards and food labeling requirements and inform all sorts of government dietary advice. Cholesterol is the latest in a long line of dietary demons pursued vigorosly by public-health officials only to be redeemed as nutrition science advances. CDC vaccine whistleblower given immunity to testify. Patrick Howley at The Daily Caller reports that William Thompson, CDC whistleblower, has been given immunity from prosecution, by the federal government, to testify before Congress about vaccine fraud at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Thompson, a long-time researcher at the CDC, published a statement through his lawyer, Rick Morgan, admitting that he and colleagues at the CDC violated the protocol in a study on the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine’s connection to autism. |
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Thursday, February 12, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #792
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February 13, 2015 - Issue #792 "Burke said that there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate, more important far than they all." - Thomas Carlyle 1795-1881 |
Media Lies: Following NBC News anchor Brian Williams' revelation that he had lied about being on a helicopter that was shot down by RPG fire during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, his credibility as a journalist has been called into question. AND Brian Williams Now Accused of Lying About Seeing "A Dead Body" During Katrina. AND During a 2014 interview with Tom Brokaw, Williams claimed that while he was covering Hurricane Katrina, he "accidentally ingested some of the floodwater" and "became very sick with dysentery." Dr. Brobson Lutz, a former city health director who was on the street manning an EMS trailer in the French Quarter, told the New Orleans Advocate that the area was "never wet" and that as for dysentery, he didn't recall a "single, solitary case of gastroenteritis during Katrina or in the whole month afterward."
AND Brian Williams also told iffy tales of rescuing puppies from fires. AND Alleged encounter with Christmas bandit.
Media Lies: ABC's Food Lion Lies: A Study in TV Deception. Arledge's statement was as false as was the segment attacking Food Lion. In both its public statements and thousands of pages of court filings, Food Lion indeed had challenged the veracity of the segment, and in damning detail. Arledge and ABC lawyers knew this fact, but nonetheless he and other network officers repeated one of the more flagrant lies in the history of American journalism. Media Lies: CBS. Citing Liberal Bias, Investigative Reporter Sharyl Attkisson Resigns From CBS News. At the same time, Attkisson's own reporting on the Obama administration, which some staffers characterized as agenda-driven, had led network executives to doubt the impartiality of her reporting. Media Lies: CNN. Why didn't CNN's international arm air its own documentary on Bahrain's Arab Spring repression? A former CNN correspondent defies threats from her former employer to speak out about self-censorship at the network. Media Lies: Bob Woodward called a senior White House official last week to tell him that in a piece in that weekend's Washington Post, he was going to question President Barack Obama's account of how sequestration came about - and got a major-league brushback. The Obama aide "yelled at me for about a half-hour." Woodward repeated the last sentence, making clear he saw it as a veiled threat. "'You'll regret.' Come on," he said. "I think if Obama himself saw the way they're dealing with some of this, he would say, 'Whoa, we don't tell any reporter 'you're going to regret challenging us.'" Media Lies: Media as the "Fourth Estate." Access to information is essential to the health of democracy for at least two reasons. First, it ensures that citizens make responsible, informed choices rather than acting out of ignorance or misinformation. Second, information serves a "checking function" by ensuring that elected representatives uphold their oaths of office and carry out the wishes of those who elected them. Cancer Random Factor. The paper, published in the journal Science, triggered such a firestorm of outrage from other cancer researchers that the journal today published a series of critical letters and a response by the authors - Johns Hopkins University scientists Bert Vogelstein and Christian Tomasetti. Said Biologist PZ Myers, "The act of living is a cause of cancer." CVS Update: Now let's be clear - this corporate decision has nothing to do with heath. If it did, CVS would immediately stop selling all other goods that are not good for you, such as candy, unhealthy foods, and alcohol - but they’re not. Gun Control: Michael Bloomberg: We Need To Disarm Minorities. Disarming minorities for their own good? The KKK would agree with him. If you want to know who is the oppressed simply look at who is disarmed. Additionally, Bloomberg can't do math. Ventilation: The Bad Air in Our Gyms. Were they lying? And if they were lying, what should be done about it? Can the agencies and people that were given funding to spread the "no safe level" concept be held financially responsible for whatever damages may have been caused by the lie? |
 Learn what an Electronic Cigarette is. |
Thursday, February 05, 2015
The Property Rights Newsletter Issue #791
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February 6, 2015 - Issue #791 "Privacy is not something that I'm merely entitled to, it's an absolute prerequisite." - Marlon Brando |
 The hidden cameras in NYC's subways. 4,500 cameras track people in the NYC subway system, including hidden ones that look like pipes. Civil-rights lawyer Norman Siegel says the cameras present privacy concerns. "I was irritated that there was a second hidden system underneath the big obvious one," he continued. "But that's the world we live in now." DHS run police departments are using 'ShotSpotter' to spy on public conversations. In one section, he said, a voice can be heard saying “No, Jason! No, Jason!” - a statement that could help his client - but in other parts the words cannot be easily distinguished. He said he was having the tape enhanced to try to clarify it. In any case, Mr. Camera said, the new technology is “opening up a whole can of worms.” 
Red light camera vendor Redflex freaked out it may lose contracts. In Ohio, even after the state’s Supreme Court upheld their use, Governor John Kasich signed into law in December 2014 a new bill that requires a police officer's physical presence for tickets that are issued from traffic cameras. The law takes effect 90 days after the governor's signature, and it could mean that cities will have less of a reason to maintain their camera systems.
REAL ID to Launch in 2016: TSA Will Force Airline Passengers to Show National ID Before Flying. Transportation Security Administration will require all airline passengers to present a REAL ID compliant identification card or a passport in order to board a flight. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that 20-30% of Americans live in jurisdictions that are not REAL ID compliant, meaning their driver's licenses will no longer be accepted during security checks at the airport. Reports of a move towards a national ID card were often dismissed by skeptics as conspiracy theories until 2005, when the REAL ID Act passed into law. AND The third phase of implementation, coming in October, mandates the presentation of REAL ID cards in order to enter semi-restricted federal facilities such as courthouses and military bases that require identification for admittance. Company Has Microchips Implanted In Employees' Hands. Employees of Swedish office complex, Epicenter, are having microchips inserted into their hands which allow them to use the photo copier, open doors, and even pay for lunch, all with the simple wave of a hand. The microchips, called RFID (radio-frequency identification) are the size of a grain of rice. These tiny chips store personal security information which can be transmitted over short distances to special receivers. Glenn Greenwald's Plan to Poke, Prod, and Piss Off the Powerful. "I think it’s important to understand, when we talk about what’s legal, is the extent to which our institutions that determine legality have been completely co-opted, either by the other branches of government, or just by the post 9/11 fearmongering and hysteria that have subsumed federal judges as much as they have everybody else - if not more so." AK Juneau's tobacco tax triples. Combined with state and federal excise taxes, the average price for one pack of cigarettes will increase to $10.50. The Assembly also implemented a new tax on e-cigarettes. CA Lodi Smoking Outside. The fact is that cigarette smoking is legal and others are free to do it. "The current lack of empirical data on outdoor tobacco smoke (OTS) levels impedes OTS exposure and risk assessments." In other words, CARB made assumptions and estimates based on other studies without real-world validation. CT Proposed Bill No. 6285. An Act concerning smoking in motor vehicles. Statement of Purpose: To protect children from secondhand smoke. New Orleans Proposal. Proposal would exempt patrons from fines. The amendment would put the entire onus of enforcing the ban on bartenders and others working at the establishments, who Williams said are in the best position to control what is happening in their businesses. "Bartenders are going to be the best and most reliable enforcement," Williams said. NY Ban Damage. As an act of peaceful resistance and in an effort to stand up for and reclaim what is ours, Sunset Park Brooklyn, El Grito de Sunset Park denounces the abuse and neglect that destroys the community and it's residents. Watch the videos: Black Man Arrested & Assaulted by NYPD For Throwing Away Cigarette on Street. |
 Smokers Against Discrimination |
