Tag Archives: freedom

Domestic Spy

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That’s what Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas seems to see as his primary job: spying on his employees, prying into their personal medical status.

The US Department of Homeland Security is seeking proposals for a new system that will allow it to track the biometric data of its workers in order to monitor their physical and mental well-being.

Government tracking of Americans’ biometric data. This is the Biden-Harris Surveillance State—rest assured that if this is allowed to go forward, it will spread rapidly to all the rest of Government—complementing the administration’s already radically expanded and expanding (see their reconciliation bill and it’s a priori amendment, their “infrastructure” bill) Administrative State.

Here’s a thought, admittedly inconceivable to Progressive-Democrats, but plainly obvious to us average Americans: improve the physical and mental well-being of those workers—and the rest of the folks involved in law enforcement in any milieu—by giving those workers the tools and support they need actually to enforce our laws. Stop denigrating them, stop defunding them, stop telling them to enforce only some laws, and those only partially.

The cognitive dissonance that results from being told to do a job, but don’t do it, from doing a job and then being castigated for doing it, can be devastating. And no biometric data collection, no snooping into personal medical situations, is needed for that.

Paranoia Strikes Deep

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President Joe Biden’s (D) Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, is at it again.

She’s defending the plan, buried in the Progressive-Democrats’ reconciliation bill, to snoop into all of our deposit accounts to collect data on each of our transactions of $600 or more. In a CBS News interview, cited by Fox Business, Yellen had this:

…there are “individuals” the IRS does not receive enough information about.
“Look, the big picture is that we have a tax gap that over the next decade is estimated at $7 trillion,” she continued. “Namely, a shortfall in the amount that the IRS is collecting due to a failure of individuals to report the income that they have earned.”

And,

But high-income individuals with opaque sources of income that are not reported to the IRS, there’s a lot of tax fraud and cheating that’s going on….

If she’s not getting enough information on what folks have earned, what information is she using to support her allegation of underreporting? She doesn’t say.

Her “tax gap” is estimated at $7 trillion. Estimated by whom? She doesn’t say.

[A] lot of tax fraud and cheating that’s going on. Based on what evidence does she make this claim of this magnitude of cheating and fraud? She doesn’t say.

Most likely, there is a measure, even a significant measure, of tax cheating and fraud. But when it comes to individuals—including members of the Left’s hated rich and successful—speculation must give way to facts and specific achievements. Beyond that, these allegations of tax cheating and fraud are allegations of crimes, and to investigate these, including snooping into personal or business financial matters, specific probable cause must be demonstrated before a judge and warrants must issue before the snooping can be done.

Absent hard data that we all can see, this preemptive snooping that Progressive-Democrats want to do is simply borne of paranoia.

Into their hearts it has creeped.

Preemptive Surrender

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This time it’s Senator Roger Marshall (R, KS) who’s announcing his surrender, even before the fight is joined.

Not that fight, the fight to block the President Joe Biden’s (D) and his syndicate’s, the Progressive-Democratic Party, spend- and tax-a-thon reconciliation bill that will take us far down the road to intrusive Big Government and toward outright socialism.

No, Marshall is surrendering before the fight is even begun that will be necessary to undo Party’s destructive policies in one and three years.

The fight in Washington, DC, right now is this: do we want big government socialism or do we want economic freedom? That’s what really this fight is all about. Once they start these programs, they’ll never end.

Once they start these programs, they’ll never end. Not of necessity. They don’t end, they continue, only as long as politicians—any collection of them, Republican Party politicians, for instance—are too timid, too outright chicken, to put an end to those programs when they return to power.

After all, once a different set of politicians are in power, they’ll have the votes, by definition, to undo the Progressive-Democrats’ policies, root and branch. That’ll be hard to do, certainly. But “hard” means “possible.” Look it up.

Worried about losing their seats after taking such supposedly drastic action, such “tough votes?” A potful of Progressive-Democrats voted up Obamacare and then got tossed at the next election. We still have Obamacare.

All those newly elected politicians—Republicans, say—would lack is the will to act. The courage then of the words now that they’re bleating. And a drastic change in their underlying mindset. To stop playing, to coin a term, the victim.

That’s Marshall’s preemptive surrender. His and his ilk’s acceptance in advance of their victimhood. That and his—and his fellows’—preference for the perks and prestige of their office over their integrity.

Anti-Business Anti-Freedom Left Strikes Again

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Their latest assault comes from left-of-the-west-coast Los Angeles.

The city of Los Angeles will begin requiring most people to provide proof of full COVID-19 vaccination before entering a wide variety of indoor businesses including salons, restaurants, gyms, museums, and theaters.

Alternatively, those with medical conditions that do not allow them to be vaccinated, or those with sincerely held religious beliefs that prevent them from being vaccinated, will be allowed to enter on presentment of a negative Wuhan Virus test done within the prior 72 hours (whose definition of “sincerely held?”). Never mind that the cost of such a test starts at $20 and that the median cost is $127. And you thought the costs at the theater concession counter were high. How’s that blowout or updo at the salon sound now? The testing requirement looks like it’s going to swamp that dinner out you thought you were going to enjoy with the family.

Notice, too, that many—most?—of the businesses in these categories are small businesses, mom-and-pop businesses, low margin businesses.

This isn’t only an assault on American businesses and American business owners, though: it’s also an assault on Americans qua Americans.

It’s a demand that we citizens give up our medical privacy and proclaim to the world what our medical status is, using only the Wuhan Virus situation—which is on the wane—as an initial step to expose all of our medical privacy.

It’s more than that, even. This vaccine mandate, and others like it, are a demand that we citizens give up an essential liberty—a liberty over which we’ve already fought one civil war—our control over our own bodies. It’s an essential liberty that the Left and its Progressive-Democratic Party are trying to take away from all of us this time, not just a minority which they held and hold in contempt.

“Threats of Violence”

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Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, under [last week’s Senate hearing’s] questioning from [Senator Josh, (R, MO)] Hawley, said the memo is only about violence and threats of violence, and it’s the role of the FBI address those threats.

And

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a separate hearing that the Justice Department does not see parents as a threat and that the attorney general’s memo is only focused on threats and intimidation.

The FBI’s claimed responsibility in this context is to

help protect you, your children, your communities, and your businesses from the most dangerous threats facing our nation—from international and domestic terrorists….

To help. Help whom? State and local police forces, acting within a State’s police powers, their authority to enforce law, are fully capable of handling “threats and intimidation;” they might need help only against domestic terrorism.

To help. Emphasis on “help.” The FBI’s claimed responsibility also is to help State and local law enforcement agencies deal with violence, not to do for the State and locals, or dictate to them, or to usurp their responsibilities.

But, if we can take Clarke’s and Monaco’s claims at face value, the only ones talking about domestic terrorism or domestic terrorists are the worthies of the National School Boards Association. Specifically, neither DoJ nor the FBI are talking about domestic terrorism, either in the Garland Memo or in those Senate hearing testimonies. Thus, there is no reason, by Garland’s own memo or those testimonies, for the FBI’s presence in these matters: with no domestic terrorism involved, there’s nothing for which the FBI need assist State and local law enforcement.

AG Merrick Garland’s memo is reprehensible, and dangerous to liberty, not because it focuses on threats of violence (which is bad enough FBI interference)—stipulate, arguendo, that that insistence is accurate—but because it exists.

Garland’s memo is reprehensible and dangerous to liberty because it is a naked attempt to usurp those States’ police powers and law enforcement capacities and arrogate them to the Federal government’s national police.