Gerry Mander (D)

WHAT THIS GUMMINT DOES           Politicians are redrawing district lines and this is a problem

The process of redrawing electoral district lines to give a political party an advantage in elections. Gerrymandering has become a big problem in states like Maryland where some neighborhoods have wound up split into as many as four different congressional districts. The paint-by-numbers congressional map could soon get a facelift due to some important court cases. Gerrymandering in Crofton Her neighbors in Anne Arundel County have had a hard time petitioning lawmakers on important issues like hospital and school funding, and in many cases the districts become so confusing that people do not know who their representatives are. Jennifer Bevan-Dangel has lived in the same house in Crofton, MD for 10 years, but in 2012 local officials redrew congressional district lines and split her community in half. "We have lived in two different congressional districts just by staying in the exact same house," Bevan-Dangel said. That line change is called gerrymandering, and it can cause a lot of problems in places like Crofton. Those wonky district lines can cause big problems in communities that find themselves divided up among multiple congressional districts. Bevan-Dangel said her neighbors in Anne Arundel County have had a hard time petitioning lawmakers on important issues like hospital and school funding, and in many cases the districts become so confusing that people do not know who their representatives are. <snip> Taking gerrymandering to court The "paint by numbers" congressional maps could be reigned in soon thanks to a slew of court cases challenging gerrymandering practices. One lawsuit headed to the U.S. federal district court of appeals in Maryland argues the state's Democratic-leaning districts violate Republican's first amendment rights. And the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a similar case out of Wisconsin where Democrats hope to prove gerrymandering is leading to a significant amount of wasted votes, violating their constitutional rights. Francois says the court will have to determine if there is a point at which officials gerrymander so blatantly "to the extent that it becomes almost anti-democratic." He added that until the court reaches a verdict on that case, other gerrymandering cases are in limbo. <snip> Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) and former Gov. Martin O'Malley (D-MD) have both said publicly that they would like to see independent redistricting commissions formed to examine the gerrymandering in Maryland. Hogan proposed legislation last year to create a panel, but Democrats in the state legislature have called for national or redistricting reform instead. [FULL] I live across  the street from people  represented by Maryland's only Republican?; Rep. Andy Harris (who dismissed President Trump’s proposed federal budget and backed the congressional investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia).   I get Rep. Anthony G Brown (who tweeted: "Skipping Inauguration. @RepJohnLewis a civil rights hero). So, you might say that I am disenfranchised.

The FRONTLINE Interview

WHAT THIS GUMMINT DOES      The FRONTLINE Interview: William Binney – United States of Secrets

(VIDEO) So when you say that you had gone down to get targeted sites, it was the Yemen safe house that was the renowned Al Qaeda center for telephone? That was in the list of the targets, yeah. ... We actually had the worldwide network. That was simply one node in that network. So it was a key node, but it was still just one node. And we had all of them, and we were targeting them all as a group, for this deployment and all the access that we already had. And your contention is that if Hayden had allowed it to go through, we would have known about 9/11? Oh, absolutely, yeah. The most unreliable factor in this was the human beings. They were the most creative, but they were also the most unreliable, especially in terms of the massive amounts of data. If you have something buried in a massive amount of data, humans have to wade through it. They make pulls based on words or other kinds of combinations, and then they get a whole host of information out, and then they have to wait. <...> You worked in the NSA for quite a few years. You were an important person there, pushing them into the modern age. You look back at the NSA now, and what do you think? I think the place needs a total lobotomy. I think they need to scrap it and start again, get rid of those people who are in it, because they were a part of this process and agreed to it. Take the workforce, take them and move them to someplace else, or get rid of the management, move them somewhere else, put them in isolation away from everything so they can't infect that process, and reconstruct the whole business. They need to stop doing this kind of illegal activity and focus in on really the meaningful jobs of foreign intelligence that they were charged to do. ... What a lot of people in the government will say is that you don't understand; we're still at war. Remember we lost 3,000 people on 9/11. This is a very important program. It has saved thousands of lives, as Cheney said at one point. There are multiple plots that have been stopped because of this program. You've got to be very careful about what you wish for, because if you do, you might have another attack, and you might have blood on your hands. What is your reaction to this question about the effectiveness of what all this has been? First of all, they like to lump it in as one program and say you can't cancel the program. That's false to begin with. It's multiple programs. The one program that dealt with domestic spying was called Stellar Wind. They had the other foreign ones; you mentioned the names. There were other names that were listed in the PRISM program that was dealing with foreign intelligence. There were a whole bunch of those programs, not just one. So the point is you stop the intelligence, the domestic intelligence program, period. U.S.-to-U.S. communications are not a part of it. Eliminate them. They're irrelevant to anything that is going on. All the terrorists would have been caught by the process that we put in place for ThinThread, which was looking and focusing in on the groups of individuals that we already had identified and anybody in close proximity to them in the social graph, plus anybody -- the other simple rules like anybody that was looking at jihadi advocating sites over and over again would imply that they might be becoming radicalized, so you would put them into that zone of suspicion, too. That would get them all, and you didn't have to do the collection of all this other data that requires all that storage, transport of information to the storage, maintenance of it, interrogation programs, all of that added expense that they are incurring as a part of it over the last 10 years. You wouldn't have any of that, and you would still -- you would actually reduce the problem and focus it down for the analysts on meaningful information, and they would actually succeed, instead of failing like they're doing now, because they're taking in too much data and making themselves dysfunctional by that. ... Marc Miller sent me this 3 year old Frontline piece a few weeks ago - without comment. After thinking about what to make of it, I eventually ended up here. During the six months following the Kennedy assassination, Ruby repeatedly asked, orally and in writing, to speak to the members of the Warren Commission. The commission initially showed no interest. Only after Ruby's sister Eileen wrote letters to the commission (and her letters became public) did the Warren Commission agree to talk to Ruby. In June 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, and other commission members went to Dallas to see Ruby. Ruby asked Warren several times to take him to Washington D.C., saying "my life is in danger here" and that he wanted an opportunity to make additional statements. He added: "I want to tell the truth, and I can't tell it here." Warren told Ruby that he would be unable to comply, because many legal barriers would need to be broken and public interest in the situation would be too heavy. Warren also told Ruby that the commission would have no way of protecting him, since it had no police powers. Ruby said he wanted to convince President Lyndon Johnson that he was not part of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy. FWIW

Obama strikes. Again.

WHAT THIS GUMMINT DOES

Obama Using Federal Funds to Push Urban Poor into Middle-Class Suburbs cuzzin ricky In the late 60's HUD did something similar in D.C.  There was a tony little apartment building on Wisconsin Ave, amidst embassies,  and just south of the very chic Chevy Chase.  The agency decided to force ( I forget how; maybe the building was in financial straights) owners to turn it into welfare haven.  Lot of dissent, but HUD brought the  hammer down and, lickety-split, the building was home to some very poor Black families.  Right out of the box they screamed bloody murder because [Duh] the only supermarket in the area was an upscale, "International"  Safeway that catered to the embassy crowd, selling caviar, whole pigs, and Filet mignon.  At very high prices.  The same problem existed with other shops.  I remember that after a spate of news stories in the Washington Post and Washington Star, it all just went away. Probably because the local muck-a-mucks grew tired, and slapped a lid on the whole affair. So, there's that example.

Another fast food chain looking at robots

Day of the Dolphin

WHAT THIS GUMMINT DOES           TEXT

Horry clap ... I'm certain  I used to date this girl.  Saw Day of the Dolphin with her at the Timonium Drive-in

Monkey Swines

Law enforcement took more stuff from people than burglars did last year Last year, according to the Institute for Justice, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion. Here's an interesting factoid about contemporary policing: In 2014, for the first time ever, law enforcement officers took more property from American citizens than burglars did. Martin Armstrong pointed this out at his blog, Armstrong Economics, last week. Officers can take cash and property from people without convicting or even charging them with a crime — yes, really! — through the highly controversial practice known as civil asset forfeiture. Last year, according to the Institute for Justice, the Treasury and Justice departments deposited more than $5 billion into their respective asset forfeiture funds. That same year, the FBI reports that burglary losses topped out at $3.5 billion. Armstrong claims that "the police are now taking more assets than the criminals," but this isn't exactly right: The FBI also tracks property losses from larceny and theft, in addition to plain ol' burglary. If you add up all the property stolen in 2014, from burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and other means, you arrive at roughly $12.3 billion, according to the FBI. That's more than double the federal asset forfeiture haul. "Every country has the government it deserves" - Joseph de Maistre

Government Cracks

When Democrats are in charge

Government Cracks Down on Little Free Libraries Naturally, the government has to ruin everything, including Little Free Libraries. You may have seen one of these little bird house turned mini-libraries in your neighborhood. They’re a lovely idea. Simple, no fuss, and quite fun. Donate a book, borrow a book. Nothing to sign, no due date, no late fees, just common courtesy. Conor Freidersdorf of The Atlantic explored the ridiculous trend of “shutting down” unregulated community book sharing. In Kansas, residents were told to remove the library at peril of fine: The Leawood City Council said it had received a couple of complaints about Spencer Collins’ Little Free Library. They dubbed it an “illegal detached structure” and told the Collins’ they would face a fine if they did not remove the Little Free Library from their yard by June 19. Evidently, Los Angeles and Shreveport, Louisiana are hotbeds of illicit literary lending activity. YAWN Like, we're in the shower line at Auschwitz when someone mentions he heard the SS cadre are adding 100 new guards.  Like that. At some point you're just numbed out.

The rising cost of free stuff

WHAT GUMMINT DOES

FREE STUFF

“

What's behind the huge price jump for some generic drugs? They cited the example of the asthma drug albuterol sulfate. The average cost for a bottle of 100 pills was $11 last October, the pair said. The average charge by this April was up to $434. The antibiotic doxycycline hyclate cost $20 last October for a bottle of 500 tablets, the congressmen observed. By April, the price was $1,849. "Most generics are increasing in price by an average 10% a year," said Bryan Birch, chief executive of Truveris, a New York company that monitors prescription drug costs. "But we've seen some popular drugs increase by more than 650% in the last year." He cited simvastatin, the generic equivalent of cholesterol drug Zocor, and clomipramine hydrochloride, the generic version of antidepressant Anafranil. Prices for each rose more than 650% from June 2013 to this June, Birch said. He said consumers often are unaware of such huge price hikes because they face only a copay when they buy meds at a drugstore. The skyrocketing costs are borne primarily by insurance companies, which subsequently raise people's premiums to accommodate the greater expenses, Birch said. "Someone ends up paying the bill," he said. "Ultimately, it's consumers." "There is much to be said for trying to improve some disadvantaged people's lot. There is nothing to be said for trying to create heaven on earth." -- Margaret Thatcher

”

Why don't fat girls date a lot?

WHAT GUMMINT DOES

“ From the People Who Want To Control Global Warm, erm, Cooli , erm Climate Change —and who did enact Obamacare ”

US FORREST SERVICE GOES Postal, erm EPAish

WHAT GUMMINT DOES

“ THE U.S. FOREST SERVICE WANTS TO FINE YOU $1,000 FOR TAKING PICTURES IN THE FOREST UPDATE: After the outcry, the Forest Service backs off. Nice photo. That'll be $1,000, please. This week's most profoundly wrongheaded display of nonviolent press infringement comes from an unlikely source: The U.S. Forest Service. New rules being finalized in November state that—across this country's gloriously beautiful, endlessly photogenic, 36 million acres of designated wilderness area administered by the USFS—members of the press who happen upon it will need permits to photograph or shoot video. [Full] What I see here is, that under Obama, every government dept. is acting like it's a regulatory commission able to make shit up.  The key question today is:  Does the U.S. Forest Service have a Swat Team? Ahem ”

FDA Gone Wild

WHAT THIS GUMMINT DOES          TEXT FDA moves to ban cheese aging on wooden boards   We warned at the time that the ill-conceived Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2011 would tend to choke off many non-industrial food sources. Now the FDA, interpreting FSMA as part of its regulatory process, is moving to ban the aging of cheese on wooden boards, a process that dates back thousands of years and has been practiced safely by many of the world’s finest cheese makers. The agency apparently intends to apply the same standard to imported cheese as well, which means that in addition to devastating artisanal cheese producers in this country, the move would cut off Americans’ access to large numbers of classic European cheeses, many of which, like Comte and Reblochon, “are required to be aged on wood by their standard of identity.” [Jeanne Carpenter, Cheese Underground (Wisconsin); Matt Spiegler, Cheese Notes] by WALTER OLSON on JUNE 9, 2014 Our coverage of FSMA, including its many-sided impact on traditional and artisanal farm and food practice, is here.  And remember boys and girls, the FDA have their own Swat Team.  Several years ago I made a somewhat tortured argument that all laws carry with them, ulimately, the death penalty.  Ahem.

Mary Landrieu is asking for only 7.9 days' worth of the American economy ...

WHAT GUMMINT DOES          Pretty soon we're talking serious money - Dirksen Not enough colors though “ This is too true to be funny. The next time you hear a politician use the Word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about Whether you want the 'politicians' spending YOUR tax money. A billion is a difficult number to comprehend, But one advertising agency did a good job of Putting that figure into some perspective in One of it's releases. A. A billion seconds ago it was 1959. B. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. C. A billion hours ago our ancestors were Living in the Stone Age. D. A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet. E. A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, At the rate our government Is spending it. While this thought is still fresh in our brain.... let's take a look at ... New Orleans ... It's amazing what you can learn with some simple division. Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D) Is presently asking Congress for 250 BILLION DOLLARS To rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number... What does it mean? A. Well .. If you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, and child) You each get $516,528. B. Or... If you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787. C. Or... If you are a family of four... Your family gets $2,066,012. Washington , D. C HELLO! Are all your calculators broken?? Building Permit Tax CDL License Tax Cigarette Tax Corporate Income Tax Dog License Tax Federal Income Tax (Fed) Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA) Fishing License Tax Food License Tax Fuel Permit Tax Gasoline Tax Hunting License Tax Inheritance Tax Inventory Tax IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax) IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax) Liquor Tax Luxury Tax Marriage License Tax Medicare Tax Property Tax Real Estate Tax Service charge Taxes Social Security Tax Road Usage Tax (Truckers) Sales Taxes Recreational Vehicle Tax School Tax State Income Tax State Unemployment Tax (SUTA) Telephone Federal Excise Tax Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax Telephone State and Local Tax Telephone Usage Charge Tax Utility Tax Vehicle License Registration Tax Vehicle Sales Tax Watercraft Registration Tax Well Permit Tax Workers Compensation Tax (And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes) STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago.... And our nation was the most prosperous in the world. We had absolutely no national debt... We had the largest middle class in the world... And Mom stayed home to raise the kids. What happened? Can you spell 'politicians'! And I still have to Press '1' For English. I hope this goes around the U S A At least 100 times What the heck happened?? I'm wary of facts presented in those harlequin colored, gigantic sized font e-mail blasts we all get, because it's likely that at least some of the content is misstatement, or outright falsehood.  This one (from Metzger- who was just a relay and not the designer) was intriguing enough to throw it against the Google wall and see what stuck.  I got only as far as this from  Daily Kos.  A Conservative Email, And A Polite Rebuttal.  Of all the charges made I expected the numbers would be picked apart, probably using SNOPES, a favorite agitproppist tool.  But no.  Here is the crux of the response. Yes, a billion seems like a very large number, especially as presented in the email below. Let's not forget, however, that the U.S. economy generates 11.5 trillion dollars in output every year - that's practically $365,000 every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every year. By the method below of reckoning how much a billion is, Mary Landrieu is asking for only 7.9 days' worth of the American economy to rebuild one of its formerly premier cities. 7.9 days is not much! That's a vacation to a lot of people. The rest of his screed travels the same state road (to serfdom, ahem).  - There was no Social Security.  If you had no money when you got too old to work, you lived off of your family, or you starved. - There was no Medicare.  If you got sick and couldn't afford to pay the doctor, you died before your time. - There was no Medicaid.  If you were poor and sick and couldn't afford to pay the doctor, you died. - There were no governmental administrations mandating workplace safety; if you got injured on the job, and hundreds of thousands did every year, tough luck - your employer didn't have to take care of you and you couldn't sue them.  They got off scot-free while you starved. A chasm so wide as to be unbridgeable,  I'd say.    ASIDE: It's been brought to public attention several times during, and since Katrina,  that pre-Nanny State hurricanes (like the one in 1915, that similarly devastated New Orleans)  were handled by Louisianan's without a farthing's worth of assistance  from the Federal government.   ”

Why Clive Bundy is a traditional American hero.

“ Why Clive Bundy Is Not Wrong- From A Fellow Rancher Flashback: Sen. Reid Breaks Ground for Nevada Solar Farm Near Bundy Ranch          $$$ “ In the early 90s, the BLM went on a frenzy and drastically cut almost every rancher’s permit because of this desert tortoise issue, even though all of us ranchers knew that cow and desert tortoise had co-existed for a hundred+ years. As an example, a family friend had his permit cut by 90%. For those of you who are non ranchers, that would be equated to getting your paycheck cut 90%. ” There have been a lot of people criticizing Clive Bundy because he did not pay his grazing fees for 20 years. The public (are) also probably wondering why so many other cowboys are supporting Mr. Bundy even though they paid their fees and Clive did not. What you people probably do not realize is that on every rancher’s grazing permit it says the following: “You are authorized to make grazing use of the lands, under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management and covered by this grazing permit, upon your acceptance of the terms and conditions of this grazing permit and payment of grazing fees when due.” The “mandatory” terms and conditions go on to list the allotment, the number and kind of livestock to be grazed, when the permit begins and ends, the number of active or suspended AUMs (animal units per month), etc. The terms and conditions also list specific requirements such as where salt or mineral supplements can be located, maximum allowable use of forage levels (40% of annual growth), etc., and include a lot more stringent policies that must be adhered to. Every rancher must sign this “contract” agreeing to abide by the TERMS AND CONDITIONS before he or she can make payment. Had Clive signed on the dotted line, he would have, in essence, signed his very livelihood away. And so Mr. Bundy took a stand, not only for himself, but for all of us.  In the early 90s, the BLM went on a frenzy and drastically cut almost every rancher’s permit because of this desert tortoise issue, even though all of us ranchers knew that cow and desert tortoise had co-existed for a hundred+ years. As an example, a family friend had his permit cut by 90%. For those of you who are non ranchers, that would be equated to getting your paycheck cut 90%. In 1976 there were approximately 52 ranching permittees in this area of Nevada. Presently, there are 3. Most of these people lost their livelihoods because of the actions of the BLM. Clive Bundy was one of these people who received extremely unfair and unreasonable TERMS AND CONDITIONS. Keep in mind that Mr. Bundy was required to sign this contract before he was allowed to pay. Had Clive signed on the dotted line, he would have, in essence, signed his very livelihood away. And so Mr. Bundy took a stand, not only for himself, but for all of us. He refused to be destroyed by a tyrannical federal entity and to have his American liberties and freedoms taken away. Also keep in mind that all ranchers financially paid dearly for the forage rights those permits allow – - not rights to the land, but rights to use the forage that grows on that land. Many of these AUMS are water based, meaning that the rancher also has a vested right (state owned, not federal) to the waters that adjoin the lands and allow the livestock to drink. These water rights were also purchased at a great price. If a rancher cannot show beneficial use of the water (he must have the appropriate number of livestock that drinks and uses that water), then he loses that water right. Usually water rights and forage rights go hand in hand. Contrary to what the BLM is telling you, they NEVER compensate a rancher for the AUMs they take away. Most times, they tell ranchers that their AUMS are “suspended,” but not removed. Unfortunately, my family has thousands of “suspended” AUMs that will probably never be returned. And so, even though these ranchers throughout the course of a hundred years invested thousands(and perhaps millions) of dollars and sacrificed along the way to obtain these rights through purchase from others, at a whim the government can take everything away with the stroke of a pen. This is the very thing that Clive Bundy single-handedly took a stand against. Thank you, Clive, from a rancher who considers you a hero. Thanks to Sir H the Comet for finding and sending this.  It will only be for lack of  exposure to American history that anyone, knowing these facts, save for communistas, will not— at the very least—understand  Clive Bundy's  position.  Most will see him as an exemplar  of what we used to be.  The Don't Tread on Me we. Which, come to think of it, means even the communistas will understand that too.  And hate him for it. Aside- my reference to Harry Reid atop is because, per usual, Harry Reid is backing the PRC (Chinese) in developing a solar farm techno facility on the grazing land, and I will bet big time that  the Reid Crime Family stand to make big wampum from this scheme.   Did I say that Harry Reid is a known, but unindicted crook? ”

Sen. Feinscam

“ The Two Faces of Elected Democrats  ... it's probably not a good idea to begin by asserting that virtually all elected Democrats are liars. But what the hell. Mr. Ron Metzger Which brings to mind— I naively thought Congress wanted to get rid of the bad apples. Boy, was I wrong. I thought we were doing a good thing here, but it turned out Congress didn't agree with that. They were angry Francis 'Bud' Mullen former FBI assistant director .While prosecutors won 19 Abscam convictions, Congress sought assurances that a similar investigation would never happen again. Then-U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti approved new guidelines in 1981 that governed "sensitive" undercover investigations involving politicians.  [Full] Of the thirty-one targeted officials, one US senator (Harrison A. Williams (D-NJ)) and six members of the US House of Representatives (John Jenrette (D-SC), Richard Kelly (R-FL), Raymond Lederer (D-PA), Michael "Ozzie" Myers (D-PA), Frank Thompson (D-NJ), and John M. Murphy (D-NY)) were convicted of bribery and conspiracy in separate trials in 1981. John Murtha (D-PA) was one of the Congressmen videotaped[16] in an encounter with undercover FBI operatives.[17] Although never indicted or prosecuted, he was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the scandal.[18] .... Murtha was given immunity and testified against his colleagues, and remained in Congress Until fairly recently, most discussions of Abscam misdirected his party affiliation with (Harrison A. Williams (R-NJ)   ”

The Gummint Standard

The to-date cost of the glitchy Obamacare website has topped $1 billion (as of Dec. 3, 2013 4:30pm) “ U.S. Department of Health and Human Services #GetCovered: www.HealthCare.gov I am not making this up.  This from Feb 22nd.  I reckon Obamacare creative are just overworked.   Marc Miller   ”

Juanita & the Kids

WHAT GUMMINT DOES          But Wait! Is it entirely useless? yes Metzger