U.S.

IRS seizes hundreds of perfectly legal bank accounts, refuses to give money back

The Internal Revenue Service has been seizing bank accounts belonging to small businesses and individuals who regularly made deposits of less than $10,000, but broke no laws. And the government is refusing to return all the money taken. The practice ‒ called civil asset forfeiture ‒ allows IRS agents to seize property they suspect of being tied to a crime, even if no charges are filed, and their agency is allowed to keep a share of whatever is forfeited, the New York Times reported.

NGO Envisages Global One Child Policy, Pandemics to Solve Overpopulation

The National Academy of Sciences has published a shocking report which envisages a Chinese-style global one child policy as the only means of reversing climate change and reducing global population to a “sustainable” number of 1-2 billion people. The white paper, entitled Human population reduction is not a quick fix for environmental problems and authored by the University of Adelaide’s Corey Bradshaw and Barry Brook, even entertains the impact of world wars and global pandemics that wipe out 6 billion people as potential methods of combating the threat posed to the environment by overpopulation. Crucially, the paper is edited by Stanford University’s Paul R.

15 Signs That We Live During A Time Of Rampant Government Paranoia

How does it feel to live under a government that is getting even more paranoid with each passing day? Yes, we live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, but that is no excuse for how ultra-paranoid the federal government has become. Today, every single one of us is viewed as a “potential threat” by the government.

Reporter: A Government Agency Bugged My Computer

A former CBS News reporter who quit the network over claims it kills stories that put President Obama in a bad light says she was spied on by a “government-related entity” that planted classified documents on her computer. In her new memoir, Sharyl Attkisson says a source who arranged to have her laptop checked for spyware in 2013 was “shocked” and “flabbergasted” at what the analysis revealed. “This is outrageous.

As Seattle school mourns, teacher hailed as hero

As a Seattle community tries to make sense of a deadly high school shooting and four students continue recovering in hospitals, community members took some solace in a first-year social studies teacher who may have minimized the bloodshed. After a student opened fire with a .40-caliber handgun in the cafeteria of Marysville-Pilchuck High School on Friday, Megan Silberberger confronted the shooter, according to witnesses and the school union’s president.

How Asset Forfeiture Allows Cops to Steal from Citizens

It probably seemed like a bright idea at the time: Let the police seize the ill-gotten gains of alleged drug dealers and other suspected criminals and sell it, using the proceeds to buy much-needed crime-fighting gear. Unfortunately, the process—civil asset forfeiture—did not require convicting anybody of a crime.

Vote Fraud? Video Shows Man Stuffing Hundreds of Ballots Into Ballot Box

Defenders of lax election laws say it rarely happens — but apparently it’s happening again. In what critics describe as a shocking example of likely vote fraud, a surveillance video (see below) from a Maricopa County, Arizona, polling place shows a man stuffing hundreds of ballots into a ballot box. The act was observed by A.

Special report: America’s perpetual state of emergency

The United States is in a perpetual state of national emergency. Thirty separate emergencies, in fact. An emergency declared by President Jimmy Carter on the 10th day of the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979 remains in effect almost 35 years later.

Tennessee Woman Goes to Jail for Not Mowing Lawn

If you are a resident of Lenoir City, Tennessee, you might want to remember to mow your lawn — otherwise, you will be spending the night in jail. Karen Holloway just spent six hours in a jail cell for failing to maintain her yard in accordance with the standards set by the city. The saga began last summer, when Holloway was sent a citation for her overgrown grass and shrubbery.

Land of the Free – 1 in 3 Americans Are on File with the FBI in the U.S. Police State

The sickening transformation of these United States into an authoritarian police state with an incarceration rate that would make Joseph Stalin blush, has been a key theme of my writing since well before the launch of Liberty Blitzkrieg. One of the posts that shocked and disturbed readers most, was published a little over a year ago titled: American Police Make an Arrest Every 2 Seconds in 2012.

The Government Wants To Censor Social Media By Studying ‘Social Pollution’ On Twitter

Months after the Federal Communications Commission was forced to withdraw a newsroom study many viewed as an attempt to censor the media, the government is making a second attempt by studying “social pollution” on Twitter, and engaging in a free-speech analysis one FCC commissioner described as “straight out of a George Orwell novel.” The National Science Foundation — the federal agency charged with promoting science, advancing welfare and securing national defense — is funding said study by researchers at Indiana University, who will mine Twitter data and categorize users’ politically related tweets into convenient government definitions of “social pollution,” “social epidemics” and “misinformation.” Two of those same researchers, Filippo Menczer and Alessandro Flammini, co-authored a paper in 2012 examining social media use during the 2010 midterm election, which focused on “right-leaning Twitter users” who exhibited “greater levels of political activity, a more tightly interconnected social structure, and a communication network topology that facilitates the rapid and broad dissemination of political information.

Politico Poll: 64 Percent Believe America Is ‘Out of Control’

A devastating new Politico poll reveals voters believe America has spun off its axis and is “out of control.” “An overwhelming majority of voters in the most competitive 2014 elections say it feels as if events in the United States are ‘out of control’ and expressed mounting alarm about terrorism, anxiety about Ebola and harsh skepticism of both political parties only three weeks before the Nov. 4 midterms,” reports Politico.

Billy Graham: America is Just as Wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah Ever Were

Reverend Billy Graham, arguably the most well-known and respected evangelical preacher of the last 50 years, said in a recently published commentary that America was “founded by men who believed in prayer” and that prayer can turn “the tide of history,” adding that while “America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah” and deserves “the judgment of God,” this judgment can be lessened through prayer. “Even though America is just as wicked as Sodom and Gomorrah ever were, and as deserving of the judgment of God, God would spare us if we were earnestly praying, with hearts that had been cleansed and washed by the blood of Christ,” said Rev. Graham in his commentary for Decision magazine, published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.

California Poverty Rate: 23.4 Percent

California continues to have – by far – the nation’s highest level of poverty under an alternative method devised by the Census Bureau that takes into account both broader measures of income and the cost of living. Nearly a quarter of the state’s 38 million residents (8.9 million) live in poverty, a new Census Bureau report says, a level virtually unchanged since the agency first began reporting on the method’s effects.

If The Oil Plunge Continues, ‘Now May Be A Time To Panic’ For US Shale Companies

Over the past 5 years, the shale industry, fabricated or real reserves notwithstanding, has been a significant boon to the US economy for four main reasons: it has been the target of billions in fixed investment and CapEx spending, it has resulted in tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, its output has been a major tailwind for the US trade deficit, and has generally been a significant contributor to GDP (not to mention various Buffett-controlled or otherwise railway corporations). And perhaps, most importantly, it has become a huge buffer to the price of global oil, as the cost curve of US shale is horizontal, with a massive 10,000 kbls/day available within pennies of $85/bl.

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