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Authored by John Whitehead via The Rurtherford Institute,

“They came again this morning at about 8:00 o’clock. A large cargo-type helicopter flew low over the cabin, shaking it on its very foundations. It shook all of us inside, too. I feel frightened … I see how helpless and tormented I am becoming with disgust and disillusionment with the government which has turned this beautiful country into a police state … I feel like I am in the middle of a war zone.”

– Journal entry from a California resident describing the government’s aerial searches for marijuana plants

Backyard gardeners, beware: tomato plants have become collateral damage in the government’s war on drugs, especially marijuana.

In fact, merely growing a vegetable garden on your own property, or in a greenhouse on your property, or shopping at a gardening store for gardening supplies—incredibly enough—could set you up for a drug raid sanctioned by the courts.

It’s happened before.

After shopping for hydroponic tomatoes at their local gardening store, a Kansas family found themselves subjected to a SWAT team raid as part of a multi-state, annual campaign dubbed “Operation Constant Gardener,” in which police collected the license plates of hundreds of customers at the gardening store and then investigated them for possible marijuana possession.

By “investigated,” I mean that police searched through the family’s trash. (You can thank the Supreme Court and their 1978 ruling in California v. Greenwood for allowing police to invade your trash can.) Finding “wet glob vegetation” in the garbage, the cops somehow managed to convince themselves—and a judge—that it was marijuana.

In fact, it was loose-leaf tea, but those pesky details don’t usually bother the cops when they’re conducting field tests.

Indeed, field tests routinely read positive for illegal drugs even when no drugs are present. According to investigative journalist Radley Balko, “it’s almost as if these tests come up positive whenever the police need them to. A partial list of substances that the tests have mistaken for illegal drugs would include sage, chocolate chip cookies, motor oil, spearmint, soap, tortilla dough, deodorant, billiard’s chalk, patchouli, flour, eucalyptus, breath mints, Jolly Ranchers and vitamins.”

There’s a long list of innocent ingredients that could be mistaken for drugs and get you subjected to a raid, because that’s all it takes—just the barest whiff of a suspicion by police that you might be engaged in criminal activity—to start the ball rolling.

From there, these so-called “investigations” follow the usual script: judge issues a warrant for a SWAT raid based on botched data, cops raid the home and terrorize the family at gunpoint, cops find no drugs, family sues over a violation of their Fourth Amendment rights, and then the courts protect the cops and their botched raid on the basis of qualified immunity.

It happens all the time.

As Balko reports, “Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It’s happened with all five.)”

Surely, you might think, the government has enough on its hands right now—policing a novel coronavirus pandemic, instituting nationwide lockdowns, quelling civil unrests over police brutality—that it doesn’t need to waste time and resources ferreting out pot farmers.

You’d be wrong.

This is a government that excels at make-work projects in which it assigns at-times unnecessary jobs to government agents to keep them busy or employed.

In this case, however, the make-work principle (translation: making work to keep the police state busy at taxpayer expense) is being used to justify sending police and expensive military helicopters likely equipped with sophisticated surveillance and thermal imaging devices on exploratory sorties every summer—again at taxpayer expense—in order to uncover illegal marijuana growing operations.

Often, however, what these air and ground searches end up targeting are backyard gardeners growing tomato plants.

Just recently, in fact, eyewitnesses in Virginia reported low-flying black helicopters buzzing over rural and suburban neighborhoods as part of a multi-agency operation to search for marijuana growers. Oftentimes these joint operations involve local police, state police and the Army National Guard.

One woman reported having her “tomato plants complimented by the 7 cops that pulled up in my yard in unmarked SUVs, after a helicopter hovered over our house for 20 minutes this morning.” Another man reported a similar experience from a few years ago when police “showed up in unmarked SUV’s with guns pulled. Then the cops on the ground argued with the helicopter because the heat signature in the ‘copter didn’t match what was growing.”

Back in 2013, an aerial surveillance mission spotted what police thought might be marijuana plants. Two days later, dozens of city officials, SWAT team, police officers and code compliance employees, and numerous official vehicles including dozens of police cars and several specialized vehicular equipment, including helicopters and unmanned flying drones, descended on The Garden of Eden, a 3.5-acre farm in Arlington, Texas, for a 10-hour raid in search of marijuana that turned up nothing more than tomato, blackberry and okra plants.

These aerial and ground sweeps have become regular occurrences across the country, part of the government’s multi-million dollar Domestic Cannabis Eradication Program. Local cops refer to the annual military maneuvers as “Eradication Day.”

Started in 1979 as a way to fund local efforts to crack down on marijuana growers in California and Hawaii, the Eradication Program went national in 1985, right around the time the Reagan Administration enabled the armed forces to get more involved in the domestic “war on drugs.”

Writing for The Washington Post, Radley Balko describes how these raids started off, with the National Guard, spy planes and helicopters:

The project was called the Campaign Against Marijuana Production, or CAMP… In all, thirteen California counties were invaded by choppers, some of them blaring Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” as they dropped Guardsmen and law enforcement officers armed with automatic weapons, sandviks, and machetes into the fields of California … In CAMP’s first year, the program conducted 524 raids, arrested 128 people, and seized about 65,000 marijuana plants. Operating costs ran at a little over $1.5 million. The next year, 24 more sheriffs signed up for the program, for a total of 37. CAMP conducted 398 raids, seized nearly 160,000 plants, and made 218 arrests at a cost to taxpayers of $2.3 million.

The area’s larger growers had been put out of business (or, probably more accurately, had set up shop somewhere else), so by the start of the second campaign in 1984, CAMP officials were already targeting increasingly smaller growers. By the end of that 1984 campaign, the helicopters had to fly at lower and lower altitudes to spot smaller batches of plants. The noise, wind, and vibration from the choppers could knock out windows, kick up dust clouds, and scare livestock. The officials running the operation made no bones about the paramilitary tactics they were using. They considered the areas they were raiding to be war zones. In the interest of “officer safety,” they gave themselves permission to search any structures relatively close to a marijuana supply, without a warrant. Anyone coming anywhere near a raid operation was subject to detainment, usually at gunpoint.

Right around the same time, in the mid-1980s, the federal government started handing out grants to local police departments to assist with their local boots-on-the-ground “war on drugs.” These grants (through the Byrne Grant program and COPS program, both of which started to be phased out under George W. Bush, only to be re-upped by Barack Obama) could be used to pay for additional police personnel, equipment, training, technical assistance and information systems. However, studies show that while these federal grants did not improve police effectiveness or drug deterrence, they did incentivize SWAT team raids.

But how do you go from a “war on drugs” to SWAT-style raids on vegetable gardens?

Connect the dots, starting with the government’s war on marijuana, the emergence of SWAT teams, the militarization of local police forces through the federal 1033 Program, which allows the Pentagon to transfer “vast amounts of military equipment—machine guns and ammunition, helicopters, night-vision gear, armored cars—to local police departments,” and the transformation of American communities into battlefields: as always, it comes back to the make work principle, which starts with local police finding ways to justify the use of military equipment and federal funding.

Each year, the government spends between $14 and $18 million funding helicopter sweeps and police overtime to help the states track down illegal marijuana plants. These sweeps are even being carried out in states where it’s now legal to grow marijuana.

The sweeps work like this: Local police, working with multiple state agencies including the National Guard, carry out ground and air searches of different sectors. Air spotters flying overhead in helicopters relay their findings to police on the ground, who then carry out a search-and-destroy mission.

Mark my words: the use of police drones will make these kinds of aerial missions even more common.

For the most part, aerial surveillance is legal. As Arthur Holland Michel writes for The Atlantic: “When it comes to law enforcement, police are likewise free to use aerial surveillance without a warrant or special permission. Under current privacy law, these operations are just as legal as policing practices whereby an officer spots unlawful activity while walking or driving through a neighborhood.”

There have been a few notable exceptions.

In 2015, the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that surveillance from a low-flying helicopter conducting an aerial search for marijuana by state police and the national guard was illegal under the U.S. Constitution. The court reasoned that “when low-flying aerial activity leads to more than just observation and actually causes an unreasonable intrusion on the ground—most commonly from an unreasonable amount of wind, dust, broken objects, noise, and sheer panic—then at some point courts are c and require a warrant before law enforcement engages in such activity. The Fourth Amendment and its prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures demands no less.”

In Philip Cobbs’ case, helicopter spotters claimed to have seen two lone marijuana plants growing in the wreckage of a fallen oak tree on the Virginia native’s 39-acre family farm.

Cobbs noticed the black helicopter circling overhead while spraying the blueberry bushes near his house. After watching the helicopter for several moments, Cobbs went inside to check on his blind, deaf 90-year-old mother. By the time he returned outside, several unmarked police SUVs had driven onto his property, and police (ten in all) in flak jackets, carrying semi-automatic weapons and shouting unintelligibly, had exited the vehicles and were moving toward him.

Of course, it was never about the two pot plants.

What the cops were really after was an excuse to search Cobbs’ little greenhouse, which he had used that spring to start tomato plants, cantaloupes, and watermelons, as well as asters and hollyhocks, which he planned to sell at a roadside stand near his home. The search of the greenhouse turned up nothing more than used tomato seedling containers.

Nevertheless, police charged Cobbs with misdemeanor possession of marijuana for the two plants they claimed to have found. Eventually, the charges were dismissed but not before The Rutherford Institute took up Cobbs’ case, which revealed that police hadn’t even bothered to secure a warrant before embarking on their raid of Cobbs’ property—a raid that had to cost taxpayers upwards of $25,000, at the very least—part of their routine sweep of the countryside in search of pot-growing operations.

Two plants or two hundred or no plants at all: it doesn’t matter.

A SWAT team targeted one South Carolina man for selling $50 worth of pot on two different occasions. The Washington Post reports: The SWAT team “broke down Betton’s door with a battering ram, then fired at least 57 bullets at him, hitting him nine times. He lost portions of his gallbladder, colon, bowel and rectum, and is paralyzed from the waist down. He also suffered damage to his liver, lung, small intestine and pancreas. Two of his vertebrae were damaged, and another was partially destroyed. Another bullet shattered his leg.” After security footage showed that most of what police said about the raid was a lie, the cops settled the case for $2.75 million.

Monetary awards like that are the exception, however.

Most of the time, the cops get away with murder and mayhem. Literally.

Bottom line: no amount of marijuana is too insignificant if it allows police to qualify for federal grants and equipment and lay claim to seized assets (there’s the profit motive) under the guise of fighting the War on Drugs.

SWAT teams carry out more than 80,000 no-knock raids every year. The vast majority of these raids are to serve routine drug warrants, many times for crimes no more serious than possession of marijuana.

Although growing numbers of states continue to decriminalize marijuana use and 9 out of 10 Americans favor the legalization of either medical or recreational/adult-use marijuana, the government’s profit-driven “War on Drugs”—waged with state and local police officers dressed in SWAT gear, armed to the hilt, and trained to act like soldiers on a battlefield, all thanks to funding provided by the U.S. government, particularly the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—has not abated.

Since the formation of the DHS post-9/11, hundreds of billions of dollars in grants have flowed to local police departments for SWAT teams, giving rise to a “police industrial complex” that routinely devastates communities, terrorizes families, and destroys innocent lives.

No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly being deployed for relatively routine police matters, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.

Unfortunately, general incompetence, collateral damage (fatalities, property damage, etc.) and botched raids tend to go hand in hand with an overuse of paramilitary forces.

In some cases, officers misread the address on the warrant. In others, they simply barge into the wrong house or even the wrong building. In another subset of cases, police conduct a search of a building where the suspect no longer resides.

SWAT teams have even on occasion conducted multiple, sequential raids on wrong addresses or executed search warrants despite the fact that the suspect is already in police custody. Police have also raided homes on the basis of mistaking the presence or scent of legal substances for drugs. Incredibly, these substances have included tomatoes, sunflowers, fish, elderberry bushes, kenaf plants, hibiscus, and ragweed.

All too often, the shock-and-awe tactics utilized by many SWAT teams only increases the likelihood that someone will get hurt with little consequences for law enforcement, even when the raids are botched.

Botched SWAT team raids have resulted in the loss of countless lives, including children and the elderly. Usually, however, the first to be shot are the family dogs.

SWAT raids are usually carried out late at night or shortly before dawn. Unfortunately, to the unsuspecting homeowner—especially in cases involving mistaken identities or wrong addresses—a raid can appear to be nothing less than a violent home invasion, with armed intruders crashing through their door.

That’s exactly what happened to Jose Guerena, the young ex-Marine who was killed after a SWAT team kicked open the door of his Arizona home during a drug raid and opened fire. According to news reports, Guerena, 26 years old and the father of two young children, grabbed a gun in response to the forced invasion but never fired. In fact, the safety was still on his gun when he was killed. Police officers were not as restrained. The young Iraqi war veteran was allegedly fired upon 71 times. Guerena had no prior criminal record, and the police found nothing illegal in his home.

The problems inherent in these situations are further compounded by the fact that SWAT teams are granted “no-knock” warrants at high rates such that the warrants themselves are rendered practically meaningless.

This sorry state of affairs is made even worse by U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have essentially done away with the need for a “no-knock” warrant altogether, giving the police authority to disregard the protections afforded American citizens by the Fourth Amendment.

Clearly, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, something must be done.

When the war on drugs—a.k.a. the war on the American people—becomes little more than a thinly veiled attempt to keep SWAT teams employed and special interests appeased, it’s time to revisit our drug policies and laws.

“You take the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, all the rights you expect to have—when they come in like that, the only right you have is not to get shot if you cooperate. They open that door, your life is on the line,” concluded Bob Harte, whose home was raided by a SWAT team simply because the family was seen shopping at a garden store, cops found loose tea in the family’s trash and mistook it for marijuana.

“Our family will never be the same,” said Addie Harte, recalling the two-hour raid that had police invading their suburban home with a battering ram and AR-15 rifles. As The Washington Post reports:

Bob found himself flat on floor, hands behind his head, his eyes locked on the boots of the officer standing over him with an AR-15 assault rifle. “Are there kids?” the officers were yelling. “Where are the kids?” “And I’m laying there staring at this guy’s boots fearing for my kids’ lives, trying to tell them where my children are,” Harte recalled later in a deposition on July 9, 2015. “They are sending these guys with their guns drawn running upstairs to bust into my children’s house, bedroom, wake them out of bed.”

It didn’t matter that no drugs were found—nothing but a hydroponic tomato garden and loose tea leaves. The search and SWAT raid were reasonable, according to the courts.

There’s a lesson here for the rest of us. As Bob Harte concluded: “If this can happen to us, everybody in the country needs to be afraid.”

All it took was nearly three months of often-riotous protests in Portland for business owners to pull out of the city or relocate outside its central district, according to local station KOIN (via Fox Business).

In a letter to Mayor Ted Wheeler and the Portland City Council, the Downtown Development Group said that the exodus of companies wasn’t related to the Black Lives Matter movement – “but does have most everything to do with the lawlessness you are endorsing downtown.”

“The number is like nothing I have seen in 42 years of doing business in downtown,” wrote DDG co-founder Greg Goodman.

Goodman said companies include Daimler Trucks North America, Airbnb, Banana Republic, Microsoft, Saucebox, and Google, which he claimed: “leased 90,000 square feet in the Macy’s building [and] has stopped construction of their improvements.”

“The list goes on and on. If you know a retail or office broker, give them a call and ask them how many clients they have are trying to leave,” he continued.

Goodman encouraged city leaders to “walk around downtown Portland in the morning,” adding that he would personally give them a tour. –Fox Business

“You aren’t sweeping the streets, needles are all over the place, garbage cans are broken and left open, glass from car windows that have been broken out is all over the streets, parks are strewn with litter,” the letter continues. “You are willfully neglecting your duties as elected officials to keep our city safe and clean.”

On Saturday, Portland PD said that just 30 officers were available to manage a crowd of several hundred people, while authorities say that the department “had to be judicious with our limited resources” due to many officers having already worked the previous night’s demonstrations, according to The Oregonian.

Meanwhile, Mayor Wheeler issued a statement regarding a Saturday skirmish between right-wing Proud Boys activists and Black Lives Matter demonstrators – completely taking the side of BLM and calling the Proud Boys ‘White nationalists.’

“I vehemently oppose what the Proud Boys and those associated with them stand for, and I will not tolerate hate speech and the damage it does in our city. White nationalists, particularly those coming to our city armed, threaten the safety of Portlanders, and are not welcome here,” said Wheeler. “We are at a critical place where police officers are needed to intervene in protests where police officers themselves are the flashpoint.”

Authored by Stacey Lennox via PJMedia.com,

The debate over hydroxychloroquine has faded from the forefront as big tech has worked to suppress information and silence the voices of doctors and researchers promoting it. However, it appears the controversy over the drug has encouraged some senators to take a closer look, and it seems they are asking the FDA the right questions.

Senators Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn explicitly asking about the agency’s handling of information regarding the drug and its use during the pandemic.

Doctors and researchers advocating for hydroxychloroquine are recommending it be used in high-risk outpatients.

Texas Congressman Louis Hohmert, who was recently diagnosed positive for COVID-19, tweeted just this morning about the benefits of hydroxychloroquine:

Hydroxychloroquine protocols worked for me. Americans suffering from the Wuhan Virus deserve the right to consult with their doctors and try HCQ if deemed a safe and appropriate fit. Keep Big Govt out of this. Thank you Dr. Risch for your work and research on this.

In the letter to Hahn, the senators are asking about specific actions the agency has taken regarding hydroxychloroquine. The current FDA guidance is that it should not be used outside the hospital setting for COVID-19, and the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) has been withdrawn. Given the safety profile of the medication and the fact it is used daily on an outpatient basis around the world for malaria prevention, malaria treatment, rheumatoid arthritis, and lupus, this guidance is ridiculous on its face.

The recommended duration of hydroxychloroquine treatment for COVID-19 is between five and seven days at FDA approved dosages. In a sane world, a doctor may prescribe drugs off-label at approved dosages if they think a medication may be useful for a patient’s symptoms. However, 2020 is not sane, and now the FDA interference has led to medical boards, hospital systems, and politicians banning the use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. These actions are unprecedented in the doctor-patient relationship.

Finally, these senators are standing up for that relationship and demanding clarity from the FDA. From the letter:

However, we have heard from licensed physicians that have had a far different experience with the FDA’s approach. The physicians are concerned about the FDA’s decision to revoke the March 28th EUA for HCQ and CQ for treatment of COVID-19. They have described the clear differences between inpatient and outpatient treatments and how this decision has affected their ability to treat patients in different settings. The physicians have warned that the FDA’s EUA revocation of HCQ and CQ has led to misinformation and confusion across the country. Some states have restricted the ability of physicians to write and pharmacies to fill HCQ and CQ prescriptions under longstanding and well-established authority to prescribe FDA approved drugs off-label with a patient’s informed consent and according to their clinical judgement.

To better understand the FDA’s actions, the letter requests four specific pieces of information:

1. Studies or data that definitively shows prescribing hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine within seven days of COVID-19 symptoms is ineffective or harmful.

2. Produce studies or data on the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine for COVID-19 in outpatient settings under a doctor’s care, including as a preventative. They specifically exclude late-stage studies involving hospitalized patients.

3. Provide any public statements issued by the FDA to clarify the agency does not regulate the practice of medicine and explaining state governments may not regulate or prohibit the sale of the drugs.

4. Information on potential treatments for COVID-19 that have been used internationally and whether the FDA has approved those for use in the United States. If not, the senators want to know what steps are being taken to ensure they are.

These requests are a kick in the derriere to the bureaucracy. It is unconscionable for the FDA not to clarify their role in the practice of medicine and even worse for them to remain silent in the face of other entities trying to interfere with it. While it does not appear they have ever made a statement like the one the senators are requesting, hopefully, one will be forthcoming.

It would be even more concerning if the agency withdrew the EUA based on the debunked Lancet study and has done nothing to correct their position. In an extensive search, I can find no studies indicating that short-term outpatient use of hydroxychloroquine at approved dosages is dangerous or deadly. It will be surprising if the FDA has one.

Dr. Harvey Risch, an epidemiologist from Yale, has done a review of these studies and arrived at the conclusion that treatment with hydroxychloroquine is effective for high-risk outpatients. Dr. Risch told Mark Levin on “Life, Liberty, and Levin” Sunday that it was some of the most convincing data he has seen in his career:

Continued… pic.twitter.com/HNNyF3B5NM

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 24, 2020

Clearly, President Trump has not given up on the potential this drug combination may hold. Dr. Risch’s assessment is clear. For high-risk patients over 65 or with pre-existing conditions, the outpatient use of the hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin combination has shown a significant reduction in hospitalizations and death rates.

He asserts that we have let politics overrule science, and it is costing thousands of lives. Hopefully, senators pressuring the FDA will cause significant movement and clarity. The FDA owes its response by the end of business tomorrow. If the misinformation can be effectively cleared up, it will be a game-changer. The senators must continue to press the FDA and restore the doctor-patient relationship.

All that trouble for $125,000? That’s what a Goldman Sachs analyst might deem a “suboptimal” outcome, considering the public hiding GS CEO David Solomon endured a couple of months ago, when Gov Cuomo opened an investigation into a charity concert in the Hamptons that went viral over images of attendees violating social distancing norms.

Despite the fact that the crowd was in the open air, voluntarily, and no different effectively from the ‘peaceful’ protests that have thronged the US since the death of George Floyd, Cuomo banked precious political capital by bashing Solomon and all the other bold-faced names associated with the event, which also had the misfortune of taking place in the Hamptons, where NYC’s elite fled to wait out COVID-19.

Now, it looks like Solomon & Co. are in for another round of outrage and scrutiny, as Bloomberg just reported that the concert only netted $152,000 for charity, a pittance considering the $25,000 donations made by some attendees, including Solomon himself. BBG put it best when it described the figure as “un-Hamptonesque”.

Safe & Sound, as the July event was called, has gone down as the most tone-deaf musical moment of the Hamptons’ Summer of Covid.

State health officials launched an investigation after Governor Andrew Cuomo excoriated the organizers and well-heeled revelers for “egregious social-distancing violations.”

But the night’s real surprise turns out to be the sums that were raised for charity.

To some, $152,000 is very un-Hamptons-esque. This, after all, is where a beachfront estate originally built for the Ford family was recently listed for $145 million.

“I never would have gone if I knew how little it would be,” said Daniel Tannebaum, one of the Manhattan residents who’s been spending more time at the beach since lockdown, working remotely for a management-consulting firm.

Others tried to spin it in a positive light.

Others find $152,000 a fair amount considering the expenses of putting on such an event, and the scrutiny that has created legal and crisis-management issues as well as potential government fines.

“I feel a little sense of relief,” said Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, who was born in Montauk and has lived on the East End full-time for more than 30 years. “I had the fear it would be zero.

But the fact remains: the physical event brought in less money than several virtual events that – as Bloomberg’s reporters dutifully pointed out – occurred the same night on social media.

The same night as the concert, a fundraiser for All Star Code honoring Robert Smith — held virtually rather than at an oceanfront house in East Hampton — raised $700,000, while Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s gala, with about 35 micro parties at people’s homes, brought in $750,000 the following week.

One reason for the shortfall after ticket sales brought in nearly 3/4ths of $1 million is that the event wasn’t organized by a non-profit, though the organization behind it specified that “all profits” would go to charity.

By now, we all know the story behind the event, but just in case you haven’t read it yet…

Granted, the Safe & Sound “Drive-in Fundraiser Experience” was not a benefit organized by a non-profit. It was put on after months of lockdown by for-profit companies to present live music, modified for Covid, in the style of a music festival (complete with Red Bull, tequila and CBD oil). In a summer with few such happenings, it was an opportunity for people to have fun and raise some money for good causes.

Attendees at the Water Mill event were supposed to stay near their cars in socially-distanced splendor while the EDM duo the Chainsmokers performed after warm-up acts by Solomon (the Goldman chief executive officer moonlights as a DJ) and Schneiderman and his band.

Publicity materials specified that “all profits” would go to three charities: Southampton Fresh Air Home, which runs a camp on the East End for disabled New York City kids; Children’s Medical Fund of New York, which supports a Long Island hospital; and No Kid Hungry, a group that works nationally to get meals to low-income children.

Here’s a breakdown of the money, according to Bloomberg.

When Bloomberg requested the information afterward, a spokesman provided the $152,000 figure, adding that an additional $90,000 of personal protective equipment also was distributed and about $575,000 was spent locally to put on the event.

“Our hope was to have a safe and enjoyable event during a difficult time and to raise some money for local charities, create jobs for the entertainment and events industries, and help local businesses,” said spokesman Joe DePlasco of Dan Klores Communications, who represents event producers In the Know Experiences and Invisible Noise. He added that neither took fees.

Southampton Fresh Air Home got $20,000, according to Executive Director Thomas Naro, while representatives of No Kid Hungry and Children’s Medical Fund declined to disclose the amounts received. No Kid Hungry said its contribution included Solomon’s performance fee, and the Children’s Medical Fund said its amount included that of the Chainsmokers.

At the end of the day, these details don’t really matter: at the end of the day, what’s the bigger transgression? Violating vague social distancing guidelines? Or rich people daring to flaunt the fact that they didn’t spend the whole summer cooped up in their closet-sized one-bedroom, angrily tweeting about every “New York is Dead” essay like a broke, irrelevant, wannabe Seinfeld.

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

Have you ever thought about the ramifications of a cashless society? I’m talking about the real, first-person effects, not some ephemeral conspiracy theory or possible biblical prophecy. This is bad news for a lot of reasons, not the least of which are the ways it would affect day-to-day life.

Here’s my definition of a cashless society, so we’re all singing from the same songbook:

Cash would no longer be legal tender, therefore you could not make purchases with it, pay bills with it, or spend it in any way.  You would not be able to deposit cash into your bank account so you wouldn’t be able to accept cash for an exchange of goods or services.

Therefore, cash would be nothing more than a worthless piece of paper. (I know, I know. Debt-based currency is a totally different article though.)

We’re heading this way.

Jose recently wrote that Venezuela is rapidly becoming cashless and here in the United States a concerning early sign is that there is a “change shortage” which is causing many stores to give you your change on a store loyalty card or invite you to donate that change to some cause.

Gifts

Think of all the times that cash is an appropriate gift. I’ve always given money, like stuffing a child’s birthday card with a $20 bill or giving a new graduate some cash to put toward college expenses.  When I got married, we received quite a bit of money from various loved ones. My dad always gave my daughters some spending money of their own each time we visited and they were surprised and delighted every single time.

However, in a cashless society, there are two problems with this.

First of all, the recipient would not be able to use the cash. He or she would not be able to spend or deposit it.

Secondly, if a monetary gift is given, it would have to be done with a check or electronic transfer. This means that the government (and the Tax Man) would know precisely how much money any person is given. That might not be a big deal for the 7-year-old who got $20 from grandpa, but what about the graduate who raked in a couple thousand in gifts from family members to celebrate his or her accomplishments? At what point will the government have their hands out for “their fair share?”

Side Gigs

A lot of folks are really struggling right now with the COVID shutdowns. Jobs have been lost, hours have been cut, and financial problems abound. One of the ways that these people are making ends meet is with side gigs. Folks are cutting grass, cleaning houses, driving for Uber, delivering food, babysitting – they’re coming up with all sorts of ways to make some extra money. A huge percentage of these people are being paid in cash.

But if suddenly you can no longer spend your cash, you’d need to be paid electronically. How many people who don’t already have a business have a merchant account for taking credit or debit cards? There are options like Paypal and Venmo, which take a percentage fee, but they’re going to have to figure out something.

And then, as above, every single bit of this side gig money is traceable and trackable. This could quickly turn your 20 bucks from lawn mowing into $15 after taxes.

Selling Secondhand Goods

Raise your hand if you’ve ever sold something to pay a bill.  Me too! I’ve sold jewelry, furniture, exercise equipment – all sorts of stuff to meet an obligation when in a pinch.  Not only that, but I have a yard sale every single year to downsize the things that I found I don’t really use, which often brings in a few hundred dollars.

How will this work in a cashless society? Well, if you are selling just one larger item, you’d probably end up using some kind of payment app like Venmo or Paypal. On the other hand, a yard sale would be nearly impossible to conduct electronically. Who is really going to be able to sit there and do Paypal transactions all day, especially when folks are buying things that cost 25 cents?

And there we are, down another way of making some quick money.

Tips

Lots of folks who work in food service and the beauty industry, just to name two niches, depend on tips to make a living. Generally, tips are collected from tables or paid out at the end of the shift if they were put on a debit card. But…once there is no cash, these tips will have to end up going on a regular paycheck. One hundred percent of this money will be subject to payroll withholdings.

This will mean that a lot of people see a sharp decrease in their earnings, plus they’ll have to wait for their checks to get the money. It puts a lot of power into the hands of the management and it would not be difficult at all for someone to manipulate the amounts the workers have earned.

Children

I’ve written many times about the importance of allowing children to handle their own money. It teaches them responsibility and life skills that will serve them well in the future. (Learn more about talking to your kids about money in this article.) My daughters have had access to money since they were in kindergarten, and possibly before.

Now, how are you going to give a five-year-old access to money if it’s all electronic? Are they going to end up with their own bank accounts and debit cards? That hardly seems realistic. There is also the option of gift cards, but that means the money can only be spent at certain places, taking away the vital learning curve of saving your money to put it toward a Big Goal. Forget lemonade stands, gifts from Grandpa, or putting change in a piggy bank – these will all be things of the past.

The unbanked or underbanked

Eight million households in the United States are “underbanked” or “unbanked.” This means that they don’t have any kind of bank account due to fees, bad credit, or other obstacles. These people rely on check-cashing businesses that already take a hefty fee to give them the pay they’ve earned. What will they do when this is no longer an option?

Most of the people who are unbanked or underbanked are living under the poverty line already. This would mean that they can no longer pick up side-gigs to make ends meet, they can’t do odd jobs, and getting them any kind of assistance will be more difficult.

Slate reports how the coin shortage is affecting these Americans:

To the average American, this shortage may only cause minor headaches—a harder time paying at a parking meter or exact change required at a coffee shop. But some 8 million American households, or 6 percent of Americans, are “unbanked,” meaning that because of fees and other financial hurdles, they have no checking, savings, or money market account. Many rely instead on services such as money orders, pawn shop loans, or payday loans. According to Venky Shankar, a marketing professor at the Center for Retailing Studies at Texas A&M University, Americans who make $25,000 a year or less use cash for around 45 percent of their purchases. So those Americans might struggle to pay for essential services without change on hand. They also might find it more stressful to round up or donate their change, should stores ask for it. “For an unbanked or underbanked person, it could leave them in a horrible situation if they don’t have access to the cards,” saidAngela Lyons, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. (source)

And this is just a coin shortage. Imagine how difficult it would be if our society became completely cashless.

There is an alarming amount of power in access.

So, we can see this isn’t an ideal situation for any of us.

But even these things are relatively minor in comparison to the potential for abuse against citizens in a cashless society. If every single dime you bring in is tracked and recorded, you will have no financial privacy, and you’ll also be at far more risk. Many of us keep some cash savings around the house for emergencies. Even if there is a bank holiday, we’ll be okay because we have the money sitting around to take care of any incidentals while we are unable to access our banked money.

But what happens when things are cashless? All that money we’ve stashed away over the years would have to go into the coffers and we’d lose a certain amount of control.

It’s all well and good when times are okay, but what happens when there’s a Cyprus-style event and the government decides a bail-in is in order? If you don’t recall, back in 2013, billions of dollars were seized from depositors to protect the small country’s banking system. This was done to make good on an $11.6 billion dollar debt owed to creditors outside the country.

If you think that sounds far-fetched – like something that could “never happen here,” it’s incredibly important to note that we already have language that allows for bail-ins here in the United States. After the bailouts for the economic crisis of 2008, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Act of January 2010, which prohibits government bailouts but allows bail-ins. So, yes, the money in your account could indeed be used to save a floundering bank.

Not only that, but think about the outrageous phenomenon of civil asset forfeiture. If you aren’t familiar with it, that means that an entity can seize your property or money even when you have not been convicted of a crime. Civil asset forfeiture provides billions of dollars to the US Government and local police departments every single year. Imagine how much easier that would be if your wealth was all in one place.

And let me take it just one step further before I take off the tinfoil – think about how many websites, YouTube channels, and social media accounts have been purged and demonetized over the past few years. Is it that much of a stretch of the imagination that this could be taken a step further?

That perhaps unpopular opinions could be fined and money immediately be withdrawn from the accounts of those who dissent with the status quo?

Maybe I’m just another paranoid conspiracy theorist. But are you actually paranoid when “they” are really out to control you?

In the latest tit-for-tat South China Sea saga, China has denounced the United States, lodging “stern representations” with the US embassy, over Pentagon attempts to spy on live-fire military drills over what Beijing claims is its sovereign airspace.

Specifically, according to Reuters, the US is charged with “sending a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance plane into a no-fly zone over Chinese live-fire military drills on Tuesday, further ratcheting up tensions between Beijing and Washington.”

China’s Defense Ministry called the unpermitted U-2 flight an unsafe threat which constitutes “seriously interfering in normal exercise activities”.

The statement hinted at a threat as well, saying an “unexpected incident” could have easily resulted, which presumably means the spy plane may have been targeted as “drills” could have rapidly transitioned to becoming fully operational under a perceived US threat.

“It was an act of naked provocation, and China is resolutely opposed to it, and have already lodged stern representations with the U.S. side,” the Defense Ministry added. 

“China demands the U.S. side immediately stop this kind of provocative behaviour and take actual steps to safeguard peace and stability in the region,” the statement said.

It’s as yet unclear precisely where the incident happened, also given China’s PLA military is engaged in multiple small-scale drills, notably in the Bohai Sea and some in the Yellow and South China Seas.