Tag: news

Lori Loughlin And Mossimo Giannulli Plead “Not Guilty” In College Admissions Scandal

Aunt Becky is digging her heels in and setting up to fight the system.

Actress Lori Loughlin and her husband, fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli both pleaded not guilty Monday in “the largest ever college admissions scandal.” Loughlin, 54, and Giannulli, 55, both said they are waiving their right to appear in court for an arraignment, according to Fox News.

Loughlin and Giannulli didn’t appear in court on Monday and both requested to waive their appearance for an arraignment. As of now, it is not known if the judge will permit the pleas without Loughlin and her husband present.

Monday’s filing means Loughlin, currently free on bail, won’t have to come back to court in Boston anytime soon unless the judge orders an in-person arraignment, according to Tom Winter of NBC News. Previously it had been reported that Loughlin was worried about what a guilty plea would do to her daughters. 

“She is very concerned about what a guilty plea would do to her daughters, who may not have grasped everything that was going on. Yes, she can think about the public perception of her, but that’s nothing compared to what her daughters think of her. So that is something that has understandably made her less likely to enter a plea,” a source told People several days ago. 

Loughlin seems to be the exception to what others accused in the scandal are doing, in terms of legal strategy. Just days ago, we reported that the Harvard test taking whiz who was central to the scheme, Mark Riddell, had cut a deal with prosecutors and was facing 33 to 41 months in prison. 14 other parents were also recently indicted in the scandal last week. Two weeks ago, we noted that parents charged in the scheme were seeking out “prison life consultants” to find out what life would be like in the big house.

We have been following the admissions scandal at length. As part of our coverage, we detailed how financial speaking gigs and elite high schools helped facilitate the scam for years.

We’ve also covered the fallout from the scandal, like when UCLA’s Men’s Soccer Coach and former U.S. Men’s national team player Jorge Salcedo recently resigned from his position at the university as a result of taking bribes. We also wrote about how students were being encouraged to fake learning disabilities in order to cheat on college entrance exams. 

We profiled Mark Riddell for the first time in March. Prior to that, we also reported on the tipster who gave the SEC the lead on the admissions scandal. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2v6SKZ6 Tyler Durden

The Ilhan Omar ‘Some People Did Something’ Controversy Is Bad-Faith Outrage-Mongering on All Sides

A clip of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D­–Minn.) describing the 9/11 terrorist attacks as an incident in which “some people did something” went viral on social media last week.

What followed was a vicious cycle of thunderous conservative indignation, complete with President Donald Trump tweeting a video mashing up Omar’s remarks with footage the planes hitting the Twin Towers, followed by an overreaching liberal backlash against the backlash, in which Democratic presidential contenders Beto O’Rourke and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), as well as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–NY), all accused Trump of inciting violence against Omar.

The plain truth is this: Omar’s comments may sound flippant when taken out of context, but they were nowhere near as offensive as the right made them out to be—and Trump’s tweet, though thoughtless and unfair, did not represent any kind of violent threat. Everybody who got worked up about Omar was stoking unfounded outrage. And they were doing it hypocritically, since this is the kind of thing each side tends to hate when the other side does it.

Here is the full context of Omar’s remarks, delivered at a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) event last month:

Here’s the truth. For far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen. Frankly, I’m tired of it. And every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it. CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.

“Some people did something” is not the most sensitive way to describe 9/11, but the right—and the Trump tweet, specifically—made it sound like that was all she had said. She wasn’t minimizing the tragedy; she was suggesting that what some Muslims did threatened all Muslim Americans’ civil liberties. Omar was arguably incautious with her choice of words (and CAIR was actually founded in the 1990s), but those who dragged her for this were engaged in”patriotic correctness,” a right-wing variety of political correctness.

Omar’s remarks did not merit this level of denunciation. But as a sitting congresswoman, she’s in the political fray; she should not be immune from criticism, wrongheaded though it sometimes may be. Some of that criticism crossed a clear line: Omar has claimed that she received death threats in the wake of Trump’s tweet. No one should be threatened for expressing their opinions, and the government should take whatever action is necessary to make sure Omar is safe. But even if Trump calling attention to Omar’s comment had the effect of causing her to receive death threats, Trump himself did not threaten or incite violence, in either a strictly legal or a metaphorical sense. It would be no more appropriate to accuse Trump of inciting violence against Omar than it would be to hold the far left at fault for the 2017 congressional baseball shooting, which was perpetrated by a Sanders supporter who had appropriated some views of the Republicans-are-the-real-Taliban variety.

In general, don’t criticize a politician because some people might take it too far and threaten her would be a bad rule, one that would make it more difficult to hold politicians accountable when they really have earned a good lambasting.

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“Extreme Environmentalist” Couple Set To Sue Tesla For Model 3 Bluetooth Issue

Tesla’s less than impeccable customer service reputation is being firmly held in tact by another recent example of the “disruptive” company’s ignorance toward excited owners. New Tesla owners Jeff and Jennifer Salvage considered themselves to be “fairly extreme environmentalists” and excited Tesla owners, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

“For every reason under the sun, it was the perfect car,” Jeff had even said.

But six years after the purchase of their first Tesla and about a year after the purchase of their Model 3, the Salvages are ready to take Tesla to court over their $56,000 car that will not pair with Jennifer’s smartphone. It should be a relatively simple problem to fix, though it is one that prevents Jennifer from receiving hands-free phone calls and entering the car without a key.

Tesla, instead, has blamed Jennifer’s phone and has refused to re-purchase the car from the couple.

Jennifer said of Tesla’s response:

“It was insulting. Despite the fact that I’m insulted, I want to be in a Tesla. I want them to do the right thing.”

The couple argued that the problems with Bluetooth cause safety issues and harm the value of the vehicle. Tesla disregarded the Bluetooth capabilities as mere “convenience features”. The couple’s lawsuit is being prepared right now. “We’re not letting it go away,” Jeff said.

Tesla has serviced the car for seven months, according to invoices and text messages that were shown to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The company looked at it in July, serviced it in September, again in October, diagnosed it in December and sent somebody to the couple’s house in January. They also kept the Model 3 at a service center for all of February. After all of those appointments, Tesla concluded that there was nothing wrong with the car but it was, instead, an issue with Jennifer’s phone, a Samsung Galaxy Note 8.

A Tesla service manager wrote in a March 7 email the “root cause of the problem” is “a compatibility issue that Samsung Galaxy phones have with vehicle Bluetooth devices.” The employee also pointed to an online forum post from an anonymous Samsung customer to back up their point.

But Samsung says there’s no known compatibility issues, and the forum post the Tesla employee pointed to dealt with a different phone – and a different car. The post highlighted issues a Galaxy Note 9 (not 8) was having with a Toyota, not a Tesla.

Jennifer also says her phone works just fine with a loaner Model 3 she was given.

According to Jeff, the car had been in service for about 100 days after several repair attempts. As is usually the case after Autopilot related accidents, Tesla is blaming the owner, saying that the car was needed for far less time and that the owners didn’t immediately pick up the vehicle.

Tesla did not address the Cherry Hill service manager’s claim of Samsung phones having a compatibility issue with the car. The company instead said in a statement: “Our service evaluation of the vehicle, which we confirmed with a review of the vehicle’s logs, showed that every time the Bluetooth pairing became disconnected, the break in connectivity was initiated by the customer’s phone, not by the car.”

New Jersey’s lemon law requires “consumers to prove an unfixed defect ‘substantially impairs the use, value, or safety of the new motor vehicle’ to qualify for relief.”

Jeff concluded: 

“The number one issue is the safety issue. When the car and phone disconnect, incoming calls come through the phone instead of the dashboard. You look down at your phone because that’s where the noise is, and now you’ve taken your eyes off the road.”

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2Pf0uBx Tyler Durden

Texas Cops Arrest About 45,000 Drivers a Year for Minor Traffic Offenses

The practice of arresting drivers for minor traffic violations in Texas first received wide national attention as a result of the 2001 Supreme Court decision in Atwater v. Lago Vista, which upheld the handcuffing, booking, and jailing of a woman who violated a state law requiring drivers and front-seat passengers to wear seat belts. In 2016 such rough treatment of motorists became even more controversial when a 28-year-old woman named Sandra Bland, who was arrested after a state trooper stopped her for failing to signal a lane change, died of an apparent suicide in the Waller County jail. A new report from the Texas group Just Liberty, based on data reported under a 2017 state law passed in response to the Bland incident, estimates that “more than 45,000 Texas drivers were arrested at traffic stops for Class C misdemeanors last year” and were therefore unnecessarily exposed to the risk of injury as well as the trauma of being hauled off to jail in handcuffs.

Class C misdemeanors are traffic and city ordinance violations that are typically handled with citations. Based on Just Liberty’s analysis of 2018 data from cities with populations of more than 50,000, that is what happens more than 99 percent of the time. But because there are so many traffic stops—3 million in the data set used for this report—the absolute number of arrests is large.

Among traffic stops by local police departments, arrests for Class C misdemeanors were most common in Waco, at 451 per 10,000 stops (4.5 percent), nearly seven times the average of 67 (0.7 percent). Injuries associated with police use of force during such arrests were most common in Houston, where they were reported in 53 per 10,000 stops, three times the average rate of 17 per 10,000. The injury rate for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which was responsible for Bland’s arrest, was more than double that average. Just Liberty notes that cases where injuries were reported are “likely a small subset of all force incidents at traffic stops.”

Breaion King’s arrest

In 2015, for instance, an Austin police officer stopped a 26-year-old elementary school teacher named Breaion King for speeding and ended up yanking her from her car, pulling her across the parking lot, and throwing her to the ground. The incident, which was the focus of the Oscar-nominated HBO documentary Traffic Stop, was highly traumatic for King. But because she “wasn’t seriously injured,” Just Liberty says, “her arrest, while disturbing, would not have been included in this data.”

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Ron Paul: “As Long As Assange Is In Prison, We Are All In Prison”

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

Last week’s arrest of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange by the British government on a US extradition order is an attack on all of us. It is an attack on the US Constitution. It is an attack on the free press. It is an attack on free speech. It is an attack on our right to know what our government is doing with our money in our name. Julian Assange is every bit as much a political prisoner as was Cardinal Mindszenty in Hungary or Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

They, and so many more, were imprisoned because they told the truth about their governments.

Repressive governments do not want their citizens to know that they are up to so they insist on controlling the media. We are taught, at the same time, that we have a free press whose job it is to uncover the corruption in our system so that we can demand our political leaders make some changes or face unemployment. That, we are told, is what makes us different from the totalitarian.

The arrest of Assange is a canary in a coal mine to warn us that something is very wrong with our system.

What’s wrong? The US mainstream media always seems to do the bidding of the US government. That is why they rushed to confirm Washington’s claim that the Assange indictment was not in any way about journalism. It was only about hacking government computers!

As the New York Times said in an editorial, sounding like a mouthpiece of the US government, Julian Assange committed “an indisputable crime.” But was it? As actual journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote last week, what Julian Assange did in 2010, for which he is facing extradition to the US, is no different from what New York Times and other journalists do every day! He attempted to help Chelsea Manning shield his identity as he blew the whistle on US government crimes to a publisher. The information in question included a video showing US military personnel participating in and cheering the murder of Iraqi civilians. Why is it criminal for us to know this?

The difference is that what Assange and Manning did embarrassed the US government, which was lying to us that it was “liberating” Iraq and Afghanistan when it was actually doing the opposite. Mainstream journalists publish “leaks” that help bolster the neocon or other vested narratives of the different factions of the US government. That’s why the US media wants to see Assange in prison, or worse: he upset their apple cart.

The lesson is clear: when you bolster the government’s narrative you are a “brave journalist.” When you expose corruption in government you are a criminal. Do we really want to live in a country where it is illegal to learn that our government is engaged in criminal acts? I thought we had an obligation as an engaged citizenry to hold our government accountable!

As long as Julian Assange is in prison, we are all in prison. When the government has the power to tell us what we we allowed to see, hear, and know, we no longer live in a free society. Julian Assange will be extradited to the US and he will have dozens of charges piled on. They want him to disappear so that the next Assange will think twice before informing us of our government’s crimes. Are we going to let them steal our freedom?

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2v4m4PY Tyler Durden

Justice Department Decides Not to Appeal Court Ruling Striking Down Federal Law Banning Female Genital Mutilation

On Friday, the Justice Department announced that it will not appeal a federal trial court decision ruling that the federal law banning female genital mutilation (FGM) is unconstitutional. This is likely to be an unpopular move. But it is right thing to do nonetheless. The federal FGM ban exceeds the scope of Congress’ power under the Constitution. I summarized the reasons why in this post on the trial court decision:

Article I of the Constitution does not give Congress any general power to suppress crime or child abuse. Therefore, the federal government tried to shoehorn the FGM ban into the Commerce Clause, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. On first principles, it is pretty obvious that, at least in most cases, FGM is not a form of interstate commerce. It is generally performed within one state and often isn’t even a commercial transaction. However, misguided Supreme Court decisions have interpreted the Commerce Clause so broadly that they now allow Congress to regulate virtually any form of “economic activity,” even if it is only performed within a single state, and even some forms of “noneconomic” activity, so long as banning it is part of a broader “regulatory scheme” aimed at an interstate market. But… the FGM ban does not fit even these broad criteria, and is also at odds with previous Supreme Court decisions, including United States v. Morrison (2000), which make it clear that the Commerce Clause does not give Congress the power to ban local violent crime…

If Congress does not have a general power to forbid violence against women or other violent crime – such as rape and murder – it also does not have the power to ban FGM. Like other crime, FGM, of course, has some effect on interstate commerce. But if the Commerce Clause gave Congress the power to forbid any activity that affects interstate commerce in some way, it would have the power to ban virtually anything, as almost any type of human behavior has some effect on what people buy, sell, or transport in interstate trade.

As Judge Bernard Friedman explained in the trial court decision:

FGM cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be classified as an economic or commercial activity. There is no suggestion that the procedure is done for money…. Nor is there any suggestion that this “service” is offered within anything approaching an established interstate market, as exists for illegal drugs and pornography. Committing FGM is comparable to possessing a gun at school, i.e., a criminal act that “has nothing to do with commerce or any sort of economic enterprise.” [United States v.] Lopez, 514 U.S. at 561.

The federal government also claimed that the law is authorized by a combination of the treaty power and the Necessary and Proper Clause, as an exercise of Congress’ authority to enforce US obligations under Article 3 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which requires states to “to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights set forth in the present Covenant,” and Article 24,  which states that “[e]very child shall have, without any discrimination as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, national or social origin, property or birth, the right to such measures of protection as are required by his status as a minor, on the part of his family, society and the State.” These are stronger arguments than the Commerce Clause theory. But they still fall short for reasons explained in Judge Friedman’s opinion and in my earlier post on the case.

Female genital mutilation is a terrible crime. But that does not mean it has to be dealt with by the federal government. As Judge Friedman explains, FGM is already illegal in every state. It is either banned by targeted anti-FGM laws, or by general laws against child abuse and assault. Just as there is no need for a federal law against murder or assault, so there is no need for a federal anti-FGM law.

Some experts who agree that the anti-FGM law is unconstitutional nonetheless condemn the Justice Department’s decision not to appeal, because they believe DOJ has a duty to defend the constitutionality of any federal law for which a plausible defense can be offered. I disagree for reasons outlined here and here. The Justice Department’s highest legal duty is to defend the Constitution, not federal laws that violate it.

For what it is worth, I have maintained that view under both the Obama administration (with respect to its decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act) and the Trump administration (respecting its refusal to defend Obamacare). My objection to elements of the latter policy was due to the fact that DOJ’s position was wrong on the merits, not the idea that the Department has a duty to defend the constitutionality of all federal laws that have a plausible legal rationale.

DOJ’s decision on the FGM case is a welcome departure from the Trump Justice Department’s generally awful record on constitutional federalism, lowlighted by its policies targeting “sanctuary cities,” which have been ruled unconstitutional in numerous court decisions by both Democratic and Republican-appointed federal judges. The Trump administration also supports passage of the Protect and Serve Act, which would make it a federal crime to assault a police officer. The proposed act is unconstitutional for much the same reasons as the federal anti-FGM law. The Protect and Serve Act failed to pass last year, because it was bottled up in the Senate, but was recently reintroduced in the House of Representatives.

It is, therefore, a mistake to conclude that the Trump DOJ is a consistent champion of federalism. Very far from it. That said, Friday’s decision may be the result of the influence of the Attorney General William Barr, who appears to be more supportive of federalism than his predecessor, Jeff Sessions. Being better than Sessions in this respect is, of course, a pretty low bar for Barr to exceed. But a small measure of progress is much better than nothing.

from Latest – Reason.com http://bit.ly/2v7XfTc
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Cryptos Suddenly Plunge As Bloomberg Exposes Algos Running Wild

Just minutes after Bloomberg reported that ‘Flash Boys’-like trading manipulation is rampant on certain cryptocurrency exchanges, the entire crypto space tumbled on heavy volume.

According to a paper from researchers at Cornell Tech and several other universities, special arbitrage bots are anticipating and profiting from ordinary users’ trades on decentralized exchanges, which let them trade more directly.

“We have no idea what the extent of the malfeasance is on centralized exchanges,” he said in a presentation last week during a blockchain conference at Cornell Tech’s New York City campus.

“If we extrapolate from what we’ve seen on DEXes, it could well be on the order of billions of dollars.”

Bitcoin tumbled to exactly $5,000 before bouncing (nope, no algos here at all)…

As Bloomberg concludes, the study is the latest red flag in a market that has been beset by allegations of manipulation since its onset a decade ago, including a recent report that said nearly 90 percent of exchange volume was suspect.

Of course, when this occurs in the equity market space, as long as prices go up, no one worries.

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2VL6Nzt Tyler Durden

Ecuador’s Moreno: Assange Asylum Revoked Because He Used Embassy As ‘Center For Spying’

Aside from releasing a brief video statement where he attributed the decision to revoke Julian Assange’s asylum to the Wikileaks’ founders’ repeated rule violations, as well as Assange’s refusal to stop interfering in global affairs, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno has remained conspicuously silent in the days since British police entered his country’s London mission and arrested Assange on charges of skipping his bail and conspiring to break into a government computer.

But that changed on Sunday, when the Guardian published Moreno’s first interview with an English language news organization since Assange’s arrest. And in a revelation that appeared to undermine his insistence that Ecuador’s decision to revoke Assange’s asylum and citizenship wasn’t influenced by foreign powers, Moreno changed his story once again, telling the Guardian that Assange had tried to use the embassy as “a center for spying.”

Moreno

This is the first time Moreno has made this allegation.

“Any attempt to destabilize is a reprehensible act for Ecuador, because we are a sovereign nation and respectful of the politics of each country,” Moreno said. It is unfortunate that, from our territory and with the permission of authorities of the previous government, facilities have been provided within the Ecuadorian embassy in London to interfere in processes of other states.”

“We cannot allow our house, the house that opened its doors, to become a center for spying.”

Of course, Assange’s arrest came just one day after Wikileaks held a press conference to accuse Ecuador of illegally spying on Assange. Critics, including Moreno’s predecessor Rafael Correa, have accused Moreno of bowing to pressure from the US, hoping Assange’s arrest would help Ecuador secure a lucrative trade deal or convince the superpower to cancel some of his country’s debt. Correa, who championed Assange and was responsible for initially granting him asylum back in 2012, accused Moreno of committing “a crime that humanity will never forget” in deciding to turn over Assange.

Responding to these claims, Moreno called them a “fallacy”.

“It is a fallacy that there will be debt relief in exchange of Assange. This statement has been generated and disseminated by groups related to the previous regime that did not want to find a solution to the Assange case beyond having him locked up in our embassy. With the United States, we work on issues of cooperation, trade, culture and security. At no time has Assange’s status been negotiated with that country.”

Moreno denied that his decision was retribution for Wikileaks’ publication of intimate family photos, as well as Wikileaks’ drawing attention to documents pertaining to the INA scandal, which has stoked suspicions of corruption after Moreno was linked to offshore accounts believed to have been started by his brother. Others have argued that the Assange arrest may have been an effort to distract from the scandal.

Moreno also blamed Assange’s “unhygienic” habits and belligerence toward embassy staff for making his asylum “untenable.”

Moreno lambasted Assange’s treatment of his diplomatic staff in London. “Assange’s attitude was absolutely reprehensible and outrageous after all the protection provided by the Ecuadorian state for almost seven years. He mistreated our officials in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, abused the patience of Ecuadorians. He developed an aggressive campaign against Ecuador and started to make legal threats even against who was helping him.”

Any form of coexistence with Assange in the embassy became a headache, Moreno added.

“He maintained constant improper hygienic behaviour throughout his stay, which affected his own health and affecting the internal climate of the diplomatic mission. In addition, Assange had health problems that should also be resolved.”

“We never tried to expel Assange, as some political actors want everyone to believe. Given the constant violations of protocols and threats, political asylum became untenable.”

He also claimed that the UK had provided Ecuador with written assurances that Assange wouldn’t be turned over to any country where he could face torture of the death penalty, something that the UN has warned about should he be handed over to the US.

Rebutting Moreno’s claims, Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson said these were self-serving arguments that sought to paper over the fact that Ecuador had violated international law.

“I think the first thing to say is Ecuador has been making some pretty outrageous allegations over the past few days to justify what was an unlawful and extraordinary act in allowing British police to come inside an embassy,” she told Sky. Pressed over the veracity of the allegations, Robinson said: “That’s not true.”

Of course, as Gateway Pundit journalist Cassandra Fairbanks has reported, Ecuador’s claims that Assange’s room at the embassy had been transformed into a “fetid lair” have been greatly exaggerated. Meanwhile, Ecuador’s former London consul has accused Moreno of breaking the law by ousting Assange.

Meanwhile, Fairbanks and other supporters of Assange are preparing to vociferously protest Moreno when he arrives in Washington later this month. Whether he is granted a meeting with President Trump will be closely watched.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2KBU3tz Tyler Durden

Stunning Images Show France’s Historic Notre Dame Cathedral Engulfed In Flames

It’s unclear how it started or what, exactly, is going on, but the historic Notre Dame cathedral caught fire on Monday, and photos and video circulating on social media suggest that conflagration has engulfed the historic monument.

Developing…

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UDgGCE Tyler Durden

My Money, My Choice: Remember Taxation Is Theft On April 15th

Authored by Andrew Moran via Liberty Nation,

Today is the most dreaded day of the year for Americans…

Over the years, wise men have said a lot about the iniquitous nature of taxation. Chief Justice John Marshall likened the power of taxation to the power of destruction. Novelist Herman Wouk said the greatest fiction of all time is an income tax return. Most recently, conservative commentator Andrew Wilkow called taxpayers the new permanent underclass. While these morose words might have you ordering a new prescription for Prozac, if you subscribe to Keynesian economic philosophy, then at least you’re stimulating a sector of the market!

Today is Tax Day. This is the annual tradition when conservatives and libertarians realize that they have forked over a significant portion of their income to the federal government. Leftists, however, may not even know what day it is because they’re too busy demanding President Donald Trump’s tax returns and tweeting, “Impeach Drumpf Now!”

Tax Day

Americans can anticipate a somewhat different tragedy compared to previous years. In an attempt to show that Trump and the GOP’s tax cuts did not help the average household, the media has regularly reported that filers can expect smaller refunds. While this is technically correct, it is only true because income earners experienced less confiscation from their paychecks over the last year.

Does it make it any better? Well, the answer to that question depends on how you respond to this one: Would you rather be stuck in a room with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) reading the 6,500 pages of the U.S. tax code or would you rather spend eternity watching the Counterfeit News Network?

Yeah, it doesn’t really matter. Both scenarios are torturous. The only good thing that comes out of this legalized larceny is to once again discover how egregious, soul-sucking, and time-consuming the whole affair of filing taxes really is.

For instance, Americans spent more than eight billion hours preparing their tax returns. As another example of this drain on the economy, the total cost burden of IRS paperwork neared $200 billion. And, what did the American people get for this? Not much, except a bill of $200 just to file a 1040 and more than five minutes wasted calling the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

Just think of the opportunity cost.

You can only imagine what the population would have been able to do with that extra money and that little bit of additional time. Why, taxpayers could have donated a couple of hundred bucks to the Treasury Department or spent those five minutes reading libertarian memes!

Don’t worry. The IRS is paying you back with new and more complicated W4 forms.

Perhaps the Japanese system is superior to the American version. In early spring, the Kokuzeicho sends you a postcard with how much you earned, how much tax you owed, and how much was withheld. Disagree? Saunter into a tax office and dispute it. That’s it. No tax accountants, no attorneys, and no annoying H&R Block commercials.

Abolish The 16th

Defenders of the IRS often espouse the fallacy that taxes are how we pay for a civilized society. If it weren’t for the government, who would pave the roads? Who would educate the children? Who would confiscate your earnings? But here’s a better question, one that suits the state much better: If it weren’t for the government breaking your legs, who would give you a crutch? That’s the real nature of government; it’s not the benevolent force out to do good that some statists believe is the case.

In the Declaration of Independence, it is said that every American has the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” If everyone has a right to life, then it is also logical to concede that the population is entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labor, otherwise known as a property right. So, why is the government violating your property by forcefully extracting part of of your earnings? You can’t have a right to life if you don’t have a right to what you make and what you own.

Abortion proponents often say, “My body, my choice,” and that the government has no business inside a woman’s uterus. Well, 16th Amendment abolitionists should shout, “My money, my choice,” and Washington and state capitols nationwide do not have a right to your wallet.

Sorry President John F. Kennedy, it’s not what you can do for your country. Instead, it’s what the country can do to leave you alone and stay out of your bank account. Let’s hop in a time machine and travel back to 1912 when Ethel Barrymore was dominating the stage, Fenway Park had its inaugural season, and the income tax was non-existent.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UJ7OM0 Tyler Durden