McAdams Warns US Empire Is "Too Fragile" For A Free Press

The US Congress yesterday revoked press credentials for the Russia-backed RT America television station, claiming RT"s new "foreign agent" status disqualified it from conducting journalism on Capitol Hill.

RPI Director Daniel McAdams appeared on RT"s The Ed Shultz Show to criticize the move on the grounds that the US government should not attempt to prevent Americans from viewing whatever media they choose.

The move is really an attempt by Washington"s neoconservatives to prevent any criticism of US interventionist foreign policy, he told RT:

Russia Warns It Will Retaliate Against American Media Next Week

It has been over a month since Russia and the US engaged in political tit-for-tat escalations, but that is about to change: after a recent crackdown by the U.S. government, which ordered state broadcaster RT to register as a foreign agent following accusations it interfered in last year’s presidential elections, and which saw Twitter ban all RT-sourced advertising (despite actively seeking RT"s business beforehand) Russia said on Thursday it would retaliate next week against the American media, Bloomberg reports.

While the Russians didn’t specify what measures would be taken, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that “practical implementation” of steps in response to the U.S. move would begin next week. Russia has previously warned its retaliation would mirror restrictions imposed by the U.S. The foreign-agent label, which applies to several state-owned outlets operating in the U.S. including Japan’s NHK and the China Daily newspaper, requires disclosure of the media organization’s foreign funding.

As reported earlier today, RT"s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, said on the broadcaster’s website that it has no choice but to comply with the DOJ’s demand to register as a foreign agent by a final deadline of Monday. Otherwise, the head of the channel’s U.S. subsidiary would face arrest and its bank accounts would be frozen, she said. “This demand violates U.S. law and we intend to appeal it in U.S. courts.”

What may Russia"s next move be?  One month ago, Zakharova said that “we have never used Russian law in relation to foreign correspondents as a lever of pressure, or censorship, or some kind of political influence, never. But this is a particular case..."

She cited a 1991 Russian law which, she said, stated that if a Russian media outlet is subject to restrictions in a foreign country, then Moscow has the right to impose proportionate restrictions on media outlets from that country operating inside Russia. “Correspondingly, everything that Russian journalists and the RT station are subject to on U.S. soil, after we qualified it as restriction of their activities, we can apply similar measures to American journalists, American media here, on Russian territory." She did not identify any specific U.S. media outlets that would be targeted. She said it made no difference from the Russian government’s point of view if those outlets were backed by the U.S. state, or privately-funded.

In September, Russia’s state communications regulator accused CNN International of violating its license to broadcast in Russia and said it had summoned the broadcaster’s representatives in connection with the matter. The watchdog did not publicly disclose the nature of the violation. The head of the regulator said it was a technical matter and denied that politics was involved. The U.S. Congress is investigating RT’s role in the 2016 election, as well as possible influence by state-owned Sputnik news service.

Russian authorities have signaled that CNN and Radio Liberty could be among those targeted in response to the action against RT.

Twitter Bans RT, Sputnik Ads "For Attempting To Interfere With The US Election"

In a blog post this morning, Twitter"s Jack Dorsey explains why the social media company is banning RT and Sputnik from advertising on their platform...

Twitter has made the policy decision to off-board advertising from all accounts owned by Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik, effective immediately. This decision was based on the retrospective work we"ve been doing around the 2016 U.S. election and the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that both RT and Sputnik attempted to interfere with the election on behalf of the Russian government. We did not come to this decision lightly, and are taking this step now as part of our ongoing commitment to help protect the integrity of the user experience on Twitter.

 

Early this year, the U.S. intelligence community named RT and Sputnik as implementing state-sponsored Russian efforts to interfere with and disrupt the 2016 Presidential election, which is not something we want on Twitter. This decision is restricted to these two entities based our internal investigation of their behavior as well as their inclusion in the January 2017 DNI report. This decision does not apply to any other advertisers. RT and Sputnik may remain organic users on our platform, in accordance with the Twitter Rules.

 

Twitter has also decided to take the $1.9 million we are projected to have earned from RT global advertising since they became an advertiser in 2011, which includes the $274,100 in 2016 U.S.-based advertising that we highlighted in our September 28 blog post, and donate those funds to support external research into the use of Twitter in civic engagement and elections, including use of malicious automation and misinformation, with an initial focus on elections and automation. We will have more details to share on this disbursement soon.

Notably, the "off-board"-ing move comes less than a week before the company will testify on Russian election meddling on Capitol Hill, where he"ll join colleagues from Google and Facebook.

RT is not taking this lying down, asking an awkward question that we suspect will also get asked next week in Congress...

Hope @jack won’t forget to tell @congressdotgov how @Twitter pitched @RT_com to spend big $$s on US elex ad campaign. pic.twitter.com/7GqoEoSaY8

— ????????? ???????? (@M_Simonyan) October 26, 2017

We are sure this move will please Mark Warner, but the bigger questions are how will Putin respond, and whether Facebook and Google (which owns YouTube) are likely to follow Twitter"s freedom-of-speech-denying lead.

The Death Of Free Speech Is Imminent: Government Begins Censorship Of Media Through Disingenuous Means

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The death of free speech is imminent.

Anyone with access to a computer and the internet can see that the United States mainstream media is nothing more than a propaganda machine designed to brainwash the masses into a lemming-like agreement with the government.

And now, it’s oh-so-ironic that the same government that tells the media what to report on in order brainwash the public is seeking to quiet those who disagree and label them as “propaganda.”  Some may call it fake news, others just want a different opinion rather than the left-leaning media hysteria we are accustomed to.

But now, media outlet RT (Russia Today), founded in Russia will have to register with the United States as “foreign media;” which will forever give it the inaccurate title of “propaganda.”

This doesn’t apply to merely the Russian version of the news outlet, but the American-run and operated site as well. According to The Hill, in a report on Monday, RT did not name the company that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has compelled to file paperwork under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, but blasted the edict as overreaching.

“The war the US establishment wages with our journalists is dedicated to all the starry-eyed idealists who still believe in freedom of speech. Those who invented it, have buried it,” Margarita Simonyan, RT’s editor-in-chief, said about the registration.

Media organizations have been exempted from the law, which is wide-ranging in its disclosure requirements and generally applies to political consultants and those working in lobbying or public relations.

It would be a felony if RT is found to have willfully failed to register as a foreign agent, however.

The registration would not stop the organization from operating, but requires regularly submitted paperwork that lists its sources of foreign government-tied revenue and the contacts it makes in the United States, and it would require any reporting to be labeled as being influenced or financed by the Russian government. –The Hill

RT has also contracted with Julian Assange, who runs WikiLeaks and is suspected of leaking internal emails from the Democratic National Committee, so the fact that they are being singled out with attempts to silence their reporting is not a big surprise to anyone with functioning neurons.

RT must be a threat to the political elites and the establishment, or they would be left alone while outlets like CNN brainwash and lie for profit to prop up the wealthy and powerful politicians they will stop at nothing to protect.

Lee Camp Explains How The New York Times Manufactures "Hit Piece Propaganda"

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Comedian Lee Camp has hosted a show on RT called Redacted Tonight since 2014. While I certainly don’t always agree with his conclusions, he’s clearly a passionate, genuine and highly intelligent American who cares deeply about the country and the people living in it. He believes (rightly), that our fellow citizens are are suffering unnecessarily due to our demonstrably parasitic, corrupt, imperial, oligarchic, corporate-state. Because he possesses such attributes, The New York Times found it necessary to dispatch one of its minions to write an embarrassing, unprofessional and downright shady piece of propaganda about him.

His response is lengthy, but it’s also extremely important for everyone to read in full. It provides further evidence that those who peddle in fake news and shoddy, deep state propagandist drivel should not throw stones. The New York Times needs to get its own house in order before whining about how everyone else is so deficient.

Below are some of the more outrageous excerpts from his excellent rebuttal. You can read it in full at Naked Capitalism:

This past Thursday the New York Times vomited up a hit piece on little ol’ me – a guy who has been doing stand-up comedy for nearly 20 years and thought maybe that comedy could be used to inform and inspire audiences, rather than just make fun of the differences between men and women.

At first when you’re the center of a smear job, you’re annoyed and frustrated. But as I read further through the piece, I realized it was a master class in how to write propaganda for one of the most “respected” news outlets in our country. I’m actually grateful it was written about me because now I can see with my own eyes exactly how the glorious chicanery is done. I count no less than 15 lies, manipulations, and false implications in this short article, a score that even our fearless prevaricator-in-chief Donald Trump would envy.

So here now is a “How To” for writing propaganda for the New York Times – using the smear piece against me as an example.

 

Guilt by Association

That Mr. Camp does this on RT — which describes itself as the ‘Russian view on global news’ and which paid Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, to speak at the gala where he sat next to Vladimir V. Putin — raises questions about the comedian’s independence, particularly when he delves into the conspiracy about Mr. Rich. Just last month, Andrew Feinberg, a former White House reporter for Sputnik, another Russian-financed media outlet, said that his bosses ‘wanted the Seth Rich story pushed.’

So now he’s somehow looping in me and my comedy news show with Michael Flynn, Putin, Sputnik (the radio channel), Seth Rich conspiracies, and I’m pretty sure he mentioned something about me hanging out with Bill Cosby.

Here’s the problem with that paragraph – I have nothing to do with Sputnik. I have nothing to do with Michael Flynn, Andrew Feinberg, nor Vladimir Putin. I have never spoken to or met any of them. (Nor do I speak Russian, so a conversation with Putin would consist of me grunting and trying to act out references to The Hunt For Red October.) I have never been told by anyone at RT America to say anything about Seth Rich, nor have I seen anyone being told to talk about Seth Rich, nor did my segment even support the theory that he was killed by the DNC.

So basically nothing in that paragraph has anything to do with me, but Zinoman wants to lead you to believe it does. This technique is called “guilt by association,” although Zinoman couldn’t actually find the “association” part so he just included a paragraph about these people to imply guilt by association. Subconsciously the reader is left to think, “If Lee Camp didn’t have anything to do with any of those things, then our fearless author would never have brought any of it up.”

Furthermore, Zinoman is correct that RT has said in the past that they are “the Russian view on global news” in the same way BBC has said in the past that they are “the British view of global news.” However, BBC also creates many shows that are outside the realm of straight news – such as Dr. Who. I’ve rarely heard anyone accuse Dr. Who of being the British view of global news. (Why do those crazy Brits always insist on taking flying police boxes to go everywhere?)

My show, written by me and my correspondents, is certainly not the Russian view of global news and neither is – for example – Larry King’s show on RT America. (I get that Dr. Who is further afield of news than my show is, but the analogy is simply meant to say these networks create shows that are not strictly straight news.) And anyone who thinks CNN, for instance, isn’t the American view of global news is kidding themselves. But I have to agree that CNN’s Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown did a terrible job of covering the terror attacks in London.

I speak only for my show – I don’t speak for any other show on RT America. I write the words I say on Redacted Tonight and have never been told I have to say anything. Compare that to… (Oh, so many examples to choose from! How can I only pick one?!)… let’s say Melissa Harris Perry on MSNBC. After being forced out she said she was censored often. As an example she said – close to showtime – that she was told not to cover Beyonce’s Black Panther inspired Super Bowl halftime show. In no uncertain terms MSNBC heads stopped her from talking about it. Perry was literally forbidden from discussing the two most popular things to ever exist on our planet earth – Beyonce and the Super Bowl (and I’m including food and sex).

Now that we’ve established a good foundation of guilt by association (without the association) and some priming and some baseless implications, it’s time to move on to:

Write Off Good Attributes That Don’t Fit the Storyline

Mr. Camp’s hard-edge critique of corporate greed and American policy is genuine; he was taking this line in his stand-up act before working for RT. But context matters.

Writing about the fact that I have spent nearly two decades involved in comedy, much of it political, much of it trying to make America better, trying to stand up for people over profit… well, that just wouldn’t fit with the author’s theme. So he had to find a way to get this stumbling block out of the way of his race to propaganda victory! He did that by casually mentioning the good attributes before writing them off as meaningless. My work and what I stand for is beside the point because “context matters.”

It’s What the Person Doesn’t Say That Really Matters

Because Zinoman wasn’t able to find any statements from me pledging allegiance to Russia, or supporting war by Russia (or anyone for that matter), or even voicing support for Donald Trump in any way, shape, or form (because none of those statements exist), he had to resort to going after what I don’t say. …And oddly, I agree with him that what people don’t say can be important, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

As hacking and Russia’s relationship to the Trump campaign increasingly dominate headlines, Mr. Camp’s refusal to dig into the story is conspicuous. He avoids the subject on air, and while he does criticize President Trump, his considerable comic bile rarely focuses on him.

Despite all his extensive research (sarcasm), Jason Zinoman failed to read the title of my show. …Redacted Tonight. I’m hoping he knows what the word “tonight” means but maybe the “redacted” part eluded him. “Redacted” means “censored,” and my show tries very hard to focus on the news that (ironically in this conversation) is NOT being covered on the mainstream media, the stuff that is being censored. As he just admitted, bullshit about Trump and hacking claims FILL the mainstream airwaves. Some of it true, some of it not, but all of it covered intensively. I have no interest in being a mainstream media or government mouthpiece for anyone – which is why I created REDACTED Tonight. It’s also why the things I say (particularly the anti-corporate things) are not allowed on any standard American TV channel. Zinoman, on the other hand, is quite content working at a propaganda outlet like the New York Times – also more on that later – and after all, context matters.

Zinoman tepidly says “while he does criticize Trump his considerable comic bile rarely focuses on him.” Well, first of all, for anyone who watches my show regularly, you know that hardly an episode goes by in which I don’t call Trump a megalomaniacal fascist man-boy with the decision-making capacity of a gopher recently run over by a Hummer (or something similar). You can watch some examples HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, & HERE. In fact I went harsher on Trump than pretty much all of the mainstream media during the campaign season. Please point to the moments when Anderson Cooper or Brian Williams called Trump a fascist, or a psychopath, or photoshopped his head onto Hitler’s body. (I did all those things.)

And the reason I don’t spend EVEN MORE lengthy segments on him is that A) We’re the “redacted” stories, remember? The title of my show is not “Stories Everyone Has Heard 8 Billion Times On Cable News… Tonight.” And B) I don’t believe Trump is the cause of our country’s main problems. I believe he is a symptom of an incredibly corrupt corporate-ruled system. He is a horrible and rather – not bright – man, but he is not the cause of the millions of hungry and homeless and imprisoned in our country. He is not the cause of the flaws in our democracy and our media. He is just the pimple that has risen up. So either Zinoman is intentionally misunderstanding the viewpoint of my show or he’s just so desperate to push his talking points that he’s looking past it.

And I believe the New York Times is one of those directly responsible for making Trump president by – along with other mainstream outlets – giving him $5 BILLION of free coverage during the campaign season. In fact, Bernie Sanders supporters got so angry with the Times for their lack of coverage that the Times eventually issued a response. Even in that response in which they say they’ve covered Sanders plenty, they admit that in one sample month Sanders had 14 articles about him while Trump had 63 articles. If that distribution of coverage had been ANYWHERE NEAR even, we would have either Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton as president. So, Mr. Zinoman, let me know when you’d like to apologize for your outlet giving us the Trump presidency.

Fuck It, Insult the Guy’s Looks

Mr. Camp — who looks like a Broadway musical costume designer’s idea of a counterculture comedian, with ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ hair and T-shirts bearing images of Bill Hicks or ‘Catch-22’…

The NY Times has so deeply fallen into their own propaganda hole, they’ve resorted to just insulting the looks of people they feel threatened by. I don’t know what Jason Zinoman looks like, but I’m sure it’s awesome.

Now here’s where it gets downright dastardly, and simply inexcusable.

Lie

Enough beating around the bush, it’s time to flat-out lie.

According to several people in the comedy scene, his stand-up diatribes succeeded with like-minded fans but had more trouble with crowds that didn’t share his point of view. ‘We wouldn’t book him for a weekend, let’s put it that way,’ said Cris Italia, one of the owners of the New York comedy club the Stand.

First of all, I’d love to know who these mysterious “comedy scene” people were. Waitresses? Busboys? Phanton of The Opera types lurking underneath the stage silently judging my satire? Unfortunately, we’ll never know because “the comedy scene” only speak on deep cover. (First rule of comedy scene – Don’t talk about comedy scene!)

Secondly, Zinoman claims that Cris Italia told him that the comedy club the Stand in NYC would not book me on the weekends. Cris had actually contacted me two days before the Times article came out to tell me that a reporter had reached out to him about me and that he could tell from the questions the reporter was trying to portray me in a negative light. (Read: Trying to push an agenda rather than being, you know, a journalist.) Italia said:

I told him you were liked by everyone. I also said what Dennis Miller, Janeane Garofalo, & Marc Maron were for their generation, you were for this generation.

But Zinoman did the smart thing for a propaganda machine – leave out the stuff that does not fit the false story you’re pushing. (I picture Zinoman cringing on the other end of the line as nice things are said about the unscrupulous Russian agent – Lee Camp. After jotting down the quote about Dennis Miller, he furiously rips the page out of his notebook, chews it up, and swallows it.)

Cris Italia says he was next asked whether the Stand would book me on a Saturday, and he replied that they don’t book headliners on weekends. (Most NYC clubs do what’s called a “showcase” show in which many comics get onstage over the course of the evening.) Zinoman – upon not getting the quote he wanted – must have figured he could slant this into something saying the Stand would not book me. He either didn’t understand Italia or chose to misquote him. So Zinoman is sloppy at best and a fraud at worst.

Final Step: Leave the Reader With the Same (False) Prime You Started With

The article wraps up by describing my live stand-up performance at the Cutting Room in NYC a few weeks ago. Zinoman attended the show and in the article wrongly states that I performed with two correspondents from Redacted Tonight. Only one of the openers – John F. O’Donnell – is from Redacted. But getting that fact correct would have required ANOTHER Google search. (The work never ends!) Zinoman of course fails to mention in his description that A) The 250-capacity room was nearly sold out with excited fans B) The show went great and I think everyone left having had a wonderful time C) My stand-up performances (unless done for a TV special) have no connection to RT America at all. They are my own events. But the author leaves all of that out even though… context matters.

Anyway, the article ends like this:

Once Mr. Camp finished and the crowd had filed out, I lingered for a minute on the sidewalk. And while there wasn’t any rally, I couldn’t help noticing two beefy guys speaking in Russian and laughing uproariously.

What Zinoman really REALLY doesn’t want you to know is that those “beefy Russians” were almost certainly not there for my stand-up comedy show. The Cutting Room had a show starting after mine that had nothing to do with my show. And guess what – that show was a rapper named Noize, who is described as “The most outspoken, daring and exciting Russian rapper.” That’s right, the reason there were people in line speaking Russian outside my comedy show is because they were there to see a Russian rapper that had nothing to do with me.

And don’t forget – context matters.

Either Zinoman knew about the rapper and decided not to reveal it (so he’s basically a liar), or he didn’t bother to look at the massive sign listing the performances, nor ask the Russians (who probably spoke English) why they were there (in which case he’s possibly the worst “journalist” to walk the earth). It’s tough to say which one of those two things is worse.

But describing those laughing Russians serves a purpose greater than an interesting tidbit. Zinoman sat through an entire 90-minute stand-up comedy show in which I covered everything from how our leaders force us into endless war, to how we can feed every human on the planet, to how we are sold an infinite parade of lies, to how my comedy doesn’t go over well at children’s birthday parties. He saw me cover all those important issues. He saw an audience of over 200 people loving it and coming up to meet me afterwards. He saw a guy who has fought hard for 20 years to just do stand-up comedy that matters – that enlightens and informs and entertains. He saw it all. But none of THAT fit with the propaganda he needed to push. In fact, it went against the storyline he was trying to create.

So instead he leaves the reader with the idea that either A) My show is meant for burly Russians (according to online analytics roughly 80% or 90% of my viewers are Americans) or B) My show is being watched over by burly Russians to make sure I don’t say anything “out of line.” Both of those are fake news. The reality is that burly Russians like a rapper named Noize.

I want to conclude with a little bit of context about the New York Times, and how they’ve become such a propaganda outlet that they would even hire journalists who pump out loads of fake news like this article on me.

Chris Hedges worked for 15 years as a foreign correspondent at the Times and won a Pulitzer for his work. He now hosts the show “On Contact” at RT America. He once said of his former employer,

…many at the paper have no real moral compass. They know the rules imposed by the paper’s stylebook. They know what constitutes a ‘balanced’ story. They know what the institution demands. They work hard. They have ingested the byzantine quirks and traditions of the paper. But they cannot finally make independent moral choices. The entire paper — I speak as someone who was there at the time — enthusiastically served as a propaganda machine for the impending invasion of Iraq.

Hedges went on to say,

[The senior editors] do not question the utopian faith in globalization. They support preemptive war, at least before it goes horribly wrong. And they accept unfettered capitalism, despite what it has done to the nation, as a kind of natural law.

The Times was a strong cheerleader for the War in Iraq. (Don’t worry though – they still have reporters out there looking for the weapons of mass destruction. …Any day now.) When Hedges came out against the Iraq War, the paper reprimanded him for “public remarks that could undermine public trust in the paper’s impartiality.” …So basically they said, “Either stand behind this flawed, illegal invasion of Iraq or else you’re not welcome at the Times.” Hedges left the paper soon after.

Want some more evidence of exactly how the New York Times operates? Here’s world renowned political philosopher Noam Chomsky going through a single issue of the Times in 2015 explaining how it is pure propaganda.

Zinoman should voluntarily lock himself in a dark closet for a year, or better yet, find a new profession. Preferably both.

For more on the topic, see last year’s piece: Veteran Reporter Exposes The New York Times’ Arrogant, Disconnected, Agenda Driven Perspective

Joe Scarborough Giddy Over Souring Russian-US Relations, Says Russia is Helpless to Protect Syria

I want you to watch the clip below to see what we"re dealing with in the media. This is a former Congressman, well connected amongst the elite in our country, who is rumored to be texting buddies with Jared Kushner, giddy over the specter of souring Russian-US relations.

"A week ago, you have little Devin Nunes going back and forth, going, "What do I say, what do I say about Russia, what do I say about Russia?" and Sean Spicer getting killed," he added.
 
"Now, the Russians snub Tillerson — I mean, if I’m Donald Trump, I’m thinking these are good days."

 
This is all a joke for neocon Joe -- him and his stupid haircut -- especially since it"s not his fat face having to fight the wars to come. After bathing in his wanton stupidity for celebrating poor relations with the only other global nuclear superpower, Joe then reveled in the idea that Putin was humiliated by the Syrian ordeal. If I"m Putin and I read this, I order someone to kick Scarborough down a flight of stairs, shrouded by sarin gas, tomorrow.

"Russian foreign policy since Christmas 1991 has been all about resentment, resentment of losing the cold war. So you go into Crimea, you go into Georgia, you go into these places that you"re not going to face a show of force. Imagine how humiliating it is for Vladimir Putin that (laughter) his troops are in Syira and have the United States say we don"t care if you"re in Syria or not, you can"t do anything about it. In fact, we"re going to tell you, we"re going to strike your client state and you"re going to do nothing about it. If you want to get your people out of the way that"s fine. If you don"t we"re gonna kill them. And so, why does he stay there when he knows he"s got a guy like Assad."
 
"We sure as hell have shown we can strike Syria even when their warplanes are there. Do you know how embarrassing it is for Vladimir Putin when he"s trying to project strength. I got this big gas station and I"m in Syria too. Well, great, you can"t even protect your client in Syria. Embarrassing."

 

 
These aren"t the words of a stable man, by any stretch of the imagination. Wanting to provoke war with a formidable superpower, or anyone for that matter, is disgusting and not at all representative of how most Trump supporters feel about national defense.
Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

The Myth Of Authority... "But There'd Be No Roads!"

Submitted by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

Along with the Myth of Authority – the idea that being ordered about by other people is legitimate so long as those people have given themselves titles or wear uniforms – there is this idea that, absent government, we’d never have things like roads.

Much less plowed roads.

It snowed hard over the weekend and I got to thinking about it as I watched the government plow trucks do their thing.

They do it very expensively.

It seems “free,” of course. The trucks rumble by and you aren’t sent a bill . . . for that. But you’re sent a bill – via the IRS, via your state-level IRS – for many other things, most of which (unlike roads and plow trucks to clear them when it snows) you probably don’t use, don’t want and – quite reasonably – would therefore rather not have to pay for.

Like, for instance, the estimated 10,000-plus nuclear warheads possessed by the federal government. Even if you’re not a Libertarian, it probably strikes you that a few hundred of them are sufficient for “defense.”

But we’re all forced to pay for as many nukes – and carrier battle groups – as the federal government decides it wants, even though we have little if any use for such.

The “defense” budget amounts to around $610 billion annually – nearly three times what China spends (appx. $216 billion) and more than seven times what Putin-rearing-his-head spends ($84.5 billion).

If the U.S. “defense” budget were to be cut in half, we’d still be spending as much as the dreaded Chinese and 4-plus times as much as the Russian bogeyman. Surely, sufficient for “defense.” Just imagine how much more money would be available for roads and plows to clear them. Things most of us probably would be willing to pay for and would pay for voluntarily.

Because we could afford to do so.

If, that is, we weren’t forced to pay for so many other things – like “defense” spending that amounts to more than what Russia and China and the entire axis of evil spend together.

Oddly, many Americans (especially Republican ones) believe “our military” is mendicant, like the ragtag Colonial Army at Valley Forge. That “we” must rebuild it. Because Putin, et al. Who – with his single operational Typhoon is going to challenge Uncle to nooklear combat, toe-to-toe, per Major Kong all those years ago.

People buy this stuff.

Literally.

They pay for “rebuilding” (endlessly, excessively) the military – and lately, on top of this, the Homeland Security apparat. So there is less available to pay for things like roads and trucks to plow them.

Much less.

How many miles of new road could be paid for with $300 billion dollars – just half the current loony sum burned up on the “defense” budget? America would likely not be invaded or nuked in the meanwhile. The 10,000 nukes in stockpile will keep and if even nine out of ten of them are duds, probably 1,000 Hiroshima-plusses ought to suffice to keep Putin from rearing his head. But most Americans – trained to an extent that Dr. Goebbels, were he still around, would find startling – react exactly as required, siding with the government as it sticks its hands in their pockets yet again. Note that both candidates in the late election worked hard to outdo the other as the greatest champion of “defense.”

Even “small government” conservatives defend the defense budget – not grokking that “defense” is also government.

And very big.

Like the rest of the federal budget. It takes so much from us that we have very little left to spend on ourselves. On the things we need and want.

Most middle class people pay about 28 percent off the top in federal taxes; add more if you are self-employed and have to pay “your share” of the federal tax (it is actually called a contribution) toward FICA, also known as the Social Security tax. These taxes have the effect of making it very difficult to set aside money for retirement – because all your  working life, you are taxed to pay for the retirement of other people, many of whom do not “contribute” much and sometimes nothing at all. Regardless, the point is you could have provided for your own retirement – and probably, retired at a much younger age – if you hadn’t been fleeced at every paycheck to provide money for other people’s retirement.

All of us would be better off; and better able to help people who needed help. Non-coercively, too. Imagine that.

 

The faulty premise behind the anti-Libertarian argument that “we’d have no roads” and other needful things rests on the assumption – almost never questioned – that we would not have the money available to spend on such things, currently taken away from us to spend on other things.

Including “administration” (make-work government “workers”) and so on.

Imagine if you were allowed (vile, isn’t it, that such language is necessary?) to keep what you earned. Not 60 percent of it. All of it. To spend as you see fit, on only the things you need and want.

Probably, there would be roads. Very good ones.

And plow trucks, too.