NC Renegades

The support of immigration laws is no big deal for non-libertarians. For them, immigration laws are, in principle, no different from any other laws.

Not so for libertarians, however. Libertarians pride themselves for being about freedom. Liberty is the essence of the libertarian philosophy. It’s what sets us apart from liberals, conservatives, and everyone else.

Thus, as part of the freedom philosophy, libertarians oppose socialism and police-state totalitarianism and support the right to do “anything that’s peaceful.”

There’s one big problem, however, for libertarians who support immigration controls: The enforcement of immigration laws entails socialism, police-state totalitarianism, and infringements on economic liberty. That means, obviously, that libertarians who support immigration controls are, at the same time, supporting socialism, police-state totalitarianism, and infringements on the exercise of economic liberty.

Is that a good thing?

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No, it wasn’t this:

The Peoples Cube

Since there was so much drama and controversy over the Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, I submit these two images for your consideration.

Where is the outrage, riots and looting over the senseless loss of two white, straight, productive members of society ?

Both images from Blue’s Blog …

ALL LIVES MATTER … but, notice how we didn’t burn shit down ?

It seems the no-pressure sales method wasn’t working.

Instead, a Philadelphia cop was caught on camera using the threat of force to insist that two guys he pulled over during a traffic stop buy tickets for a fundraiser to support the families of fallen first responders.

The driver and his friend were essentially given no choice but to fork over some $30 to buy tickets for the police effort after the office claimed the vehicle was “unregistered” and threatened to seize it.

It was a threat tantamount to extortion… but I guess it was all for a good cause. The police officer encouraged the trapped buyers to take their “sweethearts” and support the local department.

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One of the greatest things that an Intelligence Analyst does for his commander is visualize the battlespace.  I’m not talking about Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) assets like hide sites or drones.  I’m talking about the ability to take raw data, plot it on a map overlay, and show the commander an area view of relevant activity and its corresponding locations.  The commander gets a much better picture of enemy activity or ethno-sectarian violence (or insert activity here) throughout the battlespace by examining the analyst’s overlay.  (An overlay is simply the term for removable clear plastic over a map, which is used for tracking events.  We never draw on maps.  Go get some clear mylar, lay it over your map, and battle track events on the mylar.)

But Intelligence Analysis isn’t just the map or overlay.  The Analyst answers the “So what?” of the data.  There were murders here, or IEDs here, or looting here — that’s the news.  We can get that anywhere at 6 and 10 o’clock.  Intelligence Analysts don’t just provide the news, they provide the information in its proper context.  We get bonus points for making that intelligence actionable or predictive.

When we get some free time, we’ve been listening to our HomePatrol II scanner, which is so much more than just a simple police scanner.  The information relayed by police, fire and EMS units gives us a great indication of the types of events happening around us.  Last night, for instance, someone’s step-father got drunk and broke into a neighbor’s shed.  EMS was called after a woman took Xanax and got drunk.  These are relatively unimportant events for now.  But what if we start hearing more traffic about armed robbery or shootings or other violent, gang-related activity?  In conjunction with a near-SHTF event, or the actual unwinding of derivatives and our debt-based economy, what’s heard over the police scanner becomes very important for the Intelligence Analyst.  This is the collection of vital intelligence information that he needs to do his work.

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A major rift has occurred within the Oath Keepers movement, causing many to flee the organization and join, start, or reorganize splinter groups. The defections occurred when the national leadership reportedly pulled support for the armed march in Ferguson. Former defense contractor Sam Andrews, the organizer of the march, doesn’t care about the national leadership’s reservations, and he’s not alone.

Andrews was a member of the Oath Keepers and ran a tactical team called the “YETIs.” He said that after Oath Keepers’ national leadership indicated they were uncomfortable with the appearance of directly confronting law enforcement with an armed march in Ferguson, he withdrew from the organization. When asked if the march would still happen, he responded with one word.

“Absolutely.”

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Update:

The tipped wage is base wage paid to an employee that receives a substantial portion of their compensation from tips. According to a common labor law provision referred to as a “tip credit”, the employee must earn at least the state’s minimum wage when tips and wages are combined or the employer is required to increase the wage to fulfill that threshold.[1][2][3] This ensures that all tipped employees earn at least the minimum wage: significantly more than the tipped minimum wage.

Federal law

The American federal government requires a wage of at least $2.13 per hour be paid to employees that receive at least $30 per month in tips.[4] If wages and tips do not equal the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour during any pay period, the employer is required to increase cash wages to compensate. As of May 2012, the average hourly wage – including tips – for a restaurant employee in the United States that received tip income was $11.82.[5]

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When I was young, tips were 10% of the bill. Then 15% became the “fair” tip. Then 18% and now 20%. Some restaurants charge a minimum tip on the bill for large parties – over 6 – 8 people. Do you tip the tribute tax on the bill?

The food and service are not any better. I do know that the waiters and waitresses in popular restaurants take home several hundred dollars in tips in one night. Mostly tax free. I also know that there are waiters and waitresses who are struggling.

A simple business analysis will show the end result: people will stop going to eat out when the economy collapses so this is all moot.

David DeGerolamo

On Wednesday we witnessed the third largest single day point gain for the Dow Jones Industrial Average ever.  That sounds like great news until you realize that the two largest were in October 2008 – right in the middle of the last financial crisis.  This is a perfect example of what I wrote about yesterday.  Every time the market crashes, there are huge up days, huge down days and giant waves of market momentum.  Even though the Dow was up 619 points on Wednesday, overall we are still down more than 2,000 points from the peak of the market.  During the weeks and months to come, we are going to see many more wild market swings, but the overall direction of the market will be down.

Sadly, the mainstream media is still peddling the lie that everything is going to be just fine.  So millions upon and millions of Americans are just going to sit there while their investments get wiped out.  In the six trading days leading up to Wednesday, Americans lost a staggering 2.1 trillion dollars as stocks plunged, and the truth is that this nightmare is only just beginning.

Early on Wednesday morning, CNN published an article entitled “Why U.S. stocks aren’t headed for a crash“.  I had to laugh when I saw that headline.  If CNN is going to make this kind of a claim, they better have something very solid to base it on.  But instead, these are the five reasons we were given for why the stock market is not going to collapse…

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It is undeniable; the final collapse triggers are upon us, triggers alternative economists have been warning about since the initial implosion of 2008. In the years since the derivatives disaster, there has been no end to the absurd and ludicrous propaganda coming out of mainstream financial outlets and as the situation in markets becomes worse, the propaganda will only increase. This might seem counter-intuitive to many. You would think that the more obvious the economic collapse becomes, the more alternative analysts will be vindicated and the more awake and aware the average person will be. Not necessarily…

In fact, the mainstream spin machine is going into high speed the more negative data is exposed and absorbed into the markets. If you know your history, then you know that this is a common tactic by the establishment elite to string the public along with false hopes so that they do not prepare or take alternative measures while the system crumbles around their ears. At the onset of the Great Depression the same strategies were used. Consider if you’ve heard similar quotes to these in the mainstream news over the past couple months:

John Maynard Keynes in 1927: “We will not have any more crashes in our time.”

H.H. Simmons, president of the New York Stock Exchange, Jan. 12, 1928: “I cannot help but raise a dissenting voice to statements that we are living in a fool’s paradise, and that prosperity in this country must necessarily diminish and recede in the near future.”

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Now that what has been glaringly obvious for at least six months has been given the official mainstream stamp of fact-based approval, the all-clear has been given for rampant speculation on what exactly this means for US monetary policy. Here’s Bloomberg again:

China selling Treasuries is “not a surprise, but possibly something which people haven’t fully priced in,” said Owen Callan, a Dublin-based fixed-income strategist at Cantor Fitzgerald LP. “It would change the outlook on Treasuries quite a bit if you started to price in a fairly large liquidation of their reserves over the next six months or so as they manage the yuan to whatever level they have in mind.”

“By selling Treasuries to defend the renminbi, they’re preventing Treasury yields from going lower despite the fact that we’ve seen a sharp drop in the stock market,” David Woo, head of global rates and currencies research at Bank of America Corp., said on Bloomberg Television on Wednesday. “China has a direct impact on global markets through U.S. rates.”

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