Another excellent article by Jeffrey Tucker. I read you on the Epoch Times and your thoughts give me hope every time. Not in the Pollyanna sort of way, like there’s a change coming right around the corner. Because it’s not. You don’t have to be Edgar Cayce to see the foreseeable future isn’t what the average person wants. That’s what censorship is for: so the ones who benefit from the current system can stop hearing how badly they suck. (Can we please stop using the E word to describe them? Financially privileged yes, but to actually refer to them as superior? Puhleeze!) The hope comes from Jeffrey Tucker’s writings on really awakening to the full magilla of what has happened. For most of my anarcho-libertarian life, I hoped everyone would stop voting. I wanted a general strike. A vote of no confidence. I gave up entirely on normies because like, who would want to be normal (aka fit in) THIS society? You might not have seen it then but trust me, plenty did. Why validate it? Seriously. Stone me, go ahead. Everybody must get stoned. Look where your voting got you. It got me here too. And if you think that’s because “them darn liberals”, I hope some of the rocks coming your way finally do wake you up. THIS is the awakening I mean. Validating any of it is to be in the Matrix. Sure. I will be voting, “just in case”, but nothing will change enough anyhow. I just do kt now because it really doesn’t matter anymore, paradox intended. It is me using my voice. I don’t expect it to matter but if I don’t I will feel like more of a chump than I would doing it. Make sense? Alrighty then. Mr. Tucker wrote a piece for the ET this month I highly recommend. He also understands the labels we use to describe ourselves are bankrupt and can only limit ourselves. The clarity of JT’s message gives me hope that more will be awakened to the bottom line. Not until we have clarity about the underlying problems can we develop the intellectual and practical capacity to respond effectively. clhttps://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/now-they-are-targeting-the-amish-5598468
You are SPOT ON. I stopped voting. Voting and thinking 'this time' it's going to make a difference is the definition of insanity...doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. You can't fix stupid at this point. In case anyone missed it, 2020 was clear as day that It's NOT an election...it's a "SELECTION" ...AND....If we don't vote, we make the actors in DC irrelevant and they all go away. It's that simple - stop voting. Exit, and rebuild. I vote with my dollars...I buy direct from farmers (over 90% of my food) and buy almost nothing from big-box stores. Time to exit the matrix.
For many years our responsible, conservative ‘betters’, usually identifying as Republicans (because that’s where smart, cutting edge business makes the name and mark ‘big money’ is all about) have identified the deepest pockets of spending as ‘good ole Uncle Sam’. Identified as ‘neo-cons’ now, that military-industrial complex Ike warned us about has metastasized beyond the 4th stage dimension into the Beast of Revelation that the great whore of Babylon rides in all her shameless luxury and arrogance. *Witness the unbearable wanton violation of every human value in Ukraine.* I.E., the Greedy western (globalist) Corporatists are damned if they aren’t gonna have their ‘piece of the rock’ off the Russian domain. There’s no way America is the Constitutional Republic the Founders had in mind now. It was derailed before the Twentieth Century, and the neo-Marxist totalitarians who believe they can tip this nation into the United Soviet States of America are making their best moves right now.
Makes sense that Marxism, essentially resentment and craving, has grown to the point it has. In my lifetime, I’ve seen corporate socialism, not fair play. And that’s already Marxist, just contained to a sphere. But humans don’t like unfairness. It generates anger, which if not responded to effectively, becomes envious, bitter desire. The whole space is infected with that. How can we respond without turning into that, or enflaming that, is a serious question. It’s tempting to react with anger. I am trying to find another way.
Face it. American business sucks. They make crappy products. Have abysmal customer service. And are run by rent seeking apparatchiks who excel only at feathering their own nests Even worse, there is a revolving door between corporate America and American bureaucracy and the Deep State actors are well compensated for helping corporate officers (Not shareholders). We no longer have free enterprise. We have managed competition with a few players and the Deep State both making the rules and calling balls and strikes. This is NOT America and anyone who thinks it is has been willfully deluded. The only way to cleanse this foul Augean Stable is to enact term limits, lobbying restrictions and an air tight rule on anyone in government going to work for the private sector for several years. For starters. And add to that new tax rules to rein in the plutocrats.
It wasn't this way years ago. American made products were top notch. Customers used to be treated very well. Now, everything has gone 180 degrees in the other direction Everything you have said is the truth. There were far better times...when products and money weren't so important. Most of the products being sold today have major downsides...and manfuacturers have done no research that would harm their sales. The love of money has taken America downhill rapidly.
There are companies, such as mine, that do provide great customer service and support. We don’t lie to our customers, and they often become long time friends. Small business is the key. Big companies cannot do that.
I agree with all you say except that Ike's farewell address was in 1961. I remember watching it as an 11 year old and thinking "here's this old guy who speaks like an accountant but who is sounding a very important warning to our nation." And wondering if any of the adults were listening. I guess the answer is clear. They weren't. To our great sorrow as we are awash in hyper political partisanship and the military industrial complex - including the despicable intel agencies - has a stranglehold on our country .
No forgiveness needed. We all do it. Me more than most. I find it hilarious that all the Dems used to deride Ike as just a golfing do nothing while they fainted in praise over the hapless Adlai Stevenson. Ike was one of the greatest presidents. Kept the peace. Had the balls to crush the racists in Little Rock and the sense to warn against the military industrial complex.
Not to mention he was the Supreme Allied Commander who defeated Hitler. My father was a drafted Army cartographer whose men drew the D-Day invasion maps and all the Army and Airborne maps up to and through the Battle of the Bulge. As a young boy, I was on the sidelines with my father and watched President Eisenhower’s presidential inaugural drive down Constitution Avenue in Washington DC.
Funny…Yes, I pay more. I only deal with locally owned businesses if possible. They know Me, I know Them. I can tell You that a local Driver I use has three daughters and five grandchildren. 🤣 Ed
Edit - On business entry, My comment is always”Not You Again”.🔥 They ALL make fun of Me.😁
Excellent analysis Mr. Tucker, as always, and why I modestly support Brownstone. I say the short answer as to why is the typical human behavior that Ben Franklin alluded to in his cautionary statement in 1787, “...if you can keep it.” Humans are notoriously imperfect and tending towards corruption. Smith acknowledged that in pointing out that true free market capitalism can flourish only in a moral society.
" A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For over 100 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. The problem of how a constitutional democracy reacts to great crises, however, far antedates the Great Depression. In the United States, actions taken by the Government in times of great crises have — from, at least, the Civil War — in important ways shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency"
Here is an example of the power of declaring a National Emergency and the Executive order. The Democrats can thank FDR.
"Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."
Are any of these found in the U.S. Constitution:
Since the Civil War our current federal government- has been operating under the rule of National Emergency - thus the executive order. President Lincoln as military commander issues Executive order number 1.
*********************************************
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Whereas, on March 6, 1933, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, by Proclamation declared the existence of a national emergency and proclaimed a bank holiday extending from Monday the 6th day of March to Thursday the 9th day of March, 1933, both dates inclusive, in order to prevent the export, hoarding or earmarking of gold or silver coin, or bullion or currency, or speculation in foreign exchange; and
Whereas, under the Act of March 9, 1933, all Proclamations heretofore or hereafter issued by the President pursuant to the authority conferred by section 5 (b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended, are approved and confirmed; and
Whereas, said national emergency still continues, and it is necessary to take further measures extending beyond March 9, 1933, in order to accomplish such purposes:
Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, in view of such continuing national emergency and by virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5 (b) of the Act of October 6, 1917 (40 Stat. L. 411), as amended by the Act of March 9, 1933, do hereby proclaim, order, direct and declare that all the terms and provisions of said Proclamation of March 6, 1933, and the regulations and orders issued thereunder are hereby continued in full force and effect until further proclamation by the President.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and have caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done in the District of Columbia, this 9th day of March, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Thirty three, and of the Independence of the United States the One Hundredth and Fifty-seventh.
*********************
It was here that every American citizen literally became an enemy to the United States government under declaration. He changed Wilson's original 1917 Act.
The nation got a taste of what FDR meant when, on Invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act, FDR imposed a national banking holiday and prohibited all gold transactions. Roosevelt's use of the Act was questionable, to say the least. Congress had passed the Act in 1917 to give the president broad economic powers during wartime or national emergency, but not to regulate the domestic economy in the absence of a foreign threat. Without the statute, FDR was left to act under an unspecified presidential emergency power.
12 USC 95(b) refers to the authority granted in the Act of October 6, 1917 (a/k/a The Trading with the Enemy Act or War Powers Act) which was "An Act to define, regulate, and punish trading with the enemy, and for other purposes".
This Act originally excluded citizens of the United States, but in the Act of March 9, 1933, Section 2 amended this to include "any person within the United States or any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
Always like JT's writings. He doesn't waste words getting his points out. When something is important to the USG, it makes sure it has access to it, always. Glenn Beck illustrated this over a decade ago. Here are examples: Once in office, O had his admin, especially the DOJ, take measures to coerce major business sectors to do his bidding (Choke-Point was one that applied to bankers to stop arms related businesses or others on O’s hit list) while agencies with regulation powers regarding monopolies and mergers were green-lighting to allow and even request certain tech business buy or take over their competitors. The USG’s controlling capabilities are at stake when there are too many cats to herd.
Here is one from history: AT&T is 148 years old. All long distance phone service belonged to AT&T under a Federally regulated monopoly and through its Bell operating companies, the majority of local service across the nation. In 1982 AT&T agree to divested the Bell operating companies. It was not until 1996 that long distance was opened to competition. Four years later cellular service became available. The lengthy timeline for this monopoly was due to the Feds need for intelligence gathering that only AT&T could provide. It was especially important during WWI. There was an understanding between the two entities. I’m sure most remember when it was leaked that AT&T made copies of all domestic and foreign calls for the Feds and the Bell companies were required to provide the same when the Feds asked. Qwest’s CEO, Joseph P. Nacchio (1997-2002), was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA which began prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks. He refused to give customer data in 2001. In 2007 Nacchio was convicted of insider trading during his time heading Qwest and he was sentenced to six years in federal prison. His appeals failed.
It's so hard to keep up, much less comment, when there's so much regular work anymore. Not political work, but that to put food on the table.
However, back tracking late last night to an interview between Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo, there was an insightful discussion led by Cuomo of all people. That it was 9-11 where government finally abrogated its responsibilities. The Congress gave up their role in legislation and war powers by handing it to the president, the executive. And the Congress has not taken it back since. Like Pilate, they washed hands of the responsibility of governing, contrary to the Constitution, and thankfully gave to Bush and the Presidency, never to be retrieved. I'm sure their are examples of this earlier, but since then, we have had an executive state. And endless CR's
Even when retired, duty calls and conversation must wait. I guess 9-11 was a pivotal point. I’m not sure when Congress’s propensity to genuflect to the executive occurred, but every time it moved oversite of State powers to the Feds those powers are vested in the executive. That’s about all Congress has been doing since FDR. It has become the money laundromat between tax payers and the executive branch. Never been a time in my lifetime that Congress took anything back. The judicial joined in on the scheme also.
AT&T , 148 years old would equal the year 1876. The would be a 5 years after 1871. That would be when Congress formed the Corporation called the District of Columbia( UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) with an U.S. CONSTITUTION.
They have an interesting History.
During the Bell System's long history, AT&T was at times the world's largest telephone company, the world's largest cable television operator, and a regulated monopoly.
AT&T started with Bell Patent Association, a legal entity established in 1874 to protect the patent rights of Alexander Graham Bell after he invented the telephone system. Originally a verbal agreement, it was formalized in writing in 1875 as Bell Telephone Company.
In 1880 the management of American Bell had created what would become AT&T Long Lines. The project was the first of its kind to create a nationwide long-distance network with a commercially viable cost-structure.
The project was formally incorporated in New York as a separate company named American Telephone and Telegraph Company on March 3, 1885. Originating in New York City, its long-distance telephone network reached Chicago, Illinois, in 1892, with its multitudes of local exchanges continuing to stretch further and further yearly, eventually creating a continent-wide telephone system.
***********************
AT&T, They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program. Known in AT&T as "Service Node Routing Complexes."
Mr. Binney point, is the FBI director and Top DOJ has daily access to the NSA database without going thru a FISA court.
NSA global reach is omnipresent. The US intelligence controls the entire cyber network across the globe, violating individual piracy by storing endless data on its increasingly enlarged servers, former NSA crypto-mathematician, William Binney,
Fairview is a secret program under which the National Security Agency cooperates with the American telecommunications company AT&T
The agency has gotten access to billions of emails, etc with the cooperation of AT&T.The NSA 's ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.
NSA has a 70 billion contractor budget each year. You need clearance just to get in the building. Only the NSA knows what is going on behind the doors. Congress does not have access to inside the NSA. They have over 50000 data links around the world collecting information.
NSA global reach is omnipresent. The US intelligence controls the entire cyber network across the globe, violating individual piracy by storing endless data on its increasingly enlarged servers, former NSA crypto-mathematician William Binney.
Thank you for all this detail! There must be more though about AT& “Telegraph” - I find blanks or statements with no specific facts regarding history between AT&T and Western Union. I found agreement?, contract?, ownership? and the 1913 Kingsbury commitment in which it had to divest its 'interest' in Western Union. None of my research indicates that it every operated a telegraph, hmm. I know that during WWI the entity that became the CIA had a special 3 or 4 story building where AT&T worked with it but by then I assume it was no longer in the telegraph business (or was it?) and continental long distance could not provide foreign info.
It is the Brits that put in all the undersea cable for telegraph in the 1850-60s to connect France, Ireland, Newfoundland, America and so forth. Queen Victory sent a cable to Pres. Buchanan “The Queen is convinced that the President will join her in fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now connects Great Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between the nations, whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem.” Ya. England had decided it had to have immediate access to foreign governments is my take.
AT&T gained control of Western Union in 1909, acquiring a 30% stake in the company. However, in 1913 AT&T, under indictment for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, was forced to sell its shares in the company which once again became independent.
Nonnenmacher, Tomas. History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry
"Telephone Trust to Dissolve," The New York Times pg. 1, Saturday, December 20, 1913.
Financier Jay Gould orchestrated a merger of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company with Western Union in 1881, giving him a controlling share of the merged company.
Klein, Maury (1997). The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5771-3.
Renehan, Edward J. Jr. (2006). Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons. New York: Basic Books. p. 263. ISBN 978-0-465-06886-9.
Wu, Tim, The Master Switch : The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. ISBN 978-0-307-26993-5
Western Union acquired its only major competitor in the American telegraphy sector Postal Telegraph, Inc. in 1945, effectively giving the company monopoly power over the industry.
After 1945 the telegraphy industry began to experience a decline as the use of telephones increased, especially in the case of long-distance calls, with total telegraph messages almost halving from 1945 to 1960.
****************************
History of the early telegraph: The key person was Oliver Heaviside and Werner von Siemens...
Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925) was a self-educated English mathematical physicist who spent most of his life on the far fringes of the scientific community. Yet he did more than anyone else to shape how James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory was understood and applied in the 50 years after Maxwell's death. Both Maxwell and Heaviside follow the concept of counter-space/Aether.Maxwell's equations are actually Heavisides equations.
Maxwell's original equations were averaging 20 pages per equation. Not very useful to engineers in an age before computers. Heaviside restructured Maxwell's original 20 equations to be the four equations that we now recognize as Maxwell's equations. In every high school, good physics students can write down Newton's laws. In every university, they can write down Maxwell's equations in the mathematical form developed by Heaviside.
Mr. Guy, thank you for this history. I know of Siemens, which was the number one manufacturer of telephone switches. Jay Gould is certainly a historical figure. The Kingsbury Commitment was a 1913 out-of-court settlement of the United States government's antitrust challenge against AT&T. 1909 sounds right for control of WU under AT&T President Vail.
I will look at your post in detail when I get back from getting some horse feed and bird seed for my deck birds.
I have not had time to review your lengthy and wonderful post. Here is another tidbit - The most explicit example of AT&T’s collusion with the U.S. government came in 1918, when the U.S. Government nationalized the telegraph and telephone system under the supervision of the United States Postal Service. The USPS ran AT&T and its competitors with a light touch, allowing executives like CEO Theodore Vail to remain with the company and compensating shareholders handsomely. As Michael Janson and Christopher Yoo write of the government’s stewardship of AT&T assets, “the government effectively guaranteed AT&T’s previous rate of return while assuming all of the risks of operating the system.” The Postal Service’s stewardship did more to consolidate the telecom industry in one year than AT&T was able to do in five years following the Kingsbury Commitment. As Janson and Yoo point out, the government was keen to make the nation’s telephone and telegraph networks more efficient, which meant reducing redundancies and harmonizing differences between networks. During the short time the government ran AT&T, it approved dozens of consolidations of competing services, and Congress formally exempted telecom companies from antitrust laws in 1921.
World War II: If the government takeover helped AT&T reestablish itself as a monopoly provider of telephone service, it was during World War II that the company repaid the American people for its largesse. According to author Jon Gertner:
By 1940, the research department at Bell Labs stopped doing research as nearly all of the Labs’ work—about 75 percent of it—was redirected towards developing electronic devices for wartime, first to help the Allies in Europe, and soon after to assist the U.S. Army and Navy.
The federal government invested hundreds of millions of dollars in private organizations like AT&T’s research arm, and Bell Labs helped develop tools as wide ranging as “tank radio sets to communications systems for pilots wearing oxygen masks to enciphering machines for scrambling secret messages.”
Bell Labs’ most famous invention during the war years was radar technology, which is often credited with helping the Allies win the war. Research related to radar began at the Naval Research Laboratory in the 1930s, but the Navy soon turned to AT&T scientists to refine the game-changing technology it was to become.
The Cold War: AT&T’s close relationship with the government persisted into the 1950s. According to Gertner’s account, Bell Labs director Mervin Kelly devoted half his work hours to military and government affairs. He describes the post-war AT&T as one of the main pillars of the military-industrial complex. Government contracts were not only a source of revenue for the firm, but “they gave the company strong allies within the government that the company would need as the twentieth century reached its midpoint.” These relationships helped fend off various efforts to check AT&T’s dominance of the telephony industry, like a 1949 antitrust suit brought by the Justice Department and settled in 1956, with the AT&T telephone monopoly still intact.
AT&T was able to retain control over the nation’s telephone system for 30 more years, until advances in long distance communication allowed upstarts like MCI and Sprint to challenge AT&T’s long distance business and the logic of its government-supported monopoly. But the events following the September 11 attacks show that AT&T’s eagerness to collaborate with the U.S. government, the entity most responsible for its glorious heyday, remains very much a part of its DNA.
My guess is the final inputs to "Data is the new oil!" came from the freely given information on social media sites which developed into detailed individual advertising dossiers. Government had access to bank data and other state registers of data and had all the Internet, email and smart phone intercepts. Then it came to politicians and their handlers to morph all together to control voting propaganda and it was not a large jump to think of making money from mandated vaccines.
Too many, gave up too much information on social media for free. The tech cos took it and sold it to govt becoming captured in the process having done so.
If everyone stopped using social media or demanded they be paid every time their data is sold, the situation would reverse fairly quickly.
With my limited knowledge and experience with technology, I find it difficult to see how we could have foreseen all of these problems that we're currently having with all of these quasi company & governmental partnerships.
It seems to me, as difficult as it may be, that we need to RETROFIT a FIX a PATCH.
WHY is it that most disclosure s have an terms of service exception for residents of California, New York and sometimes Wisconsin?
WHY can't we ALL have a CONSUMER BILL OF RIGHTS?
WHY can't we have ALL APPS subjected to rules that protect the CONSUMER?
WHY can't we have full disclosure on the OWNERS, the INVESTORS AND DEVELOPERS of the apps?
Stifling competition and manipulating politicians and having laws and rules designed to maintain a competitive advantage has progressed into a fine art form! RNA push that is moving forward at warp speed is just the latest iteration
Thank you for sharing this with us! I have now read three Jeffery Tucker and one Brownstone pieces today. I was very unhappy to find our Chief Judge of the Supreme Court used the Chevron approach to sandbag us into Obamacare - with his approach re the superior expertise of the government. It leaves me with serious concerns for both the Chevron case and our censorship issues.
I first encountered the birth of 'motivational research' for sales purposes at MSU. Later I shared the evolution of computers in a law firm (that refused to network their 24 ees) and a Court with a slow antique undocumented sludgy data base. Our Pet service has a custom dB that for unknown reasons doesn't work on my cell phone.
I had no appreciation of the monster mountain of corporatism that has developed. I'm hopeful we will be learning more details, particularly as relates to how extensive the welding together has become. I remain hopeful that independant operations like Truth and Rumble and their related extensions of their services will be able to offer us independent uncensored options.
In the meantime back to learning today's realities and their implications.
You are ever so appreciated for helping us progress ! Again Thank You!
March 15 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday handed down a new legal test spelling out when public officials may or may not block members of the public on social media accounts'
isn't clear enough to adequately grasp the import. Looking for more detail
I read it and I think it was the original opinion was off because "The Supreme Court remanded the case to the 6th Circuit with instructions to vacate its judgment and ordered it to conduct “further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”" And "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled for Mr. Freed, finding that he was acting only in a personal capacity and that his activities did not constitute governmental action." Those two align. This tell me that the 6th Circuit must have ruled differently then the Appeals Court.
Right. What I'm confused about is what actually happened. Person has an X personal account. Person is a public official. Public knows about Persons account. Public writes in complaint related to Persons public duties. Person does like publics' omplaint.
Person deletes complaint?
Person blocks that publics posting to Persons account?
Person blocks publics account on X social media?
Is the implication that Person as a recognized public official maliciously blocking public right to lodge complaint?
One of Maryland's County operations was just reporting about their new dedicated system for communications between County officials and public.
I guess part of my problem is I'm having issues with using a private social media account for public business.
I think most of our congress members have X accounts. I've never had a Twitter/X account.
If a public official is required by their job to alert, inform or otherwise engage with the public about some official matter then the official should do so through an official website, or email address or other official means. (those are all set up for NO responses) If they are talking about something as a private person on a social platform then they can block anyone they want to.
Hopefully this opinion will reinforce your concern. If it is public business and done on a private social media account, then the first amendment principle applies to anyone who responds to a post and they cannot be blocked or have comments taken down.
Your company sounds like an exception, but what I've run into has not been great. Small business is a key, but what happens it becomes very success, then it's bought out.
What's really bad, when phone machines answer... and put customers on hold forever; or disconnect after a person has waited for ages.. The other thing...hiring people who have a bad attitude and take it out on the customer. Once upon a time, the customer was always right. Today, some company representatives make a potential buyer feel like they are doing customers a favor waiting on them.
JulieW in response to Bruce Miller hit the nail on the head when she wrote in her comment “Strict return to constitutional parameters, including eliminating bureaucratic law and public employee unions; then, starve the beast.” I written this too many times; the United States Constitution grants very limited powers to the federal government. All federal laws and agencies not in pursuance of the Constitution must be eliminated. Good intentions and time never makes wrongs right.
I.e. the 10th amendment gave the bulk of the power to the people via the states. Time for aggressive state AGs to begin the battle to return that power where it belongs
Another excellent article by Jeffrey Tucker. I read you on the Epoch Times and your thoughts give me hope every time. Not in the Pollyanna sort of way, like there’s a change coming right around the corner. Because it’s not. You don’t have to be Edgar Cayce to see the foreseeable future isn’t what the average person wants. That’s what censorship is for: so the ones who benefit from the current system can stop hearing how badly they suck. (Can we please stop using the E word to describe them? Financially privileged yes, but to actually refer to them as superior? Puhleeze!) The hope comes from Jeffrey Tucker’s writings on really awakening to the full magilla of what has happened. For most of my anarcho-libertarian life, I hoped everyone would stop voting. I wanted a general strike. A vote of no confidence. I gave up entirely on normies because like, who would want to be normal (aka fit in) THIS society? You might not have seen it then but trust me, plenty did. Why validate it? Seriously. Stone me, go ahead. Everybody must get stoned. Look where your voting got you. It got me here too. And if you think that’s because “them darn liberals”, I hope some of the rocks coming your way finally do wake you up. THIS is the awakening I mean. Validating any of it is to be in the Matrix. Sure. I will be voting, “just in case”, but nothing will change enough anyhow. I just do kt now because it really doesn’t matter anymore, paradox intended. It is me using my voice. I don’t expect it to matter but if I don’t I will feel like more of a chump than I would doing it. Make sense? Alrighty then. Mr. Tucker wrote a piece for the ET this month I highly recommend. He also understands the labels we use to describe ourselves are bankrupt and can only limit ourselves. The clarity of JT’s message gives me hope that more will be awakened to the bottom line. Not until we have clarity about the underlying problems can we develop the intellectual and practical capacity to respond effectively. clhttps://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/now-they-are-targeting-the-amish-5598468
You are SPOT ON. I stopped voting. Voting and thinking 'this time' it's going to make a difference is the definition of insanity...doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. You can't fix stupid at this point. In case anyone missed it, 2020 was clear as day that It's NOT an election...it's a "SELECTION" ...AND....If we don't vote, we make the actors in DC irrelevant and they all go away. It's that simple - stop voting. Exit, and rebuild. I vote with my dollars...I buy direct from farmers (over 90% of my food) and buy almost nothing from big-box stores. Time to exit the matrix.
Link got wonky: https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/now-they-are-targeting-the-amish-5598468
For many years our responsible, conservative ‘betters’, usually identifying as Republicans (because that’s where smart, cutting edge business makes the name and mark ‘big money’ is all about) have identified the deepest pockets of spending as ‘good ole Uncle Sam’. Identified as ‘neo-cons’ now, that military-industrial complex Ike warned us about has metastasized beyond the 4th stage dimension into the Beast of Revelation that the great whore of Babylon rides in all her shameless luxury and arrogance. *Witness the unbearable wanton violation of every human value in Ukraine.* I.E., the Greedy western (globalist) Corporatists are damned if they aren’t gonna have their ‘piece of the rock’ off the Russian domain. There’s no way America is the Constitutional Republic the Founders had in mind now. It was derailed before the Twentieth Century, and the neo-Marxist totalitarians who believe they can tip this nation into the United Soviet States of America are making their best moves right now.
Makes sense that Marxism, essentially resentment and craving, has grown to the point it has. In my lifetime, I’ve seen corporate socialism, not fair play. And that’s already Marxist, just contained to a sphere. But humans don’t like unfairness. It generates anger, which if not responded to effectively, becomes envious, bitter desire. The whole space is infected with that. How can we respond without turning into that, or enflaming that, is a serious question. It’s tempting to react with anger. I am trying to find another way.
Love the references, "Everybody must get stoned" and your writing in general is refreshing to read, Dorothy.
Face it. American business sucks. They make crappy products. Have abysmal customer service. And are run by rent seeking apparatchiks who excel only at feathering their own nests Even worse, there is a revolving door between corporate America and American bureaucracy and the Deep State actors are well compensated for helping corporate officers (Not shareholders). We no longer have free enterprise. We have managed competition with a few players and the Deep State both making the rules and calling balls and strikes. This is NOT America and anyone who thinks it is has been willfully deluded. The only way to cleanse this foul Augean Stable is to enact term limits, lobbying restrictions and an air tight rule on anyone in government going to work for the private sector for several years. For starters. And add to that new tax rules to rein in the plutocrats.
Strict return to constitutional parameters, including eliminating bureaucratic law and public employee unions; then, starve the beast
Probably wouldn't hurt if we went back to not letting the free shit army vote too.
That used to be a thing.
It wasn't this way years ago. American made products were top notch. Customers used to be treated very well. Now, everything has gone 180 degrees in the other direction Everything you have said is the truth. There were far better times...when products and money weren't so important. Most of the products being sold today have major downsides...and manfuacturers have done no research that would harm their sales. The love of money has taken America downhill rapidly.
There are companies, such as mine, that do provide great customer service and support. We don’t lie to our customers, and they often become long time friends. Small business is the key. Big companies cannot do that.
It is certainly NOT the America the Framers wanted or intended.
I'd say 1948 was a waypoint benchmark when "IKE" left the office as President.
His farewell warning was like cave hieroglyphics to us as average normal citizenry.
We were hard pressed to truly understand that our own .GOV may well screw us.
And what he knew for future certain, he spoke and wrote it on the walls, now does exist.
I agree with all you say except that Ike's farewell address was in 1961. I remember watching it as an 11 year old and thinking "here's this old guy who speaks like an accountant but who is sounding a very important warning to our nation." And wondering if any of the adults were listening. I guess the answer is clear. They weren't. To our great sorrow as we are awash in hyper political partisanship and the military industrial complex - including the despicable intel agencies - has a stranglehold on our country .
Forgive me Bruce and thanks for the correction. I was 8 in 61.
I am waiting for the coffee to kick in with my hamster on the wheel. Hahaha
No forgiveness needed. We all do it. Me more than most. I find it hilarious that all the Dems used to deride Ike as just a golfing do nothing while they fainted in praise over the hapless Adlai Stevenson. Ike was one of the greatest presidents. Kept the peace. Had the balls to crush the racists in Little Rock and the sense to warn against the military industrial complex.
Not to mention he was the Supreme Allied Commander who defeated Hitler. My father was a drafted Army cartographer whose men drew the D-Day invasion maps and all the Army and Airborne maps up to and through the Battle of the Bulge. As a young boy, I was on the sidelines with my father and watched President Eisenhower’s presidential inaugural drive down Constitution Avenue in Washington DC.
I find it funny I still have a willing hamster and a spinning wheel 😂👍
Funny…Yes, I pay more. I only deal with locally owned businesses if possible. They know Me, I know Them. I can tell You that a local Driver I use has three daughters and five grandchildren. 🤣 Ed
Edit - On business entry, My comment is always”Not You Again”.🔥 They ALL make fun of Me.😁
Excellent analysis Mr. Tucker, as always, and why I modestly support Brownstone. I say the short answer as to why is the typical human behavior that Ben Franklin alluded to in his cautionary statement in 1787, “...if you can keep it.” Humans are notoriously imperfect and tending towards corruption. Smith acknowledged that in pointing out that true free market capitalism can flourish only in a moral society.
The other word that was coined in the 1930s was fascism, which is exactly the same thing as corporatism, which is a subtle euphemism.
That's odd. Nothing subtle comes out of Italy.
Since when did the euphemism "corporatism" come out of Italy?
It was a humorous aside. "Fascism" originated in Rome (1920s or earlier).
See and read Senator Frank Church's report: See 93d Congress 1 ,1st Session 7i j ,SENATE Report No. 93-54:
https://archive.org/stream/senate-report-93-549/senate-report-93-549_djvu.txt
" A majority of the people of the United States have lived all of their lives under emergency rule. For over 100 years, freedoms and governmental procedures guaranteed by the Constitution have, in varying degrees, been abridged by laws brought into force by states of national emergency. The problem of how a constitutional democracy reacts to great crises, however, far antedates the Great Depression. In the United States, actions taken by the Government in times of great crises have — from, at least, the Civil War — in important ways shaped the present phenomenon of a permanent state of national emergency"
Here is an example of the power of declaring a National Emergency and the Executive order. The Democrats can thank FDR.
"Under the powers delegated by these statutes, the President may: seize property; organize and control the means of production; seize commodities; assign military forces abroad; institute martial law; seize and control all transportation and communication; regulate the operation of private enterprise; restrict travel; and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all American citizens."
Are any of these found in the U.S. Constitution:
Since the Civil War our current federal government- has been operating under the rule of National Emergency - thus the executive order. President Lincoln as military commander issues Executive order number 1.
*********************************************
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Whereas, on March 6, 1933, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, by Proclamation declared the existence of a national emergency and proclaimed a bank holiday extending from Monday the 6th day of March to Thursday the 9th day of March, 1933, both dates inclusive, in order to prevent the export, hoarding or earmarking of gold or silver coin, or bullion or currency, or speculation in foreign exchange; and
Whereas, under the Act of March 9, 1933, all Proclamations heretofore or hereafter issued by the President pursuant to the authority conferred by section 5 (b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended, are approved and confirmed; and
Whereas, said national emergency still continues, and it is necessary to take further measures extending beyond March 9, 1933, in order to accomplish such purposes:
Now, Therefore, I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, in view of such continuing national emergency and by virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5 (b) of the Act of October 6, 1917 (40 Stat. L. 411), as amended by the Act of March 9, 1933, do hereby proclaim, order, direct and declare that all the terms and provisions of said Proclamation of March 6, 1933, and the regulations and orders issued thereunder are hereby continued in full force and effect until further proclamation by the President.
In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and have caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
Done in the District of Columbia, this 9th day of March, in the Year of our Lord One Thousand Nine Hundred and Thirty three, and of the Independence of the United States the One Hundredth and Fifty-seventh.
*********************
It was here that every American citizen literally became an enemy to the United States government under declaration. He changed Wilson's original 1917 Act.
The nation got a taste of what FDR meant when, on Invoking the Trading with the Enemy Act, FDR imposed a national banking holiday and prohibited all gold transactions. Roosevelt's use of the Act was questionable, to say the least. Congress had passed the Act in 1917 to give the president broad economic powers during wartime or national emergency, but not to regulate the domestic economy in the absence of a foreign threat. Without the statute, FDR was left to act under an unspecified presidential emergency power.
12 USC 95(b) refers to the authority granted in the Act of October 6, 1917 (a/k/a The Trading with the Enemy Act or War Powers Act) which was "An Act to define, regulate, and punish trading with the enemy, and for other purposes".
This Act originally excluded citizens of the United States, but in the Act of March 9, 1933, Section 2 amended this to include "any person within the United States or any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof".
1917
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/twea.pdf
1933
https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/twea.pdf
******************************
Here is what FDR did during the last Economic emergency. The gift that keeps on giving.
Here is an example of the power of declaring a National Emergency: All created by FDR and not Congress, outside of the original U.S Constitution.
AAA 1933 Agricultural Adjustment Administration
CCC 1933 Civilian Conservation Corps
CWA 1933 Civil Works Administration
DRS 1935 Drought Relief Service
DSH 1933 Subsistence Homesteads Division
EBA 1933 Emergency Banking Act
FAA 1933 Federal Aviation Administration
FAP 1935 Federal Art Project
FCA 1933 Farm Credit Administration
FCC 1934 Federal Communications Commission
FDIC 1933 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
FERA 1933 Federal Emergency Relief Administration
FHA 1934 Federal Housing Administration
FLSA 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act
FMP 1935 Federal Music Project (part of WPA)
FSA 1935 Farm Security Administration
FSRC 1933 Federal Surplus Relief Corporation
FTP 1935 Federal Theatre Project (part of WPA)
FWA 1939 Federal Works Agency
FWP 1935 Federal Writers' Project (part of WPA)
HOLC 1933 Home Owners' Loan Corporation
NIRA 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act
NLRA 1935 National Labor Relations Act
NLRB 1934 National Labor Relations Board/The Wagner Act
NRA 1933 National Recovery Administration
NYA 1935 National Youth Administration
PRRA 1933 Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration
PWA 1933 Public Works Administration
RA 1935 Resettlement Administration
REA 1935 Rural Electrification Administration (now Rural Utilities Service)
SEC 1934 Securities and Exchange Commission
SSA 1935 Social Security Administration
SSB 1935 Social Security Board (now Social Security Administration)
TVA 1933 Tennessee Valley Authority
USHA 1937 United States Housing Authority
USMC 1936 United States Maritime Commission
WPA 1935 Works Progress Administration
Bravo Mr. Guy! Another worthwhile file on two of the most loathsome presidents.
Always like JT's writings. He doesn't waste words getting his points out. When something is important to the USG, it makes sure it has access to it, always. Glenn Beck illustrated this over a decade ago. Here are examples: Once in office, O had his admin, especially the DOJ, take measures to coerce major business sectors to do his bidding (Choke-Point was one that applied to bankers to stop arms related businesses or others on O’s hit list) while agencies with regulation powers regarding monopolies and mergers were green-lighting to allow and even request certain tech business buy or take over their competitors. The USG’s controlling capabilities are at stake when there are too many cats to herd.
Here is one from history: AT&T is 148 years old. All long distance phone service belonged to AT&T under a Federally regulated monopoly and through its Bell operating companies, the majority of local service across the nation. In 1982 AT&T agree to divested the Bell operating companies. It was not until 1996 that long distance was opened to competition. Four years later cellular service became available. The lengthy timeline for this monopoly was due to the Feds need for intelligence gathering that only AT&T could provide. It was especially important during WWI. There was an understanding between the two entities. I’m sure most remember when it was leaked that AT&T made copies of all domestic and foreign calls for the Feds and the Bell companies were required to provide the same when the Feds asked. Qwest’s CEO, Joseph P. Nacchio (1997-2002), was the only company to demand legal authority for surreptitious mass surveillance demanded by the NSA which began prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks. He refused to give customer data in 2001. In 2007 Nacchio was convicted of insider trading during his time heading Qwest and he was sentenced to six years in federal prison. His appeals failed.
It's so hard to keep up, much less comment, when there's so much regular work anymore. Not political work, but that to put food on the table.
However, back tracking late last night to an interview between Tucker Carlson and Chris Cuomo, there was an insightful discussion led by Cuomo of all people. That it was 9-11 where government finally abrogated its responsibilities. The Congress gave up their role in legislation and war powers by handing it to the president, the executive. And the Congress has not taken it back since. Like Pilate, they washed hands of the responsibility of governing, contrary to the Constitution, and thankfully gave to Bush and the Presidency, never to be retrieved. I'm sure their are examples of this earlier, but since then, we have had an executive state. And endless CR's
Even when retired, duty calls and conversation must wait. I guess 9-11 was a pivotal point. I’m not sure when Congress’s propensity to genuflect to the executive occurred, but every time it moved oversite of State powers to the Feds those powers are vested in the executive. That’s about all Congress has been doing since FDR. It has become the money laundromat between tax payers and the executive branch. Never been a time in my lifetime that Congress took anything back. The judicial joined in on the scheme also.
We had great friends that worked for Qwest. They had the insider view of the changes.
My mother worked for Bell Telephone as a young mother after WW2 as did her sisters.
The phone companies were a huge colossus for employment and family survival.
That was the go-to place for many women. The central offices and outside plant required lots of male workers also.
AT&T , 148 years old would equal the year 1876. The would be a 5 years after 1871. That would be when Congress formed the Corporation called the District of Columbia( UNITED STATES OF AMERICA) with an U.S. CONSTITUTION.
They have an interesting History.
During the Bell System's long history, AT&T was at times the world's largest telephone company, the world's largest cable television operator, and a regulated monopoly.
AT&T started with Bell Patent Association, a legal entity established in 1874 to protect the patent rights of Alexander Graham Bell after he invented the telephone system. Originally a verbal agreement, it was formalized in writing in 1875 as Bell Telephone Company.
In 1880 the management of American Bell had created what would become AT&T Long Lines. The project was the first of its kind to create a nationwide long-distance network with a commercially viable cost-structure.
The project was formally incorporated in New York as a separate company named American Telephone and Telegraph Company on March 3, 1885. Originating in New York City, its long-distance telephone network reached Chicago, Illinois, in 1892, with its multitudes of local exchanges continuing to stretch further and further yearly, eventually creating a continent-wide telephone system.
***********************
AT&T, They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program. Known in AT&T as "Service Node Routing Complexes."
https://theintercept.com/2018/06/25/att-internet-nsa-spy-hubs/
Mr. Binney point, is the FBI director and Top DOJ has daily access to the NSA database without going thru a FISA court.
NSA global reach is omnipresent. The US intelligence controls the entire cyber network across the globe, violating individual piracy by storing endless data on its increasingly enlarged servers, former NSA crypto-mathematician, William Binney,
Fairview is a secret program under which the National Security Agency cooperates with the American telecommunications company AT&T
The agency has gotten access to billions of emails, etc with the cooperation of AT&T.The NSA 's ability to spy on vast quantities of Internet traffic passing through the United States has relied on its extraordinary, decades-long partnership with a single company: the telecom giant AT&T.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairview_(surveillance_program)
The NSA collects data on everyone. They have over 50000 data links around the world collecting information.
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/sociopol_mediacontrol05.htm
NSA has a 70 billion contractor budget each year. You need clearance just to get in the building. Only the NSA knows what is going on behind the doors. Congress does not have access to inside the NSA. They have over 50000 data links around the world collecting information.
NSA global reach is omnipresent. The US intelligence controls the entire cyber network across the globe, violating individual piracy by storing endless data on its increasingly enlarged servers, former NSA crypto-mathematician William Binney.
****************
William Binney | Snowden Debate | Oxford Union
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQpTofvZJWU
An effective alternative to mass surveillance | William Binney | TEDxBerlinSalon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LufSe8-50-s
Thank you for all this detail! There must be more though about AT& “Telegraph” - I find blanks or statements with no specific facts regarding history between AT&T and Western Union. I found agreement?, contract?, ownership? and the 1913 Kingsbury commitment in which it had to divest its 'interest' in Western Union. None of my research indicates that it every operated a telegraph, hmm. I know that during WWI the entity that became the CIA had a special 3 or 4 story building where AT&T worked with it but by then I assume it was no longer in the telegraph business (or was it?) and continental long distance could not provide foreign info.
It is the Brits that put in all the undersea cable for telegraph in the 1850-60s to connect France, Ireland, Newfoundland, America and so forth. Queen Victory sent a cable to Pres. Buchanan “The Queen is convinced that the President will join her in fervently hoping that the electric cable, which now connects Great Britain with the United States, will prove an additional link between the nations, whose friendship is founded upon their common interest and reciprocal esteem.” Ya. England had decided it had to have immediate access to foreign governments is my take.
Have you seen this?
AT&T gained control of Western Union in 1909, acquiring a 30% stake in the company. However, in 1913 AT&T, under indictment for violating the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, was forced to sell its shares in the company which once again became independent.
Nonnenmacher, Tomas. History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry
"Telephone Trust to Dissolve," The New York Times pg. 1, Saturday, December 20, 1913.
Financier Jay Gould orchestrated a merger of the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company with Western Union in 1881, giving him a controlling share of the merged company.
Klein, Maury (1997). The Life and Legend of Jay Gould. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5771-3.
Renehan, Edward J. Jr. (2006). Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons. New York: Basic Books. p. 263. ISBN 978-0-465-06886-9.
Wu, Tim, The Master Switch : The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2010. ISBN 978-0-307-26993-5
Western Union acquired its only major competitor in the American telegraphy sector Postal Telegraph, Inc. in 1945, effectively giving the company monopoly power over the industry.
After 1945 the telegraphy industry began to experience a decline as the use of telephones increased, especially in the case of long-distance calls, with total telegraph messages almost halving from 1945 to 1960.
****************************
History of the early telegraph: The key person was Oliver Heaviside and Werner von Siemens...
Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925) was a self-educated English mathematical physicist who spent most of his life on the far fringes of the scientific community. Yet he did more than anyone else to shape how James Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory was understood and applied in the 50 years after Maxwell's death. Both Maxwell and Heaviside follow the concept of counter-space/Aether.Maxwell's equations are actually Heavisides equations.
Maxwell's original equations were averaging 20 pages per equation. Not very useful to engineers in an age before computers. Heaviside restructured Maxwell's original 20 equations to be the four equations that we now recognize as Maxwell's equations. In every high school, good physics students can write down Newton's laws. In every university, they can write down Maxwell's equations in the mathematical form developed by Heaviside.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2017.0447#:~:text=Heaviside%20restructured%20Maxwell's%20original%2020,mathematical%20form%20developed%20by%20Heaviside
Eric Dollard - History and Theory of Electricity - the whole video is interesting.
Eric Dollard - History and Theory of Electricity
Telegraph and Oliver Heaviside and Werner von Siemens - in the first 30 minutes of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNstg-HHneY
***************
https://www.siemens.com/global/en/company/about/history/technology/information-and-communications-technology/telegraphy-and-telex.html
Mr. Guy, thank you for this history. I know of Siemens, which was the number one manufacturer of telephone switches. Jay Gould is certainly a historical figure. The Kingsbury Commitment was a 1913 out-of-court settlement of the United States government's antitrust challenge against AT&T. 1909 sounds right for control of WU under AT&T President Vail.
I will look at your post in detail when I get back from getting some horse feed and bird seed for my deck birds.
Thanks for the information on the Kingsbury Commitment. Did not know this name.
I have not had time to review your lengthy and wonderful post. Here is another tidbit - The most explicit example of AT&T’s collusion with the U.S. government came in 1918, when the U.S. Government nationalized the telegraph and telephone system under the supervision of the United States Postal Service. The USPS ran AT&T and its competitors with a light touch, allowing executives like CEO Theodore Vail to remain with the company and compensating shareholders handsomely. As Michael Janson and Christopher Yoo write of the government’s stewardship of AT&T assets, “the government effectively guaranteed AT&T’s previous rate of return while assuming all of the risks of operating the system.” The Postal Service’s stewardship did more to consolidate the telecom industry in one year than AT&T was able to do in five years following the Kingsbury Commitment. As Janson and Yoo point out, the government was keen to make the nation’s telephone and telegraph networks more efficient, which meant reducing redundancies and harmonizing differences between networks. During the short time the government ran AT&T, it approved dozens of consolidations of competing services, and Congress formally exempted telecom companies from antitrust laws in 1921.
World War II: If the government takeover helped AT&T reestablish itself as a monopoly provider of telephone service, it was during World War II that the company repaid the American people for its largesse. According to author Jon Gertner:
By 1940, the research department at Bell Labs stopped doing research as nearly all of the Labs’ work—about 75 percent of it—was redirected towards developing electronic devices for wartime, first to help the Allies in Europe, and soon after to assist the U.S. Army and Navy.
The federal government invested hundreds of millions of dollars in private organizations like AT&T’s research arm, and Bell Labs helped develop tools as wide ranging as “tank radio sets to communications systems for pilots wearing oxygen masks to enciphering machines for scrambling secret messages.”
Bell Labs’ most famous invention during the war years was radar technology, which is often credited with helping the Allies win the war. Research related to radar began at the Naval Research Laboratory in the 1930s, but the Navy soon turned to AT&T scientists to refine the game-changing technology it was to become.
The Cold War: AT&T’s close relationship with the government persisted into the 1950s. According to Gertner’s account, Bell Labs director Mervin Kelly devoted half his work hours to military and government affairs. He describes the post-war AT&T as one of the main pillars of the military-industrial complex. Government contracts were not only a source of revenue for the firm, but “they gave the company strong allies within the government that the company would need as the twentieth century reached its midpoint.” These relationships helped fend off various efforts to check AT&T’s dominance of the telephony industry, like a 1949 antitrust suit brought by the Justice Department and settled in 1956, with the AT&T telephone monopoly still intact.
AT&T was able to retain control over the nation’s telephone system for 30 more years, until advances in long distance communication allowed upstarts like MCI and Sprint to challenge AT&T’s long distance business and the logic of its government-supported monopoly. But the events following the September 11 attacks show that AT&T’s eagerness to collaborate with the U.S. government, the entity most responsible for its glorious heyday, remains very much a part of its DNA.
https://fortune.com/2015/08/18/att-nsa/
But none of this describes the OSS (pre CIA) working with AT&T. Perhaps it was Western Union rather than AT&T.
My guess is the final inputs to "Data is the new oil!" came from the freely given information on social media sites which developed into detailed individual advertising dossiers. Government had access to bank data and other state registers of data and had all the Internet, email and smart phone intercepts. Then it came to politicians and their handlers to morph all together to control voting propaganda and it was not a large jump to think of making money from mandated vaccines.
Too many, gave up too much information on social media for free. The tech cos took it and sold it to govt becoming captured in the process having done so.
If everyone stopped using social media or demanded they be paid every time their data is sold, the situation would reverse fairly quickly.
Well done.
Greed was/is always available.
With my limited knowledge and experience with technology, I find it difficult to see how we could have foreseen all of these problems that we're currently having with all of these quasi company & governmental partnerships.
It seems to me, as difficult as it may be, that we need to RETROFIT a FIX a PATCH.
WHY is it that most disclosure s have an terms of service exception for residents of California, New York and sometimes Wisconsin?
WHY can't we ALL have a CONSUMER BILL OF RIGHTS?
WHY can't we have ALL APPS subjected to rules that protect the CONSUMER?
WHY can't we have full disclosure on the OWNERS, the INVESTORS AND DEVELOPERS of the apps?
Stifling competition and manipulating politicians and having laws and rules designed to maintain a competitive advantage has progressed into a fine art form! RNA push that is moving forward at warp speed is just the latest iteration
Thank you for sharing this with us! I have now read three Jeffery Tucker and one Brownstone pieces today. I was very unhappy to find our Chief Judge of the Supreme Court used the Chevron approach to sandbag us into Obamacare - with his approach re the superior expertise of the government. It leaves me with serious concerns for both the Chevron case and our censorship issues.
I first encountered the birth of 'motivational research' for sales purposes at MSU. Later I shared the evolution of computers in a law firm (that refused to network their 24 ees) and a Court with a slow antique undocumented sludgy data base. Our Pet service has a custom dB that for unknown reasons doesn't work on my cell phone.
I had no appreciation of the monster mountain of corporatism that has developed. I'm hopeful we will be learning more details, particularly as relates to how extensive the welding together has become. I remain hopeful that independant operations like Truth and Rumble and their related extensions of their services will be able to offer us independent uncensored options.
In the meantime back to learning today's realities and their implications.
You are ever so appreciated for helping us progress ! Again Thank You!
Very Bestest♡♡♡
New Ruling. To me the writeup
March 15 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday handed down a new legal test spelling out when public officials may or may not block members of the public on social media accounts'
isn't clear enough to adequately grasp the import. Looking for more detail
That's all that I saw on it too - was Amy Coney-Barrett written opinion.
There is a write up in ET now. Reading it over doesn't help much. May need to see if the opinion itself clarifys.
I read it and I think it was the original opinion was off because "The Supreme Court remanded the case to the 6th Circuit with instructions to vacate its judgment and ordered it to conduct “further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”" And "The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled for Mr. Freed, finding that he was acting only in a personal capacity and that his activities did not constitute governmental action." Those two align. This tell me that the 6th Circuit must have ruled differently then the Appeals Court.
Right. What I'm confused about is what actually happened. Person has an X personal account. Person is a public official. Public knows about Persons account. Public writes in complaint related to Persons public duties. Person does like publics' omplaint.
Person deletes complaint?
Person blocks that publics posting to Persons account?
Person blocks publics account on X social media?
Is the implication that Person as a recognized public official maliciously blocking public right to lodge complaint?
One of Maryland's County operations was just reporting about their new dedicated system for communications between County officials and public.
I guess part of my problem is I'm having issues with using a private social media account for public business.
I think most of our congress members have X accounts. I've never had a Twitter/X account.
If a public official is required by their job to alert, inform or otherwise engage with the public about some official matter then the official should do so through an official website, or email address or other official means. (those are all set up for NO responses) If they are talking about something as a private person on a social platform then they can block anyone they want to.
Hopefully this opinion will reinforce your concern. If it is public business and done on a private social media account, then the first amendment principle applies to anyone who responds to a post and they cannot be blocked or have comments taken down.
I'll check it out. Thanks
Could someone (Robert?) identify the header photo above Tucker's piece? Quite the work of art!
That's "The Chair of St Peter" in St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. (aka 'Throne', too)
Your company sounds like an exception, but what I've run into has not been great. Small business is a key, but what happens it becomes very success, then it's bought out.
What's really bad, when phone machines answer... and put customers on hold forever; or disconnect after a person has waited for ages.. The other thing...hiring people who have a bad attitude and take it out on the customer. Once upon a time, the customer was always right. Today, some company representatives make a potential buyer feel like they are doing customers a favor waiting on them.
Such an important piece of writing!
JulieW in response to Bruce Miller hit the nail on the head when she wrote in her comment “Strict return to constitutional parameters, including eliminating bureaucratic law and public employee unions; then, starve the beast.” I written this too many times; the United States Constitution grants very limited powers to the federal government. All federal laws and agencies not in pursuance of the Constitution must be eliminated. Good intentions and time never makes wrongs right.
I.e. the 10th amendment gave the bulk of the power to the people via the states. Time for aggressive state AGs to begin the battle to return that power where it belongs