Showing posts with label statute of limitations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label statute of limitations. Show all posts

Friday, February 28, 2020

Thirty-Five Forms of Child Abuse and Trafficking That Are Legal or Supported by Government (Incomplete)

Table of Contents

     1. The groping of children by T.S.A. agents
     2. The use of zero-tolerance drug policies to excuse the arrest and detention of children
     3. The use of the fact that students disrobe in locker rooms to excuse strip searches of minor students
     4. The police use of "bait trucks" to lure teenagers and poor people into stealing, to excuse their arrest
     5. The sale of teenage delinquents to for-profit prisons by American judges
     6. The use of "trash TV" shows, and federal law, in the 1990s, to promote boot camps as supposedly less abusive alternatives to prison
     7. The legal abduction of migrant children by I.C.E. agents at the border
     8. The legalized hitting of children due to lax standards set by C.P.S.
     9. Schools instructing bullying victims to hug their tormenters     10. Schools' deprivations of parents' rights and students' privacy during field trips
     11. The calculation of states' disbursements to public schools based on attendance turns schools into prisons
     12. The genocidal separation of children from parents, which is called "compulsory education"
     13. The molestation of children in public schools
     14. The taxpayer funding of legal defense expenses for teachers accused of molestation
     15. Teachers' access to students, and students' access to contraceptives
     16. Government attempts to refuse to grant diplomas to students unless they get hired, continue their education, or enlist in the military
     17. The recruitment of young adults into the military where they can't sue for rape
     18. The Violence Against Women Act functions as a rape and domestic abuse insurance program
     19. The refusal of courts to remove children from the custody of abusive parents simply because they are actively trying to remain a part of the children's lives
     20. The subjugation of American children to debt slavery through the Social Security System
     21. The splitting-up of families by the child support system (Social Security Title IV-D)
     22. The splitting-up of families by family law courts
     23. The abuse of adoption laws to justify taking biological children into custody
     24. The occasional refusal to remove a molested child from a home, or sentence child molesters to prison, on the grounds that the abuser is the biological parent of the child, is the child's caregiver and supports the child financially, has gone through treatment, and/or "wouldn't fare well in prison"
     25. The death of children following placement in foster care by family services departments
     26. The normalization of kidnapping, through phony "kidnappings" of high school students, by other students, as part of birthday celebrations
     27. The lack of an 18-year age of consent law
     28. The legalized use of the "I thought she was older" defense in statutory rape cases
     29. The decriminalized interstate trafficking of 12-to-16-year-olds by people less than 4 years older
     30. The invalidation of twenty states' age of consent laws, as the result of Quintana-Esquivel v. Sessions
     31. The legality of marrying minors, with the consent of a judge and/or a parent, in ten states
     32. The refusal to give serious sentences to police officers accused of statutory rape and child molestation
     33. The continued service, in Congress, of lawmakers whom have been charged with "underage prostitution" or child sex trafficking scandals, or have been caught on tape molesting children
     34. The use of the monetary system and financial pressure to coerce adults into accepting putting their children to work
     35. The possibility that the BAR Association (attorneys' union) is a syndicate of homosexual rapists and child molesters whom are covering-up each other's sex crimes.




Content



     1. The groping of children by T.S.A. agents

     The Transportation Security Administration agents give no presumption of innocence to passengers. This is “guilty until proven innocent” and it subverts the idea of maintaining the rule of law in order to create a just and civil society. In presuming guilt, executing unwarranted searches, and assuming consent, the T.S.A. ignores passengers' due process rights recognized by the 4th and 5th Amendments; namely the rights to be secure in one's person and papers (etc.) except upon presentation of a specific warrant, and to be free from undue searches and seizures.
     Children flying on planes in America are not immune from the T.S.A.'s choice of “porn or grope” (as Judge Andrew Napolitano put it). “Porn or grope” gives airline customers a “choice” between a privacy-invading body scanner that shows an image of your child naked to a government employee and could also give them cancer, versus a physically invasive pat-down.
     Were it not for their supposed legality, these pat-downs would be considered clear-cut examples of mass grooming of children (i.e., mass coaxing of children into accepting unwanted touching). The argument against ending this practice is the notion that terrorists will start strapping bombs to children because they know their children will not be searched, but those fears are unjustified because such a thing has never happened once in American history. The purpose of patting-down adults and children alike, is not just to instill in us a sense of safety; it is to lure us into a false sense of security. We know from tests that the T.S.A. fails to intercept 95% of bombs, so we can only conclude that sexual humiliation and submission are the goals of these procedures. Subjecting our children to them serves to inculcate whole generations of children into accepting unwanted touching near their groins from the day they begin using airplanes to travel.





     2. The use of zero-tolerance drug policies to excuse the arrest and detention of children

- Banning of getting drugs planted, touching drugs even if you say no after, and banning markers due to sniffing, as excuses to arrest kids http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyPe3_boqgE



     3. The use of the fact that students disrobe in locker rooms to excuse strip searches of minor students
- 58:04 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyPe3_boqgE : changing clothes in gym is excuse to allow strip searches of children (by Breyer)






     4. The police use of "bait trucks" to lure teenagers and poor people into stealing, to excuse their arrest



- Norfolk Southern:https://www.vox.com/2018/8/10/17676818/norfolk-southern-apologizes-for-bait-truck-in-poor-chicago-neighborhood-englewood
https://www.vox.com/2018/8/7/17661240/video-chicago-police-bait-truck-nike-norfolk-southern-apology-englewood-black-neighborhoodhttp://www.instagram.com/p/B9kVHiCJ5Gv/?igshid=1gyw7l32306br




     5. The sale of teenage delinquents to for-profit prisons by American judges



Pennsylvania judge convicted of selling teen delinquents to for-profit prisons
- school to prison pipeline



     6. The use of "trash TV" shows, and federal law, in the 1990s, to promote boot camps as supposedly less abusive alternatives to prison




Joe Biden's, and 1990s trash TV show hosts', efforts to promote boot camps as solution to teen delinquency, including as a supposedly less abusive alternative to prison (see WWASPS; boot camps are often no less abusive than prisons, and often more abusive)





     7. The legal abduction of migrant children by I.C.E. agents at the border

     Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) officials have snatched children from their mothers' arms, an act which would be considered kidnapping if it were not being done in order to further the goals of law enforcement.
     I.C.E. abducts these children on the premise that they can't be sure that the children are related to the adults accompanying them, as opposed to the children being victims of trafficking. This is false more often than it is true, as even when the child is not related to the accompanying adult, the child may have been adopted by the adult before or during their journey to America.
     This is the modern equivalent of Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels's claim, from the 1934 Nuremberg rally, that, during World War I, the enemies of Germany accused Germany of doing what they themselves were doing. Another justification for this practice is that the threat of taking children away is thought to deter people from making the journey to America.
     During the administration of Donald Trump, migrant parents were told by I.C.E. officials that they were taking their children away from them in order to give them baths, only to discover that their children weren't going to be returned to them. This is remarkably similar to the manner in which the Nazis used the promise of showers to lure Jewish prisoners into gas chambers.




8. The legalized hitting of children due to lax standards set by C.P.S.
     According to Child Protective Services, hitting a child will not be considered maltreatment unless it causes bruises or other physical symptoms which persist for longer than 24 hours. This is tantamount to enforcing a law that says it is acceptable to hit a child as long as you don't leave any physical evidence.
     http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3805039/ (see footnote #50 and search for “bruise”)












10. Schools' deprivations of parents' rights and students' privacy during field trips

     Some time between 2005 and 2010, a public school in Florida organized a field trip, and declined to notify how they would be keeping track of the students during the trip. The school failed to notify parents that the school would be taking pictures of their eyes; that is, retinal scans.
     This may seem innocuous and innocent enough, to the untrained (ahem) eye. But there are several religious traditions whose members have moral objections to being photographed. Native Americans, for example, and the Amish, among others. Some Orthodox Jewish people have a particular distaste for allowing their children to be photographed.
     The potential religious objections aside, collecting the biometric information of school students - especially without their parents' knowledge or consent - should be especially frightening to anyone who knows a lick about American history. The education system is heavily influenced by the Ford Foundation, founded by American automobile entrepreneur Henry Ford, who was known to have Nazi sympathies. Moreover, the collection of personal information, which was done to Jews in Germany in order to round them up and kill them, was made possible only by the technology utilized by I.B.M. (International Business Machines). That is why the collection of children's personal biometric information - whether it's scans of their retinas, or information about what kind of earlobes they have (because Nazis cared about that for some reason) - should never be done without both parental notification, and parental education about the history of Nazi influence on American education.
     No adult ought to know what a child's eyes look like, better than the child's own parents do. Retinal scanning of children, and other invasive forms of documenting their personal attributes for the sake of keeping track of them and "keeping them safe", only stands to accustom school children to being photographed by adults whom they don't know well, and accustom them to being tracked by strangers who are resorting to extremely unnecessary, and invasive, levels of security, in order to keep track of children during field trips.
     Whatever happened to "the buddy system"? At least when children are kept track of by other children, there's no possibility for adult-child sexual activity.



11. The calculation of states' disbursements to public schools based on attendance turns schools into prisons

     In nearly half of U.S. states, schools allocate funding to schools based on either Average Daily Attendance (A.D.A.) or Average Daily Membership (A.D.M.). "Membership" is the official term for enrollment. State-provided funds are divided by the number of students enrolled in public schools statewide. Those funds are then divided among the state's school districts, based on each district's projection of the number of students who will actually attend classes.
     Recently, this practice prompted one user of social media, who attends school in California, to create what has since become a "text meme". This high school student explained that a member of his school's staff "joked" that students should come to school as often as they can, even when they are sick. The official said that sick students should show up, be counted in attendance, and then go home to recuperate.
     This practice risks exposing sick children to unnecessary travel, exposing healthy students to communicable diseases, and reducing schools to the level of prisons which get paid according to their head count. The more states that choose to determine school funding based on A.D.A. and A.D.M., the more complete the transformation of schools into prisons - overcrowded, disease-ridden prisons - will be.
http://www.quora.com/Are-all-U-S-public-schools-funded-based-on-attendance-as-is-the-case-in-California-schools
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2011/jun/27/chronically-absent-students-cost-county-schools-mi/
http://www.quora.com/Do-schools-get-money-based-on-attendance





12. The genocidal separation of children from parents, which is called "compulsory education"
     According to Article 26 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (drafted in 1948), "Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. [emphasis mine] Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

     "Everyone has the right to education" sounds great, doesn't it? And "education shall be free" sounds even better (as long as nobody's forced to pay for it). But "Elementary education shall be compulsory"?
     "Elementary education" is the only thing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says should be "compulsory". In fact, Article 20 of the same document says that "No one may be compelled to belong to an association." Well excuse me, but isn't a public school an association? Isn't it compelling children to belong to public school associations, to describe their elementary education as "compulsory"?
     As if it weren't obvious enough yet that compulsory education is a scam designed to traffic children into the hands of government employees, public officials such as Kamala Harris have threatened to jail the parents of truant students. That is forcible transfer of children from their parents to the schools.
     Moreover, in the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (adopted in 1948, the same year as the Human Rights Declaration), genocide is defined as any one of many acts; not just deliberate attempts to mass-exterminate people. Genocide, as defined by the U.N., includes (but is not limited to) "forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" (where "the" denotes "a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group").
     What this means is that the same year that the United Nations declared compulsory education to be a universal human right, it also arguably declared compulsory education to be a form of genocide. Which implies that the U.N. believes that all peoples and groups are entitled to genocide. The United Nations are effectively saying that all peoples and groups the world over, have a universal human right to be forcibly taxed, in order to fund the transfer of their children to government employees with the threat of jail time if they refuse to comply (but it's OK because the forcible taxation allows elementary education to be free at the point of sale).
     The U.N. has thus shown that it has no business whatsoever determining what is and is not a universal human right.
     http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
     http://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf


13. The molestation of children in public schools

     Twenty-four American public school students are molested every school day in America (assuming 175 school days per year). This figure includes all reported molestation, sexual abuse, and sexual assault, by teachers and fellow students combined, from the years 2011 through 2015.
     According to an estimate by Hofstra University scholar Charol Shakeshaft, 290,000 students had experienced some form of sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000 (which works out to 184 molestations per school day, assuming 175 school days per year).
     One American public school student per school day suffers injury or death at the hands of a gunman. If the argument “If it will save the life of even one child, it will be worth it”, can convince people that gun control is necessary to prevent gun violence and protect children, then a similar argument ought to work for convincing parents to withdraw their children from public schools. Every day that students organize nationwide to skip a whole day of school, is another day that 24 kids won't get molested at school. And that goes whether they are skipping school to protest the climate, or to protest what they should really be protesting instead, which is their own mass enslavement by our corrupt government.


     14. The taxpayer funding of legal defense expenses for teachers accused of molestation

     The legal fees of public school teachers charged with molesting students, are always paid for by taxpayer money one way or another. This is because all of public school teachers' money comes from taxpayer money, and the only common alternative to those teachers hiring private attorneys, is accepting representation from their teachers' union. Those unions are funded by employee contributions, and those employees' money comes from the government. The taxpayers will thus not be free from preventing their money from being used to defend teachers charged with molesting students, until they find legislators and lobbyists who will lobby for an end to taxing people who do not consent that their money be used for such purposes.


     15. Teachers' access to students, and students' access to contraceptives
     Many people who support both public education and the legality of abortion, want high school students to have easy access to condoms, morning-after pills, and other forms of contraceptives and abortificants.
     Granted, any high school student who decides to become sexually active, should have access to such things. But the only kind of high schooler who can make such a "decision" to become sexually active, is someone whom is capable of making an informed decision; of giving informed consent. Only the oldest and most mature high schoolers are capable of deciding to become sexually active, because only the oldest and most mature high schoolers know about all the potential consequences - negative and positive - of sex.
     If mature upperclassmen have access to contraception at high schools, then that is all well and good. But perhaps younger teens who seek contraceptives, and abortions, should have their parents notified (except, of course, in cases in which their father or stepfather is the one who knocked them up, which would only turn a parental notification requirement into a danger to the child).
     Don't get me wrong; there are sex-positive people who support our public schools, and support easy access to contraceptives in schools, because they want women (women being the operative word) to be able to control their bodies. However, teenage girls, of the underclassmen ages in high school, are not women, and cannot consent to sex (nor can teenage boys of the same age).
     Moreover, there are other kinds of people who want contraceptives readily available in schools, besides pro-choicers who love teachers. Male teachers who want to have sex with teenage girl students have plenty of incentive to make sure that the school nurse's office is stocked with everything his "girlfriend" needs to "get rid of our little problem". Male teachers who molest teen girls and risk impregnating them, have every reason to make sure that the tools necessary to "cover up the evidence" are close by, and to make sure that the girl is independent enough to obtain them without any other adult finding out.
     Legal promises that public high schools will be stocked with easily accessible contraception - even for students not yet mature enough to handle sex, or understand when their relationship with an adult has become inappropriate - are, thus, a federally created insurance fraud program that subsidizes the molestation and impregnation of teenage girls by male teachers at public high schools.
     Easy access to contraceptives at high schools, does not teach students to have sex responsibly. It's not that teaching chastity or "abstinence-based" education is superior to teaching sex positivity and teaching about contraceptives; both abstinence and contraception need to be taught, and students need to be aware of the effectiveness of each. Abstinence does have a 100% effectiveness rate; but only if it's actually practiced consistently. Having sex is not a "failure" of abstinence education; to have sex is to stop practicing abstinence. Thus, no pregnancy can be blamed on abstinence, nor on its failure, since abstinence does not cause pregnancy. Abstinence-only sex education is what has been linked to increases in teen pregnancies; not education about abstinence alongside other methods of contraception. If adults can't accept these facts, then what chance do our teenagers have of ever learning this information in school?
     Easy access to contraception gives teachers the tools they need to help convince, or even intimidate, girls they molested into getting morning-after pills or abortions. Federally funded contraceptives in high schools, for all students who want them, is therefore federal student-raping insurance.




16. Government attempts to refuse to grant diplomas to students unless they get hired, continue their education, or enlist in the military

- Rahm Emanuel



     17. The recruitment of young adults into the military where they can't sue for rape
Military recruiters and supporters of drafting women, lure 18-year-old women into the military, where they can't sue the military for rape due to long and frequently changing contracts and also due to sovereign immunity

also the draft itself





18. The Violence Against Women Act functions as a rape and domestic abuse insurance program
     Consider the fact that the 1994 Brady Bill took guns away from Americans; including America's single mothers. Later in 1994, the Violence Against Women Act was passed, as part of the Clinton omnibus crime bill. The Violence Against Women Act promised that federal funds would be made available to women who became victims of domestic abuse. This is a perfect example of government "breaking your leg and then giving you crutches"; the same federal government that disarmed single mothers against their abusive husbands, also promised that some prosecutors would get paid every time an abusive man goes back to his ex-wife and mops the floor with her.
     The Violence Against Women Act is aptly named, because it does precisely that: it removes the barriers which prevent violence against women (by confiscating guns), and it promises more violence to women, through repeated abuses, by essentially promising to compensate the woman for the takings of her guns, by creating a federal insurance fraud program that subsidizes rape and wife-beating.
     Until the Brady Act and other federal gun control legislation is repealed, the Violence Against Women Act will function as nothing more than federal rape and wife-beating insurance.



19. The refusal of courts to remove children from the custody of abusive parents simply because they are actively trying to remain a part of the children's lives
     About half of U.S. states lack laws which make it difficult for parents who have abused their children, to retain custody. According to a March 2018 article from Pacific Standard, "family court may not consider the history of abuse relevant when awarding custody. It's common practice for family courts to preach that both parents should be in the picture for the [']best interest of the child.[']" The article also explains that abusive parents use custody battles to manipulate their ex-spouses - often traumatizing their children in the process - to a remarkable 70% success rate.
    http://psmag.com/social-justice/abuse-survivors-custody-battl




 20. The subjugation of American children to debt slavery through the Social Security System
     Social Security, and privatization schemes thereof, are used to securitize the debt of ourselves and our children.
     This is done in order to make that debt saleable on the international markets; that is, the markets for the purchase and refinancing of debt, and the markets for debt collateralization and government loans. Our unbalanced budgets, and lack of monetary and fiscal solvency and responsibility, have caused us and our children to become debt slaves.
     Because the government promises to repay its creditors, it intends to tax enough wealth from the next generation to make those payments. Unless and until we balance budgets (and then pass numerous surplus budgets), switch from fractional-reserve to full-reserve banking, and find something to tax which will be more efficient and less detrimental to productivity, our futures and our children's futures will be owned by private European bankers and/or Chinese investors whom our families will never meet.
     To learn more about this topic, research the sale of MuniBonds to European banks (this occurred some time between 2007 and 2011).



21. The splitting-up of families by the child support system (Social Security Title IV-D)

      Social Security Title IV-D pays states to go after fathers for child support money. Every time the state forces a "deadbeat dad", or an unfairly charged father contesting his loss of custody, the state receives federal funding. The State of Illinois receives federal funds for requiring child support payments, at a rate which is approximately 50% higher than the rates of the other states in the union.
     This turns the states - and especially the State of Illinois - into tools, to enforce federal laws on the federal government's behalf. These laws should not exist because they are not constitutional, as there is no specific enumerated authority for Congress to legislate on matters pertaining to child custody, nor retirement.
     The fact that the states get paid every time they successfully prosecute and incarcerate someone - whether they are guilty or not - adds to this mess (and also might help explain those high criminal recidivism rates).
     The states' avarice, and lack of concern for the freedom and custody retention of unfairly charged fathers, have resulted in a situation in which the states, in effect, routinely blackmail fathers, and charge them money for both the endless piles of legal documents they will have to file during custody hearings, as well as money for the very right to see their own biological children.
22. The splitting-up of families by family law courts

     In several states, including Illinois, family law courts have been known to unduly intervene in custody arrangements. Oftentimes they unfairly assume that the father is the person at fault, even when neither parent is really at fault, no serious child abuse can be proven and 50%-50% custody is the most desirable outcome for all parties involved.
     When 50%-50% equal custody is not presumed as the standard (when no child abuse is alleged), parents unduly deprived of custody become subject to needlessly-imposed difficulties in justifying retaining custody of their children. It is ridiculous to claim that you have the means and the time to take care of your own biological children, when all of your time and money is consumed in hiring attorneys, filing motions, and showing up for court appearances.
     The courts know this and they don't care. They want your children.
23. The abuse of adoption laws to justify taking biological children into custody

     In 2018, video emerged of a family court proceeding in California, in which an Asian-American female attorney found herself in an argument with a judge, after attempting to cite custody law which pertained to foster children, in order to excuse the State of California's taking of children away from their biological parents.
     Fortunately, the judge pointed out the attorney's error, and did not allow her argument to stand. However, in California as well as in other states, we should always be concerned that this line of reasoning could begin to be taken seriously in family court rooms.


      24. The occasional refusal to remove a molested child from a home, or sentence child molesters to prison, on the grounds that the abuser is the biological parent of the child, is the child's caregiver and supports the child financially, has gone through treatment, and/or "wouldn't fare well in prison"

     Sometimes, judges allow parents who have molested their children, to retain custody, and/or avoid prison time, because of absurd lines of logic such as those listed above.
     To accept the argument that a parent who molests his children, should not have his children taken away from him, because he is the child's biological parent, is to suggest that parenting a child allows you to rape them. It is to suggest that a child's duty to obey his parents extends to allowing them to molest or even rape them.
     To accept the argument that a parent who molests his children, should not have his children taken away from him, because he provides financial support and care for the child, is to suggest that a parent need only pay for the privilege of raping or molesting his child; whether it's through money and gifts, or whether it's through a legal settlement.
     To accept the argument that a parent who molests his children, should not go to prison, because he has gone through treatment, is to suggest that all a parent need to do in order to get away with raping or molesting his child, is read some pamphlets and maybe lie to a therapist a few times. It is to suggest that people who have actually raped children already, could be helped just as much by therapy, as could people who possess child pornography and haven't yet physically harmed any children (a class of offenders which is normally thought to be much more likely to benefit from treatment than people who have already committed direct sexual acts upon children).
     To accept the argument that a parent who molests his children, should not go to prison, because he "wouldn't fare well in prison" is to suggest that all a parent need to do, in order to avoid the harsh prison sentence which he deserves, is pretend to be, and act like, "a nice guy" who's polite, meek, timid, or submissive, or makes himself small, or ingratiates himself to everyone during the legal proceedings. It is to let narcissistic, sociopathic child molesters do what narcissists do best: put on the face of a nice, polite person, in order to get away with committing the emotional and psychological equivalent of murder, against children and their innocence.

     http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/03/du-pont-heir-gets-probation-for-raping-3-year-old-daughter


25. The death of children following placement in foster care by family services departments

      In 2015, Tammi diStefano reported that 570 children had died after being placed in foster care by the California Department of Children and Family Services (D.C.F.S.). Although diStefano made an error in reporting the dates during which these deaths took place, and neglected to mention that nearly half of the children who died had no previous connection to D.C.F.S. and merely had their deaths reported to that agency, it is true that 268 children died after being removed from their homes and placed in foster care by D.C.F.S., over the eighteen-month period of June 2010 to December 2011. That works out to one child, every other day, dying after being removed from their homes and placed in foster care, in the State of California.

     http://hoax-alert.leadstories.com/3470949-fake-news-570-children-taken-from-parents-and-placed-in-foster-care-in-los-angeles-not-murdered-in-2013.html







26. The normalization of kidnapping, through phony "kidnappings" of high school students, by other students, as part of birthday celebrations
     From 2001 to 2005, I attended Lake Forest High School in Lake Forest, Illinois. During the last few years of high school, I discovered that some students at my school had begun celebrating each other's birthdays by "kidnapping" them from their homes around sunrise, as a prank. The birthday boy's friends would get approval from the boy's mother, go into the boy's room while he slept, and then snatch him from his bed by surprise, and take him out for breakfast or whatever they decided to do together.
     Despite the fact that this "kidnapping" was done with the consent of the parents, this is not a socially nor emotionally healthy practice in which children should be engaging. That's because this phony "kidnapping" risks normalizing actual kidnapping. By de-stigmatizing kidnapping in this way, this phony "kidnapping" pastime risks desensitizing us towards kidnapping.
     Real kidnapping typically involves child rape, and often murder as well. No decent parent ought to allow his children to participate in anything which is referred to as kidnapping. The more you let people "kidnap" you for fun, the harder it's going to be to tell the difference between when someone uses the word "kidnap" in jest, or whether they're serious. If you get too used to getting "kidnapped", then the next person who does it might actually kidnap you.




     27. The lack of an 18-year age of consent law
     Contrary to popular belief, "the age of consent" is not 18. That is to say that the federal or national minimum age of consent to sex is not 18. States set that age at either 16, 17, or 18. The most common state age of consent is 16; as 32 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have chosen 16 as the age of sexual consent.
     There is no 18-year federal age of consent, but there is such a thing as a "generic age of consent" at the national level, which is set at 16 years old. That generic 16-year age of consent is set up in 18 U.S. Code Section 2243. That law was written in 2011 and passed in 2012, more than a decade after Hawaii became the last state to increase its age of consent to 16.



     28. The legalized use of the "I thought she was older" defense in statutory rape cases

     The section of federal law which deals with "Sexual abuse of a minor or ward" is 18 U.S. Code Section 2243. Within that section, subsection (c) lists the defenses acceptable for pleading not guilty to that crime.
     According to subsection (c): "(1) In a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section, it is a defense, which the defendant must establish by a preponderance of the evidence, that the defendant reasonably believed that the other person had attained the age of 16 years."
     Subsection (a) refers to the crime of sexual abuse of a minor, where under federal jurisdiction, by a person who "knowingly engages in a sexual act with another person who- (1) has attained the age of 12 years but has not attained the age of 16 years; and (2) is at least four years younger than the person so engaging; or attempts to do so...".
     What this means is essentially that it has been codified into law that "I thought she was 16" is an acceptable defense for sexually abusing or even raping a child; that is, as long as the child is at least twelve years old, and as long as the accused person can prove he "reasonably" believed the victim to have been over 16 years old at the time.
     The federal law concerning sexual abuse of a minor or ward, teaches rapists that it's OK to rape 12-year-olds as long as they maintain that they thought the child was over 16, and as long as they keep talking about and focusing on whatever details may have led them to believe that the child was of age. The effect of this law is that rapists are allowed to get away with raping children, by focusing on how it was really the child who was at fault, because she lied about her age. This law turns child victims into criminals, and helps rapists portray themselves as victims of fraud.





     29. The decriminalized interstate trafficking of 12-to-16-year-olds by people less than 4 years older,
   and

     30. The invalidation of twenty states' age of consent laws, as the result of Quintana-Esquivel v. Sessions



- 20 state age of consent laws invalidated by Quintana



- Trafficking of 12 to 16 year old by person less than four years older: Federal government won't punish because of age of consent law, and it's out of states' hands because it's interstate trafficking.



      http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2243
     http://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-unanimously-overrules-statutory-rape_b_592edaede4b017b267edff12
     http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/16-54






     31. The legality of marrying minors, with the consent of a judge and/or a parent, in ten states

 - in Esquivel-Quintana v. Sessions

- due to state laws (see folder)

- 10 states still allow people to marry minors with judges' and/or parents' consent; also TX child marriage epidemic

      http://www.huffpost.com/entry/supreme-court-unanimously-overrules-statutory-rape_b_592edaede4b017b267edff12

      http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/16-54








     32. The refusal to give serious sentences to police officers accused of statutory rape and child molestation


Cops get away with dating teenagers, see large document and use as link
http://scholars.law.unlv.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1755&context=nlj

http://thefreethoughtproject.com/elburn-police-officer-charged-21-counts-sexual-assault-child-payroll/

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/nov/19/police-chief-convicted-for-having-child-sex-abuse-video-on-phone-robyn-williams

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/18/police-officer-among-16-men-charged-with-child-sexual-abuse-in-halifax

http://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/11/20/cop-stalls-his-child-sex-abuse-trial-claiming-dying/2574771001/

http://newsmaven.io/pinacnews/cops-in-cuffs/nypd-cop-convicted-of-raping-13-year-old-girl-KQJjqs6uWkyOKmE0R65-tg

http://abcnews.go.com/US/oklahoma-city-cop-spending-263-years-prison-rape/story?id=38517467

http://texaspolicenews.com/default.aspx?act=Newsletter.aspx&category=News+1-2&newsletterid=67176&menugroup=Home

http://blackmainstreet.net/school-cop-received-oral-sex-child-wont-register-sex-offender/

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/prosecutors-louisiana-cop-forced-7-year-old-girl-to-perform/

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/ny-louisiana-deputy-forced-mother-perform-oral-sex-infant-son-20190608-3cuvo33yvngejertfb246f63ia-story.html

http://www.stripes.com/news/navy-cop-convicted-of-raping-child-after-super-bowl-party-1.591495

http://www.wbrz.com/news/breaking-news-one-year-old-raped-iberville-deputy-accused-of-filming-it/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Holtzclaw




     33. The continued service, in Congress, of lawmakers whom have been charged with "underage prostitution" or child sex trafficking scandals, or have been caught on tape molesting children


Biden pinched nipple of 8-year-old girl on C-SPAN

Menendez, New Jersey Senator, “underage prostitute” in Colombia


Epstein sex scandal unresolved; includes business people (Wexner, Gates, etc.) but also politicos: Trump, Clintons, Bloomberg, Richardson, A Acosta, George Mitchell, Sandy Berger. And fact that both Clintons involved with Epstein probably means Podesta guilty of child sexual assault as charged; Podesta worked with both Clintons
     34. The use of the monetary system and financial pressure to coerce adults into accepting putting their children to work

- dollar (lure into prostitution)
Money / artificial poverty; manipulating and controlling people into needing money (include capuchin study in links)
normalization of prostitution in high schools in UK (Dennis Parsons)





     35. The possibility that the BAR Association (attorneys' union) is a syndicate of homosexual rapists and child molesters whom are covering-up each other's sex crimes

Alex Jones: BAR Association criminal sex crime coverup syndicate / cover for each other, GALs










Originally Published (incomplete) on February 28th, 2020

Edited and Expanded Between February 28th and March 7th, 2020

Edited and Expanded between March 10th and 13th, 2020
at 1 comment:
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Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Thoughts on the News of Early February 2019


     The following was written as a set of responses to a select set of questions, concerning the American political news of early February 2019.
     The questions were written by Ron Mantegna, for discussion a current events round-table political discussion, held at Highwood Public Library on the morning of February 13th, 2019, moderated by Alan Minoff. The discussion group meets at 10:30 A.M. on the second Wednesday of every month, lasts until noon, and is normally moderated by Suzanne Cahnmann.
     Topics discussed include partisan congressional politics, democratic socialism, environmental policy, recent racial and sexual harassment controversies in Virginia, the statute of limitations on reporting sexual assaults, the State of the Union and the response thereto, racial demographics in America, U.S. military policy, recent events in Venezuela, Elizabeth Warren's claim to Native American heritage, a potential second summit between the U.S. and North Korea, the condition of the economy, transgender troops, and abortion policy.


     Q: Are far-left Democrats making it easier for Trump to get re-elected?

     A: No, because the system is not working, and people know it. Also, because economically and culturally, Trump is a step backwards, and his policies aren't doing enough to let technological progress (and the price relief it offers) to proceed at a normal pace. Taking a farther-left stance is the only way Democrats can compete against Trump in the Midwest and the Rust Belt.


     Q: How big a worry should the word “socialism” be for Democrats?

     A: Socialism itself should not be a worry at all; the only people who feel threatened by calls for democratic-socialist policy in the Democratic party are people like Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and Elizabeth Warren, whom have openly and repeatedly described themselves as capitalists, while posturing farther to the left, and all the while, contributing to the legitimization of a system that is designed to work against the poor.
     Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has reluctantly described herself as a socialist, but like Kristen Gillibrand and Gary Johnson, she understands that more worker cooperatives provide a viable non-profit alternative to public and corporate institutions. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gillibrand want that to come about through tax incentives, while Johnson would encourage businesses to cooperativize voluntarily. Economist Richard Wolff has also recommended that more firms become worker cooperatives.
     There is nothing that is necessarily “socialist” about “aligning profits with people”; nor with encouraging more firms to become worker cooperatives. Workers should have realistic chances to inherit, buy out, and franchise the companies they work for; and government creation of Private-Public Partnerships that give CEOs much higher salaries than the earnings of their workers, only contributes to the income disparity.


     Q: AOC's Green New Deal intends to provide economic security “for those unable or unwilling to work”. Your thoughts?

     A: We don't have to worry about that; people should not be required to work. Plenty of people know how to get by without doing taxable work, technology and automation will drastically reduce the number of hours people need to work in order to make ends meet over the next decade, and technological developments can relieve thousands of people from having to work. The problem of automation putting people out of work, is easily remedied, through any or all of the following measures: 1) provision of a universal basic income guarantee; 2) jobs training; and/or 3) widespread ownership of means of production. Through mass production and automated distribution, it will become much easier to provide people with what they need, without the vast majority of them ever lifting a finger to perform any type of labor they find distasteful or pointless.
     Socialism arose to deal with the problems associated with abundance, not scarcity. If not enough people are working, then that's because enough goods have been produced, that it is possible for many people to avoid work. Not only will many jobs die out over the next decade, those jobs will deserve to die out, because they can be automated, and thus relieve workers of their burdens. This will free-up time for workers to improve themselves, acquire skills, engage in leisure activities, invent something or start a business, save more, or do whatever else they would rather be doing if they did not have to work to earn a living.


     Q: Can Dems win by going far left?

     A: Yes. There are over 60 electoral votes in the Midwest that are up for grabs, since they went for Trump in the general election after Hillary lost them to Bernie in the Democratic primaries. One major reason for Hillary's loss was that she declines to visit those states as much as she needed to, and that is the area where a lot of the job loss is happening. Democrats will lose if they try to desperately hold on to states like Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina.


     Q: Should there be “statutes of limitations” on racist acts and comments by politicians? Citizens?

     A: No. Anything and everything a politician has done should be considered fair game; racial insensitivity, sexual harassment, anything. Until national and state governments adopt meaningful limitations on the number of terms politicians can serve in office, a high level of scrutiny will be necessary to provide the level of transparency the public needs to make informed decisions about the candidates.
     Ordinary citizens should not be subject to the same level of scrutiny as politicians are (not that that standard is very high right now; it should, of course, be much higher). But citizens should not be protected from being fired based on their past behavior either, because in the private sector, employers – and, to some extent, customers - have the right to make such decisions (which should, for the most part, be unaffected by political considerations).


     Q: Are Democrats hypocrites on the Ralph Northam issue, given that they have made “anti-racism” a primary motivator?

     A: No, because Tim Kaine, Mark Warner, and other Democratic Virginia politicians, have called for Northam to resign. If anything, they should be criticized for failing to call for the resignation of Attorney General Mark Herring for doing the same thing, and for failing to call for the resignation of Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax over sexual assault allegations. Democrats are certainly being inconsistent though, and unreasonably picky about which people they choose to call out over such inappropriate actions.


     Q: How does the Virginia situation compare with other high-profile figures who made sexist or racist actions or comments without consequences?

     A: The differences between the Ralph Northam incident and the Brett Kavanaugh incident are that: 1) there is physical evidence of Gov. Northam's insensitive behavior, and none in the Kavanaugh “case” (or, non-case, rather, since no formal charges were filed), and 2) Northam's “offense” didn't have any direct victims, as in the case of Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey-Ford.
     Before continuing, I should note that in the early 1980s in Maryland, when and where the incident between Kavanaugh and Blasey-Ford allegedly occurred, there was not a statute of limitations on reporting sexual abuse. This means that, even though it's true that the lack of a statute of limitations didn't stop Blasey-Ford from reporting the alleged attack, that does not prove in any manner that the statute of limitations made it easier for her to report the attack. And that's for one simple reason: she never formally reported the attack.
     Statutes of limitations on reporting sexual assault should be lengthened (as New York is trying to do), or repealed (as Illinois recently did). That's because people who are sexually or physically abused sometimes suffer from repressed memories; their minds hide from them the very fact that they have been abused.
That is why many rape victims don't come forward, because every time they spoke about it, they were silenced and intimidated, and because they can't cope with admitting that someone abused them.
     A rape victim may even be suffering from a form of split personality, fractured identity, or schizophrenia, because the person's mind has convinced them that the trauma literally happened to someone else, or to another version of themselves. A sexual abuse victim with this problem can sometimes be heard saying things like “I felt like it wasn't even me who that happened to”, or “I wasn't myself at the time”, or “I'm a different person now from who I was then”.
     And if they can admit that they were abused, they can't always accurately remember the details of their victimization, because the event was so traumatic, that instead of blotting out the traumatic memory, they remember only the traumatic memory, while what happened before and afterwards gets blotted out (because those parts of the experience weren't traumatic, and therefore were less memorable than the traumatic event).
     And while a rape victim is struggling to cope with being a victim, others may be telling them that they have a victim complex that is only imagined. Some people will even say that the victim should have said something sooner, but also that they should shut up about it because they were probably asking for it, and “must have done something to incite or provoke or arouse the rapist”.
     Others will intimidate a rape victim into silence based on the fact that the abuser has a career and a reputation to maintain, and a family to support. This is nothing more than the “banality of evil”, as explained by Hannah Arendt, who testified at the Nuremberg Trials. Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann stated at those trials, “I have been faithful to my country, and have obeyed the rules of war.” Essentially, his argument was that he was “just doing his job”, as I.C.E. officials in the U.S. are wont to say after shooting someone to death. But having a career and a family, and needing to obey the rules, does not make it OK to rape people, nor to intimidate them into silence, nor to put on blackface to deliberately mock people. If everybody with a family to feed did that, the world would be too horrible a place to live in.
     A person who has been abused or molested – especially a child or a legal minor – cannot be relied upon to either be capable of consenting to sexual activity, nor to promptly make a police report about his abuser, nor to give consistent and reliable testimony about everything surrounding the pertinent attack, nor to take the appropriate formal steps to do so without the assistance of legal counsel. Memory loss, intimidation, and the stigmatization of the “victim complexes” supposedly possessed by people who acknowledge that they have been victimized, all contribute to the “conspiracy of silence” which makes it difficult to charge and convict sexual abusers, and which delays the reporting of sex crimes.
     That is why statutes of limitations on reporting all physical and sexual crimes should be lengthened or abolished. The purpose of the American government is not to make it more difficult to sue others, it is to leave the courts open to all significant controversies, with equal protection for all, and equal justice under the law, and, thus, equal access to the courts, and equal right to initiate a lawsuit or file charges regardless of geographical location or jurisdiction.


     Q: What are your thoughts about the State of the Union?

     A: I thought Trump's address was boring, and virtually devoid of positive proposals, or any good ideas about what the government should do, or even any hope for a better future. It's difficult to argue that we can't do better as a nation than a Trump presidency. But as the current president, Trump cannot help but make the argument that we can't do any better, even if he tries not to. Trump's address failed, and he is plainly incorrect that “the state of the union is strong”.
     Trump patronized a young girl with cancer who collected funds for her treatment, which she only had to do because she was taken off of a public health care plan (a fact which Trump neglected to mention). Trump took credit for the U.S. for winning World War II that rightfully belongs to the Soviet Union (whose forces killed 80% of the fascists in Europe during that war).
     Trump has practically taken personal credit for lowering unemployment, which he admitted just four years ago was at 41.2%. It's not that the unemployment rate fell from 41% to the current rate; it's that Trump started using the U3 unemployment rate instead of the U6. U6 includes more people, like the seasonally employed, the underemployed, people without residences who work occasionally, and more; so the drop in unemployment is largely attributable to plain and simple fudging of the numbers. One cannot accuse Trump of misleading us about unemployment numbers, without acknowledging that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is at least part-right in her analysis of how bad unemployment is.
     Trump also patronized minorities by neglecting to consider the possibility that the low Hispanic and black unemployment rates that the country is currently experiencing, might be, in part, due to people being pressured into seeking employment. Being coerced into working for a business, especially one that has recently been bailed out by the government, is not a purely voluntary decision. Our society pressures people into working a regulated job and paying taxes, even those individuals can be productive and self-sustaining on their own, based on the idea that they are tax cheats.
     Not everyone who avoids work is lazy; some people avoid particularly difficult and taxing labor because it's safer and more healthful to avoid it. People who know how to avoid work should be left alone, and left free to reap the rewards, rather than being pressured into selling their labor to someone for profit.


     Q: How effective was the Democratic response by Stacey Abrams?

     A: It wasn't effective, but it was more effective and substantive than Trump's speech. It wasn't necessarily wise to have someone deliver the State of the Union response who is both currently out of office and has never served in a national elected office, but Abrams delivering the response can be rationalized by her popularity, the necessity of winning Georgia as perceived by Democrats, and the need to mobilize Democratic voters at the state and local levels.
     Although Abrams was correct to call for increasing voters' access to polls, she neglected to mention that we need to restore the right to vote to people who have been incarcerated but have served their time. To fail to mention the voting rights of the incarcerated is to neglect the significant diminution of black voter turnout in the South which is attributed to convicted felons still lacking the right to vote. On the other hand, I would guess that Abrams decided to omit those people out of concern that it could make African-Americans seem like violent criminals, so I understand why she would be reticent to mention them.
     Still, Abrams's failure to mention the voting rights of ex-offenders – as well as the fact that, in her speech, she appealed to Reagan and Obama to promote “reasonable border security” over open borders – suggests to me that the Democratic Party is still run by a neo-liberal oligarchy. That oligarchy is every bit opposed to real socialism, as it is to a system which would feature a combination of free markets, free trade, open borders, and a free flow of people into the country (unless and until they're suspected of a real crime).
     Given Abrams's support of gun control, Trump's willingness to confiscate guns, and Trump's supporters' ability to win immigration arguments with Democrats by citing Obama's record number of deportations, suggest to me that Abrams and the Democrats will offer a very weak and inconsistent argument against the Trump Administration. Citing Obama as an inspiration on immigration policy, is sure to prompt the Republicans to do the very same thing, and rightfully claim that the Democrats didn't criticize Obama while he was breaking deportation records.
     These facts lead me to believe that the Democrats will offer no substantial alternative to the Republicans in 2020, as far as Libertarians, staunchly progressive Democrats, Greens, and Socialists are concerned.


     Q: How important a role does race play today in our politics (on both sides)? Is one party helped more than the other by “playing race cards”

     A: Race plays a very important role in politics, as well as in the institutional hierarchy which minimum wage laws intended to impose (and succeeded in imposing) upon the labor force, and in the relations between racial gangs in the prison system and in organized crime.
     Neither party is helped by playing race cards, because while Republicans look like racists for focusing on race, Democrats focusing too much on race tends to distract from economic issues and divert attention to “identity politics”.
     Democrats are able to get away with this by feigning sympathy for people of color and patronizing them, while Republicans are able to get away with it by replacing discussions about race with discussions about citizenship status and religion (and discriminating people based on those factors instead of race).


     Q: Statistics show that ethnic minorities will be a majority in the U.S. by 2024, and beginning in 2019, more non-white children will be born each year. Your thoughts?

     A: The only reason that whites becoming a minority in the U.S. presents a political problem, is because the Democrats and Republicans who claim to value the Bill of Rights and civil liberties, are busy maintaining the current system of majority voting.
     Protecting the rights of majorities in an unlimited manner is not an American value. The rights of individuals should always be protected, without regard to whether they are in the majority or the minority (whether we're talking racially, politically, in terms of religion, or whatever else).


     Q: Will there be another shutdown? Is there a “national crisis on our southern border”? Is Trump doing a service by making immigration an issue that we, and Congress, can no longer ignore?

     A: There will not be another shutdown, because yesterday (February 12th, 2019), Democrats agreed to $1.4 billion in funding for a steel barrier along that border. I predicted several weeks ago that the Democrats would decline to impeach Trump, and even agree to pay for his wall, and I was right. The Democrats have shown themselves to be spineless, and their eventual capitulation was predictable from the moment last month when they agreed to fund the Border Patrol.
     Trump is not doing a service to the American people by making immigration into an unavoidable issue. He is doing nothing more than scapegoating immigrants and foreign countries for most American problems; from drugs, to infectious disease, to religious conflict, to economic and trade policies, to unemployment.
     Trump is deliberately playing-up the threat supposedly posed by immigrants coming from Central America, in order to create an illusion that they present a military-level threat to the United States. Without proving that such a threat exists, it will be difficult for Trump to justify declaring a national emergency, citing such a military-grade threat as a basis for such a declaration). Additionally, without such a declaration, it will be difficult for Trump to justify deploying U.S. troops on U.S. territory, without it being declared an unconstitutional move and an inappropriate use of U.S. soldiers during peacetime.
     The threat posed by Central American drug gangs is also being overplayed. The C.I.A. is the largest drug cartel in the world, and the U.S. sells weapons and drugs to regimes all over Latin America. People are coming here from Honduras, in part, because Obama's C.I.A. orchestrated a coup of that country in 2009, when it colluded with forces conspiring to oust Manuel Zelaya from power.
     If America doesn't want sovereign countries to be undermined and destabilized by rebel groups, as it claims, then America should stop funding and arming the rebel groups in those countries, and then wondering why people are trying to escape their home countries where those rebels are fighting their elected governments. If America doesn't want immigrants coming here, then America should stop bombing foreign countries, sabotaging their economies, and declaring their elections invalid.
     The Trump Administration is deliberately making the immigration crisis worse; by preventing people from coming into the United States and then declaring asylum, by funneling migrants into dangerous points of entry, and by suing volunteers who leave food and water out to help migrants survive their trek across the desert.
     Just like how the government allows heroin supplies to be cut with deadly fentanyl in order to make it more dangerous – and just like how the government allowed bootlegged liquor supplies to have toxic wood alcohol added to them – Trump is “proving” that illegal immigration is dangerous, by deliberately making it more dangerous. That's manufacturing evidence, and it's deceptive.
     Trump may be correct that he's making it easier to come in legally, but he's also trying to turn the victimless crime of crossing a border into an act that a person should not be allowed to undertake and still survive. Unfortunately, the Democrats offer no alternative.


     Q: What are the chances for substantive bipartisanship? Will low approval ratings give Trump incentive to work with Pelosi for high-profile deals, like infrastructure? Does Pelosi want to work with him?

     A: If it's not only a rumor that the Democrats just signed on to a $1.4 billion deal to give Trump his wall, then Trump will begin working with Democrats more, regardless of his approval ratings.
     I now suspect that Pelosi and Schumer have wanted to work with Trump to fund Border Patrol and build the wall since the beginning, especially considering that, a month or two ago, Trump cited Schumer's previous consideration of support for the wall as a reason why Schumer should capitulate.
I hope that Democrats refuse to fund the wall, and find some way to cancel the deal to allocate $1.4 billion to that cause (if such a deal has already been made).
     Infrastructure, and potentially also veterans' issues, are some of the most likely topics on which bipartisan compromise could be made, but disagreement on immigration might continue to be an obstacle to such compromise. However, I hope that disagreement on immigration grows, and I do not consider infrastructure projects to be a rightful authority of the federal government, so I would not be bothered if federal infrastructure reform were delayed due to partisan conflict or a government shutdown. Infrastructure would best be handled in the states and localities which are primarily affected by such projects.


     Q: “Great nations do not fight endless wars”. Are we OK with pulling out of the Middle East? Out of South Korea?

     A: I favor pulling troops out of South Korea, Japan, Kuwait, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Germany, and all other countries farther than 100 miles from U.S. shores. I favor dismantling some 800 overseas military bases, and removing U.S. troops from some 150 countries.
     U.S. troops have not been fighting I.S.I.S. as much as our government claims they have; our troops have mainly been working with I.S.I.S. to try to destabilize Bashar al-Assad's regime. Reagan said you shouldn't underestimate the irrationality of Middle East politics; but that's not because “they've been fighting each other for centuries”, they haven't. The same quotation from Reagan also suggested that the real irrationality lies in American foreign policy, which assumes it can fund and arm the right rebel group, to oust the right regime in the right country, and somehow achieve world peace.
     I support pulling troops out of Syria, but doing so will only prove self-defeating if we replace U.S. soldiers with private contractors or mercenaries. Regardless of concerns that a lack of U.S. presence in Syria will lead to a power vacuum, we never should have gone into Syria in the first place, we don't know what we're doing there, and every time we decide what we're doing there we're proven to be lying about it. It's time to come home.
     However, we should be cautious not to congratulate the president for removing troops from Syria and South Korea, only to re-deploy them on the U.S.-Mexico border, or to Venezuela for a coup to help install Juan Guaidó as president of that country. To move troops around the world in this manner, is like a child refusing to eat the food on his plate, and instead, moving it around with his fork, so as to give the illusion that he is doing as he's told. We must not allow the president to deceive us like that, if that is his intention.


     Q: Is Senator Elizabeth Warren's candidacy dead because of her false claims of Native American heritage?

     A: No. Her campaign is not dead, and she shouldn't have apologized, because she does have Native American heritage. Her genetics test revealed that she has a Native American ancestor somewhere between six and ten generations back.
     Indigenous tribes have the authority to determine whom to admit and whom not to admit, and they have the right to exclude Warren if they so desire. Warren is not lying; the data that the genetics test revealed were widely misinterpreted by various news sources.
     Right-wingers' focus on Elizabeth Warren's race – aside from it being a major distraction from more important things, like what Warren's policies are – is proving them to be every bit as focused on race and identity politics as the liberals and leftists whom they detest for doing the same thing (except that the liberals and leftists do it in order to defend marginalized people of color, not to dehumanize them).
     This “Pocahontas” controversy is also, conveniently, serving as a distraction from the fact that right-wingers apparently do not remember the history of institutionalized racism in the United States. After the Civil War, many southern states passed “grandfather clauses”, imposing voting restrictions upon African-Americans, but exempting those whose grandfathers had the right to vote before the U.S. Civil War (or other designated dates). This effectively excluded nearly all blacks from voting, the majority of whose grandfathers had been slaves before the Civil War. Effectively, these laws kept people from becoming free voting men, based on their ancestry; essentially, based on “the sins of their fathers”, not on anything bad they had personally done during their lifetimes.
     Additionally, before the Civil War, state laws regarded free people of color or mixed race as legally white, if they had less than one-quarter or one-eighth African ancestry. The following century saw the “one drop rule”, which whites claimed in order to justify subjugating anyone and everyone who wasn't 100% European. It should be plain to see, from these facts, that the experience of many people of color in America, is that no matter how many generations one's family has been interbreeding with whites, some whites will never stop treating mixed-race people as if they were not white at all, and therefore (in their mind) not human, or at least as undeserving of equal rights and equal treatment.
     Growing up poor in Oklahoma in a family she knew had Native American heritage, effectively makes Elizabeth Warren mixed-race. Her critics have apparently forgotten that not everyone in America is 100% white, or 100% Native American, et cetera, but that some people have heritage from multiple ethnic groups. It would be presumptuous to tell Elizabeth Warren that she did not have similar experiences to other people of mixed European and Native American heritage growing up. Therefore, it would be difficult to assert that she is “not Native American”, or only a fraction Native American, because being “a fraction Native American” does not erase any past treatment she may have received which could have been influenced by the assumption that she was Native American.
     I wish Senator Warren would walk-back her apology, and reiterate the fact that her genetics test revealed a Native American ancestor between six and ten generations back. Once the Republicans finish demanding to see her papers, and analyzing her blood (like perfectly normal people with honest intentions often do), I hope they can learn to criticize her on issues of substance, instead of complain that she doesn't look as “Indian” as the stereotype they imagined in their heads.


     Q: Democrats are proposing a “Green New Deal”. Why is the environment so low on the radar screen of most Americans, while so many scientists believe that the Earth is in crisis?

     A: One factor is the fact that most Americans whose opinions matter in the eyes of the governing body - because of their money and their high voter turnout - is retired people. And frankly, they don't have a lot of time left on this planet, so they have less incentive than young people do, to make sure that humans and other life forms can co-exist on this planet without destroying it.
The planet is approaching a point of no return, regarding carbon emissions, around the year 2030. Despite the statements of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that does not mean that we have to get to zero carbon emissions worldwide within 11 years; it means that after 2030, carbon dioxide should not be emitted without equal and commensurate offsets (such as planting trees, or engaging in other actions that lower our carbon footprint).
     Right-wingers' insistence that the public policy on global climate change be ignorance, is making it difficult to set the facts straight about this subject. It is also making it difficult for Americans to get behind adopting international climate agreements voluntarily. That's because right-wingers are willing to criticize Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 purely on the basis that they risk undermining American national sovereignty because they come from the United Nations. And they are correct to point that out, but they criticize the implications on sovereignty without considering that many U.N. programs and international climate agreements are voluntary.
     The same effects of Agenda 21 and Agenda 2030 – some of which are desirable - could be replicated without encroaching on national sovereignty. That can be achieved by codifying the same policies into law on a local or state level. That way, we could have local, popular laws all over the country, to make sure that human development does not threaten endangered animals, and to ensure that new wealth and large buildings are both spread out geographically, in order to (at the very least) prevent income disparity from getting any worse.
     Yet right-wingers' refusal to admit that climate change does not solely involve warming, and their fear that the only way to implement good environmental policy is through socialism, is just perpetuating the problem, and turning their pessimism about improving environmental quality into a self-fulfilling prophecy; one which allows them to pollute and waste as much as they please, without any responsibility to compensate others who did not agree to suffer the consequences of other people's pollution, but whom nonetheless have to cope with them.
     Republicans' scientific ignorance is stalling progress and compromise on the environmental issue. Hopefully it will not take them until 2025 to admit that there is a problem, when they realize that the North Atlantic Ocean has been dangerously overfished.


     Q: Is Trump's second summit with Kim Jong Eun a good idea? North Korea says they won't denuclearize. What's the risk that Trump will agree to pull out without getting concessions from Kim?

     A: America is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons against any other country, and it vaporized hundreds of thousands of civilians upon impact. America is the last country in the world that has any leverage or clout from which to admonish North Korea for possessing nuclear weapons.
     American belligerence and domination is the very reason why “rogue nations” like North Korea and Iran (which are nowhere near as much of a danger to America as we are told) seek nuclear weapons in the first place; to defend themselves against American aggression.
     To blame North Koreans for defending themselves would be more irrational than any ridiculous claim that was ever made about the birth of Kim Jong Il.
     Trump should pull U.S. troops out of North Korea, regardless of whether Kim agrees to denuclearize or not. I believe that Trump is ready to act like a giant baby over this issue, and I believe he is prepared to allow U.S. servicemen to die if Kim doesn't allow Trump to humiliate him, in the event that a second U.S.-D.P.R.K. summit does indeed take place.


     Q: What do you make of America not recognizing Venezuela's Maduro?

     A: I do not recognize the authority of the United States, nor Vice President Mike Pence, nor any country in Europe, to determine the leadership of the people of Venezuela; that responsibility lays in the hands of the people of Venezuela alone.
     The U.S. is currently blockading Venezuelan oil ships, effectively preventing them from unloading and selling their oil. The U.S. is blockading Venezuelan oil exports, while blaming socialism for Venezuela's decline. Well, socialism is not blockading Venezuelan ports; America is.
     Moreover, the U.K. decided to steal Venezuela's gold, on the assumption that Maduro is not a legitimate leader, and thus not qualified to ask for it back, and not trustworthy of delivering it to his people. Western media report this, as if the leadership of Great Britain were more concerned about the Venezuelan people's welfare than their own financial solvency.
     This is yet another example of the U.S. and its Western allies conspiring to delegitimize a nation's election results, invade it, and coerce whomever's left to rule that country into surrendering a significant amount of its oil supply. Trump even admits that he'd like to go back to a “to the victor go the spoils” model of war, in which the United States will brazenly admit to taking oil as payment for supposedly liberating some obscure segment of the people (and who those people are exactly, maybe we'll find out later).
     What is happening in Venezuela, would be like if the U.S. Senate got together and elected a leader from among themselves. It would be like if the Senate elected Chuck Schumer president, after two members of his party had insisted on remaining seated in office after they were revealed to have won their elections fraudulently. It would be like if Chuck Schumer essentially declared himself president, and tried to abolish the U.S. House of Representatives, against the wishes of the Supreme Court.
     That is essentially what is happening in Venezuela, except replace Chuck Schumer with Juan Guaidó, replace Senate with the Venezuelan National Assembly, and replace the House with the Constituent Assembly. An American congressman recently called for abolishing the Senate; so, if anything, it is the House that should be abolishing the Senate, not the other way around. That's because the House exists to represent the population, while the Senate intended to represent the states. And also because senators serve longer terms, and represent wealthier and more specialized interests than House members. Generally speaking, the upper house of a legislature entrenches power to a greater degree than the lower house does.
     Additionally, Juan Guaidó – the president of the upper house – attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C., a university known for having a significant C.I.A. presence on campus, as well as one of the five most militarized campuses in America. Guaidó's presidency is not only illegitimate; it is an orchestrated coup by the U.S., in concert with other foreign powers who want destabilization in Venezuela. It is practically a repeat of the C.I.A.-aided coup back in 2002 (under the Bush Administration) which saw the two-day kidnapping of Hugo Chavez, before his return to power.
     I predict that Trump's baseless proclamation that Guaidó rules Venezuela, will go down as one of the greatest blunders in the history of State of the Union addresses. That is, unless the Trump C.I.A. succeeds in its mission to carry out a coup there (perhaps with the help of a draft, to compel young people to fight). I hope that Trump comes to his senses and learns to respect the right of the Venezuelan people to manage their oil and their elections by themselves.


     Q: On paper, our economy looks great. But how have tax cuts, dramatic jobs increase, tariffs, and interest rate increases worked out so far for middle-income Americans?

     A: The Trump tax cuts benefited the wealthy to a much greater degree than the middle class and poor. I attribute the increase in employment to increased poverty and thus increased desperation to work, and to the picking and choosing of official government unemployment measures as a way to distort the truth about how many people are not only working, but are satisfied with their job and can rely on it for the hours they need.
     The tariffs failed, as tariffs always do, because they have only frustrated our allies without cause. The tariffs acted as, in effect, a bailout for American steel. Next, the agricultural sector was quick to notice that a round of bailouts might have been beginning, and so, they asked for their own. This not only could have been predicted, but was predicted, in economist Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson. Additionally, tariffs (as well as sales taxes) unnecessarily politicize trade, and deter foreign investors from investing here, if they in any way object morally to what America does with the money it gets from those tax revenue sources.
     It is sort of a good thing that interest rates have gone up, since that might make investments more secure, but it is still being set by a private corporation with unduly delegated authority from Congress, which disguises itself as a bureaucratic central board. If banks were free to compete to issue currency at low interest rates, then loans would be less expensive, and money would hold its value for longer. Any economic policy which does not recognize these facts, does not care about Americans' right to determine their own financial destiny.
     Ninety-nine percent of Americans do not own stocks, and 60% of the stocks are owned by 1% of investors. The Dow Jones is not an indicator of the well-being of the economy in general, nor is the G.D.P., nor is the minimum wage.
     The economy is only working for the super-rich, and the tax cuts made that problem worse than it already was.


     Q: The Supreme Court allowed Trump's ban on transgender individuals serving in the military to go into effect while specific cases work their way through the courts. What are your thoughts on this?

     A: It sounds exactly like Trump's policy at the border: punish everyone en masse, and let people drip through the system as slowly as possible, to discourage them from enlisting (or immigrating). What more do I need to say?
     Effectiveness on the battlefield should be the only criterion for admission or expulsion.


     Q: Americans are not making enough babies to replace ourselves. What can be done?

     A: If America doesn't have enough people, then we could let millions of immigrants and refugees come here. Whether we do that or not, we can automate manufacturing and distribution, so that we can sustain larger numbers of people, while progressively needing less and less human labor (and more automated labor, including delivery of goods by drone) in order to accomplish that.
     Think of how much food and medical care we could deliver to retirees, if internet purchasing, robotic delivery drones, robot surgeons, and 3-D printed organs were more affordable and accessible. Ending subsidies of all kinds, curtailing the duration of intellectual property protections, and lowering sales taxes and tariffs and trade barriers, could help make that happen, without needing to devote any more extorted taxpayer funds to science and technology.
     Undertaking the above mentioned efforts will do wonders to allow people to live comfortably into old age, without needing to promote the birth of additional babies whom we are not yet certain we have the means to take care.


     Q: How conservative is the Supreme Court? It left lower court victories intact for Planned Parenthood in a legal battle with states over access by Medicaid patients to the group's services. The dispute did not involve abortion, but it keeps a hot-button political issue off the docket.

     A: I cannot say that I know anything about the particular Supreme Court case that is being referenced, but I do not believe that abortion should be publicly funded in any way. Churches, charities, non-profits, cooperatives, and voluntary associations, however, should never be prohibited from offering abortion services (that is, unless they receive public funds and the public doesn't want them to offer those services).
     I hope that Illinois Republicans will wake up to the fact that they are never going to have a staunchly pro-life Republican gubernatorial candidate. I am personally pro-choice, but that fact does not stop me from saying that total lack of government involvement in abortion is the only correct moral position, no matter what side you're on.
     In deference to the Tenth Amendment, states would make their own policies. But localism, subsidiarity, and county and municipal home rule, are more important values than the simple assumption that the Tenth Amendment should always render an unenumerated authority the purview of state authority. The Tenth Amendment reserves unenumerated rights for “the states or the people” (emphasis mine), not “the states, and then the people”. Thus, the authority to determine abortion policy rests with the people of each state, and they can choose to have no policy if they wish.
     I do not agree with New York State's law permitting abortion until delivery, and I also know that there are plenty of people (even progressive women) who will admit that an “abortion” of a fetus over six months gestation is never (or almost never) medically necessary. That said, I also cannot say that I know for sure whether the survival of a fetus of eight months gestation has ever threatened the life of its mother.
     At the same time, though, I wish that this issue had never become politicized, and I believe that pregnant people should have the right to get abortions, even if it is elective. As long as it is not publicly funded, and nobody is coerced into paying for it. I don't think Medicaid should exist, much less pay for abortions.
     Viable Republicans and Democrats running for prominent offices will never offer voters this moderate third option.


     Q: How will the new Congress address health care? Which party has the bigger problem if Obamacare is killed and millions lose insurance, or pre-existing conditions are not covered?

     A: The new, and divided, Congress, will address health care in the same chaotic, meaningless fashion in which they have carried on “addressing” it for the last decade.
     The question explains it all: The two parties will disagree as to whether Obamacare has even been dismantled in the first place, and this disagreement will make meaningful conversation on the topic all but impossible.
     As usual, the Democrats will refuse to explain what their Medicare for All bill will entail in enough detail, and as usual, the Republicans will completely fail to explain the merits of creating free interstate commerce in the delivery of health insurance, together with an attempt to reduce drug prices. But reducing drug prices, coupled with getting rid of trade barriers against the importation of pharmaceuticals, will achieve an even freer and more interconnected market for health items in general. That, and taxing profits from the sales of medical devices, without taxing sales themselves, and only taxing medical device companies if they receive government assistance.
     Simply put, the Republicans do not care that they have a brilliant, simple health policy that could reduce drug prices, the costs of living, and maybe even the costs of malpractice lawsuits in this country. Why? Because Rand Paul is one of the biggest advocates of such proposals, and having a free market in health would make Rand Paul look even more credible than he already is. It would elevate his stature, and increase his influence upon the president and upon his party.
     If Donald Trump keeps listening to Rand Paul, our politics might become slightly more sensible. God forbid, we would be in a few less wars around the world. And I know of few Republicans who would be willing to put up with such a thing.


Post-Script:
     I asserted above that congressional Democrats agreed to fund Trump's wall to the tune of $1.4 billion, but that has not yet been confirmed. The source of that information can be viewed at the following link:
     Reports about this are conflicting. The following two articles allege that there will be a deal to avoid another government shutdown, and that the deal will not include funding for a wall:
     http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-likely-sign-deal-keep-government-open-doesn-t-include-n970951
     http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-shutdown/congress-advances-border-security-bill-without-trump-border-wall-idUSKCN1Q30KU
     We may not know what the final deal is, until Friday, February 15th, the deadline to avoid another government shutdown. So please, do your own research, consult multiple sources, check the facts against each other, and come to your own conclusions.
   





Written on February 13th, 2019
Edited on February 14th, 2019
Post-Script Written and Added on February 14th, 2019

Published on February 13th, 2019
at 1 comment:
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