- "Accommodation Crisis" Hits Ireland Universities As Dorm Costs Spike
An Irish Independent survey revealed student accommodation costs (dorm costs) had jumped as much as 11.55% YoY for all university-owned and on-campus accommodations in Ireland, which has led to financial stresses for parents and left millennials with student debt.
The Independent is describing this as an “accommodation crisis” as all of the country’s universities have increased housing costs so dramatically, it has priced out impoverished students from higher education.
Experts warn that the student accommodation crisis hasn’t peaked and could deepen into the early 2020s.
The survey found accommodation costs at University College Cork (UCC) increased the most, with prices for its Mardyke Hall accommodation soaring 11.5% for upcoming 2019/2020 academic year.
Students must pay at least $6,800, compared to $6,100 last year, to live in one of UCC’s small dorm rooms for the new year.
UCC’s University Hall dorm costs saw the second-highest price spikes in the country, with an 11.3% increase for a room.
Last year, students paid $6,200 to live in University Hall, but now it costs $6,900.
A spokesperson for the university told the Independent in a statement that the rise in accommodation costs was primarily due to “refurbishment works” at on-campus student housing facilities.
Social policy lecturer at Maynooth University Rory Hearne suggested that rising accommodation costs are due universities using it as a funding source.
“The crisis can only get worse. Students are now being squeezed even more because previously they would have relied heavily on the rental sector, but now that most people can’t afford homes and there is little social housing, students have nowhere to go,” he told the Independent.
“Colleges don’t have enough funding and college accommodation is an income source. But students shouldn’t have to pay for that – colleges should stand up to the Government and demand more funding.”
The National Union of Students in Ireland (USI) criticized universities for developing the accommodation crisis.
“Student accommodation prices country-wide have taken a sinister hike towards unaffordability in the past few years, this past year in particular,” said USI president Lorna Fitzpatrick.
Elsewhere, student accommodation climbed higher at the University of Limerick (UL), by 6.2%.
For a small room in an eight-bedroom dwelling in UL’s Kilmurry housing complex, students are being charged 6% higher at $5900, as opposed to last year’s $5,600. Students who rent at Plassey on UL’s campus will notice a 6.2% jump, from $5,000 to $5,300 this upcoming academic year.
A UL spokesperson said accommodation costs are higher thanks to modernization efforts at the dormitories.
“There has also been a capital refurbishment programme of €20m implemented over the last four years in UL’s on-campus accommodation, which has significantly increased the standard of our facilities at UL.”
Dorm price hikes have also occurred across other universities in Dublin: Trinity College Dublin, Dublin City University, and University College Dublin.
The Cost of Education in Ireland, a recent report from insurance company Zurich, recently said 41% of parents in 2018 were falling into debt covering the costs associated with increasing accommodations.
It seems Ireland, just like the US, is dealing with rapid inflation rates when it comes to higher education, at some point, this will all implode.
- Killing Free Speech In France, Germany, And On The Internet
Authored by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,
In May, France called for increasing government oversight over Facebook. Now Facebook has agreed to hand over to French judges the identification data of French users suspected of hate speech on its platform, according to France’s Secretary of State for the Digital Sector, Cédric O.
Previously, according to a Reuters report, “Facebook had refrained from handing over identification data of people suspected of hate speech because it was not compelled to do so under U.S.-French legal conventions and because it was worried countries without an independent judiciary could abuse it”. Until now, Reuters noted, Facebook had only cooperated with the French judiciary on matters related to terrorist attacks and violent acts by transferring the IP addresses and other identification data of suspected individuals to French judges who formally demanded it.
Now, however, “hate speech” — as speech that fails to comply with current political orthodoxy is conveniently labelled — appears to have become comparable to terrorism and violent crime. How autocratic, yet Cédric O apparently loves it: “This is huge news, it means that the judicial process will be able to run normally”.
It is highly probable that other countries will want to have a similar agreement with Facebook; it also appears likely that Facebook would comply. In May, for instance, as France was debating legislation that would give a new “independent regulator” the power to fine tech companies up to 4% of their global revenue if they do not do enough to remove “hateful content” from their network, Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented:
“I am hopeful that it [the French proposal] can become a model that can be used across the EU”.
France is the first and so far only country to have entered into such an agreement with Facebook.
The new agreement could signal the de-facto end of free speech on Facebook for French citizens. Self-censorship in Europe is already widespread: a recent survey in Germany showed that two thirds of Germans are “very careful” about what topics they discuss in public — Islam and migrants being the most taboo. Knowing that a mere Facebook post could end you up in front of a judge in court is very likely to put a decisive damper on anyone’s desire to speak freely.
French authorities are already in the process of setting an extremely public example of what can happen to those who use their freedom of speech on the internet. Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally Party, was recently ordered to stand trial and could face a maximum sentence of three years in prison and a fine of 75,000 euros ($85,000) for circulating “violent messages that incite terrorism or pornography or seriously harm human dignity”. In 2015, she had tweeted images of atrocities committed by ISIS in Syria and Iraq to show what ISIS was doing.
If Facebook’s agreement with France is replicated by other European countries, whatever is left of free speech in Europe, especially on the internet, is likely to dry up fast.
In early July, France’s National Assembly adopted a draft bill designed to curtail online hate speech. The draft bill gives social media platforms 24 hours to remove “hateful content” or risk fines of up to 4% percent of their global revenue. The bill has gone to the French Senate and could become law after parliament’s summer recess. If it does, France will be the second country in Europe after Germany to pass a law that directly makes a social media company censor its users on behalf of the state.
Also in early July, in Germany — where the censorship law, known as NetzDG, also requires Facebook to remove content within 24 hours or face fines of up to 50 million euros — the Federal Office of Justice imposed a €2 million regulatory fine on Facebook “for the incomplete information provided in its published report [the publication of its transparency report for the first half of 2018 required under NetzDG] on the number of complaints received about unlawful content. This provides the general public with a distorted image both of the amount of unlawful content and of the social network’s response”.
According to Germany’s Federal Office of Justice, Facebook does not inform its users sufficiently of the option to report “criminal content” in the specific “NetzDG reporting form”:
“Facebook has two reporting systems in place: its standard feedback and reporting channels on the one hand, and the ‘NetzDG reporting form’ on the other. Users who wish to submit a complaint about criminal content under the Network Enforcement Act find themselves steered towards the standard channels, since the parallel existence of standard channels and the ‘NetzDG reporting form’ is not made sufficiently transparent, and the ‘NetzDG reporting form’ is too hidden…Where social networks offer more than one reporting channel, this must be made clear and transparent to users, and the complaints received via these channels are to be included in the transparency report. After all, procedures to handle complaints of unlawful content have a considerable impact on transparency.”
In response, Facebook said:
“We want to remove hate speech as quickly and effectively as possible and work to do so. We are confident our published NetzDG reports are in accordance with the law, but as many critics have pointed out, the law lacks clarity.”
While Facebook claims to be fighting hate speech online, including claiming to have removed millions of pieces of terrorist content from its platform, according to a recent report from the Daily Beast, 105 posts of some of Al Qaeda’s most notorious terrorists are still up on Facebook, as well as YouTube.
The terrorists include Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, who was imprisoned for more than five years in Guantanamo Bay for training with al Qaeda and fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan against the United States, and Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born terrorist, both killed by American drone strikes. According to one US counter-terrorism official, speaking in September of 2016:
“If you were to look at people who had committed acts of terrorism or had been arrested and you took a poll, you’d find that the majority of them had some kind of exposure to Awlaki.”
Awlaki was preaching and spreading his message of jihad in American mosques as early as the 1990s. At the Masjid Ar-Ribat al-Islami mosque in San Diego, between 1996-2000, two of the future 9/11 hijackers attended his sermons. He is also reported to have inspired several other terrorists, such as the Fort Hood terrorist, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, with whom he exchanged emails, and the Tsarnaev brothers, who bombed the 2013 Boston marathon. Apparently, that sort of activity does not bother Facebook: The Daily Beast reportedly found the videos through simple searches in Arabic using only the names of the jihadists.
That Facebook appears to be “creatively” selective in how it chooses to follow its own rules is nothing new. As previously reported by Gatestone Institute, Ahmad Qadan in Sweden publicly raised funds for ISIS for two years. Facebook only deleted the posts after the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) approached Facebook. In November 2017, Ahmad was sentenced to six months in prison for using Facebook to collect money to fund weapons purchases for the ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra terror groups and for posting messages calling for “serious acts of violence primarily or disproportionately aimed at civilians with the intention of creating terror amongst the public.”
In September 2018, Canadian media exposed that a Toronto terrorist leader, Zakaria Amara, while serving a life sentence for plotting Al Qaeda-inspired truck bombings in downtown Toronto, nevertheless had a Facebook page on which he posted prison photos and notes about what made him a terrorist. Only after Canadian media outlets contacted Facebook to ask about the account did Facebook delete Amara’s account “for violating our community standards.”
When will Facebook — and YouTube — make it a priority to remove material featuring the terrorist Awlaki, whose incitement has inspired actual terrorists to kill people?
- Russia Unveils 'Hunter' Stealth Combat Drone In Maiden Flight Footage
Previously little had been known of Russia’s new combat stealth drone, the Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik, or Hunter-B, which has been described as a stealth heavy unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) being developed by Sukhoi as a sixth-generation aircraft.
On Wednesday, for the first time the Russian Defense Ministry released footage of the Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik drone in action, in a 20 minute low altitude flight at about 2000 feet. Russian news agencies reported it as the next generation drone’s maiden flight.
First photos of the advanced stealth drone first surfaced in January 2019, via The Aviationist. Earlier this year the secretive aircraft was first spotted by land-based cameras at an airfield in Novosibirsk in southern Russia, and then picked up by commercial satellite imagery in May at the Chkalov State Flight-Test Center. New footage now confirms its first major test flight as successful.
The flight analysis site The Aviationist described the new “Hunter-B’s” first flight as “significant since the aircraft is to provide the first heavy, jet-powered, armed, long-range drone capability for Russia.” And further:
The new Su-70 Hunter-B is said to have low-observable capabilities, providing it with the ability to penetrate heavily defended airspaces without detection to conduct covert precision strikes. The remotely piloted aircraft may also be tasked to work as a “leading edge of battle” penetrator, conducting the first strikes such as enemy air defense suppression during the opening phase of a major air war.
The wedge-shaped drone is considered among Russia’s most advanced aircraft to date, and looks like something straight out of Star Wars.
Russian media commonly described the Okhotnik as capable of traveling up to 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles), despite it’s significant weight of about 20 tons.
- China "Faces The Worst Of Both Worlds" As PPI Deflation Arrives While Food Inflation Soars
As if China did not have its hands full with a trade war, a plunging yuan and growing civil unrest in Hong Kong, which is fast becoming the potential epicenter for the next global crisis (and which Steve “The Big Short” Eisman thinks is the next black swan), it now also has deflation to worry about at a time when its ability to boost liquidity in the system is severely limited… or maybe it’s soaring inflation China should be concerned about.
On Friday, China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that the Producer Price Index (PPI), i.e. factory prices, fell 0.3% in July from a year ago, missing the modest 0.1% decline expected by analysts. This was the first annual decline in China’s PPI in three years – since August 2016 – and just like back then, was largely the result of tumbling commodity prices which in turn depressed both manufacturing and raw material goods prices. And with oil sliding, and iron ore plunging, not to mention the whole trade war thing, it does not seems like a rebound is imminent at all.
Worse, since PPI is closely linked to corporate profitability, the decline suggests that China is badly lagging in the credit impulse arena despite having started off 2019 with a bang and some of the biggest increases in Total Social Financing on record.
So what’s the big deal: China has always been able to boost inflation, all it had to do was turn on the credit spigot and inject a few trillion in new bank and shadow loans into the economy.
Maybe that was the case in the past, but this time it will have a big headache, because even as PPI declined for the first time in three years, consumer prices jumped 2.8%, and coming in hotter than the 2.7% expected, were tied for the highest annual headline inflation since February 2018; before that one would have to go all the way to 2013 to find a hotter CPI print.
A continuation of recent trends, the bulk of the inflation was the result of sharply higher food prices, which surged 9.1% Y/Y as China continues to battle the rapid spread of “pig ebola” which some expect will eradicate half of China’s entire pig population, leading to even higher prices.
Sure enough, pork prices soared 27% in July from a year ago, the highest in three years, but that wasn’t even the worst of it: the prices of fresh fruit soared by 39%, the highest since 2006!
This combination of lower factory gate prices and soaring consumer prices is, needless to say, the worst possible outcome for Beijing, whose firepower to stimulate the economy using conventional means is severely limited; that this comes at a time when China is caught in an ever escalating trade war with the US certainly doesn’t help.
“Surging pork prices continued to push up consumer price inflation,” said Capital Economics economist Julian Evans-Pritchard, but “weakening demand dragged producer price inflation into negative territory last month.”
This, as Bloomberg’s Kyoungwha Kim writes, is “an ominous sign for equities because it underscores the difficulties the PBOC faces if it wants to boost policy stimulus.”
Between soaring food prices, which limit the PBOC’s ability to “shotgun” inflation higher by injecting a cool trillion in new debt here and there, and the yuan’s plunge past 7 per dollar, this has effectively tied the PBOC’s hands, and its ability to ease aggressively as the economy continues to slow.
“The recent episode where the central bank reported to the police false information circulating about rate cuts underscores the policy dilemma that is brewing”, adds Kim.
However, it was the first drop in the PPI since 2016 that spooked traders, and first sent Chinese bond yields lower, and shortly thereafter, the Shanghai Composite, amid renewed fears that China is facing a hard landing, and who knows – maybe well before the 2020 US presidential election: “That underscores that rates traders are much more worried about the economy’s downturn than rising CPI.”
Indeed, as Evans-Pritchard ever so diplomatically put it, with accelerating consumer prices and the return of factory-gate deflation, “the upshot is that China faces the worse of both worlds.”
Who knows: a few more downward nudges to the Chinese economy, and Trump may win the trade war against Beijing well before the 2020 presidential election.
- "The White Supremacist Terrorists Are Coming…The White Supremacist Terrorists Are Coming!"
Authored (satirically) by CJ Hopkins via The Unz Review,
If you enjoyed the global corporatocracy’s original War on Islamicist Terror, you’re going to love their latest spinoff, The War on White Supremacist Terror. It’s basically just like the old War on Terror, except that this time the bad guys are all white supremacists, and Donald Trump is Osama bin Laden … unless Putin is Osama bin Laden. OK, I’m not quite sure who’s Osama bin Laden. Whatever. The point is, the Terrorists are coming!
Yes, that’s right, some racist psycho murdered a bunch of people in Texas, so it’s time to “take the gloves off” again, pass some new kind of Patriot Act, further curtail our civil liberties, and generally whip the public up into a mass hysteria over “white supremacist terrorism.”
The New York Times Editorial Board is already hard at work on that front. In a lengthy op-ed that ran last Sunday, “We Have a White Nationalist Terrorist Problem,” the Board proposes that we would all be safer if the government — but presumably not the current government — could arbitrarily deem people “terrorists,” or “potential terrorists,” or “terrorist sympathizers,” regardless of whether they have any connection to any actual terrorist groups, and … well, here’s what the Editorial Board has in mind.
“The resources of the American government and its international allies would mobilize without delay. The awesome power of the state would work tirelessly to deny future terrorists access to weaponry, money and forums to spread their ideology. The movement would be infiltrated by spies and informants. Its financiers would face sanctions. Places of congregation would be surveilled. Those who gave aid or comfort to terrorists would be prosecuted.”
The Board didn’t mention the offshore gulags, wars of aggression, assassinations, torture, mass surveillance of virtually everyone, and other such features of the original War on Terror, but presumably all that kind of stuff would be included in “the awesome power of the state” that the Board would like the U.S. government to “mobilize without delay.”
And the mandarins of The New York Times were just getting started with the terrorism hysteria. The Tuesday edition was brimming with references to “white supremacy” and “domestic terrorism.” Here are some of the front page headlines … “Trump is a White Supremacist Who Inspires Terrorism.” “White Terrorism Shows Parallels to Islamic State.” “The Nihilist in Chief: how our president and our mass shooters are connected to the same dark psychic forces.” “I Spent 25 Years Fighting Jihadis. White Supremacists Aren’t So Different.” “Trump, Tax Cuts, and Terrorism.“ And so on.
The Times was hardly alone, of course.
In the wake of the El Paso and Dayton shootings, the corporate media went into overdrive, pumping out “white supremacist terrorism” mass hysteria around the clock. The Guardian took a break from smearing Jeremy Corbyn as an anti-Semite to proclaim that El Paso was “Trump-inspired Terrorism.” The Sydney Morning Herald declared that the U.S. is now officially in the throes of a “white nationalist terrorism crisis.“ The Atlantic likened Trump to Anwar al-Awlaki, and assured us that “the worst is yet to come!“ Liberal journalists and politicians rushed onto Twitter to inform their followers that a global conspiracy of white supremacist terrorists “emboldened” or “inspired” by Donald Trump (who, remember, is a Russian secret agent) is threatening the very fabric of democracy, so it’s time to take some extraordinary measures!
Never mind that it turns out that two of the three “white supremacist terrorist” mass murderers in question (i.e., the Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton shooters) do not appear to have been white supremacists, and that none of them were linked to any terrorist groups. We’re living in the Age of Non-Terrorist Terrorism, in which anyone can be deemed a “terrorist,” or a “suddenly self-radicalized terrorist,” regardless of whether they have any actual connection to organized terrorism.
Terrorism isn’t what used to be.
Back in the day (i.e, the 1970s), there were terrorist groups like the PFLP, ANO, BSO, IRA, RAF, FARC, the Weather Underground, and so on … in other words, actual terrorist groups, committing acts of actual terrorism. More recently, there was al Qaeda and ISIS. Nowadays, however, more or less any attention-seeking sociopath with a death wish and a knock-off AR-15 (or moron with a bunch of non-exploding pipe bombs) can be deemed a bona fide “domestic terrorist,” as long as it serves the global capitalist ruling classes’ official narrative.
The official narrative of the moment is Democracy versus The Putin-Nazis (also known as The War on Populism), which I’ve been covering in these columns, satirically and more seriously, for the better part of the last three years. According to this official narrative, “democracy is under attack” by a conspiracy of Russians and neo-Nazis that magically materialized out of thin air during the Summer of 2016, right around the time Trump won the nomination. OK, the Russia part kind of sputtered out recently, so the global capitalist ruling classes and their mouthpieces in the corporate media are now going full-bore on the fascism hysteria. They’ve been doing this relentlessly since Trump won the election, alternating between the Russia hysteria and the fascism hysteria from week to week, day to day, sometimes hour to hour, depending on which one is “hot” at the moment.
These recent mass shootings have provided them with a golden opportunity, not just to flog the fascism hysteria once again, but to fold it into the terrorism hysteria which Americans have been indoctrinated with since September 11, 2001 (the objective of which indoctrination being to establish in the American psyche “the Terrorist” as the new official enemy, replacing the “Communist” official enemy that had filled this role throughout the Cold War). If you think the original War on Terror was just about oil or geopolitical hegemony, check out “leftist” political Twitter’s response to the El Paso and Dayton shootings. You’ll find, not just hysterical liberals, but “leftists” and even so-called “anarchists,” shrieking about “white supremacist terrorism.”
It was the number one U.S. hashtag on Monday.
No, the original War on Terror (whatever else it was) was probably the most effective fascist psy-op in the history of fascist psy-ops. Fifteen years of relentless exposure to manufactured “terrorism” hysteria has conditioned most Americans (and most Westerners, generally), upon hearing emotional trigger words like “terrorist” and “terrorism” emanating from the mouths of politicians (or the front page of The New York Times) to immediately switch off their critical thinking, and start demanding that the authorities censor the Internet, suspend the U.S. Constitution, and fill the streets with militarized vehicles and special “anti-terror” forces with assault rifles in the “sling-ready” position. This tweet by Geraldo Rivera captures the authoritarian mindset perfectly:
“In the meantime, there must be active-shooter trained, heavily armed security personnel every place innocents are gathered.”
I’m not quite sure what “in the meantime” means. Perhaps it means until the USA, Western Europe, and the rest of the empire, can be transformed into a happy, hate-free, supranational corporate police state where there is no racism, no fascism, no terrorism, and no one ever says bad things on the Internet.
What a glorious, transhuman world that will be, like a living, breathing Benetton ad, once all the racists, terrorists, and extremists have been eliminated, or heavily medicated, or quarantined and reeducated!
Until then, the War on White Supremacist Terrorism, Domestic Terrorism, Islamicist Terrorism, Russian Terrorism, Iranian Terrorism, anti-Semitic Labour Party Terrorism, and any other type of terrorism, extremism, hate, conspiratorial thinking… oh, and Populism (I almost forgot that one), and every other type of non-conformity to global capitalist ideology, will continue until we achieve final victory! It’s coming … sooner than you probably think.
Damn, here I am, at the end of my essay, and I almost forget to call Trump a racist. He is, of course. He’s a big fat racist. I should have put that right at the top. I’m already in hot water with my fellow leftists for not doing that enough. Oh, and for the record, in case there are any other kinds of Inquisitors reading this, I also renounce Satan and all his works.
- "Insect Apocalypse:" US Farmland 48 Times More Toxic To Insects Than 25 Years Ago
A new study shows how “insect apocalypse” is unfolding across America’s farmland since neonicotinoid pesticides were introduced several decades ago.
Researchers found that farmland across the country is 48 times more toxic to insect life than 25 years ago, and neonicotinoid pesticides account for a large majority of the increase in toxicity.
“It is alarming that US agriculture has become so much more toxic to insect life in the past two decades,” said Kendra Klein, Ph.D., study co-author and senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth.
“We need to phase out neonicotinoid pesticides to protect bees and other insects that are critical to biodiversity and the farms that feed us.”
Published in the journal PLOS ONE on Tuesday, the new study is a complete assessment of pesticide usage on farmland in the US, is the first study in the world to quantify how dangerous fields have become for insects by providing YoY changes in toxicity levels of the soil.
The increased toxic load measured in the study could explain why insect populations are collapsing in the US.
Klein said neonicotinoids are more toxic for insects than traditional pesticides and are widely used by farmers. These dangerous chemicals can remain in the soil for months to years after one application.
“Congress must pass the Saving America’s Pollinators Act to ban neonicotinoids,” said Klein.
“In addition, we need to rapidly shift our food system away from dependence on harmful pesticides and toward organic farming methods that work with nature rather than against it.”
The study suggests neonicotinoids are a major factor in the recent decline of insects, along with climate change and habitat destruction, leading scientist to warn of an “insect apocalypse.”
Insects, such as honey bees, are the world’s most important pollinator of food crops. It’s estimated that at least one-third of food consumed by humans relies on pollination mainly by bees, but also by other insects, birds, and bats.
Neonicotinoid usage has been linked to honey-bee colony collapse disorder and loss of birds due to a decline in insect populations.
Klein said neonicotinoid became popular with farmers during the mid-2000s, has contributed to the dramatic increase of toxic farmland.
The study found imidacloprid and clothianidin, produced by Bayer, and thiamethoxam, a product of Syngenta-ChemChina were the three neonicotinoids that contributed to the increasing toxic load in farmlands.
Last year, Europe banned three main neonicotinoids (clothianidin, imidacloprid, and thiamethoxam) for all farming activity. Several states in the US have also restricted farmers from using the chemicals, out of fear that it could further collapse the honey bee population.
- Pence Slams Colleges Over Free-Speech Zones, Safe Spaces
Authored by Adam Sabes via Campus Reform,
Vice President Mike Pence said Tuesday that safe spaces and free speech zones on America’s college campuses are “antithetical to the process of learning” and that he is proud of young people for challenging various speech codes on their campuses.
Pence made these comments during an event hosted by Christian conservative nonprofit the Alliance Defending Freedom and made clear that campus free speech is an issue that President Donald Trump takes seriously. Earlier in 2019, Trump signed an executive order tying federal research dollars to free speech on campus, as Campus Reformreported at the time.
WATCH (relevant portion begins around the 14:10 mark):
“We’ve sent a very strong message to campuses, universities, and colleges around the country that the freedom of speech is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution, and we expect our institutions of learning to respect that and respect diverse views on our campuses, and create an environment that is conducive to learning,” Pence said.
The Vice President continued by expressing that he is “encouraged” by young students on college campuses who are standing up to restrictive speech codes.
“And this is — I must tell you: I feel somewhat encouraged not just because of the strong stand the President has taken, but because of the courageous stand that we’ve seen young people taking on campuses around the country, challenging these — what do they call them? — ‘safe zones’ that emerged; you know, challenging speech codes that have emerged on campus,” Pence said. “All of those things are antithetical to the process of learning.”
He noted that more and more students are starting to challenge speech codes, and that it’s no longer just conservatives battling them anymore.
“The encouraging thing…is I see it’s not just conservatives that are speaking out against this now,” Pence said. “It’s actually very encouraging that many liberals are recognizing the political correctness, the reality of speech codes and censorship on our campuses.”
Pence said that it is critical that free speech and discourse are kept safe on college campuses, and told the audience what he does whenever he sees protests.
“You know, I’m reminded, my kids — my kids often quote me. Whenever I was governor or Vice President, or we see — I see somebody waving an unflattering sign or — you know, some people shouting something out — I always look at my kids and I say, ‘That’s what freedom looks like. That’s what freedom sounds like.’ Right? And the ability to disagree,” Pence said, “the ability to be critical of people that are in public life — that’s at the very center of what the people who founded this country had in mind and has been preserved through the generations. And we have to make sure it’s preserved on the campuses of America.”
- Hahnemann Hospital Bankruptcy Threatens To Leave New Residents Facing Massive Malpractice Liabilities
A plan to find new work for about 570 resident physicians that will be stranded by Hahnemann University Hospital’s bankruptcy has come under fire for leaving its residents potentially uninsured, according to Bloomberg.
Hahnemann University Hospital, in Philadelphia, filed for bankruptcy in July and began shutting down at the same time that hundreds of doctors were beginning their residencies. Now, the plan to move those doctors has been criticized by both medical education groups and the US government.
Hahnemann came up with a plan to sell its residency program to Tower Health, an operator of other hospitals in the region. The program could wind up being auctioned off if competing offers come in, with plans for an auction to be held this week and the results to later be presented to a judge in bankruptcy court in Delaware.
The proposed sale would give residents a place to go, while at the same time making money for Hahnemann by moving its Medicare contracts along with other elements of its residency program.
However, the US government has been critical of the plan, stating this week that it doesn’t comply with requirements for handing off Medicare arrangements. US authorities are urging the bankruptcy judge to reject the resident program sale when it comes up for review. Pennsylvania medical oversight officials argued on Tuesday that nothing in the deal overrides the state’s licensing authority.
Medical education authorities also cautioned that Hahnemann could be “sticking new doctors with liability if something goes wrong with patients they saw while working at the hospital.”
The Association of American Medical Colleges, the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Educationor all noted that nothing in the resident program sale protects the residents and that Hahnemann has not assured that it will continue to provide insurance coverage for any medical mishaps that take place as it winds down.
The hospital is closing after failing to return a profit to its private equity owners, headed up by former investment banker Joel Freedman.
The hospital has a limited number of options, but medical groups argue that either the hospital or its buyer has to provide insurance coverage and preserve medical records for residents. Michael D. Brofman, a New York lawyer who has represented unionized residents and interns in other hospital bankruptcies said: “Everyone who signs a chart gets named in a malpractice case.”
Once Hahnemann is completely disbanded, lawyers for those claiming that they were injured by treatment at the hospital will likely try to collect damages from the people that work there. The exposure could be a massive problem for young doctors who already have significant amounts of student loan debt.
Lawyers for the Association of American Medical Colleges and other education groups urged the court to provide answers on how residents would be protected going forward.
- Grass Gestapo Out Of Control: $30K Fine & Potential Foreclosure For Too-Long Lawn
Authored by Dagny Taggart via The Organic Prepper blog,
A few weeks ago, I noticed a woman standing in my neighbor’s yard doing something I thought was pretty damn strange: she was measuring blades of grass with a tape measure.
Then I noticed the city truck parked on the street.
Turns out, the woman was with codes compliance or whatever they call it…apparently, her job is to drive around looking for reasons to harass and extort people for things like tall grass.
When I realized who she was and what she was doing, my next thoughts were:
“Are there not real problems in this city that need attention? There are people who drive around and measure grass for a living? And these employees are paid with taxpayer money…to extort taxpayers?”
It isn’t like there aren’t real problems in this city. Like most regions in the US, there are things like potholes, traffic light outages, crime, and other random issues that, to a logical thinker, seem more pressing than the height of residents’ lawns.
Since when did having tall grass become a crime?
In many parts of the United States, allowing your grass to reach a certain height will lead to an unpleasant visit from the Grass Gestapo. I know, because it happened to me a few days after I spotted the Lawn Police measuring my neighbor’s grass. We were the lucky recipients of a letter informing us that OUR grass was too tall and that if we didn’t address the “violation” there would be consequences.
So, we mowed the grass and thought the issue was resolved.
A few weeks later, we got another letter from the city. Apparently, we are now on some kind of lawn maintenance watch list.
Here is an excerpt from the second letter. I have added my own observations and commentary (the parts in bold and italics):
An inspection of the above described property (so much for private property – pretty sure this is trespassing) was conducted and the following violation of the [redacted for privacy] municipal code was observed:
On 06/25/2019 you were sent a letter stating the following violation. Once again on 07/23/2019 I inspected your property and the grass and weeds were again exceeding the allowed 7 inches. (Again, this woman admits she trespassed on our property)
VIOLATION:
All premises and exterior property shall be maintained free from weeds or plant growth in excess of 7 inches in height. All noxious weeds shall be prohibited. Weeds shall be defined as all grasses, annual plants, and vegetation, other than trees or shrubs provided; however, this term shall not include cultivated flowers and gardens. (Now every property “owner” is expected to be able to identify noxious weeds and other plants? I’m surprised the city hasn’t hired botanists to come out to identify each and every piece of vegetation on every yard and fine us per plant.)
Any owner of agent having charge of a property who fails to cut and destroy weeds after service of a notice violation, they shall be subject to prosecution in accordance with (code redacted) and as prescribed by the authority having jurisdiction. Upon failure to comply with the notice of violation, any duly authorized employee of the City or contractor hired by the City shall be authorized to enter upon the property that is in violation and cut and destroy the weeds growing thereon, and the costs of such removal shall be paid by the owner or agent responsible for the property. (Translated: We will trespass on “your” property whenever we want, and there is nothing you can do about it.)
Also in accordance with state statutes (redacted for privacy), if weeds are allowed to grow on the same property in violation of (code redacted) more than once during the same growing season, no additional notification is Department of Planning and Community Development required and the weeds will be cut by a contractor employed by the City with the cost thereof placed as an additional special tax on the property if it is not paid within 30 days of receiving invoice.
Additionally, if it is determined that compliance is not met, a citation may be issued in the (redacted) court which will require an appearance in Court and may include a fine of up to $1000 per day (What the heck?) that the violation is allowed to occur. (This is extortion. What if a property owner is disabled or injured and can’t afford to hire lawn service? What if they are in the hospital? What if they just happen to like tall grass?)
The letter included copies of photos the Grass Police took of our yard.
A man may lose his home due to the height of his grass.
While some people might think “Well, just cut your grass regularly and the government will leave you alone,” it isn’t always that simple.
Jim Ficken knows this all too well.
The city of Dunedin, Florida, is trying to steal his home because the grass was too tall.
The Institute for Justice (IJ) – known as “the National Law Firm for Liberty” – is helping Ficken fight the government in court.
Here is a summary of the case:
In May 2018, Jim left his home in Dunedin, a Tampa Bay suburb, to go to South Carolina to work on settling his late mother’s affairs. While Jim was out of town, the man he paid to cut his lawn unexpectedly died. Grass grows quickly in Florida, and the lawn soon grew longer than the ten inches allowed by the city. The city immediately began fining Jim, having classified him as a “repeat offender” because of a warning he got back in 2015. Jim finally found out he was being fined when a code inspector told him he would be getting “a big bill.” Jim then immediately cut the grass, figuring he would be fined no more than a few hundred dollars.
It was $500 per day—the same as the fine for driving 50 mph in a school zone. And the city assessed it every day for over 57 days. With fees loaded on top, the total fine was nearly $29,000. That’s not the kind of money Jim has lying around. He begged the city to reconsider—to fine him something fair—but the city refused.
Come February, it was time to pay up. The city gave him 15 days to come up with $29,000, otherwise the city was going to get its money another way: by foreclosing on his home. And on May 7, that’s just what the city voted to do. (source)
Ficken is not the only American who is being subjected to this kind of treatment, IJ goes on to explain:
No one should lose their home because they let their grass grow too long. In February 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that governments cannot impose excessive fines. And losing your home because the grass was too long is excessive. Jim is nearly 70 and on a limited income. Fining him $29,000 is outrageous. And it’s part of a wider trend: all over America, local governments are padding their budgets by assessing crippling fines on their own residents.
That’s why Jim and the Institute for Justice are fighting back in court. It’s not just about Jim’s home in Dunedin, Florida. It’s about ensuring—for everyone—that abusive governments can’t trump the Constitution. (source)
Ficken filed a lawsuit against Dunedin and members of its Code Enforcement Board. He’s seeking $1 in nominal damages, attorneys fees, and injunctions that would relieve him of the fines. The suit also hopes to end Dunedin’s practice of fining people “without considering a homeowner’s ability to pay.”
“The City had the authority to mow Jim’s grass and send him a reasonable bill,” the filing points out. “Upon information and belief, the City did not do so because it prioritizes revenue over code compliance.”
Some might think cities are justified in fining people who do not maintain their lawns. But if one is concerned about the appearance of a neighbor’s yard (property values and all that), why not…go over and offer to mow the grass yourself? That seems like a neighborly thing to do, doesn’t it?
Is a $29,000 fine – or a person losing their home – proportional to having tall grass for a few weeks?
Does this sound like something that should happen in a free country?
Fining people $500 a DAY is unconscionable and frankly, downright cruel.
People are outraged over how governments are treating property owners.
Thankfully, Fricken’s story has received a lot of attention, and a lot of people are angry about how the city is treating him.
In May, it was reported that the mayor of Dunedin and other city officials received multiple threats of violence in response to the case.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office is now investigating after the mayor of Dunedin and other city officials received multiple threats of violence in response to a viral story about a citizen being fined nearly $30,000 for not cutting his grass, according to Dunedin City Manager Jennifer Bramley.
People from across the country unleashed their anger on the city of Dunedin by phone and by email this week.
“This is repeat violations. There were 15 of them and we intervened on behalf of the neighborhood. We are not putting him out on the street without a home. He has 4 homes,” Bramley said.
Bramley is speaking out on behalf of Mayor Julie Ward Bujalski who has been the target of threatening phone calls to her home. The person on the other end threatened harm to the mayor and her family.
“There have been threats to the code enforcement board, the code enforcement division, to city hall, the city manager’s office. Physical threats,” Bramley said.
One emailer wrote: “I hope someone burns your city hall to the ground.”
“We’re going to come down there and visit you, a whole bunch of us,” someone said in a voicemail.
Bramley says some workers are concerned.
“A lot of our employees are frightened to come to work,” Bramley said. (source)
A few weeks after the city reported it was receiving threats, this story broke…
The city of Dunedin has hired a crisis PR firm after coming under fire from the public for moving to foreclose on a homeowner who could not pay nearly $30,000 in fines for tall grass.
I-Team Investigator Kylie McGivern found a month-long city contract with the firm, Sachs Media Group, will cost taxpayers $25,000. (source)
Let’s get this straight: the city is threatening to take a man’s home because his grass was tall. The city faces public scrutiny and backlash for its actions. The city then adds insult to injury by spending $25,000 in taxpayer money to try to save face.
Have we reached peak government stupidity yet?
Ron Sachs, CEO of Sachs Media Group, told the I-Team the following:
“The city’s doing its job the way it’s supposed to do. And it’s making sure your neighborhood is protected and your community quality of life is protected, and the reason they’ve asked for our help is to help them message most effectively the facts and the truth, because some news organizations are not fully and fairly reporting this story.”
Sachs called Ficken, “a chronic scofflaw, who ignores code enforcement notifications and has enjoyed being a scofflaw, being a bad neighbor who doesn’t even live in the home in question.” (source)
Ari Bargil, Ficken’s attorney, defended his client:
“Jim lives in the property, he’s been living there for years. So the extent that the city is suggesting otherwise, it’s just untrue. With respect to previous code violations, I think the city’s putting a really colorful gloss on what actually happened. In every instance in which Jim has received a notice to correct any sort of alleged violation on his property, he’s done it. He was never fined once by the city. He’s been compliant every single time. This is the first time they’ve ever fined him and they decided that they were going to go nuclear,” said Bargil. (source)
John Stossel spoke with Ficken and Bargil:
Governments imposing excessive fines is a widespread problem.
I have yet to figure out who exactly is harmed by tall grass, but it isn’t the only petty “offense” that governments are fining people for.
Slapping unsuspecting individuals with ridiculous fines and fees is becoming increasingly common, as IJ reports:
Ultimately, this case is bigger than Jim. In 2007, the entire amount of fines that Dunedin imposed for code violations was $34,000—only a little more than the amount the city is now demanding for Jim’s lawn alone. A decade later, in 2017, the city was raking in 20 times as much, about $700,000. In fiscal year 2018, it collected almost $1.3 million in total fines.The city’s code‑enforcement attorney—the one who refused to negotiate with Jim—calls the system a “well‑oiled machine.”
It represents a larger trend: governments imposing crippling and excessive fines and fees and then using abusive tactics to collect. For example, Florida is considering taking away the restored voting rights of felons who haven’t been able to pay court fees. Nationwide, about forty states will take away your driver’s license if you owe certain fees to the government. In the most egregious cases, a city might even give a private prosecutor a financial incentive to go after minor code violations and then charge residents for their own prosecutions (source)
It seems that governments seek out opportunities to steal property.
Consider the following examples.
In 2011, Eileen Battisti lost her home over an unpaid $6.30 tax bill. Yes, you read that figure right. No, it is not a typo. When Battisti’s husband died, she used the proceeds from his life insurance policy to pay off the mortgage but struggled to keep up with some other bills. She missed a property tax deadline by six days but eventually paid the original bill of $833.88 plus the penalty and late fees. However, she was unaware that additional interest of $6.30 had accrued – that amount was not included on the last bill she received.
In 2010, Battisti was late again with her county tax payments. She again settled up, paying interest and penalty in full for 2010. The $6.30 from 2008 remained unpaid and Battisti claims that she was not made aware of the balance. By 2011, the amount due from the 2008 tax bill had ballooned to $255.84. County officials proceeded to put Battisti’s home up for sale.
Battisti’s home was eventually sold at sheriff’s sale for nearly $120,000. After taxes, interest and costs deducted from the sale, Battisti was entitled to just $108,039 from the proceeds. She was not entitled to her home. (source)
When I first heard about Battisti’s case several years ago, it was quite the wake-up call. For the first time, I realized that we really do not have any true property rights here in the US.
Thankfully, in 2014, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that Battisti was entitled to her home because she was not given clear notice of the amount due. But can you believe this case had to be taken all the way to the state’s highest court – and that it took 3 years for Battisti to get her home back?
Last month, a woman in New Jersey was facing the prospect of losing her house in Cranford – that she has lived in since the 1940s – because of delinquent property taxes. Rose Estwanick is a 106-year-old widow who suffers from a plethora of physical ailments as well as dementia. Estwanick’s daughter created a GoFundMe campaign for her mother, in which she shared the tragic details of the situation:
Having checked with our municipal tax office, we cannot defer property taxes. The State of New Jersey has no hardship exemptions for centenarian homeowners on social security income. We have one option available to avoid the Cranford Township Tax Sale scheduled for September 18, 2019: Make a minimum PAYMENT OF $8,367.18. (source)
On the bright side, Estwanick’s fundraising campaign has raised over $22,000 so far, exceeding the $12,000 goal her daughter established.
All of these cases shed light on a troubling reality: we truly do not own anything.
As Daisy Luther eloquently states in Are We Really Free? Maybe It’s Time for a Personal Declaration of Independence:
How independent are any of us, really? We like to think we live in the “free-est” nation in the world, but do we really? Think about it.
You never own your home outright, even when the mortgage is paid off. Every year, you must make your extortion payment to the city or trust me, you won’t be living in that house for long.
The same thing with your car. If you don’t pay your annual extortion payment on your vehicle and pay a hundred bucks for a tiny sticker that gives you permission to drive it, it will be promptly towed away by the city with the government’s blessing. Then, like a hostage negotiation gone wrong, you’ll have to pay even more money to cover their theft and storage of YOUR vehicle.
On a regular basis, you must pay a fee and ask the government for permission to do any number of things, such as driving a car, traveling outside the country, running a business, adding another bathroom to your home, or even catching a fish for dinner.
Permits and licenses are big revenue generators from start to finish – and if you proceed without asking permission, they will extort more money from you in the form of fines. If you refuse to pay the fines (or if you can’t) they’ll kidnap you and lock you in a cage, where you’ll be forced to perform manual labor for 10 cents an hour for whatever length of time the legal authorities feel is sufficient to teach you a lesson.
There are places in our nation where you can’t use your property the way you want. There are areas where you cannot collect the water that falls on your land. There are places where you aren’t allowed to detach your home from the grid. There are places that dictate where your vegetable garden can grow (or even if you’re allowed to have one), places that won’t allow you to hang your clothes out to dry, and places that make it illegal to sleep in your car.
The bottom line is, some places in the United States are freer than others, but we’re all still serfs paying fealty to lords. (source)
Perhaps a little – no, a lot – of rebellion is in order.
What if people started refusing to pay these exorbitant fines?
What if people started helping each other – reaching out to each other to offer help, mowing each other’s tall grass, and offering other forms of assistance?
What if we all worked together to protest massive government overreach and showed tyrants that we aren’t going to put up with their coercion and bullying tactics anymore?
There is power in numbers.
This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. – Frederick Douglass
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...![<!–[if IE 9]><![endif]–>](https://i0.wp.com/www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/new%20russian%20drone.jpg?ssl=1){kind=link}