The House Judiciary Committee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, April 20, heard testimony on Overreach: An examination on Federal Statutory and Regulatory Crimes.
Tolman wants the Biden administration to reinstate Donald Trump’s Executive Ordern Protecting Americans From Overcriminalization Through Regulatory Reform.
Consider the Oregon landowner who spent a month in jail and got a $1500 fine for collecting rainwater on his property; and the Kentucky couple who got three years probation and a $5,000 fine for setting a net on the wrong side of a river to acquire caviar for their caviar business.who had all the necessary permits to run their caviar business
And then there was the Michigan mom who faced a 90-day jail sentence for running an illegal daycare because she watched her friends’ kids while they waited for the school bus. “
Abner Shoenwetter was charged with smuggling when the veteran seafood importer agreed to buy lobsters from a usual supplier. He servedsix years in prison because of a violation that was not a violation!
And for even more extreme punishments — death is pretty extreme — see We Spend $296 Billion Each Year On A Justice Systemconcerning the stories of Philandro Castile, George Floyd, and Duante Wright whose crimes were a broken taillight, a counterfeit $20 bill, and an expired plate.
The Mercatus Center makes three main points Quantifying Overcriminalization in Federal Law “There has been a significant increase in the number of federal criminal statutes and regulations over the past three decades.”
They also note that these federal laws override the principles of Federalism by superseding state and local laws. By the way, we have the highest incarceration rate in the world. Just saying.
Politico in The Overcriminalization of America mentions five suggestions, in this 2015 article. The second one is to “address prosecutorial abuses”. Guess we’re still working on that.
Back in March, when my choice of the winner of the second 2024 Free and Equal Debates was one Chase Oliver we didn’t know that he would then become the winner of the recent, and hotly-contested Libertarian Presidential contest.
He beat out nine other candidates, including R. F. K.,Jr. at the recent DC convention.
The Libertarians will be on the ballot in at least 37 states. Like the Constitution and Green Parties, they won’t know their Pennsylvania ballot status until August, at least.
The Convention’s theme was “Become Ungovernable”.
The party “called for the release of the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, “ among other proposals.
Among the other quotes from Mr. Oliver is his self-description as being “armed and gay”
“If you are living your life in peace,” then your life “is your life, your body is your body, your business is your business.”
He also reached out to younger voters who “don’t want octogenarians running their lives.”
He also added that “I’m ready to continue to be a fly in the ointment of the two-party system,” .
Chase Oliver has been running for president for the last year. He has appeared on CNN, CSPAN, FOX Business, Reason TV and Vice Media., among many. He has been profiled in Bloomberg, the Guardian, the New York Times, Rolling Stone and the Washington Post. One of the quotes in the above website is “Armed people are harder to oppress and harder to attack.”
He has worked as a sales account executive and HR representative, among other jobs. He was in the restaurant industry for 13 years, and the corporate maritime trade industry.”
Raw Milk Is Good For You And Can Be Bought In Delco
By Bob Small
The harassment of Amos Miller continues but hopefully will be soon resolved.
Our whole family, animal and human, are raw milk consumers.
The anti-raw milk campaign began before most of us, though not Joe Biden, were born. The Defender, traces it to a 1945 article in the gone but unlamented magazine Coronet titled“Raw Milk can Kill You.” Coronet cited a non-existent brucellosis outbreak in the imaginary town of Outlook.
Fast-forward to 2007, and we find the Food and Drug Administration attacking raw milk in a Power Point presentation using flawed data.
And now the Department of Agriculture declared there were symptoms of avian flu in it despite the lack of confirmed viral presence.
The authorities pointedly ignore the other side.
Farmers’ Almanac say that pasteurization killing odd bacteria “is actually a problem” as it also kills many beneficial microorganisms, including probiotics, naturally found in milk. It notes that people had been drinking raw milk, straight from their own cows, sheep, and goats, for millennia without getting sick.
Everyday Health notes raw milk sales are surging. It quotes Raw Milk Chairman Mark Mcafee saying “There is yet to be one case of avian influenza in humans from raw milk consumption.”
And no less an establishment organ as The New York Times says that none of the three reported cases of avian flu virus in the United States has been tied to drinking milk.
The title of the article was Raw Milk’s Risks Don’t Stop Right-Wing Commentators From Defiantly Pushing It.
Former President Donald J. Trump is tied up a Manhattan court room but he’s active online. One of his fund-raising efforts asks his supporters to help him choose his Vice President. In a mass email, Trump asked “Which person would you select as your next Vice President? Type in the person’s name here.” Trump will make up his own mind, but the potential candidates list is long, and his choice is important. A significant faction of registered GOP voters dubious about Trump’s candidacy could be swayed toward the former president based on his VP selection. Even though Nikki Haley abandoned her presidential campaign in early March after losing all but one state in Super Tuesday’s primary races, she’s still managed to clinch 13%-18% of the GOP electorate in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Haley’s performance causes GOP insiders to question whether her supporters will ultimately back Trump, cross party lines or simply stay home.
Trump’s VP will, if history holds, debate Kamala Harris on September 25 at Lafayette College, a key event that follows the first scheduled presidential debate, September 16 at Texas State University. A look back: The first vice presidential debate occurred in 1976 between two seasoned Senators, Kansas’ Bob Dole and Minnesota’s Walter Mondale. The exchanges were lively; Mondale called Ford “a hatchet-man.” Both were veteran politicians, tough and loyal, Dole to the right politically of incumbent President Gerald Ford and Mondale to the left of the challenger, Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.
Among the names being bandied about are three U.S. Senators: Ohio’s J.D. Vance, Florida’s Marco Rubio and South Carolina’s Tim Scott, as well as U.S. Reps. Byron Scott (R-Fla.) and Elise Stefanik (R-NY). Forget them. If Trump wins, he’ll need every congressional supporting vote he can get; to remove five certain yeas from Congress on his agenda would be folly. Another name mentioned is also a highly unlikely choice. Although Trump flew North Dakota Governor and one-time 2024 presidential hopeful Doug Burgum to his Wildwood, New Jersey rally, the moderate is, like the presumptive nominee, an old, white billionaire. North Dakota has three electoral votes, and in 2016 and 2020 Trump won the state by a 2:1 ratio. Trump would gain nothing from an electoral college angle if he added Burgum to the ticket.
That narrows the prospects down to Tulsi Gabbard who, in many ways, is an ideal VP choice. Gabbard is young, attractive, well-spoken, a former four-term House Democrat, an Iraq War veteran who has served in the Army since 2003 and was promoted to Major in 2015. In 2022, Gabbard abandoned the Democratic Party because of its shift to the far-left, or as she put it, is “now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, undermines Americans’ God-given freedoms, demonizes the police but protects criminals, encourages open borders, weaponizes national security for politics’ sake, and pushes the country ever closer to nuclear war.” In further explaining her decision to switch to the Independent Party, Gabbard added that she believes in a government that is of, by, and for the people. Unfortunately, she continued, today’s Democratic Party does not.” The 2020 presidential hopeful gave the keynote speech in March at Mar-a-Lago to the 1917 Society, a volunteer group dedicated to preserving the Constitution.
However, on voters’ top concern, immigration, Gabbard’s grade while she was in the House was as bad as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, F-. Gabbard was on the wrong side of every important immigration issue; she voted against stronger border and interior enforcement, and in favor of expanding worker visas that displace employed Americans. Her congressional votes showed that, at the time she cast them, she encouraged amnesty enticements and rewarded illegal aliens. Another irrevocable negative: Gabbard endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016 and, after she ended her own presidential campaign, Biden in 2020.
Should Gabbard’s dismal congressional immigration voting record and her past presidential endorsements surface in her debate against Harris, the Hawaiian could point to her recent criticism of Biden’s open borders, her support of Israel and, in general, her more traditional values and say she’s evolved politically and socially since becoming an Independent. Trump promises to name his VP before the GOP national convention in Milwaukee, July 15-18. In the end, he may not choose Gabbard, but he absolutely cannot remove any of his congressional allies.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org
Arizona State University and Arizona Cardinals’ safety Pat Tillman shocked the sports world when, in 2002, he walked away from a $3.6 million professional football contract to join the U.S. Army Rangers. Tillman, who attended ASU on an athletic scholarship, had been a first-team All-American and Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year in 1997. By 2000, two years after he joined the Cardinals, Sports Illustrated named Tillman to its NFL All-Pro team. But eight months after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Tillman and his brother Kevin enlisted in the Army and completed basic training together. Pat then fulfilled the Ranger Assessment & Selection Program requirements and was assigned to the 2nd Ranger Battalion in Ft. Lewis, Washington. Tillman was deployed and participated in the initial invasion of Iraq, what became known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. One year later, Tillman entered Ranger School and, upon finishing his training in November 2003, was shipped to Afghanistan.
On April 22, 2004, Tillman and Afghan allied soldier Sayed Farhad were killed by Afghan enemy combatants in a firefight near the Pakistan border —or so the official and ultimately proven false story went. The Army issued a purposely deceptive statement about the circumstances surrounding Tillman’s death. As Tillman was leading his team to help comrades caught in an ambush, the Army claimed he was fatally shot while fighting “without regard for his personal safety.”
Weeks after Tillman’s burial, the U.S. Army Criminal Investigative Division (CID) investigated the incident and concluded that Tillman and Farhad were killed by “friendly fire.” The lengthy coverup included the Army’s order to Tillman’s fellow Army soldiers to lie to his peers about the circumstances that led to the two deaths. Tillman’s mother Mary and his father Patrick were heartbroken when they heard the truth, something they suspected since the Army had been tight-lipped when they pressed for the details that surrounded their son’s final moments. Tillman’s family and other critics insisted that the President George W. Bush and his Department of Defense didn’t want negative press with a re-election campaign soon to get underway. In her congressional testimony, Tillman’s mother said: “The deception surrounding this case was an insult to the family, but more importantly, its primary purpose was to deceive a whole nation.” Ironically, just days before he was killed, Tillman told the Washington Post that the U.S.’s invasion and occupation of Iraq was illegal and immoral.
In a 2021 op-ed, Tillman’s brother Kevin railed against the government’s craven disinformation campaign waged against Pat’s memory and condemned America’s forever wars. Kevin opined that the Iraq invasion began with a barrage of administration lies about Saddam’s supposed supply of weapons of mass destruction, his reputed links to al-Qaeda, and the idea that American soldiers were liberating the Iraqi people. Some of the troops were assigned to run around Baghdad, “east, west, south, and north somewhat,” looking for nonexistent weapons of mass destruction. In his column, Kevin wrote that the invasion was “catastrophic,” and resulted in Iraqi society’s destruction, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and thousands of American soldiers, even Iraq’s leadership was removed and its military disbanded—mission accomplished, in President George W. Bush’s eyes. Neither Bush nor the rest of his top officials were held responsible for what happened.
Tillman was 27 when he was killed in a futile, senseless war. In his wartime journals, he repeatedly wrote of the strength he drew from his family, friendships, and from his high school sweetheart and eventual wife Marie Ugenti. Shortly before his deployment to Iraq, Tillman wrote a “just in case” letter to his wife for her to open in the event of his death. The letter sat on their bedroom dresser for months before the fateful day arrived. Tillman’s final request: “I ask that you live.” Ugenti wrote a book titled “The Letter: My Journey through Love, Loss and Life.” Ugenti has remarried and, with her new husband, has five children. She also chairs the Pat Tillman Foundation, a non-profit that provides academic scholarships to military service members and their spouses.
Posthumously promoted from specialist to corporal, Tillman was also awarded the Silver Star and the Purple Heart. The accolades are cold comfort to Tillman’s family and friends. A non-profit
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com
Peter Sonski And American Solidarity Run Principled Presidential Campaign
By Bob Small
The next President will have five letters in his name. The next President will be serving his second term. The next President will be our oldest serving President, older than Ronald Reagan, 77 when he left office. Either way, we will have six more months of Biden/Trump.
There are a dozen of what I call “Alternative Parties” with presidential candidates and with Pennsylvania connections.
The American Solidarity Party of Pennsylvania can be accessed at here.
They are a self-described Party with Christian democratic values” Among their seven principles is Sanctity of Life, which means they are anti-abortion and anti-death penalty and see themselves as consistent in this regard.
Among their 14 platform segments, they see foreign policy as the belief that “the United States should be committed to a more peaceful world through international cooperation and restriction of the use of military force to a strict understanding of just war theory. “
Peter Sonski is the party’s nominee for president for 2024. He former radio host, a member of Connecticut’s regional School Board 17, and director of The Knights of Columbus Museum.
His running mate is Lauren Onak who has a masters in Adolescent Education from Hunter College but is a stay-at-home mom to three children.
One of my newest favorite online publications, The Imaginative Conservative, gives a dozen reasons why one should support them and starts with the adage “good news is only good when it’s subversive.”
The article’s third reason is that “The ASP supports common-sense environmental initiatives. Without being crazy tree-huggers, they promote responsible care for the environment that corrects wanton commercial exploitation.”
The eighth reason is “Supporting the ASP means holding your head up (because you are gazing at the stars) rather than hanging your head because you were gazing at the gutter”
Anyway, we probably know who the next President will be, if not the vice-president.
Parking Kiosks And Cameras Are Undesirable Tech For Swarthmore
By Bob Small
Swarthmore Council, May 6, tabled a plan to introduce parking kiosks. The introduction of parking kiosks had been discussed at previous meetings.
That the plan was tabled doesn’t mean it still won’t happen
This is from an unpublished letter sent to the Swarthmorean;
Armond White had spoken of “technology and it’s worship” and this Swarthmore Borough change to parking kiosks has many potential problems, some of which are described in this article by Megan Hills from The Columbus Dispatch.
Swarthmore Borough is currently unable to keep up with the maintenance of their parking meters. How will they then keep up with an even higher level of technology and keep the kiosks operational?
Many of us have already battled with the Media kiosks, and, having admitted defeat, rarely attempt to go there. Many of their machines refuse to accept coinage.
As an honor system parking meters traditionally provide less revenue capture
Customers sometimes forget their license plate number or have difficulty entering information into the system (Pay-by-License-Plate)
Some systems do require proof of payment on a dashboard (Pay-and-Display)
Validations are challenging because it is a pre-pay system
Regular parking enforcement for compliance is required (additional labor costs)
It turns out that the condo developer decided not to pay his share of any parking changes, so they have been put on hold. We will now have diagonal parking become parallel parking and there will now be a charge for meters on Saturday rather than free parking.
Meanwhile, the proposed Town Center cameras have been tabled. Initially, the rainbow crosswalk(s) were approved as it cost the Borough nada. However, the crosswalk(s) were defaced and the Swarthmore Police Department wants to find the perp. These cameras would cost $8,675, with a possible split in cost with Swarthmore College i.e. $4,337.50.
One of our favorite councilpersons, Scarlett McCahill, said “For instance in the U.K., it’s widely used in public spaces, and it hasn’t demonstrated much reduction in petty crime, and it’s susceptible to abuse, whether that’s criminal abuse, personal, or institutional.” She went on to say “I don’t think this is something that enhances our public life.” For full remarks, see The Swarthmorean article.
America First. What exactly do we mean when we say America First?. Well, it depends on which organization or political party that we consult. We came across America First P.A C.T., in an internet comments section. America First P.A.C.T. , which has a Pa. Chapter. Some of their priorities are secure borders, along with freedom of speech and term limits, among others.
There is also the America First Policy Institute, with its Pennsylvania chapter America First Pennsylvania | State Chapter. One of the “advisors” is Ivanka Trump. They list some of their Policies as “expanding Pennsylvania’s energy leadership and Keeping Pennsylvania’s streets safe”
The most recent America First Party is the brainchild of Patrick Buchanan America First Party and they have a currently active website, without an active Pennsylvania Party, though they are seeking someone to start one. Their current platform — Platform of the America First Party — includes The Constitution does not empower the Federal Government to police the world or protect other nations. The Constitution does not allow our nation’s armed forces ever to be under foreign command, which has become common practice under present UN and NATO deployment. It also notes that there are US Troops in over 100 countries and discuss the Federal government taking private control of lands in California and Oregon.
America to these groups seems open to anyone who shares their viewpoints, not just white Christian males as their opponents allege.
This is unlike the 1943 America First Party, which was a gathering of American fascists and isolationists. One of their more well-known leaders was the noted Anti-Semite Gerald L. K. Smith who eventually ran for president on the 1944 America First ticket where he and Harry Romer (a Father Coughlin acolyte) garnered 1,780 votes out of a total of 47 million cast.
The mistrust of many to the America First rubric can be traced to this party.
Lastly, there is also the America Second theory — America Second by Isaac Stone Fish: 9780525657712 — espoused by Issac Stone Fish in which he describes Henry Kissinger as“an agent of Chinese influence”.
Inquirer Reports On Proposed Havertown Home For Recovering Addicts
By Sharon Devaney
Jesse Bunch’s article about the proposed community home for recovering drug addicts at 17 Tenby Road, Havertown, ran inThe Philadelphia Inquirer, May 12.
It was surprisingly fair. There was some points he left out which I don’t hold against him as space is limited in newsprint and he did provide a link to my full answer here.
One left-out point concerns Savage Sisters President Mary Nolan’s outburst that she would fill the single-family home with 25 persons rather than the eight she said she was seeking in her request for a variance.
Haverford Township law limits non-related people living in a home to three.
Maybe she wasn’t serious but it’s certainly a strong sign she has no plans on listening to the wants of the community.
Another concern was whether the house managers would have training in mental health and substance abuse; and whether they were certified in CPR, first aid , child abuse and child trafficking as all other health professionals are in Pennsylvania.
Apparently, they are not going to be.
Also, because it is a residential neighborhood and children play outside, there would be better options to help place these individuals in recovery. We do all want them to get well and get the help they need in the best place for them. We want to see everyone overcome their shortcomings. This isn’t about left or right, black or white. There is no discrimination here at all just concerns from the community.
Inquirer Reports On Proposed Havertown Home For Recovering Addicts
The coast-to-coast college rioting and destruction that marked late April and early May should draw attention to international students and precipitate a demand from fed up citizen taxpayers that the federal government tighten up the F-1/J-1 student visa guidelines. Participating in the criminal behavior at Columbia, Penn, UCLA, USC, North Carolina, and NYU, among dozens of other prominent universities, were students holding temporary non-immigrant visas. More than one million foreign-born students including 45,000 from the Middle East arrived on U.S. campuses in academic year 2022/2023. The premise is that the visa programs give foreign-born university students an opportunity to study in the U.S. so that they will be better able to contribute to their countries advancement when they return home. But, in practice, many foreign students remain in the U.S. and hire on with an American company, thus displacing citizen job seekers. Overstaying non-immigrant visas is an easily done crime especially since no one in federal immigration enforcement seeks them out.
From highly selective UCLA—only 8.8 percent of its 145,904 applicants are admitted—more than 3,000 students from 85 nations arrive on mostly F-1 student visas, but also on J-1 exchange visas. Although UC Berkeley has long been considered the gem of the UC system, its overall admission acceptance rate is 11.6%, 125,910 applications and 14,566 accepted. Cal’s international F-1/J-1 enrollment is 7,343.
UCLA’s anti-Semitic gang activity was uglier than Cal’s, but the Golden Bears had a critical free speech showdown. Pro-Palestinian students and their outside agitator comrades set up about 15 tents on the steps of Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza on Monday afternoon, vowing to stay put until the university system officially called for an end to the Israel-Hamas war, cut its study-abroad program with Israel and divests from companies with ties to Israel. Berkeley Law School student Malak Afaneh, co-president of Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine, finally gave the speech Jewish law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky prevented her from giving at an invitation-only lunch he and his civil rights law professor wife, Catherine Fisk, hosted at their home. In front of Fisk and Chemerinsky’s house, Afaneh yelled: “I will keep shouting this speech from the rooftops until Palestine is free.”
In a statement published on the Berkeley Law website, Chemerinsky said that he and his wife had been inviting students to their home for dinner since he became a dean. “I never imagined that something that we do to help our community would become ugly and divisive,” he said. Chemerinsky continued: “I am enormously sad that we have students who are so rude as to come into my home, in my backyard, and use this social occasion for their political agenda.
“We’re willing to risk suspension,” said Afaneh, a third-year law student and a Palestinian-American, who believes a Palestinian state should replace the country of Israel. “We’re willing to risk expulsion; we’re willing to risk arrest. We’re willing to risk anything to stand here until we achieve our demands for divestment.” Chemerinsky responded, correctly, to Afaneh’s invocation of the Constitution when he countered: “This is my house! The First Amendment doesn’t apply!” One lawyer’s interpretation held by most constitutional scholars: —“public university students don’t have a First Amendment right to take over a backyard dinner party — even one their school is hosting.” And from George Washington University professor of public interest law Johathan Turley’s blog: “Regrettably, the scene that unfolded at the home of Dean Chemerinsky will be viewed by many as a triumph rather than an embarrassment for their cause. Disruption has become the touchstone of protests in higher education.” At the same time in what should be a ten-alarm fire warning for Americans watching U.S. sovereignty erode, schools like UCLA have paid activists-in-residence or now bestow degrees in activism.
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Harvard Law School, J.D. 2002, after observing the campus chaos and violence, said “And by the way, any of these students who are foreigners here on visas should immediately have their visas revoked by the Biden Administration, be promptly deported. They have no right to be here. They certainly have no right to be here spewing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel filth.” Deporting lawbreakers is, however, inconsistent with Biden’s immigration agenda which is to reward, not punish, criminals.
Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org
