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[The Philadelphia School District spends over $2.8 billion, or $14,000 per student per year.]

Excerpts from a long article about Philadelphia follow.

As I swerved through this obstacle course of (potholes) government incompetence, I reflected upon how Philadelphia was a real shithole city run by Democrat a**hole politicians (those not in prison yet). I've written dozens of articles about the 30 Blocks of Squalor over the last decade and one thing remains constant – West Philly is still a shithole, occupied by low income, low IQ, low morality, welfare state slaves who continue to vote for the same a**holes who have enslaved them in squalor.

I've been making a daily trek through the pigsty of West Philly through three presidential administrations (Bush, Obama, Trump) and the mayoral stints of John Street (only 15 associates went to prison for corruption), Michael Nutter (left office with a city pension plan underfunded by $5.7 billion), and Jim "beak nose" Kenney (Mr. Soda tax and under FBI investigation).

Over the course of the last 12 years (and many years prior) the list of Philadelphia politicians shipped off to Federal prison has been endless, including congressman Chaka Fattah, DA Seth Williams, State senator Vince Fumo, councilman Rick Mariano, and now union boss Johnny Dougherty and councilman Bobby Henon. A slew of lesser lights has also been shipped off to the penitentiary. Corruption is the common theme tying all Philly Democrat politicians together. They effortlessly fulfill the roles of ass in this article about holes.


- Philadelphia's poverty rate of 25.7% allows it to retain its supreme status as the "poorest big city in America."
- The Mantua Promise Zone, a two-square-mile area home to about 30,000 black people, has a poverty rate almost twice the citywide rate, at 50.6%, up from 50.2% in 2014.
- The neighborhood's deep poverty rate, defined as 50% below the federal poverty line, also increased – to 32.3% from 31.0% since 2014.
- The 2016 Mantua unemployment rate was little changed at 12.3% (actually closer to 20% as those classified as Not in the Labor Force rose), more than twice the recent city-wide rate of 5.8%.
- Mantua median household income in 2016 was $17,969, up slightly from $17,170 when the Promise Zone was announced. Still 70% below the national median.
- The proportion of local people aged 25-64 with a high school education or higher edged up to 80.1% in 2016 from 79.6% two years earlier. This has been achieved by lowering standards and graduating anyone who can fog a mirror.

Even the numbers quoted above about graduation rates are complete and utter bullshit. The brand spanking new West Philly High is where all the little Einsteins from Mantua and the rest of West Philly matriculate. This fine institution of learning has computer labs, the newest technology, a student teacher ratio of 12 to 1, 500 students (98% black), school uniforms and 100% receiving free breakfasts and lunches. The Philadelphia School District spends over $2.8 billion, or $14,000 per student per year.

Of course, a huge portion goes to administrators and gold-plated pension and healthcare benefits for the below average union teachers. The payoff for this investment is a 59% graduation rate at West Philly High, an average SAT score of 1057 among the cream of the crop who actually take the exam, and a ranking of 632 out of 677 high schools in PA. Despite these pitiful numbers, over 25% enroll in college. That tells you all you need to know about the state of higher education today.


The entitlement mentality in West Philly is as strong as ever. Over 75% of black kids in West Philly are still born out of wedlock. Drug dealing is still the primary source of income. More than 50% of the population survive on tax payer funded food stamps, living in tax payer funded housing, using tax payer funded Obama phones, and watching taxpayer funded cable TV. They are more dependent today than they were a decade ago.

Obama's Promise Zone essentially promised the people of Mantua more free shit and a continuation of their welfare mentality enslavement on the Democrat plantation. Keeping these people dumb and ignorant is essential for Democrat politicians retaining their stranglehold on power in Philly and all the urban ghettos across the land. If these people actually obtained a good education and learned to think for themselves, the chains of ignorance would be broken and the slaves freed.


The full story gets 'better'. I'm pretty sure a very similar article could be written about a Republican controlled city and its very poor white or Hispanic residents. Read the rest at;  https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/03/05/30-blocks-of-holes/#more-192706

More government, more taxes, and more entitlements are not the answers to the problems. By all appearances they are causing the problems.

"America's news-media — especially the mainstream ones — not only cover-up important truths, but they routinely lie. Both the Democratic Party's media and the Republican Party's media report the same lies, which are the Government's lies, on these international matters. These are lies on which there is bipartisan unity by the nation's press (and by both political Parties), in order to deceive the public, into support for invading and occupying, or overthrowing via a coup or otherwise, some foreign government. Their target is always a government which America's billionaires who control international corporations want to replace, and so the US regime unanimously lies against that targeted government, as being dangerous and evil, even though the given takeover-target has never invaded, nor threatened to invade, the United States — is no real national-security threat to the American people. Only on the basis of lies can that succeed. This is the main function of the press, in such countries: deceit, on those international matters."

A long article that discusses Iraq (Bush Jr.), Libya (Hussein), Syria (Hussein & Trump), Yemen (Hussein & Trump), Ukraine (Hussein), and Venezuela (Trump) is found here;  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-28/zuesse-lies-americas-news-media-tell

["But when the president acts in an area that the Constitution gives exclusively to Congress — such as spending money — and when he acts in defiance of Congress, his acts are unconstitutional and are to be enjoined."]

The Judge speaks; "When the president acts pursuant to authority granted to him by the Congress in an area of government delegated to him by the Constitution, his authority is at its peak, and he is free to exercise it as he sees fit. When he acts in an area as to which the Congress has been silent, he acts in a twilight zone and can succeed only if the area of his behavior is delegated to him under the Constitution and if he enjoys broad public support."

"But when the president acts in an area that the Constitution gives exclusively to Congress — such as spending money — and when he acts in defiance of Congress, his acts are unconstitutional and are to be enjoined."

Complete short article at;  http://www.judgenap.com/post/trumps-brazen-unconstitutional-overreach-1

Here we go again. [First it was Bayer/Monsanto over the misuse of poisonous Glysophate. Now it is Big Pharma/Medical for experimenting on humans. Oh, the lawsuit includes the Rockefeller Foundation, belonging to one of the founding families of Faction 2 of the New World Order.]


"A federal judge recently approved a $1 billion lawsuit against Johns Hopkins University, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co (BMY.N) and the Rockefeller Foundation. The lawsuit is seeking restitution for victims who were intentionally infected with syphilis during government experiments in Guatemala during the 1940s.

Hundreds of Guatemalans were reportedly infected with syphilis during the studies, which were designed to test the ability of penicillin to treat sexually transmitted diseases. The lawsuit was pending and waiting in limbo for the past four years until it was finally approved by U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang last month. In 2015, when the lawsuit was originally filed, there were 750 victims seeking restitution, now there are only 444 plaintiffs and some remaining relatives.

The test subjects in the experiments were mainly children, orphans, patients from mental hospitals and inmates."

The full article is here;  https://www.naturalblaze.com/2019/02/rockefeller-big-pharma-faces-1-billion-lawsuit-for-intentionally-infecting-people-with-syphilis.html

[What is the chance that future investigations will show that tax-payer dollars were funneled to these 'businesses' to further these 'studies'? After all, it referred to as a government experiment. Remember, we elected them to office. And still do.]

Fred Reed, the author of this hit piece, seems to have forgotten. The piece has a fun little title, and I was expecting an expose of the demonic state on both sides of the aisle. Fred seems to have forgotten he purports to be a Libertarian. Or, at the very least the most read libertarian website embraces everything Fred writes.

He criticizes Trump and Bolton for being draft dodgers. And blames Bush the Younger for hiding away in the National Guard, as if that were not serving. Like thousands of teens in the sixties and seventies, present company included, Libertarians are generally not supportive of a military draft. That is because Libertarians do not believe in the use of coercion.

Fred, remember what the draft was. It was Uncle Sam holding a gun to the head of a teenager and saying, "Boy, you ARE going to serve. The choice is yours, Boy. You serve in the military, or you serve in federal prison". Now there is a choice. Isn't it reasonable that some of those "Boys' said screw you and refused to be drafted? Found legal ways to avoid serving? Also found illegal ways? Why should that be held against them? If we assign bravery to men facing the killing fields of war, can we not also assign bravery to those who resisted the draft, who were brave enough to deny the government its position of coercion? And accept the consequences? Why are you granting the military state the higher moral ground, Fred? That is not something Libertarians do. Maybe your passionate, emotional displeasure of Trump et. al. has carried you away from rationality.

And if we assign adjectives like coward, pussy, and chicken to draft dodgers, is not also fair to assign the adjective 'idiot', or at least 'knucklehead', to those who went to the killing fields and were pawns of the military-industrial State (present company included)? For what objectives and American values did servicemen die in Vietnam, and the Middle East? To protect us here at home? Don't make me laugh, Fred.

And Fred, what is with your emotional diatribe against Trump? You sound like an Antifa Democrat. You sound like CNN. Granted, he is a narcissist. Can you name a President since JFK that was not? I can name only one, Jimmy Carter. So, Trump is a (real estate) con man because he used legal loopholes in permitting and banking regulations to make money? That's a con artist? I say not. The con is ALL the federal regulations government uses to stifle business. A man, or an organization, that can work within the crazy regulatory framework and develop a $30 million gift from daddy into a world-wide billion dollar business is certainly not a con. Nor ignorant!

So, what are you saying Fred? You appropriately attack Mattis, Pompeo, Gina, et. al. for their war-mongering, sovereign nation-destroying Neoconism. And in the same breath you criticize draft dodgers? Do you fail to understand you carried a rifle in Vietnam because Johnson and McNamara lied about the so-called Gulf of Tonkin Incident? The incident that never happened. But Trump is crazy, and Johnson was not? And Nixon allowed Governor Rhodes to authorize the Ohio National Guard to shoot and kill anti-war protesters at Kent Sate. Yet, Nixon was not crazy? PULEEESE, as Bill Walton says.

Fred, it would be nice for the world to return to some semblance of rationality. I think you would agree with me there. For that to happen, the inflammatory name-calling needs to stop (as do my infammatory rebuttals. I have better things to do.). Let it start with you, Fred. Let it start with Libertarians. Let's not get caught up in the deceitful rhetoric of the Neocons. Let's not get caught up in the politically correct, emotional blood-letting lies of the Socialist Democrats. And, let's continue to point out the fallacies in the politics and sociology of the extremes. Let's attack the untenable political positions without attacking the personality or reputed character of the politicians. That would be a good start. Can Libertarians do so? Can you, Fred? I hope so!

[We've seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to point guards for the militarized corporate state.]

This is an ugly post, ugly enough to ask why it was posted. Although some readers may agree with police tactics, and with the developing police-industrial state providing for the power brokers, I find it difficult to believe readers would smile at the conditions in many of our large cities. I mean, public defecation? Seriously? Are civic leaders thinking? The purpose of the post is to make people realize the conditions, consider the realm of causes, and maybe, just maybe, react with some solutions. Americans are sorely in need of solutions. To date government and politicians are not providing solutions. And looking at the political climate, I do not see any solutions forthcoming. It may be up to individuals to make change, acting outside the status quo. Where do solutions lie to the following issues?

An Advocate for Freedom's View of the Change

"There's absolutely no evidence to support the statement that [America is] the greatest country in the world. We're 7th in literacy, 27th in math, 22nd in science, 49th in life expectancy, 178th in infant mortality, 3rd in median household income, number 4 in labor force and number 4 in exports. We lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending, where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined, 25 of whom are allies..."

" ... We've been held up, stripped down, faked out, photographed, frisked, fracked, hacked, tracked, cracked, intercepted, accessed, spied on, zapped, mapped, searched, shot at, tasered, tortured, tackled, trussed up, tricked, lied to, labeled, libeled, leered at, shoved aside, saddled with debt not of our own making, sold a bill of goods about national security, tuned out by those representing us, tossed aside, and taken to the cleaners..."

"... We've seen the police transformed from community peacekeepers to point guards for the militarized corporate state. From Boston to Ferguson and every point in between, police have pushed around, prodded, poked, probed, scanned, shot and intimidated the very individuals—we the taxpayers—whose rights they were hired to safeguard. Networked together through fusion centers, police have surreptitiously spied on our activities and snooped on our communications, using hi-tech devices provided by the Department of Homeland Security."

Read the rest of John Whitehead's article at;  https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/im_not_breaking_up_with_america_this_valentines_day_and_neither_should_you


A Visitor's View of the Change

Almost everyone that goes out to visit one of our major cities on the west coast has a similar reaction.  Those that must live among the escalating decay are often numb to it, but most of those that are just in town for a visit are absolutely shocked by all of the trash, human defecation, crime and public drug use that they encounter.  Once upon a time, our beautiful western cities were the envy of the rest of the world, but now they serve as shining examples of America's accelerating decline.  The worst parts of our major western cities literally look like post-apocalyptic wastelands, and the hordes of zombified homeless people that live in those areas are too drugged-out to care.  The ironic thing is that these cities are not poor.  In fact, San Francisco and Seattle are among the wealthiest cities in the entire nation.  So if things are falling apart this dramatically now, how bad will things get when economic conditions really start to deteriorate.

People from all over the world are drawn to Los Angeles because of what they have seen on television, but it is truly a filthy, filthy place.  The number of homeless has been rising about 20 percent a year, public drug use is seemingly everywhere, and there are mountains of trash all over the place.  Needless to say, rats thrive in such an environment, and the epic battle that one L.A. journalist is having with rats was recently featured in the L.A. Times...

"Eastside, Westside, north and south, they're everywhere. If you're a rat, the California housing crisis has not hit you yet and it never will. At our house, it sounded like the rats were having relay races in the ceiling, and they don't wear sneakers. Your eyes blink and your leg twitches as you drift off to sleep knowing that if the plague comes back, you are living at ground zero."

If you are into public defecation, you will be very happy to learn that Denver just made it legal...

". . . The Denver City Council has voted unanimously to decriminalize a number of offenses, including defecating in public. Also, urinating in public. Camping on public or private land without permission. Panhandling. And lying across public rights-of-way, such as sidewalks."

Read the rest of Michael Synder's article at;  http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/rats-public-defecation-and-open-drug-use-our-major-western-cities-are-becoming-uninhabitable-hellholes

[Every law against nonviolent choices—from suspended licenses to raw milk regulations to workplace rules and coming speech codes—are enforced by the threat of deprivation of freedom, family separation, and, ultimately, assault and rape.]

An article by David Gronoski at lewrockwell.com

"Since I am an experienced sewer, tonight I am working on a special project making rape resistant shower curtains for the prisons." – Craig Cesal

Craig Cesal is serving a life sentence in federal prison for doing body work on trucks that were moving marijuana, a first time offense. Our public servants would not let him out to see his son's funeral. Rapists and murderers have come and gone during his time in America's prison camps. He often works 16 hour shifts sewing for the US government. One of their specialties is "rape resistant" shower curtains.

Craig's exile inside the belly of our government reveals things that remain hidden to us free folks on the outside. What human creatures make others sew rape-resistant showers for fellow captives to hide behind? Who in their right mind made this kind of legal system? Why do millions of Americans take rape-adjacent showers every night in jail, state, and federal warehouses for nonviolent choices? Why do Americans think the evil of throwing humans into violent cages for victimless acts is okay if a majority of group-thinkers complies?

Our government is built on the threat of rape. Every law against nonviolent choices—from suspended licenses to raw milk regulations to workplace rules and coming speech codes—are enforced by the threat of deprivation of freedom, family separation, and, ultimately, assault and rape. We all know this to some degree but because it is not in our face and because others tolerate it, we remain locked in a societal bystander effect. We are incapable of moving to our neighbors' defense. Just like Stanley Milgram's disturbing experiment showed, most humans tend to go along with the rules of dominance and submission games as long as they are told it is okay by an authority and that they will not be held individually responsible.

But the more we see the failure of prohibitions and regulations and taxation to make our world better at the expense of the sacrificed few, the more the shame of our compliance builds. This shame is supposed to be safely contained on the backs of our designated scapegoats: our prisoners and policemen and soldiers sent to unnecessary decades-long wars. But the more our justice rituals fail to bring prosperity, peace, and fairness, the more unsatisfying their cover stories become. The shame is leaking onto all of us. It is seeping into all of our institutions. Social media sites are flooded with daily shame mob battles of rage. Even football has become stained with the shame of concussions, battered wives, and police shootings.

We have no where to hide from shame. The left was quick to try to quarantine their minds from the shame storm of recent stories of refugee children being placed in cages. When popular images of migrant children wrapped in foil in kennel-like enclosures turned out to be the doing of their adored role model Obama, they quickly shielded their minds from the painful realization that they hired this man, most of them two times, to carry out this behavior on their behalf and largely stayed silent.

Nevertheless, many faithful voters persist that the children in cages at the border were solely the shame of Trump voters. Like playing a game of hot potato that can sear a hole through their chests, those who see themselves as morally better than their politically incorrect nemeses feel the need to dump all responsibility for caging and family separation onto their rivals.

But the shame cannot be contained. Leftists know they supported politicians who destroyed Yemeni, Syrian, and Libyan children for no defensible reason. They know they share the blame for knowingly voting for more mass incarceration-related family separation, drone strikes of children, and other ghastly barbarism in recent elections. And just like their Republican rivals before them, when their tribal leaders pitched elective wars for obviously dubious reasons, they submitted. Now they stand up to their knees in shame with no where to drain it.

The Covington Catholic school boys were a promising target for shame shifting. Their smiles in the face of an elderly Native American's drumming felt like an obvious symbol of unrepentant shame. Finally, millions could relieve their own cauldron of shame for choices like voting for drug war politicians and status quo keepers of political prison camp laborers like Craig Cesal. Then the mob fervor was sabotaged by alternative camera angles that revealed the relative composure the teenagers showed in the face of bee-lining grandstanding adults and slurs from another group.

Of course, President Trump has been a perennial target of people full of shame. But he fails to be an effective outlet because he is so shameless. He refuses to indicate the posture of guilt for anything. A cleansing requires the accused to admit sin so that the accusers can feel comparatively exonerated. Trump simply will not play this role. Meanwhile, he himself places the shame of creeping debt and socialism onto the backs of his rival party while conveniently doing little to allow young people to opt out of failed socialist schemes like Medicare and Social Security before they take their money and burn.

It is popular in culture to be ashamed of race, gender, family togetherness, marriage, children, wealth, competence, able bodies, technology, language, religion, nationality, fitness, and meat. Each of these categories are occasions for difference and differentiation is where people can sometimes engage in shameful behavior. Shame is driving us to erase all differences and boundaries and thus erase all meaning behind these categories of life. But if children could vote, and white men became a tiny impoverished minority of the population, and gender became completely fluid, and wealth was equally printed out to every human in the land, and religion was privatized and pluralized, and meat was completely grown in labs, and body shapes had no preference, would we still bomb a country that threatened our world reserve currency? Would we still place dissidents of new regulations and speech codes in cages with rapists and murderers? Would we wrap our jails with barbed wire fences or cotton candy? Would we reform the prisons we kept by forcing misfits of our new undifferentiated glory into reeducation programs meant to reform their minds for their own good? What if they fled the classroom? Would they be tranquilized or hugged by social justice correctional officers?

Would we still be submerged in shame?

Perhaps the only way to relieve our shame is to realize it need not exist at all. Shame exists because we refuse to trust in the sovereign power of love. Love requires us to unplug from toxic groupthink and reclaim our personhood. When we love ourselves, we can learn to love our neighbors as ourselves. When we care for ourselves, we will not want to initiate physical suffering on others. When we are free of shame, we will have nothing but love left for our neighbors. We will not hide behind collective complacency with violence against misfits. We will be free.

[These newly created arms of local bureaucracy would be empowered to charge property owners a fee based on the amount of non-permeable surface they own (think: parking lots and driveways).]

[Wake-up!'s comments in italicized brackets]

Just when frustrated residents of New Jersey, one of the most heavily taxed states in the US, thought Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy had already brought the state into the ninth circle of taxation hell with new taxes to save the state's ailing pension system, middle class voters in one of the least affordable states in the country have now been given one more thing to complain about: A tax on the rain. [To be clear, this is headline grabbing rhetoric. It is not a tax on rain. See below. This 'law' does not consider how much, how often, or what time of year it rains.]

After a bill authorizing the new local taxes was passed by the state late last month, Murphy is preparing to sign it into law, over the objections of the state's Republicans, according to the New York Post.

The 'rain tax', which is largely supported by Democrats and largely opposed by Republicans, would allow towns, counties and local authorities to set up their own storm water utilities. These newly created arms of local bureaucracy would be empowered to charge property owners a fee based on the amount of non-permeable surface they own (think: parking lots and driveways). [Think any and all hard surfaces, also including rooftops, sidewalks, stone fences, concrete retaining walls, etc.]

The logic behind this is that non-permeable surfaces create runoff when it rains, and that runoff gets polluted as it travels from these surfaces into local sewers, and then on to the state's water ways. [Actually, it is worse than that. Too large a volume of stormwater is viewed as a pollutant.] The revenue generated by these taxes would be used to upgrade the state's stormwater systems, and save the state's already polluted waters from further pollution (though the state would step in and scoop up 5% of all revenues).

The EPA, according to an op-ed published by North Jersey.com, has estimated that a complete overhaul of NJ's stormwater systems would cost $15.6 billion.

[Here is an important backstory the article does not discuss. The Clean Water Act (CWA) was federally implemented across the States from 1974 through 1976. One aspect of CWA was to address stormwater issues by requiring control of run-off through detainment, de-sedimentation (sediment is a pollutant), and slow release. All States were required to develop stormwater control plans and phase them in over time at the county and city levels of government. So, and I'm guessing here, that sometime in the early 1980's New Joisey implemented Stormwater Abatement regulations through its Comprehensive Land Use Plans, if not through an entirely new branch of State government, a department of ecology or environmental protection. Maybe our occasional visiter to the coffeeshop can add her $.02 worth here. These environmental regulations bring up several points.

- Since the early 1980's (if my NJ regulation implementation timeline is reasonable) ALL residential and commercial developments have been required to design and incorporate stormwater management into their site plans. So a Planner or an Engineer has already calculated the amount of hard surface for every lot in every subdivision, and designed swales, detention ponds, or underground vaults in the correct sizes and locations to detain, then slowly release the calculated volume of rain water from a given storm event. (The act of de-sedimentation is accomplished by gravity when the stormwater is detained.) These designs are typically based on 100% detainment of a 24-hour, 25-year storm event. Anything greater or longer than that just passes through the system. The developer has already incurred the costs of design and construction of a system that meets State standards, and had been approved by numerous State and local agencies.

- So taxpayers are reacting to having a hard surface taxed. Homeowners in a recent subdivision with a 3500 square foot home, 500 square feet of driveway, a three-car garage, and a 300 square foot garden/tool shed, all on a 7000 square foot lot, are having an additional tax burden placed on 76% (5350/7000) of their property, placed on it annually. Bear in mind that zoning by the State required a minimum size house on that lot and has established minimum requirements for the width of the driveway. Just try to build a custom home in a modern subdivision, or within city limits, and get a permeable, gravel driveway permitted! That will not happen. An impermeable surface is required. The property owner is being taxed for issues he/she have no control over, no ability to limit or reduce.

- Now think how this tax will impact owners of supermarkets, lumberyards, shopping centers, etc. where hard, impermeable surfaces cover 100% of the land. Will the long-term cost of this new law cause low-return on investment businesses to close (as in the older shopping center that already has a 15% vacancy)? What will it do to new business start-ups?

- Now, what about all the hard surfaces under public administration? Are landowners, including small landowners, subsidizing the 'rain tax' on roads, schools, municipal and State buildings, and parks and playgrounds? Think of the miles of wide roads with adjacent concrete sidewalks that wind through subdivisions. Those are designed to minimum widths with wide-radius curves and cul-de-sacs, not for the volume of traffic, as much as for fire department access. And at the time those roads were constructed, the stormwater plans accounted for their surface area, and developers paid for those designs and committed the land to public use. And the land owners had those costs passed on to them when they bought houses. Need they pay again?

- Why does an approximately 35-year old stormwater system need a 15+ billion dollar overhaul? The system does not have moving parts. What wears out? Were initial designs too small to handle the volume of water now being experienced? Just what needs replaced/retrofitted? Will local governments begin to address the issue by reducing impermeable surface requirements by allowing gravel driveways, gravel roads, narrower roads, or maybe clustering homes in dense 'pods' and providing more open space? Or building vertically more often than horizontally? Daylight basement plus two-story homes anybody (the same living space under a much smaller roof)? Or the next time a road needs to be ground up and replaced, use higher tech materials that are permeable (read about recycled-rubber-tire-roads).

  - Outside all my questions above, I suspect a very large percent of the overhaul is the replacement of culverts that are undersized during peak flows and lead to local flooding. Although deemed adequate in size when designed, the culverts are now too small because population and development in-growth has created greater impermeable areas than expected when culverts were initially sized. That, or the design models did not look at growth 35 years out.]

See the entire story for the emerging politics of the new tax at;  https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-10/nj-voters-furious-governor-murphy-prepares-sign-rain-tax-law

[After all, despite the pious pinning of the Neoconservative publicists that America is the world's "exceptional" nation, the new Utopia, God did not grant us national eternity, did not guarantee our future. And our leaders and many of our citizens have done their damnedest to undo and undermine all those original hopes and promises.]

"In fact, I have come to the conclusion, fitfully and uncomfortably, and after witnessing the far, far greater meaning revealed by what occurred with those Kentucky pro-life students, that America in 2019 faces three choices for its future:

(1) Either there must be some large mass conversion of one side or the other (a "Road to Damascus" conversion?), probably occasioned by some immense and earth-shaking event, war, depression, disaster;
(2) the secession of large portions of what is presently geographically the United States, including possibly enclaves within some states that would basically exit those jurisdictions—this secession could be peaceable, although increasingly I think it would not be; or lastly, and worst,
(3) the devolution of this country into open and vicious civil and guerrilla war.

I am not at all comforted by this vision, but, frankly, given the present state of this nation, is there any other possibility? After all, despite the pious pinning of the Neoconservative publicists that America is the world's "exceptional" nation, the new Utopia, God did not grant us national eternity, did not guarantee our future. And our leaders and many of our citizens have done their damnedest to undo and undermine all those original hopes and promises."

Read the backstory at; https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/is-secession-the-answer/

I used to be excited to read one or two articles in this vein every year. Now I can read one or two every month. The need for change is spreading. More and more talk exists about #2, above. It deserves being part of the political commentary going forward.

[Americans have no protection against police abuse]

From here;  https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_state_of_the_union_these_are_dangerous_times_and_the_government_is_to_blame

The entire commentary follows.


The State of the Union: These Are Dangerous Times, and the Government Is To Blame
By John W. Whitehead

These are dangerous times. Mind you, when I say that these are dangerous times, it is not because of violent crime, which remains at an all-time low, or because of terrorism, which is statistically rare, or because our borders are being invaded by armies, which data reports from the Department of Homeland Security refute.

No, the real danger that we face comes from none other than the U.S. government and the powers it has granted to its standing army to steal, cheat, harass, detain, brutalize, terrorize, torture and kill.

The danger "we the people" face comes from masked invaders on the government payroll who crash through our doors in the dark of night, shoot our dogs, and terrorize our families.

This danger comes from militarized henchmen on the government payroll who demand absolute obedience, instill abject fear, and shoot first and ask questions later.

This danger comes from power-hungry bureaucrats on the government payroll who have little to no understanding of their constitutional limits.

This danger comes from greedy politicians and corporations for whom profit trumps principle.

You want to know about the state of our union? It's downright scary.

Consider for yourself.

Americans have no protection against police abuse. It is no longer unusual to hear about incidents in which police shoot unarmed individuals first and ask questions later, such as the 16-year-old teenager who skipped school only to be shot by police after they mistook him for a fleeing burglar. Then there was the unarmed black man in Texas "who was pursued and shot in the back of the neck by Austin Police... after failing to properly identify himself and leaving the scene of an unrelated incident." And who could forget the 19-year-old Seattle woman who was accidentally shot in the leg by police after she refused to show her hands? What is increasingly common, however, is the news that the officers involved in these incidents get off with little more than a slap on the hands.

Americans are little more than pocketbooks to fund the police state. If there is any absolute maxim by which the federal government seems to operate, it is that the American taxpayer always gets ripped off. This is true, whether you're talking about taxpayers being forced to fund high-priced weaponry that will be used against us, endless wars that do little for our safety or our freedoms, or bloated government agencies such as the National Security Agency with its secret budgets, covert agendas and clandestine activities. Rubbing salt in the wound, even monetary awards in lawsuits against government officials who are found guilty of wrongdoing are paid by the taxpayer.

Americans are no longer innocent until proven guilty. We once operated under the assumption that you were innocent until proven guilty. Due in large part to rapid advances in technology and a heightened surveillance culture, the burden of proof has been shifted so that the right to be considered innocent until proven guilty has been usurped by a new norm in which all citizens are suspects. This is exemplified by police practices of stopping and frisking people who are merely walking down the street and where there is no evidence of wrongdoing. Likewise, by subjecting Americans to full-body scans and license-plate readers without their knowledge or compliance and then storing the scans for later use, the government—in cahoots with the corporate state—has erected the ultimate suspect society. In such an environment, we are all potentially guilty of some wrongdoing or other.

Americans no longer have a right to self-defense. In the wake of various shootings in recent years, "gun control" has become a resounding theme. Those advocating gun reform see the Second Amendment's right to bear arms as applying only to government officials. As a result, even Americans who legally own firearms are being treated with suspicion and, in some cases, undue violence. In one case, a Texas man had his home subjected to a no-knock raid and was shot in his bed after police, attempting to deliver a routine search warrant, learned that he was in legal possession of a firearm. In another incident, a Florida man who was licensed to carry a concealed firearm found himself detained for two hours during a routine traffic stop in Maryland while the arresting officer searched his vehicle in vain for the man's gun, which he had left at home. Incidentally, the Trump Administration has done more to crack down on Second Amendment rights than anything the Obama Administration ever managed.

Americans no longer have a right to private property. If government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family, your property is no longer private and secure—it belongs to the government. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you're no longer the owner of your property.

Americans no longer have a say about what their children are exposed to in school. Incredibly, the government continues to insist that parents essentially forfeit their rights when they send their children to a public school. This growing tension over whether young people, especially those in the public schools, are essentially wards of the state, to do with as government officials deem appropriate, in defiance of the children's constitutional rights and those of their parents, is reflected in the debate over sex education programs that expose young people to all manner of sexual practices and terminology, zero tolerance policies that strip students of any due process rights, let alone parental involvement in school discipline, and Common Core programs that teach students to be test-takers rather than critical thinkers.

Americans are powerless in the face of militarized police. In early America, citizens were considered equals with law enforcement officials. Authorities were rarely permitted to enter one's home without permission or in a deceitful manner. And it was not uncommon for police officers to be held personally liable for trespass when they wrongfully invaded a citizen's home. Unlike today, early Americans could resist arrest when a police officer tried to restrain them without proper justification or a warrant—which the police had to allow citizens to read before arresting them. (Daring to dispute a warrant with a police official today who is armed with high-tech military weapons and tasers would be nothing short of suicidal.) As police forces across the country continue to be transformed into outposts of the military, with police agencies acquiring military-grade hardware in droves, Americans are finding their once-peaceful communities transformed into military outposts, complete with tanks, weaponry, and other equipment designed for the battlefield.

Americans no longer have a right to bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, strip search us, and probe us intimately. Accounts are on the rise of individuals—men and women—being subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of "routine" traffic stops. Remember the New Mexico man who was subjected to a 12-hour ordeal of anal probes, X-rays, enemas, and finally a colonoscopy—all because he allegedly rolled through a stop sign?

Americans no longer have a right to the expectation of privacy. Despite the staggering number of revelations about government spying on Americans' phone calls, Facebook posts, Twitter tweets, Google searches, emails, bookstore and grocery purchases, bank statements, commuter toll records, etc., Congress, the president and the courts have done little to nothing to counteract these abuses. Instead, they seem determined to accustom us to life in this electronic concentration camp.

Americans no longer have a representative government. We have moved beyond the era of representative government and entered a new age, let's call it the age of authoritarianism. History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a militaristic state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom. Even with its constantly shifting terrain, this topsy-turvy travesty of law and government has become America's new normal. It is not overstating matters to say that Congress, which has done its best to keep their unhappy constituents at a distance, may well be the most self-serving, semi-corrupt institution in America.

Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice. The U.S. Supreme Court was intended to be an institution established to intervene and protect the people against the government and its agents when they overstep their bounds. Yet through their deference to police power, preference for security over freedom, and evisceration of our most basic rights for the sake of order and expediency, the justices of the Supreme Court have become the architects of the American police state in which we now live, while the lower courts have appointed themselves courts of order, concerned primarily with advancing the government's agenda, no matter how unjust or illegal.

I haven't even touched on the corporate state, the military industrial complex, SWAT team raids, invasive surveillance technology, zero tolerance policies in the schools, overcriminalization, or privatized prisons, to name just a few, but what I have touched on should be enough to show that the landscape of our freedoms has already changed dramatically from what it once was and will no doubt continue to deteriorate unless Americans can find a way to wrest back control of their government and reclaim their freedoms.

There can be no denying that the world is indeed a dangerous place, but what you won't hear in any State of the Union address—what the president and his cohorts fail to acknowledge—is that it's the government that poses the gravest threat to our freedoms and way of life, and no amount of politicking, parsing or pandering will change that.

So what do we do about this dangerous state of our union? How do we go about reclaiming our freedoms and reining in our runaway government?

Essentially, there are four camps of thought among the citizenry when it comes to holding the government accountable. Which camp you fall into says a lot about your view of government—or, at least, your view of whichever administration happens to be in power at the time.

In the first camp are those who trust the government to do the right thing, despite the government's repeated failures in this department.
In the second camp are those who not only don't trust the government but think the government is out to get them.
In the third camp are those who see government neither as an angel nor a devil, but merely as an entity that needs to be controlled, or as Thomas Jefferson phrased it, bound "down from mischief with the chains of the Constitution."
Then there's the fourth camp, comprised of individuals who pay little to no attention to the workings of government. Easily entertained, easily distracted, easily led, these are the ones who make the government's job far easier than it should be.

It is easy to be diverted, distracted and amused by the antics of politicians, the pomp and circumstance of awards shows, athletic events, and entertainment news, and the feel-good evangelism that passes for religion today. What is far more difficult to face up to is the reality of life in America, where unemployment, poverty, inequality, injustice and violence by government agents are increasingly norms.