The attempt to kill box-office returns for Unplanned, the film that details a Planned Parenthood clinic director’s change of heart, has failed.

Despite the refusal of networks to broadcast advertisements and last-minute attack from Twitter, the film doubled its anticipated take of $3 million, and took fifth place among its competitors on opening weekend, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The smash debut for a Christian film is particularly unusual, THR noted, but as well particularly gratifying for its distributor and producers.

$6.1 Million Opening

Unplanned tells the story of Abby Johnson, who rose from being a volunteer at Planned Parenthood to becoming its youngest clinic director ever. PP performed 332,757 abortions in the fiscal year that ended in June, or 991 every day of the year as the Family Research Council has noted.

But then Johnson witnessed an abortion at 13 weeks gestation on ultrasound, which inspired her to quit her job and become a pro-life activist. “The baby looked as if it were being wrung like a dishcloth, twirled and squeezed,” she wrote. “And then it crumpled and began disappearing into the cannula before my eyes. The last thing I saw was the tiny, perfectly formed backbone sucked into the tube, and then it was gone.”

Johnson eventually became a Catholic and wrote her memoir, Unplanned, which became the film. The usual suspects did their best to sink it. The Motion Picture Association of American rated it “R” because it dealt with abortion, and major television networks refused to broadcast ads for the same reason. The film was too controversial, they said.

Still, THR reported, “the R-rated pic scored the second-best start ever for faith-based distributor Pure Flix; tracking had suggested it would earn only around $3 million. “Graced with a coveted A+ CinemaScore, the controversial anti-abortion drama Unplanned opened to a strong $6.1 million from 1,059 theaters at the U.S. box office despite a relatively modest footprint.”

The film was the fifth most popular in theaters when it opened over the weekend, and “scored the second-biggest start ever for faith-based distributor Pure Flix behind God’s Not Dead 2 ($7.6 million),” THR reported. “The Christian pic did its biggest business in the Midwest and South.”

As well, the film’s popularity in flyover country knocked theaters on the coasts out of the list of top 20 grossing theaters, THR reported:

Generally, theaters in New York City and Los Angeles populate the list of a film’s top 20 grossing theaters. In this case, there were none. Instead, the top theater was the AMC Northpark 15 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, followed by cinemas in St. Louis; Detroit; Wichita, Kansas; Temecula in Southern California’s Riverside County; Salt Lake City; Orange County, California; Kansas City; Odessa, Texas; and Nashville.

Blocking Effort Failed

But, as THR reported, Unplanned’s producers said the film “didn’t have an easy road to the big screen. A number of TV networks declined to play ads for the movie, while the film’s Twitter account was briefly suspended Saturday morning.”

The concerted effort to hide and kill the movie by stopping advertising failed. Among the networks that refused advertising, THR disclosed last week, were Lifetime, which told marketers it declined ads because of the “sensitive nature of the film.” Yet Lifetime “previously promoted an interview with Scarlett Johansson where she pitches Planned Parenthood.”

Other anti-Unplanned movers and shakers were the Hallmark Channel and USA network, the latter a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, along with the Travel and Cooking channels, HGTV, and the Food Network — all subsidiaries of Discovery. Again, the film’s “sensitive nature,” the Discovery-owned channels said, was the problem.

Despite the leftist attempt to sink the film, it sailed ahead with fair winds and following seas. One sign beyond the $6.1 million weekend haul? Views of its trailer, which went from 250,000 on Friday to 1.7 million by Saturday morning, THR reported.

One happy viewer, THR noted, was Vice President Mike Pence:

“So good to see movie theaters across the country showing @UnplannedMovie — a deeply inspiring new pro-life film based on the best-selling book by @AbbyJohnson,” he tweeted. “More & more Americans are embracing the sanctity of life because of powerful stories like this one. #Unplanned.”

This weekend, the film will be in 1,700 theaters, up from 1,000 on opening weekend.

A bill introduced in the Massachusetts House would take a first step toward limiting the impact of federal programs that militarize local police.

Rep. Denise Provost (D-Middlesex)  and Rep. James Hawkins (D-Attleboro) introduced House Bill 2119 (H2119) earlier this year. The legislation would prohibit law enforcement agencies from acquiring a long list of military equipment from federal surplus programs without local government approval.

The law would apply both to the well-known 1033 program, along with any other military surplus program operated by the federal government. The legislation covers an extensive list of military items including unmanned aerial vehicles, armored vehicles, bayonets, bombs, directed-energy weapons, grenade launchers, international mobile subscriber identity catchers, launch vehicles, mines, missiles, radioactive or nuclear weapons, rockets, silencers, torpedoes, toxicological agents, including chemical agents, biological agents, and associated equipment, or ultrasonic devices used for crowd dispersal.

Police departments often obtain military equipment from the federal government in complete secrecy. Requiring local government approval would bring the process into the open and provide an opportunity for concerned residents to stop the acquisition through their local representatives.

FEDERAL SURPLUS AND GRANT MONEY

Through the federal 1033 Program, local police departments procure military grade weapons. Police can also get military equipment through the Department of Homeland Security via the (DHS) “Homeland Security Grant Program.” In 2013, DHS gave more than $900 million in counterterrorism funds to state and local police. According to a 2012 Senate report, this money has been used to purchase tactical vehicles, drones, and even tanks with little obvious benefit to public safety. And, according to ProPublica, “In 1994, the Justice Department and the Pentagon-funded a five-year program to adapt military security and surveillance technology for local police departments that they would otherwise not be able to afford.”

In August 2017, President Trump issued an executive order that gave a push to local police militarization. Trump’s action rescinded an Obama-era policy meant to provide greater transparency and oversight around the Department of Defense 1033 program and other federal resources that provide military weapons to local police.

Pasage of H2119  would create a framework for accountability and transparency for police militarization programs in Massachusetts. It would also create a foundation for the public to stop their local police from obtaining this type of gear.

COMMAND AND CONTROL

Arming ‘peace officers’ like they’re ready to occupy an enemy city is totally contrary to the society envisioned by the founders. They’ve turned ‘protect and serve’ into ‘command and control.’

In the 1980s, the federal government began arming, funding and training local police forces, turning peace officers into soldiers to fight in its unconstitutional “War on Drugs.” The militarization went into hyper-drive after 9/11 when a second front opened up – the “War on Terror.”

By making it more difficult for local police to get this military-grade gear and surveillance technology, and ensuring they can’t do it in secret, it makes them less likely to cooperate with the feds and removes incentives for partnerships. Passage of H2119 would take a first step toward limiting police militarization in Massachusetts.

WHAT’S NEXT

H2119 was referred to the Joint Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee where it will need to pass by a majority vote before moving forward in the legislative process.

In 2015, a 16-year-old student from Jiangsu, China, tried to board a train.

She couldn’t even purchase a ticket.

The student, Zhong Pei, tried enrolling in classes at her university. But she was not allowed to do that either.

Zhong had committed a serious crime: She was guilty of being related to someone else.

Her father had killed two people and died in a car accident. So the Chinese government blacklisted her as “dishonest.”

It took her four months before she was able to overturn the decision and go to her university.

China’s Social Credit System – America’s New Nightmare?

What Zhong experienced was the result of testing for China’s new “Social Credit System.”

The SCS aims to be a unified program that provides a “social credit score” for every one of China’s 1.3 billion citizens.

But the Chinese government needed help develop the algorithms that determine social credit scores. So it enlisted eight companies for pilot programs, including its two largest, trusted social media companies: Tencent and Alibaba. They both came up with their own solutions: Alibaba’s affiliate Ant Financial rolled out its own “Sesame Credit” system. And Tencent had a nationwide system that was trialed for less than a day before it was taken down with pressure from the People’s Bank of China.

Both Alibaba and Tencent own enormous Chinese payments systems. They also own the largest Chinese marketplaces.

So Tencent’s program and Alibaba’s Sesame Credit can easily measure how much, how often, and what is bought online in China… and more importantly, when it is paid for.

Chinese regulators are pressuring both as neither have received an official licence to operate their social credit systems. But Tencent and Alibaba are pushing aggressively because they see the benefits – these seemingly innocent systems could help bring order to the chaos of Chinese commerce.

The plan, however, does not stop there. And the Chinese government has already laid the framework for the dystopian future.

Laws from 2012 and 2016 require internet companies to retain customers’ real names and information.

There will be no opting out from this future.

In 2020, the system will become the Social Credit System (SCS). And it will be owned and operated entirely by the Chinese state government.

The SCS will take into account not only purchases, but also hobbies, your lifestyle, and even who you hang out with.

If you raise a child, attend government events, or do well at your job – things considered ideal for a model citizen – your social credit score will go up.

However…

If you drink too much, play too many video games, or speak ill of the government – your social credit score will go down.

It’s a national database that will hold information on every citizen.

It will assess information as innocent as whether an academic degree was actually earned. And as personal as if a female is supposed to be taking birth control.

In short, the SCS will not be a measurement of how regularly you pay your bills.

It will show the government precisely how well you toe the party line.

Social Credit – Obedience to an Authoritarian State

It’s a great idea, right?

There are a lot of people in China. And it’s hard to prevent crime.

Just think of all the great things it will do for the country:

• Citizens know exactly how trustworthy someone is before they befriend them.
• Bad driving gets punished (if you have ever driven in Vancouver, Canada-this would be a welcomed feature). While good driving gets rewarded.
• People become more confident in public institutions.

If your social credit is high, you’ll reap huge benefits…

• You’ll be able to rent better cars and homes, without a deposit.
• Your children will have access to the best schools in your area.
• You’ll get access to better health insurance.
• Prospective employers will be more likely to hire you.
• It’ll be easier to get the paperwork to travel or to get a loan.

Chinese officials say that by 2020, the SCS will “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven…”

But that’s only looking at the benefits for people with a high score.

Here’s the end of that quote: “while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

If your credit score drops too low, you’re basically ejected from society.

• You’ll be rejected for housing and loans.
• Your children won’t be able to attend good schools – even if their grades say otherwise.
• You’ll have a harder time finding a date (dating sites and apps in China allow people to advertise their social credit score).
• You’ll be turned away from good job opportunities.
• Your internet speed could be cut.

Or, like Zhang, you’ll be locked out of being able to buy train tickets and plane tickets.

You won’t be able to leave the country.

In effect, the SCS is designed to completely eliminate mobility – social, class, or travel – for those who do not agree with the government’s definition of a model citizen.

If the punishments are so severe, surely it must be hard to get a low score. Only for horrific crimes, right?

Wrong.

The common slogan in China is: “whoever violates the rules somewhereshall be restricted everywhere.”

Punishment is already happening on a broad scale. Chinese authorities have already banned more than 10 million people deemed “untrustworthy” from boarding flights and high-speed trains.

It’s actually really easy to watch your SCS drop. Hang out with someone with a low score, and your own will go down.

You can lose points based on spending time with your family and friends.

By the way, that’s how North Korea keeps its citizens in line.

It gets worse. When you check your score, you can see precisely who is dragging it down. So you know instantly who to avoid in your life.

In a speech, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence described the SCS as:

“…an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life.”

Every Move You Make, Every Step You Take… China’s Watching You

Here’s the kicker: The Chinese people seem to want this system.

It’s perfectly gamified, after all. People want to participate in the system to watch their score go up. They’re also unknowingly participating in a system of ostracism and social pressure.

The social credit system is a tool to get people to fall perfectly in line.

It’s not mandatory yet. Which means that all the people who want to do it – the ones who willingly toe the party line – are going to get in early to get super high scores. It will seem innocent. Fun, even.

The social credit system is not scheduled to reach full nation-wide implementation until next year. But parts of it have already been put into play.

Many communities around China are already running their own versions of the social credit system…

Last year, 17 million flights and 5.4 million high-speed rail trips were denied to would-be travelers who found themselves on the government’s blacklist.

It’s said that most of the people on the blacklist are debtors. These are people who have defaulted on loans.

And some of the current implementations of the social credit system only deduct social credit points when you break the law. Like getting a speeding ticket.

Again, there’s a Sesame Credit app, which encourages users to compare their credit scores to those of their friends. It’s an obvious push to get people to share their ratings as a status symbol.

More than 100,000 Chinese people have “tweeted” their SCS scores on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter.

Above: A billboard in a Chinese community displays citizens with the highest social credit score.

The madness has not yet begun.

The logical implications of the system are horrifying to think about.

You can literally die a death by a thousand paper cuts. Buy the wrong thing on Alibaba too many times, and you can no longer even get a job.

Hang out with the wrong friends too many times, and you can’t get a loan or trade in the stock market.

And once you’re out of society, you’re out for good. There’s virtually no way to get back in. You’re muted and invisible. Persona non grata.

It’s an appalling return to the caste system of India. If your credit score is too low, you’re untouchable.

People will turn on each other. China’s elite State Council published a planning document on the SCS that says that the “new system will reward those who report acts of breach of trust.”

That’s a page straight from Soviet Russia’s KGB – only more effective.

Accurate information on China is hard to obtain. It’s likely the current reality is already far worse than we know.

The Land of the Decree, and the Home of the Slave

The majority of the elements are in place for the Social Credit System to be implemented.

Not in China.

In the United States.

We have:

• The databases
• The digital surveillance
• The national credit score system
• The systems of reward and punishment
• The government-knows-best attitude
• The electronic purchasing data
• The ubiquitous social networks

Think about it. China started with Alibaba and Tencent.

In the United States, we have Amazon and Facebook and Google.

They know everything you read, see, search, buy, and say.

Your Android or iPhone already tracks your location and reports it hundreds of times per day.

And that information is already being used for complete censorship.

In 2018, Facebook began a program that assigns every user a reputation score, which predicts their “trustworthiness.” Sound familiar?

Here is how China implemented the Social Credit Score system in just under five years:

• They subjected all online behavior to intense study.
• They collected, stored and analyzed all social media and banking information.
• They began to severely regulate the freedom to travel.

And here’s what’s going on in the United States…

Police threat-scoring algorithms are used to determine who the police should be tracking and surveilling. Social media is already being used in these algorithms.

For the past decade, the NSA has been gathering information on people’s social media, locations, friends, and who they travel with.

The agency can enrich the data with bank information, social media information, voter information and even GPS location information.

The TSA has a rapidly expanding “no-fly” list. The list has no government accountability, and there is no recourse – unless, of course, you’re a powerful government official who ends up on it.

Indeed, a report from the World Privacy Forum indicates that in such a credit score system “error rates and false readings become a big issue.”

Implications on the Yuan and U.S. Dollar

Never underestimate the currency butterfly effect. This has huge implications for the yuan, which is the currency of China. The Social Credit Score will have incredible implications on business, government and ultimately, the strength of the currency.

The world has never seen anything like this. And it’s only going to grow. China is the first country to implement this and certainly won’t be the last. You know others will do so to maintain power, increasepower and manipulate power.

Pay attention to this and it will be very important in the coming years, and will have significant indirect effects to your portfolio.

What could possibly go wrong?

Last year, Chinese authorities said that part of the program would be to freeze the assets of anyone deemed to be “dishonest.”

Imagine all of your assets suddenly disappearing because a red light camera read your license plate wrong.

The infrastructure for this system is already in place in the United States.

It’s just not about train rides or university classes anymore.

Any individual not aligning with the current social and governmental norms will face poverty… homelessness… starvation… or worse.

Under the new system of life by government approval, survival becomes simple:

Obey… or die.

We have never seen anything like this before.  According to satellite data that was just released by Reuters, “at least 1 million acres of U.S. farmland” were covered by water for at least seven days this month.  That is an agricultural disaster without equal in modern American history, and yet the mainstream media is treating this like it is some sort of second class story.  It isn’t.  This is the biggest news story of 2019 so far, and people want to know what is going on.  A few days ago, I posted a story entitled ‘“As Many As A Million Calves Lost In Nebraska” – Beef Prices In The U.S. To Escalate Dramatically In The Coming Months’, and it has already been shared on social media more than 145,000 times.  Farming communities all over the central part of the nation now look like war zones as a result of all this flooding, but the media elites on the east and west coasts don’t want to write about it.  And with more flooding on the way for the next two months, this crisis is only going to get worse.

This is the time of year when farmers are gearing up to plant wheat, corn and soybeans, and now a substantial portion of our farmland will not be able to be used at all this year.  According to Reuters, at least a million acres of farmland were covered by floodwaters for at least seven days this month, and that “will likely reduce corn, wheat and soy production this year”…

At least 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of U.S. farmland were flooded after the “bomb cyclone” storm left wide swaths of nine major grain producing states under water this month, satellite data analyzed by Gro Intelligence for Reuters showed.

Farms from the Dakotas to Missouri and beyond have been under water for a week or more, possibly impeding planting and damaging soil. The floods, which came just weeks before planting season starts in the Midwest, will likely reduce corn, wheat and soy production this year.

And with “as many as a million calves” lost to the flooding, a lot less food than anticipated is going to be produced in the United States for the foreseeable future.

Between March 8th and March 21st, almost 1.1 million acres of cropland and over 84,000 acres of pastureland were covered by water for at least a week.  With more rain on the way, it is essentially going to be impossible for most of those acres to be usable this year.

In Iowa, 474,271 acres were covered by floodwaters for at least seven days in March, and Iowa farmers are facing some very tough deadlines.  Corn must be planted by May 31st and soybeans must be planted by June 15th in order to qualify for flood insurance.  For most Iowa farms that were covered by floodwaters, that is going to be impossible.

Overall, the recent flooding caused “at least $3 billion” in economic damage according to authorities, but many believe that the final number will be far higher.

Thousands upon thousands of farms have been completely destroyed, and thousands upon thousands of farmers will not plant any crops at all this year.

In addition to the vast agricultural devastation that we have witnessed, thousands upon thousands of homes have been destroyed as well, and now the National Ground Water Association is warning that “the safety of more than a million private water wells” could be compromised…

Record flooding in the Midwest is now threatening the safety of more than a million private water wells. The National Ground Water Association estimates that people living in more than 300 counties across 10 states have their groundwater threatened from bacterial and industrial contamination carried by flood waters.

If you live in the middle of the country and there is a chance that your well may have been compromised, please don’t take any unnecessary chances.  Contaminated water can be really, really bad news.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning.  According to the NOAA, we are entering an “unprecedented flood season” that could potentially “impact an even bigger area of cropland”…

Spring floods could yet impact an even bigger area of cropland. The U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has warned of what could be an “unprecedented flood season” as it forecasts heavy spring rains. Rivers may swell further as a deep snow pack in northern growing areas melts.

In my previous article entitled ‘”200 Million People At Risk: National Weather Service Warns Apocalyptic Midwest Floods Are “A Preview Of What We Expect Throughout The Rest Of The Spring”’, I included a map from the NOAA which shows which areas of the central part of the country are projected to receive unusually high levels of rainfall over the next few months.

Unfortunately, there is a tremendous amount of overlap with areas that have already been devastated by flooding.

On Friday and Saturday, there will be “more heavy rains” in the Midwest, and Nebraska is in “the direct path” of the center of the storm…

From the Central Plains to the Midwest, it has been a disastrous spring for river flooding. A weather system slated to bring more heavy rains Friday into Saturday could aggravate the situation along and near the Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

It’s a one-two punch that combines additional rainwater with fresh runoff from snowmelt. Perhaps worst off is Nebraska, in the direct path of Friday’s quick burst of moisture. Barely a week has passed since Gov. Pete Ricketts estimated the cost of ongoing flooding in that state at more than $1 billion.

This is it.  America is being hammered by one storm after another, and I very much encourage you to get prepared for a very rough ride ahead.

There is going to be a lot more flooding.  Prices for beef, dairy, wheat, corn and soy products are going to rise significantly, and just when you think they are way too high they are going to keep on rising.

This is already the worst agricultural disaster in modern American history, and federal authorities are telling us that we should expect things to continue to get worse for at least two more months.

Perhaps the mainstream media will eventually decide to take this story seriously, but until they do those of us in the alternative media will do our best to keep you updated.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

A bill moving through the Minnesota House would reform the state’s asset forfeiture laws to require a criminal conviction in most cases and close a loophole allowing state and local police to circumvent the more stringent state asset forfeiture process by passing cases off to the feds.

A bipartisan coalition of representatives introduced House Bill 1971 (HF1971) on March 4. The legislation would effectively end civil asset forfeiture in the state and replace it with a criminal procedure. Under the proposed law, prosecutors would not be able to move forward with asset forfeiture proceedings without first obtaining a criminal conviction in most cases.

HF1971 also addresses the policing for profit motive inherent in the current forfeiture process. Under the proposed law, forfeiture proceeds would be deposited in the state’s general fund after payment of certain expenses. Under the current law, law enforcement agencies keep up to 90 percent of forfeiture proceeds in most cases.

On March 13, the Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Division Committee approved HF1971.

A companion bill (SF2155) was introduced in the Senate on March 7.

NECESSARY

While some people believe the Supreme Court “ended asset forfeiture,” the recent opinion in Timbs v. Indiana ended nothing. Without further action, civil asset forfeiture remains. Additionally, as law professor Ilya Somin noted, the Court left an important issue unresolved. What exactly counts as an “excessive” in the civil forfeiture context?

“That is likely to be a hotly contested issue in the lower federal courts over the next few years. The ultimate effect of today’s decision depends in large part on how that question is resolved. If courts rule that only a few unusually extreme cases qualify as excessive, the impact of Timbs might be relatively marginal.”

Going forward, opponents of civil asset forfeiture could wait and see how lower federal courts will address this “over the next few years,” or they can do what a number of states have already taken steps to do, end the practice on a state level, and opt out of the federal equitable sharing program as well.

FEDERAL LOOPHOLE

Passage of HF1971/SF2155 would take a big step toward closing a loophole that allows state and local police to get around more strict state asset forfeiture laws in a vast majority of situations. This is particularly important in light of a policy directive issued in July 2017 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions for the Department of Justice (DOJ).

A federal program known as “Equitable Sharing” allows prosecutors to bypass more stringent state asset forfeiture laws by passing cases off to the federal government through a process known as adoption. The DOJ directive reiterates full support for the equitable sharing program, directs federal law enforcement agencies to aggressively utilize it, and sets the stage to expand it in the future.

Law enforcement agencies can circumvent more strict state forfeiture laws by claiming cases are federal in nature. Under these arrangements, state officials simply hand cases over to a federal agency, participate in the case, and then receive up to 80 percent of the proceeds. However, when states merely withdraw from participation, the federal directive loses its impact.

Until recently, California faced this situation. The state has some of the strongest state-level restrictions on civil asset forfeiture in the country, but state and local police were circumventing the state process by passing cases to the feds. According to a report by the Institute for Justice, Policing for Profit, California ranked as the worst offender of all states in the country between 2000 and 2013. In other words, California law enforcement was passing off a lot of cases to the feds and collecting the loot. The state closed the loophole in 2016.

HF1971/SF2155 features language to close the loophole in most situations.

A local, county, or state law enforcement agency shall not refer, transfer, or otherwise relinquish possession of property seized under state law to a federal agency by way of adoption of the seized property or other means by the federal agency for the purpose of the property’s forfeiture under the federal Controlled Substances Act, United States Code, title 21,section 881; or the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970, Public Law 91-513, section 413.

In a case in which the aggregate net equity value of the property and currency seized has a value of $50,000 or less, excluding the value of contraband, a local, county, orstate law enforcement agency or participant in a joint task force or other multijurisdictional collaboration with the federal governmentshall transfer responsibility for the seized property to the state prosecuting authority for forfeiture under state law.

If the federal government prohibits the transfer of seized property and currency to the state prosecuting authority as required by paragraph (a) and instead requires the property be transferred to the federal government for forfeiture under federal law, the agency is prohibited from accepting payment of any kind or distribution of forfeiture proceeds from the federal government.

As the Tenth Amendment Center previously reported the federal government inserted itself into the asset forfeiture debate in California. The feds clearly want the policy to continue.

Why?

We can only guess. But perhaps the feds recognize paying state and local police agencies directly in cash for handling their enforcement would reveal their weakness. After all, the federal government would find it nearly impossible to prosecute its unconstitutional “War on Drugs” without state and local assistance. Asset forfeiture “equitable sharing” provides a pipeline the feds use to incentivize state and local police to serve as de facto arms of the federal government by funneling billions of dollars into their budgets.

WHAT’S NEXT

HF1971 was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. SF2155 was referred to the Judiciary and Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee.

“The likely impact of the USMCA [United States, Mexico, and Canada Agreement, which the Trump Administration is pushing to replace NAFTA] on the U.S. cattle industry will be substantial, and will be substantially negative,” predicted Bill Bullard of the R-CALF USA.

R-CALF USA filed its final submission to the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) this week, in an effort to ensure that the ITC’s report to President Trump and Congress will accurately describe the likely impacts of USMCA on the American cattle industry. The report of the ITC is required under a 2015 law, assessing the likely impact of the USMCA on the U.S. economy in general, and on specific sectors of the economy in particular.

While Trump campaigned vigorously against NAFTA during his successful 2016 presidential run, R-CALF contends that “the USMCA adopts the same provisions in the original North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) regarding cattle and beef trade.”

And those NAFTA provisions were “disastrous to independent cattle producers because they empowered multinational beef packers to indiscriminately displace domestic cattle and beef production with cheaper, undifferentiated imports of both cattle and beef,” R-CALF argued. “This has substantially weakened the U.S. live cattle supply chain and infrastructure, which has substantially reduced competition for the industry and is contributing to the hollowing out of America’s rural communities.”

Rather than just make general statements, R-CALF cited very specific ways that the NAFTA agreement has harmed the U.S. cattle industry, noting that these provisions are continued under the proposed USMCA. “Twenty percent of all U.S. beef cattle operations exited the industry from 1994 to 2012,” the group said, citing the latest available census data.

The U.S. beef cow herd has declined to the lowest level in seven decades, with nearly three million head less than in 1994. Forty-eight percent of U.S. beef packing plants have left the industry since 1995.

Before NAFTA, the share of U.S. cattle producers of every consumer beef dollar was 56 percent — by 2017 it had declined to just 45 percent.

In short, R-CALF lamented, “NAFTA has displaced domestic beef and cattle production.” USMCA promises a continuation of the same policies of NAFTA.

“In conclusion,” Bullard explained, “because NAFTA incorporates NAFTA’s fundamentally flawed provisions, it should be expected that the USMCA will now cause the elimination of the critical mass of competitive marketing channels and industry infrastructure needed to sustain an independent family farm and ranch system of cattle production in the United States. Thus, the new USMCA will accelerate the destruction of the U.S. cattle industry as we know it today.” (Emphasis added.)

The only years that cow/calf returns per bred cow exceeded the NAFTA period’s $37 average [it was $50 during the seven years prior to NAFTA] was during the time that the U.S. banned Canadian cattle imports, in 2004-2005, and after the 2009 implementation of the country-of-origin labeling (COOL) law. Unfortunately, under pressure from the World Trade Organization (WTO), the U.S. Congress meekly repealed COOL in December 2015 for beef and pork products.

With this repeal of COOL, consumers can no longer know from what country their beef or their pork is coming. One of the requirements for “pure competition” is that a consumer be reasonably well-informed about the product for sale. Considering that the average American, given a choice, would be more likely to buy beef from western Oklahoma than western Canada, it is clear that the repeal of COOL for beef and pork is detrimental to the American beef and pork producers.

Bullard, when asked about COOL by The New American, explained that the argument made by those who lobbied for Congress to terminate COOL for beef and pork is that beef from foreign countries “meets the same health and safety standards” as U.S. beef. But, Bullard said, “This notion that beef is beef is false.”

Bullard offered as an example of why it is false. He said that U.S. cattle producers are required to obtain veterinarian certification before administering antibiotics, but this does not apply to any other nation. He said this is not the only difference, but rather that there are a “host of differences” between the requirements placed on American beef producers and their foreign competitors.

Finally, if the United States is going to remain a sovereign nation, Congress should make appropriate regulations on interstate commerce and foreign imports, not the WTO, and not agreements such as NAFTA, USMCA, and the like. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution gives to Congress the power “to regulate commerce with foreign nations,” and no provision is made in the Constitution for Congress to delegate that power to the executive branch, or to any foreign body, such as the UN, the WTO, or USMCA.

Hopefully, Congress will reassert itself and kill USMCA — the latest assault upon our national sovereignty. In other words, Put America First.

A family in Arizona is having to endure the wrath of the medical police state after a doctor decided to call the Department of Child Safety (DCS) on them for not vaccinating their children – resulting in an armed SWAT team raiding the family’s home and violently seizing their three children, all of whom were placed in temporary foster homes.

It all started when one of the children, a two-year-old, developed a fever that exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit, prompting the child’s mother to take him to see the doctor in question. Because the child hadn’t been vaccinated, the doctor assumed out of nowhere that he probably had meningitis and needed to be taken to the emergency room right away.

While the mother initially agreed to the doctor’s extreme and unusual recommendation, her child’s fever broke not long after leaving the doctor’s office, having stated that he was “laughing and playing with his siblings” like normal. After taking the boy’s temperature and seeing that it was now normal, the mother called the doctor and said she would no longer be taking him to the emergency room, to which the doctor responded that she should still go anyway.

The mother verbally agreed to this, though she didn’t end up going to the emergency room after all. But because the doctor had previously notified the hospital, for some unknown reason, that a mother would be coming in with her child, she later received a call from said hospital explaining that mother and child never actually arrived – and that’s when the insanity began.

Unless parents fight back, the state will continue to assume custody over as many children as it can get its hands on

Upset that the mother didn’t follow the doctor’s recommendation, the doctor immediately called DCS, which then called local police to have them “check” on the family – which is similar to what happened to a Michigan mother who refused to give her daughter antipsychotic medications based on doctor recommendations. Two police officers arrived at the home and claim they knocked on the family’s door and received no response.

Officers further claimed they heard someone “coughing” inside, before being approached by a neighbor who, after being told what was going on, responded to say that the person they were looking for “was a good mother.”

The officers asked the neighbor to call the mother, which she did, and during this time a DCS case worker arrived, who updated the police on the status of the child, which no longer had a fever. One of the officers then called the doctor, who once again repeated her recommendation that the mother take the child to hospital.

At this point in time, the case worker reportedly informed officers that DCS was planning to obtain a “temporary custody notice” from a judge to remove the child in question from the home for “emergency medical aid.”

A court order was later issued, and the police officers decided that, if the family didn’t respond to their knocking, which was after midnight at this point, then they were going to engage in “forced entry” of the premises. At around 1 am, officers busted down the family’s door, one with a shield in hand and the other outfit in “lethal coverage,” and proceeded to remove all of the children from their parents’ custody.

The children were quickly placed in separate foster homes, and 10 days later the case went to court – and all the while DCS was doing everything it possibly could to make the situation as difficult as possible for the family.

Despite arguments from the family’s lawyer that they did what they believed to be the best thing for the child who had the fever, the judge ultimately sided with the state and DCS, telling the parents that they needed to “remember” that the state had a “family-reunification plan” in place, whatever that means.

“The children’s grandparents are undergoing a DCS review, and hope to be permitted to temporarily shelter the kids once that’s approved,” writes Lenore Skenazy for Metro Voice News about the case. “But there’s no telling how long it will be before the kids can just go home to mom and dad.”

For more related news, check out Evil.news.

Sources for this article include:

MetroVoiceNews.com

NaturalNews.com

by Gary M. Galles, Mises Institute

On January 30, Rep. John Larson and 200 Democratic co-sponsors introduced the Social Security 2100 Act. Portrayed as giving retirees long-overdue benefit increases, it would actually add another step to Social Security’s long-running Ponzi scheme.

Despite Democrats’ history of rejecting that term for Social Security, it has been the biggest series of Ponzi schemes in history, redistributing tens of trillions of dollars of wealth to earlier recipients from subsequent generations.

After Social Security’s creation, those in or near retirement got benefits far exceeding their costs (Ida Mae Fuller, the first recipient, got 462 times total contributions made on her behalf). Those excess benefits inherently required that future Americans would have to pick up the tab for the difference.

Social Security has also been expanded multiple times. Each expansion meant those already retired paid no added taxes, and those near retirement paid a bit more for only a few years. But both groups received increased benefits throughout retirement, increasing the unfunded benefits whose burdens had to be borne by later generations. Thus, each such expansion started another Ponzi cycle benefiting older Americans at others’ expense.

Social Security benefits doubled between 1950 and 1952. They were raised 15 percent in 1970, 10 percent in 1971, and 20 percent in 1972, in a competition to buy the elderly vote. Benefits were tied to a measure that effectively double-counted inflation and even now, benefits are over-indexed to inflation, raising real benefit levels over time.

Disability and dependents’ benefits were added by 1960. Medicare was added in 1966, and benefits have been expanded (e.g., Medicare Part B, only one-quarter funded by recipients, and Part D’s prescription drug benefit, only one-eighth funded by recipients).

The Social Security 2100 Act would be the next episode. It would increase all retirees’ benefits (including current retirees who would pay nothing toward the boost) and increase the inflation (over)adjustment for benefits, picking future high-income earners’ pockets to pay for the vast majority of it, by taxing wage income beyond the $132,900 ceiling now in place (eventually to all wage income).

With the multiple Ponzi giveaways to recipients creating Social Security’s 13-digit unfunded liability and Medicare’s far larger one, how can the proposed law be rationalized? Without the benefit of being in the startup generation of earlier Ponzi expansions, the present generation is being forced to begin bearing some of the costs.

This was illustrated by an Urban Institute study of lifetime payroll taxes and benefits. Especially with recent expansions, Medicare recipients were getting a great deal. In 2012 dollars, an average-wage-earning male would get $180,000 in benefits, $119,000 more than their contributions. A similarly situated female did even better. In sum, it yielded “excess” benefits of $105 trillion, with net benefits increasing over time.

However, for Social Security, whose major Ponzi expansions came further in the past, an average-earning male retiring in 2010 would make $300,000 in contributions, for only $277,000 in lifetime benefits. For women, with smaller average lifetime contributions and longer life expectancies, it was about a wash. And things are worsening. By 2030, that such men will be “shorted” 16 cents (10 cents for women) of every tax dollar paid.

Social Security is now a “bad deal” for current and future recipients precisely because the costs of its Ponzi structure are starting to be felt. But rather than admit that their “greatest accomplishment” relied on massive theft from future Americans, they want to restart the scheme, keeping restive seniors in their camp, by dumping even-greater burdens on future generations than they already have (hidden behind a flimsy cover story that high-income earners, actually big net losers from the system, would finally be forced to pay their “fair share”).

Democrats think they can finesse older Americans out of their votes for still more elections with Ponzi Security. But if other Americans recognized the dishonest ploy aimed at their wallets, they might end up in the electoral wilderness instead.

Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. He is the author of The Apostle of Peace: The Radical Mind of Leonard Read.

NOTE: This article was originally published at Mises.org and is reposted here under a Creative Commons 4.0 license

According to Agriculture Secretary Sunny Purdue, there “may be as many as a million calves lost in Nebraska” due to the catastrophic flooding that has hit the state.  This is not a rumor, this is not an exaggeration, and this is not based on any sort of speculation.  This number comes to us directly from the top agriculture official in the entire country, and it means that the economic toll from the recent floods is far greater than most of us had anticipated.  You can watch Purdue make this quote on Fox Business right here, and it is important to remember that this number is just for one state.  It is hard to imagine what the final numbers will look like when the livestock losses for all of the states affected by the flooding are tallied up.  This is already the worst agricultural disaster in modern American history, and the National Weather Service is telling us that there will be more catastrophic flooding throughout the middle portion of the nation for the next two months.

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts says that this is the worst flooding that his state has ever experienced.  Ricketts originally told us that 65 out of the 93 counties in his state have declared a state of emergency, but that number has now risen to 74.  Hundreds of millions of dollars of damage has been done in his state alone, and that is just an initial estimate.

It deeply offends me that the big mainstream news channels have spent so little time covering this disaster.  This is the biggest news story of 2019 so far by a very wide margin, but because it happened in the middle of the country they are not giving it the attention that it deserves.

In the short-term, food prices will not rise too dramatically because the stores are selling the food that has already been produced.  But as the months roll along, you will start to notice food prices steadily increase.  Millions of bushels of wheat, corn and soybeans have been destroyed by the flooding so far, and thousands of farmers will not be able to plant crops at all this year.  And the livestock losses that we have already experienced will be felt for many years to come.

Beef will never be lower in price than it is right now.  So if you are a beef lover, you may want to stock up.

When the flooding initially came, it happened so fast that many farmers were powerless to do anything about it.  In Sherman County, farmer Richard Panowicz says that ice and debris were “exploding from the river”…

“Within 15 minutes it was devastation,” Panowicz said, with water, ice and debris exploding from the river with nothing to stop it.

He described some ice chunks as 3 feet thick and the size of an extended-cab pickup.

Panowicz said a lot of the dead calves he’s picked up have had broken legs. Many of the carcasses were found by neighbors.

In other cases, farmers were faced with a heartbreaking choice between saving their animals or saving their neighbors.  One farmer that rushed to help his neighbors ended up losing 30 calves to the floodwaters…

Before Mahon could think about his animals, he needed to help his neighbors. As the water rose, he rescued one with his tractor, the floodwater lifting it up and spinning him 180 degrees. He helped save three more people — including an 85-year-old woman and a 9-month-old baby — with a boat, he said.

Then he could start counting his losses. He estimated the flood carried away 30 calves and almost as many cows, nearly $50,000 out of his pocket. It might be more.

Can you imagine the grief that these farming families are enduring right now?

Many of them are financially ruined and will never be able to go back to farming again.

Dave Eaton’s family has been farming the same plot of land for 152 years.  But now the Missouri River has swallowed his farm, and with much more flooding still to come, he anticipates that his farm with be underwater “all year”…

The farm has been in his family 152 years. He was born there. He’s been thinking about what he’s learned about the Missouri’s upstream reservoirs and the mountain snowpack, and what it means for his land.

“It’s not like I’m new to the area,” he said. “My gut feeling is we’re going to be under water all year.”

And he is definitely not the only one that has had his year ruined.

Panowicz says that the hay and silage that were meant to feed his cattle this season were soaked “in 3 to 4 feet of water”…

The hay and silage to feed his cattle are soaked after sitting in 3 to 4 feet of water.

Sand now covers much of the pastureland he uses to graze his herd of commercial Angus cows and purebred Charolais bulls.

And 40 of his recently born calves died in the flood.

So what is he supposed to do?

Some Nebraska ranchers will bravely try to rebuild, but for Panowicz it appears that the end has come…

“I’ll probably sell the (remaining) cows and calves and get out of the cattle business,” said Panowicz, 65. “I’ve been around cows since the early 1970s.”

I could go on and on, but I think that you get the point.

America’s farmers have been utterly devastated.  America’s cattle producers have been utterly devastated.  Food production is going to be way, way below expectations, and food prices are going to escalate dramatically in the coming months.  This is the kind of scenario that I have been warning about, and this crisis is going to continue to get worse as all the snow from one of the snowiest winters on record melts.  In Minnesota, there are still more than 20 inches of snow on the ground in some places, and all of that water has to go somewhere.

This is the biggest national crisis that has hit the United States in many years, but the mainstream media and millions of Americans that do not live in the affected areas still do not seem to get it.

Of course once food prices start getting painfully high at our supermarkets everyone will start complaining, but there will not be any easy solutions.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.