From The Times-Tribune.

What on earth are these guys thinking?

Even if they have it right under the terms of the contract, politically they have to be flaming morons.

As always, click the photo for the entire piece.

Scranton police file grievance after chief makes off-duty arrest

BY STEVE MCCONNELL (STAFF WRITER)

Published: April 19, 2011

The Scranton police union has filed an unfair labor practice complaint against the city for an off-duty drug arrest made by Police Chief Dan Duffy in March.

The complaint, which was filed with the state Labor Relations Board on April 14, takes issue with the chief arresting a man who was allegedly in possession of marijuana because the chief is not a member of the collective bargaining unit and was "off duty" when the March 20 arrest was made.

"I think it's absurd. I'm not going to turn my head on crime that takes place," Chief Duffy said. "I took the same oath (as a police officer) that everyone else took.

"On my day off and I'm driving around as the police chief, and that's wrong?" he asked.

The complaint states that "the work of apprehending and arresting individuals has been the sole and exclusive province of members of the bargaining unit," and that the city did not inform or negotiate with the union that the chief would be "performing bargaining unit work."

Because of this, the union says the city violated the state Labor Relations Act and the Policemen and Firemen Collective Bargaining Act.

 

You go Rolling Stone.

Despite their inability to quite put down the cool aid (see their comment below, "According to popular legend, we're broke) Rolling Stone has glommed on to the fact that the FED is accountable to nobody.

It's a start.

Click on the Victor Juhasz illiustration below for the entire piece.

Recommended

The Real Housewives of Wall Street

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

 By MATT TAIBBI APRIL 12, 2011

This one has been going around for at least a couple of years now.

Still, it's revealing.

I've been saving it just for today.

Harry Reid explains it all.

Taxes are voluntary.

Who knew?

Thanks to our good friend David Michaels for sending us this thought provoking article from Ellen Brown.

As always, click on the photo to link up to the entire piece.

Our highest recommendation for bringing up a point we would have never thought up.

Ellen Brown also writes for Public Banking Blog

Libya all about oil, or central banking?

By Ellen Brown

Several writers have noted the odd fact that the Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own centralbank - this before they even had a government. Robert Wenzel wrote in the Economic Policy Journal:

I have never before heard of a central bank being created in just a matter of weeks out of a popular uprising. This suggests we have a bit more than a rag tag bunch of rebels running around and that there are some pretty sophisticated influences.

 

Another provocative bit of data circulating on the Net is a 2007 "Democracy Now" interview of US General Wesley Clark (Ret). In it he says that about 10 days after September 11, 2001, he was told by a general that the decision had been made to go to war with Iraq. Clark was surprised and asked why. "I don't know!" was the response. "I guess they don't know what else to do!" Later, the same general said they planned to take out seven countries in five years: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran. 

To begin with, I'm still not entirely certain of what works and what doesn't with regards to the free stuff at Stratfor.

I hope this works ... you might have to fool around with something.

I've created a link from the photo below to Stratfor's latest article regarding Inspire Magazine, the al Qaeda english language jihadist magazine.

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, "There's a magazine out there for everybody".

As I have also said before, I subscribe to Stratfor.

I don't even know what it costs anymore, mostly because I'm afraid to.

Still, as far as I'm concerned, Stratfor is the single best site in the world for a "news junkie".

The “Open Source Jihad” section contained a photograph of the U.S. Capitol building with a Christmas tree in the foreground on the first page.  

The “What to Expect in Jihad” section featured a graphic of a sticky note with a to-do listreading: buy handguns, make a bomb in mom’s kitchen, blow up Times Square and “pull off Mumbai near Whitehouse ‘till martyrdom.”  

This section also had a graphic of an envelope marked with the word “Anthrax.”

The photograph of the U.S. Capitol, followed by a reference to an armed assault directed against soft targets near the White House (and the anthrax envelope), will certainly raise some eyebrows in Washington — especially since the Open Source Jihad section of the second edition of Inspire had a photo of the Chicago skyline, and the subsequent plot involving explosive devices hidden in printer cartridges were in packages sent to Chicago.

Don't bother running out, I already checked Barnes and Noble ..... no luck.

Must've gone like hotcakes.

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion

-- when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing

-- when you see money flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors

-- when you see that men get richer by graft and pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you

-- when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice

-- you may know that your society is doomed.

You seein' any of that stuff?

Click anywhere below for a very revealing 1959 Mike Wallace interview with Ayn Rand.

There is a second section.

Different.

"The creator stands on his own judgement.

The parasite follows the opinions of others.

The creator thinks.

The parasite copies.

The creator produces.

The parasite loots.

The creator’s concern is the conquest of nature.

The parasite’s concern is the conquest of men.

The creator requires independence.

He neither serves nor rules.

He deals with men by free exchange and voluntary choice.

The parasite seeks power.

He wants to bind all men together in common action and common slavery.

He claims that man is only a tool for the use of others, that he must think as they think, act as they act, and live in selfless, joyless servitude to any need but his own."

Don't forget The Fountainhead.

In maybe/probably my second favorite Gary Cooper movie, Howard Roark is forced by principle to destroy his own creation.

But on the positive side, he gets Patricia Neal.

My favorite?

The Frank Capra classic, way super double highly rated and maybe my all time favorite movie, Meet John Doe.