Making crime pay is literally true in America nowadays. Not just token work like making cons stamp out license plates or pick up trash along the Interstate. There’s not much money in that. 
But there’s a fortune to be made when government “partners” with (cough) private business to tag team the public – as in the case of photo enforcement of traffic violations.
The profits can sail into the million annually in a major metro area such as Washington, D.C. (which has cameras everywhere) and the profits – yes, profits – are typically split evenly between the two. 
Now, ordinarily, profits are a good thing. They are the result of having produced something of value that people not only want but but are willing to pay for. No one wants a traffic ticket – and few of us pay them willingly. We pay only because of the implied threat of violence that accompanies each such notice if we dare not to pay.
Profits are properly the realm of voluntary free exchange – not government force.
It is right and proper for the state to compel restitution, say – as when a criminal is required to make his victims whole. But there is something unnatural and vile about using the frightening power of organized state violence to make a buck. To point guns at people in order to funnel money – lots of money – to a “vendor,” that is, to a privately owned business, so that its owners can get rich off the misery of the citizenry, with government providing Mafia-style thugs to help him collect.
This is in fact the defining essence of fascism – and it is exactly the sort of system we’ve allowed to be erected under our noses. Often, with a good number of us cheering it on.
And we have allowed it because we’ve (that is, most people) been taught quite deliberately to misunderstand what fascism is. Our schools impart images of Hitler and his Nazis, of jackbooted stormtroopers and Nuremburg rallies – and most especially, of jew-baiting and racism. But those are incidentals. The essence of fascism is not racialism. It is corporatism. The marriage of Big Business and Big Government.
It is about for-profit government – at bayonet point. 
And it’s much more than merely traffic tickets, though that has become an enormous problem – especially since many of these cons are almost entirely automated, without even a nod to due process. There’s no facing one’s accuser, no day in court. Just a ticket in the mail along with the private contractor’s affirmation of your guilt, unchallenged and taken as given (it being up to you to demonstrate otherwise, upending a basic principle that goes all the way back to Magna Carta) along with an order to pay up.
I’ve written before about mandatory insurance – first car, soon health and bet your bippie more to come (such as coercive life and perhaps home insurance) too. Once again, we have the essentially fascist practice of (so-called) private businesses enlisting the violence business of the state to enlarge their “customer” base by force. It is no accident, incidentally, that DMVs and other organs of the state began calling their unwilling victims just that – “customers” – beginning in the late 1980s, when fascism, American-stytle really began to pick up speed. But it also goes back a lot farther, to the 1930s – when FDR took a whole book full of ideas (including word torture such as calling compulsory taxes paid into the government Ponzi scheme called Social Security “contributions”) from his Italian mentor, Il Duce – the man who articulated the concept of fascism and made it state policy in Italy was widely admired by the West many years before that funny little man in Germany who ripped-off some of his ideas and symbols was anything more than a shabby beer-hall bully. 
American schoolchildren have been educated in government schools, so of course they are largely ignorant of these things – of things like the National Recovery Act and its spread-winged adler mascot, cousin of another and very similar adler mascot across the sea. Il Duce went down in flames – actually, was hung up by his ankles – because of his association with German racialism. But fascism lives on in the very “Homeland” that once sent troops across that same ocean, ostensibly to stamp it out.
We – the average American dumbo, ignorant and propagandized as he is, attentive only to football and Dancing With the Stars – believes we can’t possibly have fascism here because America is diverse and doesn’t mistreat its minorities (A-rabs excepted, of course) as state policy. 
But that’s just exactly what we do in fact have – and are getting more of every day. “Conservatives” have for years yarbled about the threat of communism and socialism, while the real threat ran right between their legs and set up shop behind them.
The “people” own nothing in this country – but large combines with political muscle control nearly everything. And make a handsome profit besides.
We may not have billboard ads for Der Sturmer along the highways. But we’ve got everything else that matters – from internal security checkpoints to “contributions” at gunpoint from unwilling “customers” for the profit of (cough) private “businesses” whose business is fundamentally about coercion, about enriching the small elite that runs the operation, all of it marketed as being in the National Interest and necessary for Public Safety.
Only we’re taught not to notice it – or call it by its rightful name – precisely because there aren’t cartoonish pictures of Der Jude (or der A-rab) all over the front pages of the New York Times.
The genius of latter-day fascism lies in its America-style reincarnation – wrapped in the the flag and family values and heterogenous “diversity” – but exactly the same program under the skin.
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Throw it in the Woods?
If you receive a ticket in the mail from the city you do not have to pay it. It is a civil, not criminal, matter, which means you can not be arrested for not paying. You must be sued to pay, which means you have to be served, which means – Do Not Answer The Door If You Do Not Know Who It Is. Also it is a widely spread myth that you will not be able to get your car registered or get your drivers license renewed if you do not pay these tickets: Not True (as long as tickets are from the city), because the state registers your car and renews your license, and they just want your money, and are not going to attempt free collection activity for the city.
Actually, he got it from earlier proponents, e.g. Gabriele d’Annunzio was influential.
“But there’s a fortune to be made when government “partners” with (cough) private business to tag team the public …”
Heck, they even have a name for it: “public-private partnership”, with its implication that this is a *good* thing! It’s a *healthy* thing! It benefits *everybody*!
Another example of the PPP — maybe even a better one than the traffic violation industry — is the FDA and Big Pharma. The wrappings might be coming off that one though, as witness the spreading of the truth about vaccines via the Internet. Not for nuttin’ are we being subjected to a maniacally insistent flu shot campaign across the land, including Walgreen’s employee incentive plan for signing up its customers to receive the shot right there in the store. (Which is bizarre in itself. What’s next, appendectomies? Some guy wanders into Walgreen’s looking for throat lozenges and the clerk goes, “Probably your tonsils. Step right over here, sir, we’ll have those puppies out in a jiffy!”)
” … we can’t possibly have fascism here because America is diverse and doesn’t mistreat its minorities.”
Oh, no? I give you the Census Bureau, which uses its population data to allocate ‘resources’ to the poor (black) in the inner cities. The subtlety in underscoring the message that poor (black) people are too inept to live their lives without government help by throwing money at them would make Machiavelli grin in appreciation. The poor think they’re in the catbird seat, all unaware that they’re just bunnies in the farmer’s lettuce patch.
Back to Eric’s topic of photo enforcement of traffic violations, I only recently learned of plans for installing streetlight surveillance systems. From NaturalNews.com: “Like some strange deja vu of the Nazi concentration camps, the manufacturer Illuminating Concepts is now installing hi-tech devices, paid for with tax dollars, which enable “big brother” to monitor, record, display, and announce just about anything he wants … The British are already using them as surveillance tools. The city of Middlesbrough uses the speakers to bark orders at people and reprimand them for “inappropriate behavior,” littering, or committing other minor offenses in public.” The devices are already installed as a guinea-pig experment in Farmington Hills, Michigan.
I find myself fretfully obsessing on this. I’m intending to go to Farmington Hills’ online newspaper, see if I can get a sense of the peoples’ reaction to this. I’m terrified — not to overdramatize — that there won’t be any. Please, please, please: Let them be outraged, let there be fiery letters to the editor, let me see some evidence that the citizens of Farmington Hills are REBELLING against this hateful thing!
Finally, Eric writes, “Conservatives have for years yarbled about the threat of communism and socialism, while the real threat ran right between their legs and set up shop behind them.”
I love this. This is almost as good as his excellent phrase, “oleaginous cretin”, to describe Mitt Romney. That delighted me so much that for one brief shining moment I elevated Eric to Best Writer on the Internet.
But then I caught a ‘Dancing With the Stars’ header and forgot all about it.
Thanks, Gail – you made my morning (it’s 515 a.m. Saturday)!
The electric power industry is a perfect example of fascism: government control of a privately owned corporation. The government, through the PUC, sets pricing and profit at all levels. Regulation is overbearing.
In return the electric companies get a competition free environment. Then they can manipulate the situation to their advantage by setting up speculation markets as has happened by splitting generation and distribution into separate companies.
The overbearing regulation makes sure nobody else can enter the market. To keep new players out of generation and distribution. To prevent new ideas from threatening the market too.
Fascism is to use government violence to make industries and other businesses static. Only slow advancement that helps the existing players. To sew up the market for the insiders forever.
TSA body scanners purchased with tax dollars definitely falls into the category of “enriching the small (politically connected) elite”. Unfortunately, the same principle has long held true for most military-industrial complex spending which has little to do with defending our borders and lot more to do with supporting global imperialist ambitions. The scale is so large that our entire economy has been slowly drained of vigor and grotesquely distorted. Real defense, like that practiced in Switzerland, would cost a tiny fraction of what we’re currently spending.
“Real defense”, as you so aptly put it, doesn’t provide the imperialists with a tool for world domination either. In 1784 the framers recognized this fact and enshrined the principle in the Second Amendment. Having a great deal of first hand experience with standing armies and select militias, they knew that a citizens’ militia was the only way to go. As soon as a few states decided they wanted a divorce, King Lincoln set about nationalizing the military so he could do a little invading and subjugating.
That was effectively the end of our experiment with a Swiss style militia. We’ve had a standing army ever since. Sure, the governors believed that the State Guards were still under their control. That was until one of them actually tried to use it for purposes the federales found incompatible with their agenda. At that point the State Guard became the National Guard subject to the will of the president. As evidenced by their being called up to occupy foreign lands, the National Guard has now become a select militia made up of mercenaries. We have become what our founders warned us against; we are Rome with machine guns and airplanes.
There is an episode of the old Star Trek series apropos of your observation. The Enterprise visits a planet that is basically mid 20th Century Earth, but controlled by Rome. The empire did not collapse; it endured and grew into a modern, technologically equipped superstate. Gladiator fights on TV (fuuuuhhhhhhtttttball) and machine-gun armed legionnaires (TSA, Homeland Security) patrolling the streets… degenerate, jowly, jewel-encrusted oligarchs running the show.
Here’s a clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoGanwBcLr8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBwJ9MyxxsQ
I grew up hearing all about how badly people were treated in
East Germany and the Soviet Union. We were America, land of the free.
After the fall of communism,things seemed to be better, for a while.
Once 9/11 happened, Homeland Security…. Mmm Sounds like Heimat Zeicherheidsdeinst… (sp?). Then Homeland Security hired the former directors of East Germanys secret police. Oh also one of the guys from the KGB. We also work closely with Isreals Mossad.
Ever since then we have been treated just like the people we used to pity.
My parents were young adults in occupied Holland. They told me all about those times. I have seen their Nazi issued internal passports…. “your papers please” …… Gee, they look a whole lot like what Homeland Gestapo wants us to carry. Only the computer chip and the bar code is not on the obsolete Nazi document.
Yeah – and now this:
The Food and Drug Administration said that Applied Digital Solutions of Delray Beach, Fla., could market the VeriChip, an implantable computer chip about the size of a grain of rice, for medical purposes. (And what else, do you imagine?)
With the pinch of a syringe, the microchip is inserted under the skin in a procedure that takes less than 20 minutes and leaves no stitches. Silently and invisibly, the dormant chip stores a code that releases patient-specific information when a scanner passes over it.
Think UPC code. The identifier, emblazoned on a food item, brings up its name and price on the cashier’s screen.
The microchips have already been implanted in 1 million pets. But the chip’s possible dual use for tracking people’s movements — as well as speeding delivery of their medical information to emergency rooms — has raised alarm.
Source: MSNBC
I saw that too. While I am not a religious person, I have heard about “the mark of the beast”. This comes mightly close.
The first use would be in released criminals on parole, then just parole, followed by after traffic tickets, then everyone. They would not need “our papers” then.
I may have to become an expat somewhat sooner than I had in mind.
JvG, you’d better plan on expatriating to Antarctica or deep into the Amazon (if not Mars) because I get the feeling that you won’t be able to live a “normal” life anywhere there’s running water and electricity without being “chipped” before it’s over with. I have a co-worker with family in Canada. His mother travels back and forth across the U.S. border regularly. He informed me today that she gets to use a special lane to cross the border.
She cruises through at highway speeds, has to keep her eyes forward on a specific target and there are a couple of flashes. She pulls up to a crossing gate, a ticket printer spits out a card with her name, social I.D. number and some other data on it. When she takes the ticket, the gate raises and she’s on her way. When she signed up for this, they scanned her irises. They are apparently able to take an accurate iris scan from her as she cruises down the highway, I.D. her in seconds and print the data out. No clearing customs or even talking to a border guard.
Imagine the technology we’re not being told about. Right now manufacturers are putting RFID in clothing and who knows what else. Humans have already been chipped voluntarily. Worse, they asked to have it done. Israel asked for a central government (a king actually, but see 1 Samuel, Ch.8 for all the bureaucratric crap that goes along with a king and you’ll see Amerika today). People often get what they ask for and realize too little too late that it wasn’t what they really wanted.
People often get what they ask for and realize too little too late that it wasn’t what they really wanted.
Very true.
Wisdom would be knowing exactly what to ask for in order to get what we really want.
It is scary what horrors can be done with technology. I do not need to see a horror movie. Real life has enough horrors for me.
Dear God that’s frightening. I didn’t know it (iris scanning) had advanced that fast.
As for expatriating–YES.
They may *want* a global control grid, but there aren’t many countries with the means to implement it as fully as Amerika.
OTOH there aren’t many countries with a tribal memory of freedom like ex-America, either.
Central/South America comes to mind, but unfortunately the current darling of the expat community–Chile–is also the darling of the OECD for being a GOOD cattle ranch. The grid will go in there, too. If you’re rich enough, you can join Doug Casey’s Cafayate in Argentina.
Perhaps the Rawlesians are right, and the American Redoubt is the new Galt’s Gulch.
JvG–totally agreed, I’m not religious at all, but the parallels to Revelations are making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
This description of NEXUS implementation isn’t entire accurate. NEXUS is a preclearnce programme used by both Canada and the US. I can’t speak for how the US deals with NEXUS entry as I was a NEXUS holder back when it was specifically Canadian. You can’t cruise through the border crossing at highway speeds. You have to slow to about 10-15km/h and pass through the specified lane. Like everyone else, they photograph your license plate and pull up your information from the plate. Iris scans are only used when passing through a NEXUS lane at an airport and you have to place your face against a machine that scans your eyes at close range. During the NEXUS application process you’re given the option of having your irises scanned. It’s not mandatory. If you opt out it simply means that you can’t utilise the programme when travelling into Canada by air. In all my travels through US customs at various airports I’ve seen the occasional NEXUS lane, but never have I seen US officials using the iris scanning machines available at Canadian airports.
Sure we can stop it dom: just stop participating. Stop paying taxes; stop paying abusive, criminal traffic citations; defend yourself when they come to collect as you would defend yourself against any attack. As you implied: cut up your driver’s license, your registration, take off your licence plate, cut up your insurance card. Declare your freedom and live the change you want. Lead by example.
And yes: I’ve done all those things. They haven’t “come” for me yet, but they will and I’ll defend myself. Maybe I’ll end up in jail or worse, but in any case I’ll know I lived a free man. I did what was right. I’ll have a clear conscience and maybe, if I’m lucky, it will inspire others.
I’ve never understood why people say things like: there’s nothing we can do. Well then who can? You waiting for Jesus? That’ll be a long wait. It’s “we the people” or no one pal.
It’s like when people say that a political candidate is “unelectable”. Well if you don’t vote for him b/c you think he’s unelectable then he probably won’t get elected huh? It’s a self-fullfilling prophecy.
I want to live where you live.
In fact, I want to live anywhere BUT where I live now, in Houston TX. This place is going to be worse than New Orleans after Katrina when TSHTF; there *will* be martial law, and it will be absolutely savage.
The Elites who’ve established a criminal mafia in place of the US Government know that this pressure cooker is ready to blow, and they are going to put the clamps on HARD to let the little people know who’s boss now.
Does anyone remember that great TV series “Dark Angel” with Jessica Alba? Remember the internal checkpoints, the black-clad police, the automated, armed drones, the total dystopian misery?
Coming soon to a large US city near you.
They’ve been very clever bringing this in; they boiled the frogs slowly.
Even the incredible acceleration over the last ten years, and especially the last three, has been accepted by the Sheeple! HOW? I didn’t think they’d be able to bring it on so completely and so quickly. It has left me stunned and disappointed and angry at my apathetic fellows.
It is going to be savage. I dread it – but I am trying to get ready for it, tot he extent one can be ready for such an event. I hope there are millions of others out there who feel as we do, who see what we see – and are likewise taking steps.
This can work if large numbers do it. The government’s goal is to never let it become large numbers.
So long as it is some guy every now and then they’ll either ignore it (to a point)* or just overwhelm him. The usual media BS of him being a kook living in ‘compound’ that looks like a typical single family home with a ‘arsenal’ of a handgun and a shotgun and a ‘stockpile’ of three boxes of ammo will be played.
*Don’t want to give people attention that otherwise would get none if there isn’t any profit to be made.
I hear what you’re saying, but I would not be able to make it one day without getting detained like a mofo. I operate in the DC Metro area and have cops everywhere. If I told the guys at work the reason I am running late, or not making it to work at all my ass would be canned! Now if a lot of people were doing it I might be okay.
People get what they deserve.
I agree!
The problem is, those of us who understand what’s going on and object to it are in the same hand basket the sleeping mass of sheeple are headed to hell in!
The problem is that not everyone does deserve it – but we’re all carried along by what “the majority” (or those who wield political power) decide. I don’t think I deserve to have my fourth amendment (and other) rights stripped merely because the herd cattle of this land feel “safer” or choose to passively accept it. Do you?
Just trying to make a point….
There is no way to stop it. We the People are too damn stupid to organize for anything worthwhile, other than traffic jams and discount sales at Walmart. Idea: People should take of their license plates all at the same time! And keep them off.
I love that idea… I just wish (like you) that the %$%@!! cattle out there would rouse themselves from fuuhhhhhhhhttttball worship and American Idol gazing to freaking do something about what’s going on….