The verbiage is interesting.
Yesterday, the New York Times reported that government agents – FBI agents – arrested (i.e., dragged away in handcuffs, to a cage) Volkswagen Group executive Oliver Schmidt, who headed the company’s regulatory compliance office, on charges of conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
How does one “conspire to defraud the U.S.”?
Or rather, if one does – so what?
Isn’t it like conspiring to defraud the tooth fairy?
It’s not a he or a she, an actual person, after all. A someone (or someones) who can be victimized. Like a corporation, the United States is a legal construct. It has no flesh and blood. You cannot hurt “the United States” any more than you can hurt a dictionary.
Or the tooth fairy.
“Conspiring to defraud the U.S.” is a religious affront against a deity – with the FBI in the role of bully-priests, a Jesuitical brotherhood.
The deity himself (herself?) never appears in court to present his (her?) grievances. These are always presented by another priest caste called prosecutors. Just like an inquisitor of old, they present the Holy Book – it is called the U.S. Code – and proceed to parse it in relation to the accused’s alleged sins.
It is written…
He hath eaten meat on the Sabbath!
Note that these proceedings hinge entirely on the question of transgressing holy writ (i.e., “the law”). It is not considered relevant to question the law itself (that is a question for a higher priest caste called judges, who interpret the holy writ. At the highest level, there is the Supreme Court – a kind of secular Council of Nicea – which communes directly with the deity, establishing his will (we are required to take their word for it) and decreeing new law.
Which is then parsed at lower levels, ad infinitum.
“Sinners” like Schmidt are hauled before the court on the basis of contravening holy writ. He stands accused not of having harmed any real person but of “cheating” the Great God of the Potomac, which is a crime on par with affronting Huitzilopochtli.
We snicker at the image of Azteks prostrating themselves before feathered priests, who took obsidian daggers and… . But gore aside, why is that ridiculous and barbaric while solemnly genuflecting before a high priest in a black robe who wields a gavel isn’t? Like the priests of Huitzilopochtli, the judge-priest speaks in a gibberish unintelligible to those outside the priesthood, who are expected to behave with reverence toward “the court” and its officers.
Schmidt may not have his chest opened up with an obsidian dagger, but he will be punished for affronting the gods.
His freedom will be forfeit, as will large sums of money – much of it going into the coffers of the high priests, on behalf of the deity. He/she – not being real – will never enjoy the bounty.
But the priests will.
It is said that god is dead, but that’s not true. He has been replaced, is all. Everything is the same; only the names have changed.
VW declined to comment on Schmidt’s being carted away by acolytes of the new god, but issued a statement: “Volkswagen continues to cooperate with the Department of Justice as we work to resolve remaining matters in the United States. It would not be appropriate to comment on any ongoing investigations or to discuss personnel matters,” it said.
Hail Mary, full of grace.
Get thee behind me, Satan.  Â
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Six more VW employees indicted by grand jury today.
If I owned a major business and this is how the US Government treated me, would I still live inside the USA? Would I sell them products guaranteed to be on the “hate list” a decade or more after I manufactured them? Why doesn’t VW just say “Goodbye, USA, we will sell our products where they are welcomed, not persecuted. You can keep the ones you have.”
The problem for those companies, the US is still the largest market. They are still willing to change their products for market in California by itself at this point. That won’t change until the US is no longer an important market. Someday that will happen.
We will see the signs of that point, when automakers (and others large companies) stop selling new cars in California once the regulations get to the point of no return.
Agree. The business climate would have to be onerous indeed for a firm to not want to sell there. More like Venezuela, I think. Because they can almost always pass the increased cost of doing business (regulatory fees) onto the customer base.
Of course eventually you end up the scenario where the government has to subsidize housing for needed workers like firemen and nurses. If only they had looked at the root cause, they could avoid both. But control and paternalism is important to them..
The Shitty [city] of Chicago is proposing doing just that. Giving city workers houses in bad neighborhoods.
This kind of stuff is just the beginning of what is to come.
Lots of people will be arrested for “pollution” or other “undesirable things” in the near future. Things, like driving a personal private car, that are common today or were so until recently. Don’t believe me? Here is an example of the beginnings of this in my region of the US (Northwest Indiana, just outside Chicago).
http://nwigazette.com/2017/01/08/war-on-cars-visclosky-consultant-says-hidden-metric-is-what-5b-transformation-plan-is-really-about/
If you don’t know how northwest Indiana is laid out today, its a region of about 800,000 (part of the Chicago metropolitan area) spread over three counties that is mostly dispersed is a low density suburban fashion. There are no “dense” developed areas at all (our “urban” areas, like Gary, Hammond and Michigan City, are hollowed out because no one willingly wants to live there anymore). In recent decades the area has served as a relief valve to the over all metro area as Chicago and Illinois have imploded. As you can see the toxic politics have slipped across the border.
There is a rail line running through the urban communities serving DT Chicago, used by about 11,000 daily commuters (few living in the urban communities, they drive from the station to their suburban homes). They want to add a second line to that railroad at a cost of half a billion (so that really means 3 billion). There are a few bus lines that virtually no one uses since they don’t go anywhere a productive taxpaying person would want to go. So the reality of transportation is that 99.99999% of people are in cars.
There is also a (now stalled) new interstate highway plan that would actually do some good. We are one of the busiest truck routes in the world, and need a relief road for that very badly. But will likely get the rail line that a few thousand will use a day (if we are lucky) instead of a interstate that tens of thousands will use every day.
The yahoo in the video is a “planner” working for our US house representative Pete Visclosky (one of most corrupt congressmen today). If you don’t want to watch the video, he wants to cut car vehicle mileage in the region IN HALF! If you just read above how the region is, that is impossible. If anything car vehicle mileage will continue to increase as the area expands further.
I used to sell real estate here, and the vast majority of buyers in the region chose to NOT live in a dense community. In fact that is why most people chose to live here rather then in the city of Chicago, people would say it directly to me. They want a yard and a single family house, and some would even not want to look at the single family house next to a duplex even. If it was still affordable, I imagine most new subdivisions would be acre lots minimum. The few “new urbanist” communities here have been a complete failure, as people who like dense communities tend to move to Chicago itself. No developer will propose another here (willingly) anytime soon.
But this planner wants us not driving because it makes people (think of the children) fat. Well I have lived here 20 years now, and I am not fat. Does that make a difference? Not at all.
He wants to make personal driving culturally shameful. If that doesn’t work he then wants to use the government to make driving more difficult. Driving is just one behavior the elite don’t want us doing anymore.
This is scary shit people.
I tell people about it and they think I am crazy.
It’s right there in the newspapers, the UN agendas, the rockefeller foundation, the government plans, just about everywhere one would find it. The new urbanists are out there proclaiming it. There are orgs and websites galore on it…. but I’m a crazy person for knowing it. I used to engage these anti-car people on one of the few websites they have where comments are allowed and there is traffic. I was eventually banned. You’ve seen my posts here, so you can imagine why.
The goal is to end the private passenger automobile for regular people. To wreck driving and thus force people into transit. They’ve got all sorts of reasons beyond fat kids. All to give their control freak vision of the world a moral high ground.
They’ll win too because the media will do its job of shaping people’s minds and keeping the real agenda hidden.
And note too, this article is posted not by one of our two papers either. It’s a blog that someone set up due to the local “news” media never covering anything. That blog is often faster and better when covering events here, without any “professional” reporters and the like.
And its not like they had to force this “planner” to admit anything. He was willing (and probably surprised) to be videotaped, he was very open about what he is doing.
Hi Rich,
As a guy who once wrote for (once worked for) big city papers, it’s striking to me how behind-the-curve their coverage is. That plus not just egregious bias but refusal to acknowledge their bias (pissing down our pants legs and telling us it’s raining) is why the major media is terminal.
In the case of one of the local papers they are in on the corruption themselves. It will likely keep a career politician out of prison (its a pay to play scheme) let alone even being investigated. My brother stumbled across it after this politician was an assh*le to him. Even the FBI isn’t interested, and the ripoff is in the millions (at least 2 million, probably way more) rather then the thousands (30k ) like the other local politician they are actually going after. Had that politician just gave him the info he was asking for (something very simple and easy), he wouldn’t have found what he was hiding. A real dumb ass. The only thing we managed to do was force him into early retirement.
Mr. Engineer our cars have this processor box that communicates with this control unit, as it sits now its output is 01010000 causing X, we would prefer 00001010 causing Y. Can you do this? Pausing to twist his pointy mustache Mr. Engineer replies “Yes!”
Hardly rises to the concept of conspiracy in my mind, people think treason is simply anything that appears to damage a nation’s reputation. but treason is specifically defined in the US constitution.(nations are also fully capable of damaging their own reputations, just have a look around presently.) The fall back position now seems to be a charge of conspiracy. Two people privately choosing pizza toppings might rise to warrant this charge. What bothers myself about this is the assumptions made about charges such as these. The implications of which go beyond and into other legal situations as well. What is the source of these obligations: to tell the truth, show up for jury duty, accept court orders under threat of contempt and registering for conscription. Some of these I don’t have an issue with their motivations, however using them as the basis of a crime or offense tilts towards the tyrannical. To tell the truth, requires an oath. I haven’t the slightest idea where the obligation for jury duty came from, funny enough I suppose that you could be convicted of this by a JURY. I can see not behaving as a maniac/lunatic in a courtroom, but again this seems like an obligation born from nothing. Conscription and registering for it is perhaps where they show their hand the best, after poking and prodding you, likely for hours, they simply fool most inductees into stepping forward and reciting an oath. Of course the courts seem to hold a position that registering and showing up are not an onerous imposition upon the populous and are curiously silent about the part where they finally get an oath out of you, then you are theirs. These oaths are agreements/contracts in themselves, as these get laminated upon other agreements I imagine many reach a point of conflict or cross purposes there is nothing of reason left. There are wise people who uphold the commandment “Thou shalt not swear!”, usually the Amish or Jehovahs and other varieties that quietly avoid much of this conflict by staying entirely out of it. Most common people find these sorts backwards and instilled with an excessive amount of religion, not realizing their fetish for nationalism is founded from similar desires.
Undue burdens? You want crazy people, ’cause this is exactly how you get crazy people.
“Everything is the same; only the names have changed.”
Thousands of years go by and nothing really changes. We’ve still got millions, maybe billions of people believing that if they obey and sacrifice to rulers the weather will be “better”. Never mind the weather has rarely been this good because people are convinced their “sins” cause storms, droughts, etc.
People still think the way to improve their lives is to plunder their neighbors through ritual. Didn’t Christ die on the cross to get people to understand the fallacy of things like that? But instead people built another religion around it that follows the same structures as always.
Perhaps I am just obsolete, like Romney Wordsworth.
They’re saying that when questioned by the EPA, he produced fabricated evidence that the cars were in compliance. Which technically is lying to a federal official (also a crime) and not conspiracy. Given past prosecutions, they’re probably holding that over his head. “Cooperate, or we throw the book at you.”
Hi Chip,
Yup.
Which is like lying to the Gestapo or the NKVD…
Correct me if I’m wrong; but in “cheating,” VW delivered to their customers a car that performed better and was more efficient than if they had not. No?
If that’s true, then the fault lies with the public who, in large numbers, believe that the purpose of a company is to provide health care and other goodies for its staff.
Never mind the “climate change” nonsense. This is because we’ve gotten to the point that the very purpose of a company — make money for its owners by creating products and services that customers want — is not only derided as base and evil but denied entirely.
That’s where we’ve got to start taking corrective action.
Until the goobermint stepped in you had willing and happy customers voluntarily buying a car that met their need from a manufacturer willing and happy to fulfill those competitive demands. I don’t get how a consumer could ever feel slighted in any real way if they could only see their irrational tendency to lick boots. In fact, I’d love nothing more than to be able to reward VW for their actions than to buy a TDI right now.
Hi Diana,
Amen!
I am using all my Dark Powers to help VW, even if not officially.
To the extent that Trump is willing to throttle back the EPA, we may see some relief down the road. I’m not counting on anything, but we could be surprised. BTW, did you hear that the ROK has hired Eric Holder specifically to fight the new administration? I honestly don’t know why I live here anymore.
People feel slighted because VW tricked them into sinning. They produced more NOx than they were told they would.
Jesus saves. Moses invests. Caesar taxes.
Land of the free and home of the brave: Do some still believe that mindless twaddle?
Many –far too many– still do. I often wonder, though, if they are really just paying the idea lip service because they know that there is nowhere else on earth for them to go that would offer them any freer alternative and they’re just trying to convince themselves to make the best of a hopeless situation. “Battered Citizen Syndrome.”