Whereas the First Amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech.

Whereas the Internet has taken over from print and other traditional media in the distribution of speech, both on an individual, one-to-one basis and on a one-to-many basis.

Whereas Internet distribution encompasses what was traditionally considered "printed words", live and recorded speech, along with live and recorded video, and likely will encompass further means of communication not yet envisioned.

Whereas the First Amendment's guarantees, unless extended and secured by the dominant media distribution methods of the day is rendered meaningless, an outrage that neither the Founders or contemporary Americans should tolerate.

Therefore it is enacted:

Definitions

• Utility Internet Services (UIS) are those which are now and become in the future essential to participation in and publication of material on the Internet.  Said services include but are not limited to Domain Name Registration, Domain Name Resolution, Packet-Switched Routing, Dedicated Fixed Wired and Wireless Packet Service (irrespective of whether the wires involved are copper, glass, or other materials not yet invented), and CPU, Disk or Network Resource that are attached to or reachable by the Internet, whether provisioned with an operating system and application software or "bare" and whether provided on a dedicated, leased or "cloud" and shared basis.
  
  
• Application Internet Services (AIS) are those services built upon or run within UIS that are (1) branded, (2) present a consistent presence to a consumer that are distinct from other AIS and do not provide the services of a UIS.  Examples of an AIS include but are not limited to Facebook, Snap, Twitter, The NY Post's online web presence and others.
  
  
• Financial Internet Services (FIS) are those services that are built upon or run with UIS that are (1) branded and (2) primarily provide the functionality of transferring funds to or from one party to another, whether as part of an AIS or separately.  Examples of a FIS include PayPal, Square and Venmo.
  
  
• Viewpoint means any and all political, personal or commercial perspectives, expressed beliefs or statements, whether factual or opinion and irrespective of the means of expression whether verbal, via imagery or otherwise, that is lawful to express under the laws of The United States.  A viewpoint does not encompass depictions or acts that constitute per-se violations of United States law, including but not limited to child pornography or exploitation and the transmission of "spam" in violation of applicable law (e.g. the CAN-SPAM act.)

Prohibited Acts; Penalties and Exceptions

• Neither a UIS or FIS may enjoin, refuse to provide services to or refuse to transact, interoperate with or otherwise discriminate for or against any person or entity who desires to or does transact with same on the basis of Viewpoint.
  
  
• A UIS shall not tamper with, inspect, modify or filter any lawful transmission of content through, by or to a customer, nor shall any such entity intercept, monitor or sell data pertaining to same to third parties for any purpose whatsoever except as specifically directed by a court of competent jurisdiction and subject to a warrant requiring same.  By way of example filtering, diverting, sorting or otherwise tampering with domain name lookup results is a violation of this section as is the examination of stored or in-transit data for any commercial purpose including targeted advertising.
  
  
• An AIS may enjoin, refuse to provide services or refuse to transact on a Viewpoint basis, provided that said refusal does not violate any other federal non-discrimination statute in the United States, including but not limited to discrimination on the basis of race, color or creed and the rules upon which said conduct will be judged are both published and consistently applied.
  
  
• A FIS that violates this section shall have any linked federal money transmitting or banking charter suspended for six months upon the first violation, and permanently upon a second or subsequent violation.  Any aggrieved party may bring private civil suit for enforcement of this section and, upon prevailing, is entitled the the greater of $50,000 or treble the actual damages incurred and shall also recover all reasonable attorneys fees and costs.
  
  
• A UIS that violations this section shall be fined not less than $100,000 or more than $1 million for each person so injured or impacted for the first violation with the penalties doubling for each subsequent violation without limit.  Any aggrieved party may bring private civil suit for enforcement under this section and, upon prevailing is entitled to the greater of $50,000 or treble the actual damages incurred and shall also recover all reasonable attorneys fees and costs.
  
  
• Nothing in this section shall prohibit content and viewpoint neutral constraints on customers, such as billing for the data, CPU or space consumed, limiting the rate of transactions (e.g. posting) or imposing, on a non-discriminatory basis, fees for service.
  
  
• Nothing in this section shall prohibit the employees of a UIS, FIS or AIS from performing legitimate troubleshooting or investigation for the purpose of correcting "bugs" or other operational problems, or in the furtherance of investigating suspected fraudulent or illegal activity while using or facilitated through their services, provided that the interception and monitoring undertaken is performed only for that purpose and all copies of stored and intercepted data used therein are destroyed when the incident to which same pertains has been resolved.

That should pretty-much do it....

No, PayPal cannot refuse to allow people to send money to someone it considers a purveyor of "hate speech", as such is not illegal under the laws of the United States.

No, GoDaddy cannot refuse a domain registration provided the operator is not violating an actual law of the United States, nor can they terminate an existing registration except for non-payment of their fees or a proved violation of law.

No, the cable company cannot refuse you an Internet connection if you happen to have a picture of yourself in a white hood in your High School or College yearbook.

No, a hosting company cannot refuse to sell service to Glenn Beck on the same terms as it sells service to a LGBT organization.  It can, however, prohibit both from spamming people -- but cannot prohibit Glenn from spamming while allowing the LGBT people to do so.

If you get "deplatformed" or harmed by such a firm you can sue, and if you win not only will they get fined on an escalating basis if a financially-linked firm their federal banking connections will be severed on any second or repeated offense and the amount due to you is large enough to obtain both diversity jurisdiction in Federal Court and to make it hurt the entity who tries to do it.

Facebook or Youtube (for example) can ban people for whatever reason it wants. So can Twitter or, for that matter, The Market Ticker.  However, neither those firms nor any other collection of firms can get together to stop Gab, as a potential competitor, from establishing and maintaining service including taking money through and by it, and if they do all who are so-involved are exposed to ruinous fines and, in the case of a financially-related firm, the extinction of their business.

This does not address the monopolist concentration of power by, for example, Google and Youtube, nor Facebook and Google in the digital advertising realm.  It does, however, address firms and other parties attempting to destroy competing services such as Gab by targeting their ability to transact financially and connect physically to the Internet along with provisioning the services they need to operate on a non-discriminatory basis.  This act will instantly neuter the grievance industry attacks on those who might otherwise provide a legitimate competitive threat to those firms that are "AIS" types of providers yet go far down the road of censorship, and by doing so re-open the marketplace of ideas that so many are trying their damndest to slam shut.

Time to introduce and pass this folks...... right now.

Since nobody at CPAC wants to talk about it.... I will.

The bill is really quite simple:

• No person shall be entitled to any public funds or federally-funded government services unless they are a United States Citizen, Lawful Permanent Resident, or explicitly admitted under a formal refugee resettlement agreement.  No person admitted under such a formal refugee resettlement agreement may receive any federally-funded service or public funds beyond the term of five years, which may not be extended.  (In other words you either qualify for lawful permanent residence during that five years, including integrating and learning English, or get the hell out.)
  
  
• No person or organ of government may obligate any private party to provide any form of federally-sponsored benefit or mandate to any person not a Lawful Permanent Resident, Citizen or explicitly-admitted refugee during the above five-year period where said benefit, mandate or enterprise operates with any material connection to or with supplies procured in interstate commerce.
  
  
• No person who is not a citizen or lawful permanent resident may obtain any personal or financial benefit from federally-sponsored or funded benefits or mandates through a claim of familial or custodial relationship with a citizen or lawful permanent resident.
  
  
• Any person violating this statute shall be criminally liable under the crime of fraud for the full amount of such benefit, the full cost of any such mandate they access imposed upon the party who provides it and shall be ordered, upon conviction, to pay all such costs, expenses, court and attorney fees incurred by the party so impacted.  In addition any person violating this statute shall suffer a permanent inability to enter or remain within the United States with any future attempt to so enter being a separate and distinct criminal offense carrying a penalty of not less than one and not more than five years, with the costs of said incarceration billed to said illegal entrant.
  
  
• All persons desiring to claim asylum in the United States must do so in the first contiguous nation they reach after leaving the nation or nations that give rise to their claim at a US Consulate or Embassy in said nation and they must remain outside the United States while their claim is adjudicated.  Claims of asylum cannot be made nor processed by any person who is a citizen of a US-contiguous nation with which the United States has a formal trading and visitation relationship (that would be Canada and Mexico.)  Any act of illegal entry, past or present, to the United States permanently voids all privilege of asylum.
  
  
• All employers shall transmit with each 941 tax filing the E-Verify control number for each person so-employed.  All new hires must have E-Verify run prior to hiring and all currently employed persons must have same run within six months of the date of this legislation.  Failure to include a valid E-Verify control number on a 941 transmission, forgery of said number or willful omission of any employee from said form is declared a federal felony offense carrying a mandatory 5 year prison term and $100,000 fine for each person so-omitted with all persons having constructive or actual knowledge of said omission or fraud jointly and severably liable for same.

That stops the influx.

No "free" education, health care, housing, food stamps or anything else -- either directly or indirectly.  You cannot poop out a child on US soil and have their presence create an obligation to you -- not for your birth expenses, not for your housing expenses, nor for your food, utility or other expenses.  While a State could fund whatever it wants it cannot use any federal funds for such a program, including Medicaid, public schools (which obtain federal funding), food stamps or similar.

If you come here under a resettlement arrangement you have five years to show that (1) you intend to assimilate and (2) you are willing and able to both work and meet all other criteria for lawful permanent residence.  If not you're cut off -- period.  No more Little Mogadishu nonsense that has produced a crazy number of jihadi wannabes.

If you employ an illegal invader and get caught everyone with actual or constructive knowledge of it goes to prison.  It does not matter who you are -- whether you're a CEO, Controller, Payroll Clerk, farm owner or someone hiring a nanny.  Period.

Do the above as a simple bill and the entire illegal invader problem disappears overnight.

The lie factory in the media continues with regard to the economy and markets -- and it's you who take it up the chute.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recently criticized stock buybacks, including Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in a New York Times op-ed and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., in a tweet storm about his plans to release legislation on the subject. As the Tampa Bay Times notes, this is something “you might expect from Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, but not necessarily the Florida Republican.”

These objections to stock buybacks are, in a word, misguided. Critics’ complaints rest on the premise that they maximize shareholder earnings to the detriment of workers and at the expense of investments in the company. But this reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how stock buybacks work and what drives business leaders’ decisions about spending profits and deploying capital.

False.

My complaint with them is that they are frauds.

Faux Snooz continues:

When a company turns a profit, one basic way to address the balance is to buy back shares; it’s a common mechanism for companies to distribute earnings to shareholders. The alternatives are to increase investment or pay out more in dividends, the latter of which is functionally identical to buying back shares.

No it's not.  Leaving aside tax differences, which are significant, the financial and market impact of buybacks is not functionally equivalent to a dividend.

When a company pays out dividends the total number of shares does not change.  Therefore the EPS does not change either for a given level of earnings.

If you earn $1 billion dollars and have one billion shares then the EPS is $1.00.  If you pay out half of that billion dollars in dividends then the EPS next quarter, assuming you still make a billion dollars, remains $1.00.

Now let's assume you take that half-billion and buy back shares.  The denominator gets smaller.  This means that for the same billion dollars in earnings next quarter (the size of the company hasn't changed) the EPS goes up.

This is a major functional difference.  It sounds like a free lunch to many people -- EPS goes up and since the "P/E" ratio is a common way to value stocks the instant effect on P/E is for it to fall, and thus price per share will tend to rise to make P/E the same.

This sounds like a buyback is superior to shareholders, and thus ought to be not only permitted but every firm should do it instead of issuing dividends.

If only it was that easy.

If only Unicorns that crapped out Skittles existed.

If only.....

When you reduce the denominator it is true that EPS goes up for a given level of earnings.  But so do the losses per share when there are losses, and by an exactly equal amount.  In other words market violence, which is called "volatility", associated with said firm's results increases exactly at the same ratio.

There is no free lunch in this regard.

Second, however, and the reason that buybacks were generally illegal before the government changed the rules is that this fact is actively hidden by everyone involved -- on Wall Street, in the media, in earnings reports and the statements made by everyone involved.

Why would all these people intentionally mislead the public?

Simple: They use buybacks as a mechanism to rob you as a shareholder.

Let's take a hypothetical company that issues 1,000 shares of stock.  We'll make it nice and small.  The insiders -- that is, the founders, mostly, and other key people at the outset hold 250 of those shares; they sell the rest of them to the public.  (This, by the way, is another scam that is commonly run -- companies sell a minority of shares to the public by one means or another and thus prevent the public shareholders from ever voting out the officers and directors!  That's fraud because such a firm is not publicly-owned and ought to be flatly illegal in the so-called public markets -- if you wish to do this you ought to be limited to selling to accredited investors who understand what's going on and are willing to buy what amounts to a private placement with no voting rights -- because that's what these companies are!)

Ok, so we have our 1,000 share company with 250 of them held by inside executives -- probably half of that 250 is held by the founder who is frequently the CEO.  All good so far; the other 750 shares are enough that you, along with the other public shareholders, can vote out and eject the CEO and board.

Now the company runs and makes a profit.  So what the board does is vote to buyback 100 of the shares in the public market.  What just happened?

The public's interest of 75% of the company just got cut; the insiders held 25% but now they hold 28%!

It doesn't end there.  The 100 shares gets bonused out as "restricted stock units" to the officers and directors!  So the total number of shares doesn't decrease; now there are 350 shares in the hands of insiders and only 650 in the hands of the public.

Do this for two more years and the public no longer has any control over the board or executives since they are now a minority and cannot vote anyone out!

You just had control of the company stolen from you.

The same strategy is sometimes used by closely-held firms where you have outside minority shareholders.  The reason you have to be an "accredited" investor to buy such a position is that it is very easy for the majority holders, who are usually the founders and running the place day-to-day, to steal from you and absent some extremely strong controls you have written into the bylaws of the company if and when it happens there's damn near nothing you can do about it.  Unless you're very savvy and insist on such as part of your deal you are open to a rank ramjob that will diminish your investment by an arbitrary amount as soon as the insiders decide to screw you.

There is nothing in the law, for example, to prevent the majority holder of such a firm who is the CEO from voting to bonus out more shares to himself as part of his compensation.  This dilutes your ownership interest and as a minority shareholder you can't vote a stop to it.  The only hope you have is to sue and you will probably lose so long as the firm can show that it's making money and the executive(s) who got the bonus are substantially why it's making money.  In other words you're almost certain to take it up the pooper with exactly zero recourse, and if you do sue not only will you almost-certainly lose the company defends against your lawsuit with what is ultimately your money since it comes out of company coffers and not the CEOs personal checking account.

Stock buybacks where the executives and other insiders are getting share grants are the exact same scam played out in the public markets.  The claim that it "makes value go up" is a lie.  Until you sell your shares all you have is numbers on a screen; the lower the float in a given firm (that is, the fewer shares outstanding) the less-likely you can sell them without moving the price downward, and thus your so-called "gain" is likely to be illusory.  In addition you permanently give up your voting control piece by piece until you have effectively none; while you may still own the same number of shares the public ownership of the whole is reduced and at the point it reaches less than 50% you have no voting control whatsoever.

Buybacks, in short, are nothing more than a parlor trick.  They look real good so long as the economy is very strong and there are no recessions.  But as soon as the inevitable downturn comes you discover that not only are losses magnified exactly as are "earnings" but you have had your ability to throw management out on their ear either diminished or completely destroyed by an under-the-table trick at the same time.

There's simply no other way to express this....

These numbers are for only three months, so for the full year multiply by four.

Again, the total "social insurance and retirement" tax grab is $274 billion.  Social Security is a 12.3% tax (up to the cap) and Medicare is 2.9% (no cap.)  The split is thus roughly-speaking ~19% Medicare, the rest (81%) Social Security.

If you want to get down into the detailed numbers they don't "quite" add there because there is both spending and tax revenue that gets bucketed in each from the various line items.  But it's not off by much; the "line item" (without the bucketing) comes up as 74/26 -- not materially different.

81% of $274 billion is $222 billion.  Social Security spent $251 billion.  That's a ~29 billion shortfall.  Not good but there are a lot of Treasuries held against that requirement, and by 2026 the budget impact as a percentage starts to fall because the boomers start to die, statistically speaking.  In other words Social Security had a ~12% shortfall over the first three months, indistinguishable from my last look (12% .vs. 13%.)  This is easily fixable on a forward basis without much economic pain.

Medicare, on the other hand, spent $153 billion but took in just $52 billion.  That's a shortfall of 66%; that is, two thirds of it is unfunded.  You would have to more than triple the Medicare Tax Rate in order to bring it to parity.

That's an "improvement" over the nearly 75% deficit in the first month but we are in fact talking about bleeding out in two minutes rather than three; the outcome does not change.

Add to that "Health" (Medicaid, mostly) and it's much worse; now you take in $52 billion but pay out nearly $300 billion.

Note that the deficit thus far is $319 billion.  If you were to get rid of the deficit between Medicare and Medicaid .vs. tax receipts you would almost close the deficit to zero.  If you also increased the FICA tax rate by 13% (to just under 7% for "each half"), increased the income cap where it stops being collected or some combination that wounds up in the same place as well the deficit would be effectively zero.

$319 billion over three months equals roughly $1,300 billion, or close to $1.3 trillion in deficit for the entire fiscal year.  The only good news is that April is usually a strongly positive month (as a result of taxes being due) but either way the deficit is almost-certain to be in the neighborhood of $1.1 trillion this year.

You cannot fix this with either taxation or cost-shifting. It is mathematically impossible to do so.

For example you'd have to nearly double the individual income tax rate on everyone, including the middle class; to close the gap by increasing the corporate tax rate you would have to raise it by more than an insane and utterly impossible 600%.  Any claim that we can solve this by making people pay "their fair share" is a flat-out lie.

You cannot get there by "cutting spending" on other than these programs either; if you cut all "other spending" to zero along with transportation and education you'd only cover 30% of the deficit.  Cutting military spending to zero (which is obviously impossible) wouldn't get there either.

There is only one way to solve this problem and that is to collapse Medicare and Health spending by 80%.  You can only resolve the problem by collapsing the medical and health insurance monopolies, forcing everyone to publish a price for everything and charge everyone the same price, where said price must be handed out before service is provided, along with telling everyone involved that for any and all conditions in which a lifestyle change will remove the need for treatment government will pay zero unless the person in question makes that change.

The trend is not improving and it is not "The Next Generation" that will have to deal with this.

This has to stop right damn now or it will blow up before we get through the next Presidential term -- and no, you cannot tax your way out of it either.  The people in Washington DC -- Congress and the President -- must be held personally and politically responsible for their refusal to deal with the only way to put a stop to it, which is to destroy the medical monopolists using existing, 100+ year old law, and to do it right damn now.

And if they refuse we the people must enforce our demand for them to do so.  They will refuse, I remind you, unless forced by the people -- and there are peaceful and lawful means to do exactly that (e.g. a general strike.)

Nothing less than the literal existence of this nation as a Constitutional Republic is at stake.

There have been recent measles outbreaks in the United States -- which have led many to claim that this is likely related to "anti-vax" sentiment and "personal exception" laws for vaccination.

(CNN)So far this year, Washington state is averaging more than one new measles case a day as officials try to help stop the disease's spread.

Since January 1, Clark County Public Health has confirmed 47 cases of measles. In King County, home of Seattle, at least one confirmed case was reported.

A vast majority of those who came down with measles -- 41 -- were not vaccinated against the disease, Clark County officials said. One patient did receive a vaccination against MMR (measles, mumps and rubella), but the health agency declined to provide more details on that case "to protect the patient's privacy."

Measles is a nasty disease.  It is not simply "a rash, a fever, and then it's over" sort of thing.  In a small but significant percentage of the people who get it the infection spreads to the brain or causes a secondary pneumonia condition to arise; both can permanently injure or kill.

The MMR vaccine is allegedly about 97% effective in providing immunity if you get both doses (one at about 12 months, and the second between 4 and 6 years of age.)  The problem is that we admit into this country a huge number of individuals who have no vaccinations in this series and sometimes none at all, nor do we track them.  They're illegal invaders.

"Herd immunity" is often claimed as the reason to require everyone be vaccinated.  But that claim is bullshit; herd immunity is the phenomena that drops the transmission efficiency of a given disease below 1.0.  Measles is extraordinarily contagious, however -- a single person who has it and is contagious that comes in contact with 1,000 non-antibody carriers (either through previous exposure or vaccine) will likely infect an utterly enormous percentage of those exposed.  While it is true that in vaccinated populations transmission will eventually die out due to herd immunity those who have vaccine failure -- and a single-digit percentage of those vaccinated are not protected -- are still nearly-certain to contract the disease if they are exposed.

The bottom line issue here is that illegal immigration is a monstrous vector problem and one we can put a near-100% stop to by stopping all invasion of this nation by those who are not vaccinated.

Again, while a wall or other hard border barrier will not stop all persons from coming into the country illegally it will stop more than 90% of them immediately.  That's the record other nations with border walls have -- including Israel.

If you decide for whatever reason not to vaccinate your kid(s) then your kids are the ones primarily at risk.  But those who did take the vaccine and have it fail for reasons entirely beyond their control, simply because it doesn't always work, should not be exposed to the risk of serious disease and even death simply because some jackwad politicians and businesspeople want political favors and cheap under-the-table illegal labor.

Those who advocate for illegal immigration and protection of any who cross illegally and are already here ought to be charged as accessories before the fact with manslaughter should any US Citizen die as a result of such an infection and be hung at the national mall in fulfillment of their sentence.