Cronyism has destroyed the engine of American capitalism. In decades past, entrepreneurs could easily hit the ground running with big ideas that would later create jobs and prosperity. Now, such initiatives require huge payouts to regulatory compliance firms just to figure out how to navigate the hundreds of thousands of regulations that were typically passed by politicians beholden to the interests of the biggest corporations in the industry in question. As such, these rules often prevent competition and require companies to use a specific business model in order to “remain legal.” New business models often by nature violate these arbitrary regulations, even in the absence of safety issues, making it impossible for an industry to move forward.

Nothing better demonstrates this than the plight of FlightCar, a brilliant new peer-to-peer car rental company that allows airport travelers to rent their cars out to other travelers, rather than leaving them in long term parking. This solves both parking and car rental problems, while also reducing the environmental impact of the car rental industry by reducing its thirst for newly-manufactured cars. However, it also features lower rates than corporate giants like Hertz and Avis, and, as a result, the San Francisco city government is stepping in to investigate, claiming that the company is engaging in “unfair competition.” Why is the City and County of San Francisco harassing an innovative new teen-run business when our nation is in a jobs crisis?

“Undercutting” Isn’t a Crime, It’s a Service to the Consumer

Transportation costs are difficult for some families to afford. Whether it’s mass transit, new and used car prices, taxi fares, or car rental rates, lower income families unquestionably benefit the most from drops in the price to get from point A to point B. The San Francisco city government lost sight of this when it chose to put the regulatory cross-hairs on FlightCar. The city passed excessive regulations on bigger car rental companies, and, as such, competitors like Hertz and Avis can’t afford to compete with FlightCar’s $21 rates.

However, FlightCar’s new business model also alleviates traffic congestion by allowing travelers to rent out their vehicles rather than leaving them in long term parking. Considering the fact that FlightCar is looking to expand into cities like Boston where parking can be a major issue of concern for residents, the benefits to the community extend far beyond just reduced car rental rates. San Francisco’s city government argues that FlightCar must meet the exact same regulations as huge car rental services with their own inventories of vehicles, despite performing a fundamentally different service.

Brand-New Business Models Are Rarely Compliant with Regulations

When regulations drift too far into the minutiae of businesses, a unique type of dissonance occurs. For example, what happens when companies in an industry are required to buy a certain type of industrial component that a new business legitimately doesn’t need to use at all, due to having a different business model?

In the case of FlightCar, the company doesn’t need to buy cars in order to rent them out, as the basic premise is more of a peer-to-peer brokerage than an actual car rental service. However, the city government sees it as a car rental service that must meet the exact same regulations as big corporations with fleets of their own vehicles.

According to Deputy City Attorney Jennifer Choi, FlightCar has until July 1st to resolve the matter (which probably would involve paying huge sums of money to the San Francisco International Airport), after which point the company will face charges that it has violated the Unfair Competition Law if a resolution is not met. However, it is the city government which is trying to snuff out competition by harassing FlightCar on its way into the market. For doing the good work of the hand of Adam Smith in the face of statist tyranny, FlightCar, as a company, is our Rebel of the Week.

Find out where you can see Silver Circle by checking our theater and special screening schedule on our event page.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden recently leaked proof that the National Security Agency has been conducting widespread spying operations on US citizens. Many Americans exploded in outrage after discovering that their personal communications might have been compromised. Some officials even claim that the agency can listen to cell phone calls, and Snowden confirmed in a Q&A with The Guardian that NSA analysts can read the contents of citizens’ emails without a warrant.

Given all the uproar over this issue, one would think that senators would have eagerly attended last Friday’s early afternoon classified hearing with NSA head Keith Alexander. However, more than half of them couldn’t be bothered to attend and caught early flights home to their districts for the weekend. While it’s certainly important for even elected officials to spend time with family, a later flight could have easily gotten everyone home in time for the weekend’s Father’s Day celebrations. Senators are paid quite well by the taxpayers who elect them. Why are so few of them willing to attend a Friday afternoon hearing under special circumstances when so much is at stake?

Business As Usual in Washington DC

Self-serving politicians care more about their own interests than those of their constituents. Take Friday’s NSA hearing for example. The last official vote took place on noon that day, and the hearing was scheduled shortly thereafter. More than half the senators viewed that vote as the last official obligation and began scurrying to make plans for an early trip home. Only 47 out of 100 senators bothered to stick around to hear classified info on a reviled program that both liberals and conservatives agree violates the Bill of Rights.

At the beginning of the hearing, Senator Feinstein was quoted by The Hill as saying, “It’s hard to get this story out. Even now we have this big briefing — we’ve got Alexander, we’ve got the FBI, we’ve got the Justice Department, we have the FISA Court there, we have Clapper there — and people are leaving.”

If National Security Is So Important, Why Skip a Classified Hearing?

Politicians tend to lean on the national security excuse whenever citizens raise questions about programs that violate civil liberties. When details on these programs are sought, officials will conveniently state that all the relevant information is classified. In fact, those who claim Edward Snowden should be considered a traitor for leaking info on NSA spying operations say that he should have instead reported the wrongdoing to Congress. However, based on last Friday’s poor effort, legislators don’t seem that interested in learning info that has been classified by the executive branch.

Are our elected officials doing proper due diligence to ensure that the executive branch isn’t abusing its power? When the nation explodes in outrage over revelations that a government agency has been stealing private data, senators should stick around for the hearing and do their job. A lot of their constituents had to work through the entire weekend at harder jobs for lower pay. Unfortunately, it is unknown which senators chose an early trip home over their oath to the Constitution.

Find out where you can see Silver Circle by checking our theater and special screening schedule on our event page.

Detroit, Michigan used to be a symbol of American industrial might. Once home to a substantial portion of the nation’s auto industry, Motor City has slipped into economic free fall after decades of government intervention into the economy. Public sector union bosses have long pushed for unsustainable labor contracts for city workers, many of whom are planning to retire on pensions paid for by the city. However, those pensioners are now facing the prospect of only receiving ten cents on every dollar of their promised pay, as the un-elected city manager, appointed by the state government, just announced that Detroit will be defaulting on $2.5 billion worth of debts in an effort to stave off what could be one of the largest city bankruptcies in US history.

Despite this bold movie, allegedly aimed at keeping police and firefighters employed while the city faces a mounting $17 billion in debt, there’s still a serious chance that Detroit will have to file for bankruptcy anyway. With its population fleeing to other states in search of jobs, one of America’s former industrial giants is left in shambles. Detroit’s situation proves that when politicians refuse to cut the budget, the budget will eventually cut itself.

When Government Refuses to Pay

When politicians promise away the public treasury, taxpayers are typically looted to cover their claims. However, when politicians fund promises through debt schemes and municipal bonds, the recipient sometimes gets the short end of the stick when budget shortfalls make payments impossible. Detroit city workers were promised pensions in exchange for their work, and the city is only offering them ten cents on the dollar by comparison. Countless services were performed for negotiated fees which will no longer be paid.

Whenever budget cuts are suggested, the party that introduces the idea typically faces excoriation over a perceived interest in “screwing over” whichever group traditionally receives the funding in question. However, if excessive-spending apologists were truly concerned about the plights of teachers, police officers, and other city workers, they would want the city to maintain a sustainable budget. After all, when it doesn’t, no one gets paid.

Budget Cuts Have Become Politically Impossible

Detroit is in many ways the most visible victim of a nationwide political problem — no one wants to cut government spending. Governments at all levels are floating unprecedented deficits, and, in some cases, legislatures continue to spend more and more. Officials in Detroit kept kicking the can down the road in hopes that the reckoning would come after their terms in office. Now, the time has come to pay the piper, and no more tricks will hide the truth. These debts won’t be paid back, and the city’s promises can’t be kept.

The nation at large could learn an important lesson from Detroit’s experience. The public treasury is not unlimited. Government is not Superman, the Tooth Fairy, or Harry Potter, and it can’t do and be everything for everyone. When city officials dole out contracts to their friends and promise exorbitant pay and benefits for every city employee, public funds eventually dry up. Let’s hope this situation leads to more political will for cuts at all levels of government, before more dominoes begin to fall.

Find out where you can see Silver Circle by checking our theater and special screening schedule on our event page.

Mistrust of government has reached new heights of late in the US, particularly following revelations that the National Security Agency has been engaging in wide-net, unconstitutional search and seizure practices that involve stealing citizens’ private data from cell phones and online communications. Though some whistleblowers have mentioned that these practices go on in the past, few Americans believed in them until the allegations were proven by Edward Snowden.

Back in 2008, actor Shia LaBeouf, best known for his role on the TV series Even Stevens, conducted a little leak of his own on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno while promoting the film Eagle Eye. He claimed that an FBI consultant working on the film admitted that the agency spies on innocent Americans using a variety of techniques, including recording the contents of phone calls. Check out a clip from the interview below.

Shia LaBeouf’s Allegations

During the brief segment, LaBeouf laid out some serious charges. First of all, he claimed that the FBI consultant told him that microphones from home security systems could be tapped by agents to monitor conversations within the home. Also, he expressed his belief that the agents could use OnStar technology to shut down vehicles from afar.

Said LaBeouf, “He told me that one in five phone calls that you make are recorded and logged, and I laughed at him and then he played back a phone conversation I’d had two years prior to joining the picture.” He went further, “It was one of those phone calls that was like, you know, ‘what are you wearing’ type of things.”

The FBI Consultant Denies Making These Statements

Wired tracked down Thomas Knowles, the FBI consultant listed on the IMDB page for Eagle Eye. He disputed the claims using carefully-chosen language, “Put it this way… you couldn’t take that many conversations. You don’t want that many conversations. You want numbers. So the whole thing about conversations in Shia’s comment just doesn’t make sense if somebody looks at it closely.”

It’s interesting that he chose to focus on the number of calls, rather than whether or not calls are monitored without a warrant, almost as if to dispute only the frequency with which these privacy violations take place. Most Americans would likely be just as disturbed if they discovered that only one in every 5,000 phone calls were monitored, for example.

It’s hard to tell who is telling the truth, because the FBI has a history of engaging in covert operations against American political activists. Regardless of who is right in this case, it exposes another significant point: why do whistleblowers get punished for admitting things that consultants are paid to tell movie producers? Why can the government expose all types of classified info to make a propaganda film like Zero Dark Thirty, yet it turns against anyone who exposes legitimate crimes by public officials?

FBI movie consultants often give away information that is essentially the same type leaked by Edward Snowden. Was Shia LaBeouf lying or mistaken? Is the FBI agent trying to cover up his tracks now that public sentiment has turned against these techniques? It’s hard to tell until we know more about the scope and nature of the government’s efforts to spy on us.

Find out where you can see Silver Circle by checking our theater and special screening schedule on our event page.

Intellectual property laws of various types are sometimes considered controversial, but the Supreme Court ruled unanimously today in a case regarding the patenting of naturally-occurring human genes. Essentially, the government had been issuing thousands of patents to companies for providing isolated forms of genes that occur naturally in healthy people. In oversimplified layman’s terms, these genes are used by doctors to compare potentially-cancerous cells with normal ones, so the patent granted companies intellectual property claims for identifying something produced by nature.

For sufferers with symptoms of various diseases such as breast cancer, this caused massive cost increases during diagnosis, and, in some cases, patients went for more invasive procedures without properly assessing their risk, due to financial concerns over the costs of these techniques. Citing a previous case in which courts found that products of nature can’t be patented, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled to invalidate these types of intellectual property claims. Now that the government will no longer be forcing people to pay third-party companies for the right to compare their cells against normal human ones, costs for these procedures will drop dramatically.

Healthy DNA Was Invented by Nature

Imagine how distorted the economy would be if people were allowed to patent naturally-existing objects. What if the first person who discovered an apple patented it, and therefore claimed “dibs” on proceeds from all apples from then forward? This was an issue of serious concern for the Supreme Court, who noted in the decision that Myriad Genetics, the company at the center of the case, did not invent anything new by identifying healthy DNA.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote, “Myriad did not create anything. To be sure, it found an important and useful gene, but separating that gene from its surrounding genetic material is not an act of invention.” While it’s true that the company did isolate the gene so that it could be easily compared, that is more akin to someone slicing an apple into pieces and attempting to patent sliced apples.

The Court Left an Open Window for Patenting Synthetic Genes

During the discussion of the case, justices theorized that synthetic genes could potentially be patented. This is another controversial issue, because some genetically-modified organisms reproduce naturally after being created, and, in the case of foods, for example, some farmers worry that wind-blown seeds may interact with their crops in a way that could lead to lawsuits from biotech companies. That is certainly a complex issue of its own that deserves close examination.

Ultimately, this decision will help foster a freer market in healthcare and will open genetic diagnoses up to individuals who in the past couldn’t have afforded the testing. The government will no longer be using force to intimidate healthcare providers into paying royalties to companies every time they compare patient DNA to healthy examples of isolates. This will help bring competitive pricing to 21st-century genetic medical solutions, and that’s great for American healthcare consumers.

Find out where you can see Silver Circle by checking our theater and special screening schedule on our event page.

Alas…these 100 copies will only be available at PorcFest X. Either you need to make some last minute changes to your upcoming week or wait patiently for the public release that’ll be coming later this summer!

Almost all of America’s true champions at one time stood up to a government of some sort, from Martin Luther King right down to George Washington. Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old systems administrator by trade, will likely be added to that list when history reflects on current events. By leaking information on widespread private data theft and spying at the National Security Agency, he may have stopped a dystopian nightmare from coming to pass in America, just in the nick of time.

As it happens, the NSA has been conducting spying operations on American citizens and people across the world. In fact, it has been confirmed that all calls made by Verizon customers have been logged, and a new system called PRISM has been deployed to track and record emails, video chat sessions, file transfers, geolocation data, social media communications, and more. Worse still, these broad, sweeping spy operations likely affected everyone and were not limited to individuals suspected of terrorism. Now, the government has begun its campaign to demonize Edward Snowden as a traitor, despite the fact that he was defending Americans’ privacy, and no official has announced a single indictment of any decision maker associated with the criminal private data theft and spying that took place at the NSA. Check out a video interview featuring Snowden’s side of the story below, and let’s talk about his selfless heroism after the jump.

What Would You Have Done?

Edward Snowden had a dream life. He had a six-figure salary, worked and lived in Hawaii’s tropical conditions, and enjoyed a budding relationship with a beautiful dancer. However, a contract job with the NSA forced him to make a choice between having an ideal quality of life and retaining the ability to look at himself in the mirror without feeling ashamed. As a systems administrator for the NSA, he was given access to extraordinary levels of private information on American citizens, most of which had been stolen from unwitting users of cell phones, email services, and social media websites.

After noticing the fact that data theft had taken place, he made arrangements to move to Hong Kong and reported the wrongdoing to the media. He was careful to hold back information that might affect national security or the privacy of individuals. Some government officials claim that it was treasonous for him to report NSA activities to the media — that he should have reported it internally to the government. The problem with this theory is that whistleblowers are often punished for coming forward, and their testimonies are typically ignored. The NSA has no incentive to police itself, and it was already being run by criminals who conducted private data theft, possibly on virtually every internet and cell phone user in the entire world.

Did Edward Snowden Just Prevent America from Becoming a Dystopian Nightmare?

Prior to Snowden’s revelations, most Americans were blissfully unaware of the degree to which post-9/11 intelligence techniques had slipped out of control. Now, unlikely bedfellows like Michael Moore, Glenn Beck, and Mark Levin are all calling for an end to these warrantless, widespread intelligence dragnets. Without Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing, this debate never would have taken place.

Is America on a path to a dystopian nightmare scenario along the lines of Brave New World or Nineteen Eighty-Four? If it is, then Edward Snowden just threw his body on the metaphorical railroad tracks in an attempt to put it to a stop. The public at large is now loudly demanding that these practices be put to an end, and this will be Snowden’s legacy.

In America, rebels are our icons. Edward Snowden is in grave danger. He could be arrested or killed for what he did for all of us. We hope for his safety and appreciate his courage. Without question, American hero Edward Snowden is our Rebel of the Week.

Find out where you can see Silver Circle by checking our theater and special screening schedule on our event page.

Two Lanterns Media is headed back to Lancaster, New Hampshire for the tenth annual Porcupine Freedom Festival, dubbed PorcFest X. Last year we debuted the first test-screening of our film, Silver Circle. This year the film is done, the DVDs are burned, we’re screening the finished product, and for the first time we’re accepting Bitcoin for ticket sales.

PorcFest is the annual summer festival of the Free State Project, which is a movement of liberty-minded individuals moving to New Hampshire to consolidate their efforts toward establishing a voluntary society.

After three years in production, the finished film is screening Wednesday, June 19th at 10:30pm in the Media Room at Roger’s Campground. Tickets are $10, or the equivalent in silver bullion, and for the first time we’ll be accepting Bitcoin for movie tickets.

In addition, the Silver Circle DVD, with all the extras and bonus features, will be available at PorcFest X for the first time ever! In fact, the 100 copies we’re bringing have a limited edition PorcFest DVD jacket signed by Director, Pasha Roberts, a bonus music video with Jon Schaffer of Iced Earth and some fun bloopers we created along the way. If you miss this short run there won’t be another opportunity to get the DVD until the official release later this summer, and that edition won’t be nearly as cool.

“I’m so excited to offer the first run of DVD’s to our friends at PorcFest. They have been the heart and soul of our core audience.” – Pasha

The DVD will be sold for $20 at the Silver Circle vendor space (#19) starting Tuesday, while supplies last, so this opportunity can’t be missed. Merchandise related to the film will also be for sale: t-shirts, comic books, bumper stickers, Rebel silver rounds and the new Rebel Trading Cards.

And don’t forget to visit our official website to learn more about the Silver Circle Movie:http://SilverCircleMovie.com – See more at: http://silverunderground.com/2013/06/wake-up-bit-coin-is-an-alien-invasion/#sthash.SXZNjgEs.dpuf

This week I received the most delicious piece a conspiracy ranting from an anonymous source. I just don’t think I can improve it in the slightest, even if I corrected the spelling. So I’m just going to republish it faithfully.

Silver Underground Crew,

Bit Coin is a new digital money popular to hackers and Anonymous, but now it’s getting attention from Bankers and WallStreet Types too. Hackers and computer programmer experts who have analyzed the Bit Coin code program have described it as “alien technology.” They are just tyring to express how sophisticated the program is, but do the research yourself and you’ll see that this is no joke.

Never mind that nobody knows who the anonymous hacker jesus Satoshi Nokamoto is who created Bit Coin. And never mind that the only popular faces of Satoshi Nokamoto look disturbingly like the ancheint faces on Mars.

Everyone said that the Singularity of the Mayan Calendar would signal the arrival of the rogue planet, Planet X, and the fulfillment of prophecy. And now everyone is laughing that nothing happened, but they’ll be the last laugh when they realize the TRUTH!

The invasion has ALREADY BEGUN, But we were fools the believe that flying saucers would fly over major cities like this was a movie. This doesn’t make sense because of the reality of space travel. Everything travels through space at different top velocities. Beings in the physical vibration travel much slower than beings in the energy vibration. That means that long before the physical arrival of the Reptilians, the signals of the Reptilians will reach us. That’s just physics. But if we recieve signals from them we’ll be ready for them and they know that. So, the signals themselves are crafted as an attack!

BIT COIN IS THE SIGNAL!
Bit Coin arrived on Earth from unknown origin, a immediatley proliferated on the Internet, and if  you know anything about the Illuminati you know that the Internet is part of Skynet. The Internet was invented to aclimate us to digital world, and Bit Coin was invented to substitue for gold in the digital world.

Remember, the Reptilians want gold. The Sumerians knew this. The rogue planet Nibiru, or Planet X has a elliptical orbit that goes within Earth’s orbit every 3,600 years. Nibiru is the home of the Reptilians (also known as the Anunnaki) who came to Earth and genetically altered Homo Sapiens to crave gold, to mine gold for them. They used genetic manipulation to make slaves out of us. But they’re coming back to collect, and if mankind still craves gold when they do there’s going to be a war on their hands.

The Bit Coin Signal was created to trigger latent genetic codes in our gold craving genetic program. Bit Coin satisfies the gold craving genetic code, and tricks humans into accepting a synthetic substitute. Like aspartame and sugar. So when they arrive they can take the gold without fighting us for it.

The Bit Coin System is based on consensus. They say it can’t be manipulated by a central planner because in order to make any changes to the Bit Coin System you have to get adoption of the program change by the majority or users. But that’s assuming a closed system here on Earth. What happens when a million Bit Coin users, with a millions Bit Coin nodes, and a million Bit Coin mines, all arrive at once from Nibiru? I”LL TELL YOU!!!

They control the Bit Coin System. The Reptilians are coming and they’re bringing Bit Coin Consensus with them! And when they get here they’re buying all the GOLD!

The 2012 Awakening of Earth has begun too! And it’s the rebels, nonconformists and those exhibiting personal sovereignty who become the Light Warriors. It’s no coincidence that Bit Coin appeals most to these subcultures. Slaves of the Reptilians already run our governments, and our corporations and banking systems. We’ve already been invaded by androids and clones that walk among us but don’t have souls, and Bit Coin Signal is designed to spread that control into the rebel currency sphere to take control of the planet.

But there’s something we can do. Begining with the Singularity the Earth began being bombarded by highly charged particles that will result in a revolution of consciousness and activate the special gifts of everyone on the Angelic Human path.

And don’t forget to visit our official website to learn more about the Silver Circle Movie:http://SilverCircleMovie.com

In the US, civil libertarians serve an important role by keeping a watchful eye on government policies that could come into conflict with our constitutional traditions. The Daily Caller is reporting on a wacky new program, initiated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in cooperation with the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs, that does exactly that, and activists across the state are deeply concerned.

Over the past weekend, off-duty Alabama police officers set up DNA and blood collection roadblocks in the counties of St Clair and Bibb. Though motorists were not required to give blood or DNA against their consent, they were offered money in exchange for these biological samples. A St Clair County Sheriff’s Department official indicated that the screenings are going to take place in 60 locations nationwide. Allegedly, the samples are only being taken as a part of a study on impaired driving, though it’s not clear how DNA would be useful for that at all. It seems more likely that this is yet another covert attempt by the federal government to fish for the private medical data of citizens in an effort to build a comprehensive list of Americans based on DNA.

The Study Lacks Scientific Controls

The first glaring issue with the government’s story is the fact that the checkpoint-based study couldn’t possibly produce any scientific outcomes. Consider St Clair Sheriff’s Department rep Lt Freddie Turrentine’s statement on how these checkpoints work, “They are trying to get 75,000 participants with anonymous donations of blood — and they don’t know whose blood or whose swab it is — and they are trying to say, ‘OK, after this hour at night, out of these 75,000 people 10 percent of them had alcohol in their blood or 12 percent of them had some kind of narcotic in their blood. That is all they’re doing, for impaired driving,’”

First of all, impaired drivers are unlikely to consent to a blood or DNA sample study at a police roadblock. This makes it very difficult to determine the percentage chance that someone driving through a particular checkpoint has consumed drugs or alcohol. Those who consent are disproportionately likely to be clean and sober.

Under What Authority?

Why are off-duty police officers allowed to conduct roadblocks on behalf of a private contractor working for the federal government? Also, why is the federal government conducting studies of this nature in the first place? Where does the Constitution authorize the government to pay individual citizens in exchange for biological specimens?

Are off-duty Alabama police officers allowed to commandeer the roadways for other market research studies? Could other federal departments begin using these checkpoints to do other mundane bureaucratic activities like informing the public of the availability of food stamps?

Checkpoints and roadblocks in general are unconstitutional. Citizens should not be stopped by police for any type of questioning unless they are suspected criminals. In light of the NSA scandal, citizens should fear giving biological samples to the government. In fact, the federal government should not be allowed to collect such material in the first place, as it has no real-world utility for an organization that claims to primarily provide national defense and civic infrastructure. The private medical details encoded in citizens’ DNA, on the other hand, could be tyrannically abused by a future authoritarian regime.

Find out where you can see Silver Circle by checking our theater and special screening schedule on our event page.