The Weekend Vigilante October 5, 2013 - ShutDown, ObamaCare and Anarchist Charity

Hello from beautiful, and dry, Acapulco Bay,

After a few weeks of rain and setting up an “Anarchist Rescue Zone” on the outskirts of Acapulco (more on that below) things are back to the usual here at Acapulco Bay… hot, sunny days and warm beautiful nights in one of the most beautiful bays in the world.

And the timing couldn’t be better to sit back with a margarita and laugh at the insanity happening in Washington, Den of Criminals.  You really just can’t make this stuff up!  It’s part of the reason I rarely read or watch fiction anymore… it can’t compare to real life in the USSA!

As we’ve covered this week, the US government “shut down”.  Of course, all the most heinous parts of it kept working… the IRS (collecting money but not giving refunds, though, of course), CIA, FBI (busting the free-market Silk Road), NSA, DEA, ATF (except for processing gun permits, of course) and countless others.

That can be seen in the Daily Treasury Statement for Oct. 2, just two days into the shutdown where the Treasury spent a total of $63.262 billion in the first two days of fiscal 2014. At the same time, it took in $25.681 billion in tax revenue.

The Treasury also sold $1.648 billion in new Treasury securities–which is government debt.

Not much seems to have been shut down at all, unfortunately.  The few actually noticable things they have shut down so far are national parks, the Air Force-Navy football game and they have made it so overseas troops can’t watch NFL or MLB playoff games!

It is so blatantly obvious that it isn’t a real “shutdown” at all and only meant to try to cut off the few things that the federal government does provide that people enjoy!

This, from the Washington Times:

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.

“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Yes, you read that right.  The federal governnment is even shutting down parks they don’t own and explicitly telling park rangers to guard it and to “make life as difficult for people” as they can!  I thought those park rangers were all “shut down”?  Not so fast… the national parks are shut down but now the park rangers and police are there to make sure you can’t get in!

This was beautifuly displayed by activists from the comedy/activist collective Panic Hour and others when they told the world via social media this week that they were going to take advantage of the shut down situation.

How? A gathering at Independence Mall—home of nine ‘Smokedown Prohibition’ protests this year, which the Panic Hour co-founded—to smoke pot, “and see what happens,” according to activist/journalist Kenneth Lipp’s Twitter feed.

It was all a ruse though and no one went to the park to smoke marijuana.  Except about 20 park police!

In the meantime, a woman who was taking incredibly dangerous drugs of the type that every mass-shooter has taken in the US in the last few decades, physchotropic pharmaceuticals, all approved by the FDA, by all accounts was having a mental episode at the capitol.  Her family later said that she thought “Obama was watching and listening to everything she was doing”… and she was right.  The NSA is watching and listening to everything anyone in the US does.

According to the media, she then “rammed a barrier” (although I see no marks on the front of her car whatsoever) and the first real evidence we have is of this woman with her baby in the car surrounded by dozens of militants waving guns and banging on her car.

Then, according to the video, she fled from this violent scene with the armed men firing guns down the busy street and then leading keystone cops in a hilarious loop-de-loop through a fountain circle where not one of the cops even thought to just sit at the exit to the roundabout. They all followed her around the loop, with even one cop car entering the loop after she had already exited.

Hundreds of police did finally catch up to the unarmed, 34-year-old dental hygienist who was fleeing from them with her baby. Dozens of bullets tore through her black two-door Infiniti as she traveled and her body was so badly torn apart by the gunfire that in the end the gunmen were not even sure who it was they had killed.

For the daylight execution of a woman who was unarmed, with her baby and had not harmed anyone, Congress gave a standing ovation.

Like I said, you can’t make this stuff up!

OBAMACARE

This whole shutdown thing is about Obamacare.  One part of the republicrat party wants it to be enacted as it is and the other wing of the party doesn’t… leading to this apparent standoff.

As per the usual communist-style, centrally planned modus operandi hardly any of the Obamcare government websites were even functioning on October 1st when they were supposed to be launched.  It’s amazing isn’t it when a semi-free-market entity like Facebook can handle billions of requests per hour while the government sites couldn’t handle an influx of a few million in a day.  But completely par for the course.

After a few days some people were finally able to get in… and what they saw shocked them (but not us).

From Breitbart:

“I am so disappointed,” wrote one woman. “These prices are outrageous and there are huge deductibles. No one can afford this!” The comment received 169 “likes.”

“There is NO WAY I can afford it,” said one commenter after using the Kaiser Subsidy Calculator. “Heck right now I couldn’t afford an extra 10$ [sic] a month…and oh apparently I make to [sic] much at 8.55/hour to get subsidies.”

Another person shared a link found on the federal government’s main Obamacare page listing premium estimates for small business employers:

The information is not very complete as I don’t see anything about deductible or other detailed info, but it does given an actual price as to the “Premium.” It is VERY SCARY!! For example, my insurance plan right now for my spouse and I costs $545 a month with 100% coverage after my $2500 deductible. We are both 32 years old. When I looked at this site for 80% coverage it says it will be $954.78 a month!!!! So compare my old Plan: 100% coverage for $545 a month To New Plan: 80% Coverage for $945 a month. This is only only an estimate but it is VERY Scary for me to see this kind of increase in rates and reduction in benefits!

A single mother of two said she is in school and working full-time while living “75% below the poverty level.” She said she was shocked to learn she did not qualify for a healthcare subsidy. “Are you F’ing kidding me????” she wrote on the government’s Obamacare Facebook page. “Where the HELL am I supposed to get $3,000 more a year to pay for this ‘bronze’ health insurance plan!?!??? And I DO NOT EVEN WANT INSURANCE to begin with!! This is frightening,” she wrote.

These people have even more coming to them.  If they don’t pay they have to pay anyway… in the form of “penalties”.  In sports you actually have to do something to get a penalty… but as with all government concoctions it works the other way.  If you don’t do something, you get penalized.

So now if you don’t want (or can’t) pay extra for your fascist, worse medical plan, you will be sent a bill in the mail.  It’s just another tax.  And, like all government acts, it is the opposite of what it says it is.  It is the Un-Affordable Health Care Act.

And if you can afford it or get subsidies to receive it, you will be the subject of home “visits” by the government.  It’s right there in the bill, Health and Human Services will be conducting “visits” especially to those who meet this criteria:

I personally meet at least a three of them – substance “abuse” (I’ve been known to try everything at least once), tobacco use and my children don’t even go to school (unschooled… my 8 year old speaks three languages and now wants to learn Chinese).  So if I was stupid enough to live in the US, I’d get a visit… and have no doubts that they’ll be absconding with children for a litany of reasons and if you don’t play nice, a visit from the SWAT team… or as they call them now, the local police.

And if you don’t pay their “penalties” for not wanting their “services” and don’t pay (likely because you can’t), they will take away your driving permission (license), put a lien on your home and take it straight out of your bank account if you have any cash.

You’ve got to hand it to them… they’ve instituted something worse than Nazi Germany all under the guise of “helping you”.

They don’t even try to hide the fact that this is screwing the public in the US.  The actual, real phone number to sign-up for Obamacare is 1-800-318-2596.  Normally for a national number like this they use a number like 1-800-500-0000… or 1-800-MED-ICAL.  For those of you who still have a normal phone, 1-800-318-2596 is 1-800-FUCKYO (with the number one taken out).  

What are the odds of that?

MEANWHILE ANARCHY CONTINUES TO HELP PEOPLE

While chaos ensues in the statist US, anarchy has continued down here in Acapulco.

As I’ve written in the last few Weekend Vigilantes, a group of anarchist friends and family down here has been helping out one particularly hard hit area in the region where an entire small town was wiped out by the recent floods.

I quickly found a way (again, thanks to the private market) to raise funds and posted a page for donations at GoFundMe.com (gofundme.com/AcapulcoRecoveryFund).  It asked for a “target” amount to raise and since I had been single-handedly keeping the community afloat for a few days on $400 I typed in “$5,000″ with no expectation of what would happen.

I then let my mostly libertarian and anarchist audience know about the issues and how there was zero government help for these people who were in dire straits.

Quite soon after, freedom-minded individuals from around the world surpassed our $5,000 target.  The below photos are the results of those very kind liberty loving people.

TRANSLATED: ANARCHIST RESCUE ZONE

PASSING OUT LARGE BAGS OF SUPPLIES

MORE…

MORE…

THERE WAS PLENTY TO GO AROUND… $5,000 GOES A LONG WAY HERE

YOUR DONATIONS BROUGHT IN TRUCK LOADS OF SUPPLIES

The final photo is of my wife’s brother Julio who led up all the operations on the ground and has been out there every day for the last two weeks… you can see the sense of pride in his face for all that he and many of us have done.

For those who saw the last few weeks of pictures, there wasn’t a smiling face in the bunch… and that is very unusual for people in this region who seem to be constantly laughing and smiling.  That all changed in the last few days as we are seeing some smiles come back on the faces of some people who had their lives washed away in a moment.

The “emergency” part of the rescue is now winding down, but there are still a lot of people who lost their houses and all their belongings.  If you’d like to help you can donate at gofundme.com/AcapulcoRecoveryFund.

UNTIL NEXT WEEK

As for me, I will almost certainly not be in Acapulco by this time next week.  Now that the Acapulco airport has dried out and there are no more crocodiles there I can make on my with my usual world-meandering style to spread freedom, liberty and help people escape the clutches of their government.

My exact travel plans aren’t set but there is a very good chance I’ll be in San Francisco, Hong Kong, Cambodia and Thailand all in the next week.  I’m making my way over to Sydney, Australia as a keynote speaker at the Gold Investment Symposium on October 16-17. 

And then possibly back via Chile, at Galt’s Gulch Chile and then on to Spokane, Washington as a keynote speaker at The Silver Summit.  After that is anyone’s guess.  That’s enough for a few weeks!

The Dollar Vigilante is a free-market financial newsletter focused on covering all aspects of the ongoing financial collapse. The newsletter has news, information and analysis on investments for safety and for profit during the collapse including investments in gold, silver, energy and agriculture commodities and publicly traded stocks. As well, the newsletter covers other aspects including expatriation, both financially and physically and news and info on health, safety and other ways to survive the coming collapse of the US Dollar safely and comfortably. You can sign up to receive our FREE monthly newsletter, our Basic Newsletter ($15/month) or our Full Newsletter ($25/month) with specific stock recommendations and updates at our Subscriptions page on our website at DollarVigilante.com.