Here’s my idea: a total separation of economy and the state, just as our American ancestors separated church and state. This would mean that all economic activity, like all religious activity, would be totally free of government control, regulation, and taxation. A free-enterprise system.

Surely, the gas can is protected. It’s just a can, for goodness sake. Yet he was right. This one doesn’t have a vent. Who would make a can without a vent unless it was done under duress? After all, everyone knows to vent anything that pours. Otherwise, it doesn’t pour right and is likely to spill.

For government to be us, elected representatives and their publicly stated policy preferences — not an unelected “permanent government” of civil servants and corporate lobbyists that start coopting those elected officials the same day they enter office – would have to be the primary influence on what government does. How’s that workin’ out for ya?

For government to be us, it would have to actually matter what the law said — all those “constraints” Obama says he and other elected officials operate under. But if constitutional protections like the Fourth Amendment meant a damned thing, warrantless wiretapping would never have been an issue in the first place. And by his very threat to veto the proposed CISPA cyber-security bill, Obama made it clear it doesn’t really matter what the law is. The FBI has long privately assured Internet Service Providers that they’re protected from prosecution if they cooperate with “the authorities” in providing confidential customer information.

Next time Obama or anyone else of his ilk says “government is us,” give them a one-fingered salute.

Last week, I asked whether you could think of any new ways to help people understand what £1.2 trillion means. There were lots of fantastic answers, but the prize goes to M. B. Evans who pointed out that, if they were seconds, our 1.2 trillion pounds of national debt would be equivalent to 38,052 years! Or, in other words, if we paid down the national debt at a rate of £1,000 a second, it would still take over 38 years before we had paid it off!

The pledge of allegiance flies in the face of liberty, freedom of conscience and the First Amendment. It is an odious government inspired ritual of which little kids are forced to recite mindlessly every school day long before they’ve acquired any working knowledge of American history or any reason why they should owe any allegiance to a government which looks upon them as virtual slaves.

Our understanding of what caused these terrible crimes in Boston will depend upon the quality – and the range – of the questions brought to the inquiry. No doubt another whitewash "investigation" will be undertaken by a "blue-ribbon" committee chosen by the political establishment. This committee will, like its predecessors, do its appointed job of calming the public herd and urging an extension of government authority to police an already overly-policed populace. But independent journalists, along with men and women who use the Internet and other technologies to communicate their searches for truth, may find out more than we have thus far learned from babbling politicians and make-believe journalists.

In past years, Danes might have shrugged off the case, finding Carina more pitiable than anything else. But even before her story was in the headlines 16 months ago, they were deeply engaged in a debate about whether their beloved welfare state, perhaps Europe’s most generous, had become too rich, undermining the country’s work ethic. Carina helped tip the scales.

As the 3,300 names of gun victims are read today, there will be no mention of the 3,105 drone victims that the government itself has created in Pakistan. I would suggest that many many Americans have no idea that the U.S. is even involved in Pakistan.

All around us, every minute of every day, signs abound of bad and intractable consequences of the dreams of myopic schemers. Those consequences are no longer long-term. They're here, now. Soaring, almost incomprehensible deficits and debt. Abandonment of personal responsibility by large swaths of the population who pursue destructive behaviors while expecting a handout. Demagogues corrupting elections with promises of other people's money. Program after program headed for fiscal insolvency. All of it was utterly predictable—and was indeed predicted by the wise who knew history, economics, human nature, and simple math.

At the most fundamental level, this is why authority is evil. It reduces you to the feelings of fear and powerlessness you experienced as a child. It makes you think you’re bad. It makes you think you must have done something wrong.

This isn’t a good way for anyone to feel. And a society in which we spend a major part of our lives under the control of institutions directed by authority figures with the power to make us feel that way, is a fundamentally sick society.

“…yet the legislative being only a fiduciary power to act for certain ends, there remains still in the people a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.

But no matter what we think, or how we live, or with what civility and decency we conduct ourselves, in the eye of Mordor-on-the-Potomac, we are all enemies. All despised. And above all — all subject to destruction at the whim of power.

We need to recognize exactly what that darkness is, massing on our horizon. We need to quit being indignant innocents protesting against it and nattering about constitutions and rights — as if anyone in power listened or cared. We need to understand exactly what the looming darkness portends for us — and what the forces behind it intend for us.

Now they tell me they spent all the money I gave them and there’s no more money…..but they have the money for new infrastructure projects and to hire more government employees…..

I know there are some honorable people in government. I have even met some. This article is not about them. It is about those politicians, hereinafter referred to as "the government", who aid and abet the proliferation of politically expedient lies in a thousand sneaky ways. They would appear to be the majority, or things would be better than they are.

I have often pondered the analogy between the salmon’s being caught in a trap and a human population’s being caught in the institutional arrangement we call big government. Just as the salmon trap’s lead intercepts the fish in the course of their normal life cycle and directs them into captivity, so various political devices and entreaties intercept people in the course of their normal life and direct them toward dependence on the state. Salmon instinctively strive to return to their spawning places. Human beings strive to get wealth and security, and if they can get something seemingly for nothing, they may deviate from a normal, self-supporting life and support political appeals for plundering their fellows via the state. Only when it is too late, if ever, do people realize that the plunder-masters who have enticed them into supporting the expansion of government’s size, scope, and power are, along with their chief cronies in the private sector, the only ones who truly gain. The masses of duped people find themselves caught in a trap, dependent on the state for everything from food, housing, and medical care to education of their children and security in their old age.

Is there any explanation for all the deception, the unhappiness, the fear of the future, the loss of confidence in our leaders, the distrust, the anger and frustration? Yes there is, and there’s a way to reverse these attitudes. The negative perceptions are logical and a consequence of bad policies bringing about our problems. Identification of the problems and recognizing the cause allow the proper changes to come easy.

But there is good evidence that the generation coming of age at the present time is supportive of moving in the direction of more liberty and self-reliance. The more this change in direction and the solutions become known, the quicker will be the return of optimism.

During my time in Congress the appetite for liberty has been quite weak; the understanding of its significance negligible. Yet the good news is that compared to 1976 when I first came to Congress, the desire for more freedom and less government in 2012 is much greater and growing, especially in grassroots America. Tens of thousands of teenagers and college-age students are, with great enthusiasm, welcoming the message of liberty.

Twenty and thirty years ago the general consensus was that pretty much nothing was going to help Africa. Sunk in Malthusian destitution as the various countries were, people really just couldn't see any manner in which the place could develop. Then there was this bright idea: hey, what if we told people and governments just to stop doing stupid things?

Rats is the work of ex-cops, lawyers, security experts, experienced activists, outlaws, former outlaws, trained interrogators, and more. In the hour or so it takes you to read their information, you'll gain a lifetime's worth of armor against snitches, informers, informants, agents provocateurs, narcs, finks, and similar vermin.

The Progressive's social contract can be summed up in six words: "Coercive government justifies more coercive government."

Most people I know do their best to get out of jury duty, but it’s something I actually look forward to, and hope to be selected for at some point. This is because sitting on a jury is the only “civic duty” I find to be at least halfway morally acceptable and worth my time. Unlike during elections, when on a jury, your vote actually counts for something and individual members can make a difference in the trial’s outcome, and even on the very laws in question.

That is because at heart, Magna Carta is about one thing -- restricting government. That goal may be unfashionable among the chattering classes these days, but the document articulating it has been resilient for a reason. The fact that putting bounds on government and constraining what it is allowed to do is essential to progress and prosperity was recognized as far back as 1215. For instance, when King John declared, "No scutage nor aid shall be imposed on our Kingdom unless by common council," he recognized that the taxes he had arbitrarily imposed were damaging to England. It is the source of the idea that taxation must be levied only by consent of the governed, and thereby laid the foundation for the need for separation of powers.

One’s life is the beginning of this sphere, one’s liberty follows as does one’s private property. What a government is needed for is to keep these safe, to secure the rights to life, liberty, property and whatever derives from these. That is the point of government, nothing else. It is a vital function since without it criminal conduct would very likely go unchecked. But like referees at a sports event, government isn’t meant to get involved in the game, only to make sure it goes on peacefully, with everyone’s sovereignty secured.

So we are pushed into drinking less, eating better, cycling everywhere and giving up smoking altogether. Wholesome activities are promoted. Healthy sports are encouraged, promiscuous sex and watching pornography are discouraged.

Why? What is the objective standard by which these things are deemed good and bad? There isn’t one. Or, rather, the standard is the policy-makers' own preferences. Any nudge will end up being a promotion of policy-makers' preferences onto other people. In a word: paternalism.

Similarly, “national security” refers not, as you might expect in English, to the security of the American people. It refers to the security of the American state and the coalition of class interests that controls it. Economic populism is indeed a threat to “national security” in this sense. American economic elites are the heart of one of the opposing sides in the age-old conflict between those who own the world, and those whose blood and sweat enriches those who own the world. When a functionary of the American state like Daremblum refers to a “threat to national security,” he means a threat to the ability of the hemisphere’s owning classes to extract wealth from the blood and sweat of the rest of us.

In the war in Iraq, our military forces expended approximately 70 million rounds per year. In March DHS ordered 750 million rounds of hollow point ammunition. It then turned around and ordered an additional 750 million rounds of miscellaneous bullets including some that are capable of penetrating walls. This is enough ammunition to empty five rounds into the body of every living American citizen. Is this something we and the Congress should be concerned about? What’s the plan that requires so many dead Americans, even during times of civil unrest? Has Congress and the Administration vetted the plan in public?

Britons do not like nanny. Despite decades of her telling us what foods we should eat, how much we should drink, and what lifestyles are safe, a majority of us wish she'd stop. This is the finding of a new poll commissioned by the ASI. Its full findings are well worth a look, but here's a snapshot.

8. Each perverts justice

One of the Mafia's main costs of doing business is to bribe police, politicians and judges to ignore their criminal activities. In a manner of speaking, they "own the courts." Government, however, actually and literally owns and monopolizes the justice system; it makes its own rules for its own conduct and gives itself a free pass to rob, tyrannize and enslave at will and prohibits any competing court system that might call it to account.

The Zero Aggression Project is designed to answer those questions.

We want to . . .

Make heads spin. That’s the first sign of an intellectual revolution. Teach people how true government should work, so that their heads stop spinning and arrive at a new paradigm.

Don’t you just love it? Have you ever seen such rank hypocrisy? They claim to love the poor and then they punish a poor woman who is just doing her best to sustain her life and the life of her child with labor. They send her to jail and then use the incarceration to take her child away from her.

By contrast, Pinhead of the Month was Ed Davey at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, which increased its number of staff by 4 per cent from 2,816 to 2,929. The best defence they could muster in the press was that they had a target to take on more officials, as they ramp up energy policies that increase your utility bills.

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was an innovative entrepreneur somewhere whose tax payments funded your position. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody’s money was taken at the threat of imprisonment and handed over to you and your cronies to pay for roads and bridges, regardless of whether they agreed to if, how, where, by whom, and at what price.

Welcome to the true spirit of the Olympics. Its rings stand for corporatism, cronyism, extravagance, bullying and arrogance. The sensible course is to be as far from it as I can be until it's all over.

As the wildfires raged, apologists for government thought they had a trump card against libertarians and triumphantly concluded this was the latest proof that the government and its firefighters remain that thin line between order and chaos. Unfortunately for them, however, history has now made it abundantly clear that the true driving force behind the increasingly large mega-fires that plague public lands are the product of decades of mismanagement by the forest service. That is, we can thank the government for putting out the fires it is responsible for.

Liberty is the freedom to do anything you want as long as it doesn’t violate the identical rights of anyone else. If your happiness depends on you punching people who are minding their own business, or if you believe you have to steal to make yourself happy, you are out of luck.

Unless you get a job that comes with the illusion of authority to do those things. That still doesn’t make it right.

The comparison between the peaceful Voluntary Sector and the violent Statist Sector is stark. The supposedly evil corporations . . .

• Provide you with products and services that improve your life
• Give you employment
• Pay dividends that help fund your retirement

They take your money with threats of violence and use it to fund things that you often don't want, or that you actively hate. But you have no choice. You must submit, or the politicians will hurt you.

But in proposing things like taxes on Coca-Cola and price floors for alcohol, the puritans have given the game away. They've accepted free market logic that contravenes all the other things they tend to support. If taxing Coca-Cola makes people drink Coca-Cola less, then taxing work via the income tax must make people work less. If a price floor for alcohol makes people drink less booze (binge drinkers' low price elasticities of demand notwithstanding), then the price floor for labour we call the National Minimum Wage must make firms hire fewer people.

I think government is more like a dog. A big, poorly trained dog that forever grows larger and meaner.

The bigger it gets, the more of your stuff it breaks and the more it consumes. It slobbers all over everything, has terrible gas, and is possessive of your property.

What if the Declaration of Independence says that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed? What if the government claims to derive powers from some other source that it will not — because it cannot — name? What if we never gave the government the power to spy on us, to print worthless cash, to kill in our names, to force us to buy health insurance or to waste our money by telling us that exercise is good and sugar is bad?

So, when the Hitlers and Stalins and Maos of the world slaughter millions of their own citizens in furtherance of political or social objectives they're not committing "terrorism" because they're doing it "lawfully."

But if peaceful citizens resort to self defense against these thugs that's "terrorism."

Most of us are far too busy working, building things, raising families and taking care of our communities to worry all that much about what you're up to. Just understand that if you try sneaking up on someone's property to plant a GPS bug on their car, you will probably have the dogs at your throat or a load of buckshot in your butts. We don't suffer fools gladly.

4. Because of the profit and loss system, businesses are accountable to some extent for keeping their promises. (There are weaknesses in accountability mechanisms, to be sure. Most notably, an executive with a short-term focus can gain personally while making decisions with adverse long-term consequences.) In government, the main accountability mechanism is an election. But most government workers are not subject to elections, and elections are very crude expressions of voter preferences. Overall, is the accountability mechanism in government nearly as effective as that in business?

Gallup just released a poll asking Americans who they fear most: big government, big business or big labor. Government terrifies more Americans than the other two combined, by a two-to-one margin.

After the police state and national security cult of the Bush years, it’s nice to have our national security statism dished out by such a bunch of sensitive souls for a change. The Reaganites and neocons sent out goons in uniform to bash people’s heads in, both domestically and abroad because, you know, they were all mean and stuff. The Democrats do it because they care.

Government must stop transferring money from productive sectors to green theory capitalists – and fostering excessive legislation, taxation, regulation and litigation. It must promulgate sensible laws and regulations, to protect citizens, consumers and our environment from the unscrupulous, while allowing businesses and markets to operate more freely and profitably.

“Going green” must turn the corner from a marketing philosophy that does not carry its own weight, to a process that involves real data and considers the impact on poor and minority families.

That is how we can transform a monstrous “green” government into a facilitator of sustainable jobs, growth and revenue.

All I know is this: If it is legal for our government to kill people labeled “terrorist” without due process, then it is perfectly legal for our enemies to label Americans as terrorists and kill us legally anywhere in the world.

It really is quite flabbergasting that the anti-carbon dioxide religion has taken hold to such an extent that a minor change in the law of England, Wales and (I believe) Northern Ireland should be thought to have a potential impact on emissions of CO2 that can be of relevance to the well-being of our planet and/or human life on our planet.

I was reading "Nine American Cities Going Broke," and noticed similarities between the cities in the most financial trouble. Many of them simply forgot their core functions and decided to go into projects like redevelopment and stadium building. These are "grand" projects that appeal to the egos of petty politicians, but for the most part, they do little good for, and much harm to, the taxpayers. Next, you have simple corruption and finally you have politicians buying the support of city workers by offering overly-generous pension schemes.

But there's no need for any escape to anywhere. We are already home. It is the state that is the uninvited guest, the interloper who trashed the place, the invader who has distorted reality and violates our rights. We need only to assert our authority over ourselves and claim what is rightfully ours. They will be left to scramble, but their propaganda will have no effect, because we know the difference between the truth and their lies.

And what will we be left with? The freedom to serve each other, to cooperate with each other, to innovate and own. The result will be what Murray Rothbard called "anarchocapitalism," or what Hans Hoppe called the "natural society" without the state.

Here was a grand opportunity for conservatives. They could have proposed abolishing all sorts of departments, agencies, and bureaucracies. My preference would be to start with the crown jewels — Social Security and Medicare, but if that would have scared them they could have begun with the Departments of Education, Commerce, Energy, and Labor. Didn’t even Ronald Reagan support abolishing some of them? They could have ended the drug war. They could have terminated foreign aid. They could have brought the troops home from everywhere and discharged them. They could have simply said, “The money isn’t there. We can’t afford the entire welfare-warfare state anymore.”

They could have made some serious inroads into big government. But they didn’t, because deep in their hearts, conservatives love big government. They just love to preach libertarian mantras at the same time.

So what are the libertarian solutions? Instead of cutting an already inadequate system, the focus should be on decentralising welfare to a lower, more personal level, perhaps with the aim of eventual privatisation into the hands of mutuals and other non-state institutions. Burgeoning costs due to fraud, and inadequate, uncaring coverage are the features of state-run and often even business-led insurance models. We must find ways to eliminate those problems by returning welfare into the hands of people themselves, without all the pain.

With their hands in my pants, my physical health, my home, and even my toilet, I have never felt so uncomfortably close to my government.

In effect WCC are attempting to evict all protestors from Parliament Square. If you read the wording of the injunction it is draconian. It is so widely worded that it can be applied to any person on the central pavement in Parliament Square. Even if you are a member of the public carrying a handbag or a mobile phone you will be covered by this injunction and if you refuse to obey it you can be arrested and fined or sent to prison. Don't forget that this is coming from the same Council that is currently attempting to pass a bye law making it a criminal offence to give food or water to anyone on the streets.

In this case the Secret Service said he was fine and released him. But his innocence is not relevant to issue that his rights were violated. What if he had said something that sane people, that is people who are not part of the political hysteria, would deem to be threatening? Anything he said could result in criminal charges being filed against him.

It is the possibility that criminal charges may result which is the reason that government thugs have no right to interrogate children without parents, or legal counsel, there to protect the rights of the child.

The regime faces a double crisis. The first is fiscal: Unless it does something, it won’t have the money to maintain the gravy train. The other is a crisis in legitimacy. People are catching on that the borrowing power hides the cost of government, imposing burdens on future generations. If politicians don’t appear to fix things their careers are in jeopardy.

In conclusion, if the Founding Fathers had wanted to block the drift toward big government, they should have written a preamble that extolled the virtue of the private sector, perhaps like this:

We the people of the United States of America, recognizing—

That the general welfare is promoted by individuals, families, neighbors, and societies

freely striving to improve the condition of mankind,

And further recognizing—

That government action often counteracts their independent, creative activities;

Do hereby establish a government which shall establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, and provide for the common defence.

And the small handful of people who call for total separation between supermarket and state would be criticized by nearly everyone as being, at best, delusional and – it would be thought more realistically – more likely misanthropic devils who are indifferent to the malnutrition and starvation that would sweep the land if only private market forces governed the provision and patronizing of supermarket. (Some indignant observers would even wonder aloud at the insensitivity of referring to grocery shoppers as “customers”; surely the relationship between suppliers of life-giving foods and the people who need these foods is not so crass as to be properly discussed as being ‘commercial.’)

As I imagine everyone reading this will agree, the American empire our politicians have foisted on the world must be ended, and the sooner the better. The loss of life, the squandering of wealth and the inroads to our liberty engendered by their foolish quest to bring the world to heel all argue for it. Yet, nothing should be started without first thinking it through, and it must be realized that ending our empire brings with it a unique set of dangers. Specifically, we need to be wary about bringing onto our shores a large, standing army.

The U.S. government must go. We the People have a genuine right to say this and make it happen. In my opinion, the U.S. government is so profusely and deeply illegitimate in so many institutionalized ways and the people are so tied up with it that meaningful reform of a gradual nature is impossible. I think we need to make serious and deep change happen. It is my very firm belief that it must be done non-violently if it is to produce a long-lasting free country. We should not spurn or discourage important actions that genuinely reduce the size and scope of the national government, both now and in the future, and do not plant the seeds of its future expansion. Actions that significantly reduce government violence against its citizens are worthy. But if the goal of serious, broad, and deep change is kept in mind, then success at one or more of such actions should stimulate even further efforts, not cause them to abate.

Another source of illegitimacy of the U.S. government is its vast expansion of power. This has simultaneously violated the Constitution and extinguished the rights of Americans. It has got to the point where a President who is sworn to uphold the Constitution refers to it as a scrap of paper.

If we use Obama's criterion that violence against one's people is a sign of government illegitimacy, then how many world governments are themselves legitimate? They all use violence and the threat of violence to maintain themselves. The fact that the threats of violence are effective and prevent outright blood on the streets doesn't remove the presence of violence as the government's means of controlling its citizens. Once we look under the hood at the motor of government, we find violence. At what point does such violence mean that the government's leaders or the government itself - its very form - have lost legitimacy?

To take one example which has been around for a while, there is no written law against carrying large amounts of cash on one's person, nor any specific statutory definition of the threshold at which the amount of money one carries becomes a criminal offense. Nevertheless, anyone stopped by a police officer and found to be carrying thousands of dollars in cash will be presumed a drug trafficker of some sort, and their money seized according to the usual procedure of "civil forfeiture."

More troubling is the illustration given by the recent ECJ case of the consequences of pushing ideology into areas that are none of its concern. I have no problem with the concept of men and women being treated equally by the law, but I find it ludicrous that the law requires anyone to pretend that differences that actually exist as a matter of fact between men and women do not exist. There might be a simple way to avoid this absurdity. It arises only because the EU has decreed that the position of men and women is comparable so far as insurance premiums are concerned. As a matter of fact that is simply not the case, at least it is not the case when it comes to motoring premiums. The EU could, were it so minded, allow insurers to charge men and women different premiums where there is clear evidence that men present a higher risk than women or vice versa. That, indeed, was the position until it was struck down by the ECJ because it was inconsistent with another provision of EU law.

By the same token, statists will make any superficially plausible-sounding argument to justify our need for the state, without regard for how it contradicts their other arguments.

Market failures are taken as evidence that we need a regulatory state, but regulatory failures are used as a pretext for even more government. We need government to restrain human nature, because human beings are ignorant and corrupt, and tend to feather their own nests. But government, apparently, is constructed from a less crooked timber — perhaps the angels that Madison wrote about in The Federalist.

The guardian class runs over pedestrians during high speed chases, shoots people to death while bashing in the door at a wrong address to "serve a warrant" at 3 am, beats individuals with nightsticks because they didn't instantly drop to their knees on command and kiss the guardian's feet.

I would suggest that something smells in Narrogin, but I do not think it is the Thompsons’ feedlot. Something smells when people come here, invest their money and seek unbiased advice and then find that government departments are running roughshod over people who have not broken any law and have complied with all the environmental requirements made of them and find that individuals who are advising these people on how to deal with their problems are also running organisations which specialise in advising people on how to mount such spurious complaints. Something does smell in Narrogin. Having now raised it in this place, I feel it might be too late for the Thompsons. But there is a lesson for all Australians: we cannot allow government bureaucrats and departments to ride roughshod over common sense and common decency. We cannot allow government to become unruly and unwieldy in its restraint of decent businesses. To do so would send a very poor message, not only to people intent on building up their own investments in Australia but to people who are interested in investing here from overseas, like the Thompsons.

I shouted "Hey Charles, there's a mistake. We're down to vote YES on EEAS!". To which he replied "That's right. Instructions from London". Shocked, I immediately voted NO anyway, as did Nirj Deva and Dan Hannan. And to their credit, several other colleagues, although caught by surprise, at least had the presence of mind to abstain.

We should feel proud of what we've achieved, but NO2ID's work is far from done.

It is more important than ever to establish a widely accepted understanding of privacy for the 21st century - and get it properly protected in law. That is the second phase of the fight against the database state.

The median employee in the public sector gets nearly 30 per cent more than his or her counterpart in the private sector, once we take account of the employer's pension contribution. The ONS report massively undermines union rhetoric which promises mass opposition – and even “civil disobedience” – against spending reductions and a public sector pay and pensions squeeze.

Late last Friday (August 13th), we heard that DCLG are to scrap the Audit Commission. Having already scrapped Comprehensive Area Assessments – where the Audit Commission would grade councils based on top-down targets – getting rid of the entire quango came as something of a shock to many people.

"After years of fighting unjust and counterproductive postures, Liberty welcomes this new opportunity for reflection and correction in security policy. UnBritish scandals like punishment without charge and blanket erosion of privacy must now be replaced with effective targeted surveillance and prosecution within the law."

To put it another way, the Government scored 26 out of a possible 55 (47 per cent) for achieving our three-month targets. But, of course, there has been some decent progress on our longer-term objectives: we found the Government scored 54 out of 120 (45 per cent) for progress on first-year targets, and 64 out of 150 (43 per cent) on progress on five-year targets. We pleased to say that this assessment was picked up by the national media, with the Independent and Sky News Radio featuring the analysis.

Both conservatives and libertarians in the U.S. should watch closely the progress of this Great Repeal Bill. Many of the same conditions and complaints that led the Labour Party to plunge precipitously in support are present in pre-election America (November) and are not likely to disappear before the Presidential elections in 2012. For conservatives who wish to gain power, the coalition may serve as a role model; the Party that rolls back the size of government both as a sop to public demand and as a fiscal necessity may be the one to maintain power. For libertarians who wish to regain freedom, the process of direct democracy – as flawed as it may be – allows for the voice of reason to speak loudly.

Unfortunately the Coalition's actions are not consistent. Last week, more people's medical details were added to the Summary Care Record system than in any single week to date - 132,000. Most won't even have known they had a chance to make a choice. Saying you'll "give patients control of their records" while allowing well over half a million people's details to be sucked into a system that gives it irrevocably to NHS management is not just breaking a promise. It shows the bureaucracy is still in control.

We at IMANI are very pleased that through our pre-emptive analyses and public outcry on several media platforms, later to be supported by like-minded think tanks such as DI, we provided ‘fodder’ for our Parliamentarians to critically examine the draft loan agreement on the housing project.

There is a great danger that the Coalition's first piece of legislation will fail to achieve its stated objectives, were the Act supposed to dismantle the National Identity Scheme to end up preserving some of the more malign features of the Scheme.

Were the Identity Documents Bill to pass in its current form, rather than the complete victory on 'ID cards' that everyone seems to be assuming, we fear we shall be left with serious unfinished business.

We’ve made a start by submitting four ideas based on our research into how to cut spending:

• Increase employee contributions to all unfunded public sector pension schemes by a third
• End government funding for ‘green consultancy’ firms
• One-year freeze of the resource and capital budgets of the Department for International Development
• Reduce gross annual pay by 15 per cent for the richest 10 per cent in the public sector

As the murderous destructiveness of the Death State increases in every direction, nauseating charades of this kind will no doubt also occur with increasing frequency. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in analyzing what so many others consider to be questions of significance: whether McChrystal violated the sacraments of the civilian-military command structure, what Obama had to do to maintain his authority as Commander-in-Chief, and so on. I would further suggest that, if you remain a civilized human being to any measurable degree, such questions should be of no concern to you. That these and similar issues of allegedly vital interest have dominated the national debate about McChrystal's "insubordination" tells you everything you need to know about how disgustingly uncivilized the United States government and its ancillary media culture are today.

But somewhere along the line the politicians, in their infinite wisdom, decided it was a good thing to subsidize risk. Sometimes this is done directly, sometimes indirectly. In the case limiting liability it is an indirect subsidy. It tells risk-takers that they won’t have to cover all the costs of their risk taking, that they can pass it on to others. In this case the politicians decided the risk takers could pass on costs of a disaster to the victims of the disaster. However, they politicians have also decided that the profits from such ventures belong to the risk-takers. They have privatized profits but socialized risk. We see this same, flawed strategy used in field after field. If there are risky credit applicants who want to buy houses the government promises to cover the losses while the banks get the profits. Bad loans are bad by the boatload and when something goes wrong there is a huge wave of defaults creating a crisis that spreads from there. Take away the downside risk, but leave intact the upside profits and you are asking for disaster. I would actually argue that disaster, under those circumstances, is inevitable, it is merely a matter of time.

We're not saying there should never be such a thing as an electronic health record [2]. We're not even asking for SCR to be scrapped immediately (though people would be safer if it was). We're just asking that all uploads be halted NOW, and that no-one else's personal health details be put at risk.

As I am always saying, I’d be happy to save the taxpayer a great deal of money by closing down the European parliament altogether, and I’d vote to do that tomorrow if I could. I’d be even more radical, and close down the EU entirely, and replace it with a simple free trade area. We could call it EFTA.

But I can’t do either of those things (yet — but I haven’t given up!).

This week the Cabinet Office took a pivotal step and released a publication revealing the salaries of all the civil servants earning over £150k. We see this as an important victory for the TPA as we've been producing our annual Public Sector Rich Lists, which show the most highly paid executives in the public sector, for the past four years.

Everything that is wrong was already "illegal" millennia ago. No new "wrong" has been discovered since the day of the Neanderthal. Evil people have tried to justify wrongs, such as slavery and theft, by passing "laws" that "legalize" them, but the nature of right and wrong did not change to suit the "law".

This means these new "laws" are invariably counterfeit "laws" ; attempts to control or regulate something other than actual aggression, theft, or fraud. Counterfeit "laws" sound like real laws. They are written in legal language by lawyers. They are backed by the threat of death if you disregard them. They have no foundation in reality, but are based only upon the wishes of people who want to control your behavior. Bad, aggressive, dishonest people, each and every one. You have no ethical obligation to obey any counterfeit "law".

It is a positive sign that the very first Bill introduced by the coalition government is one to repeal the Identity Cards Act. But the government's continued failure to act on Summary Care Record uploads, despite promising in the Coalition Agreement to "[put] patients in charge of making decisions about their care, including control of their health records" is far less encouraging.