Bad news is easy to find; but we are starting 2025 off with some freedom wins because they are worth celebrating.
January 6, 2025
By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP
People left 2024 with some astoundingly depressing losses:
- Total U.S. household debt is nearing 18 trillion dollars.
- An all-time record high 770,000 people are homeless in the United States, and that number grew by 18 percent in just one year which is also an all-time record high.
- U.S. retailers have announced 7,100 store closures in 2024.
- According to the Institute for Economics & Peace, there are 56 active military conflicts raging around the world right now. That is the highest number that we have seen since World War II.
- If the amount of plastic in our brains continues to rise at a rate of 50 percent every 8 years, 28 percent of our brains will be plastic 80 years from now and everyone will be dead.
That’s just a taste of some of the staggering numbers coming out of 2024. Never mind the last minute nonsense the out-going administration is trying to pull like:
- Banning gas powered tankless water heaters
- Proposal to ban new offshore drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific
- Presentation of options to strike Iranian nuke sites
Obviously the bad news is abundant. It gets people worked up. It gets clicks. It’s not hard to find. But how about starting 2025 with some freedom wins? A little good news?
Amish Farmer Wins Against USDA!
The US governments at various levels have had it out for the Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch for as long as I can remember. In 2012, the FDA won a two-year battle with an Amish farm for selling raw milk in the Washington DC area. In 2017, another Amish man was sentenced to six years in prison for selling an herbal skin cream without government permission.
A year ago, in January 2024, Amish man, Amos Miller was raided by the USDA.
There was a lot more condemnation for Mr. Miller than there was for the USDA. But the condemnation was coming from people who never did business with Miller, had no interest in his wares, and have this weird affection for regulations. He offered products procured differently than the commercial production methods we’ve grown accustomed to:
According to LancasterOnline, Miller and the Feds have been locked “in a standoff over his compliance with federal food safety rules and failure to pay assessed fines.”
With his sovereign citizen defense, Miller has tried to thwart the Fed’s overreach to get him to comply with food safety rules. He sells all sorts of food to more than 4,000 buyers, such as organic eggs, raw milk, grass-fed beef and cheese, and fresh produce. He doesn’t use electricity, chemical fertilizers, vaccines, or petroleum products in farming.
Robert Barnes, attorney for Amos Miller, reports on his X account Friday, January 3, 2025:
Big win today for #FoodFreedom as Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania affirmed the trial court decision allowing #Amish farmer #AmosMiller to continue to make his wonderful food available to customers outside the state. Thank you to everyone who spoke out for Amos!
The regulation was ruled ambiguous, and the USDA is not entitled to a permanent injunction. How’s that for starting 2025 off with some freedom wins!
“Misinformation” Bill in Australia Fails!
Australia has been a case study in what not to do on many fronts these past few years. Never forget what the country did to its people during COVID:
Thousands of Australians with unpaid fines for breaking COVID rules have their homes seized, bank accounts raided and licenses canceled as government chases $5.2million
Remember Haley Hodgson:
She could not leave her room to even go for a walk outside. She was tested three times, and never tested positive for COVID in the two weeks she was there. So despite her negative tests, she was still ordered to stay there the full two weeks.
The CDC would tell her she was likely sent there as punishment for lying about being tested for COVID when she in fact was not tested. Without trial or even formal charges, she was taken away and put in a camp for two weeks.
Australia, like many other countries, squandered an insane amount of trust equity and good will with its people with stunts like these.
ABC News Australia reports that a review done of the COVID response indicated some major flaws in activation, resulting in Australians being unlikely to cooperate with lockdowns again. The inconsistency in policies across jurisdictions in Australia, all claiming to be “following the science” didn’t help. Lockdowns and mandates were implemented as a first and immediate response, but with little evidence or real-time evaluation of the outcomes. The policies seemed more like a power grab and accommodation for police than proving to have any relevance to disease control.
Obviously the problem was people communicating with one another and sharing their ideas, frustrations, and skepticism! Best to introduce a “misinformation” bill to ensure that doesn’t happen again!
Nope! One by one, legislators rejected the bill, and for various reasons:
Their reasons varied from concerns over government overreach, and vague definitions of misinformation, to the implications for political discourse and the potential for misuse. Each statement chipped away at the bill’s support, creating a domino effect.
One Green Party senator, Sarah Hanson-Young said, “We are concerned this bill doesn’t actually do what it needs to do when it comes to stopping the deliberate mass distribution of false and harmful information.”
Bills like these certainly can be resurrected, but for now, Australia is starting 2025 off with some freedom wins.
Appellate Court Shuts Down Net Neutrality!
Net Neutrality in lay terms is treating all internet content the same, regardless of the disparity in bandwidth they require. So everything gets either more or less bandwidth than it needs because it’s all the same.
If you’ve ever set up an internet service, they typically ask what kind of activity are you using the internet for? Multiple devices? Gaming? Video conferencing? Or are you just looking up recipes and chatting with folks on social media? There are tiers of service, and we pay for as much bandwidth as our habits require.
Net Neutrality was instituted under Obama, undone by Trump, and then this happened in October 2023: the FCC voted in favor of itself (surprise!) to reinstate Obama-era net neutrality rules. Not congress. Not a court. A group of Alphabet Bois.
The price per megabit has been precipitously dropping since 2000 and when it was nixed at the federal level, sever states picked up the mantle and ran with it. So what’s the real reason behind this? Turned out it was “national security”. That old chestnut right?
Well, NO DICE! An appellate court has struck down the FCC’s “ruling” on itself.
A federal law enables the FCC to impose strict requirements on telecommunications services but not information services.
Griffin referenced a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Loper Bright that struck down a doctrine that gave government officials wide leeway to interpret laws.
“We acknowledge that the workings of the Internet are complicated and dynamic, and that the FCC has significant expertise in overseeing ’this technical and complex area,‘” Griffin wrote. “Yet, post-Loper Bright, that ’capability,’ if you will, cannot be used to overwrite the plain meaning of the statute.”
Internet service providers provide information services, not telecommunication services. So the FCC can go pound sand.
And nothing says starting 2025 off with some freedom wins quite like watching the FCC cry in its overzealous soup.
I have a feeling the Chevron Deference bill is going to have a LOT of impact in the coming years, as there’s a lot of poetic license taken by these federal agencies. They’ve gotten too big for their britches.
Here’s to a prosperous new year, and more wins!
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