Your Government Is Letting Pipeline Companies Rob Ranchers Twice

Len Hoffmann and his neighbors near Watford City, North Dakota didn't fight the pipeline. When WBI Energy showed up in 2018 with federal eminent domain authority under the Natural Gas Act and demanded a right-of-way across their ranches, the landowners accepted that the pipeline was going in — they just wanted to be paid fairly. WBI's opening offer was just over half the going market rate, so the ranchers did what the legal system is supposed to allow: they went to court. Three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees later, a federal judge ruled in their favor — the ranchers were right about the land value, and North Dakota law entitled them to have their legal costs covered by WBI. Then the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stepped in and threw out the fee award. The court reasoned that because WBI was operating under federal eminent domain authority, state law didn't apply — and federal law doesn't require companies to reimburse legal costs. The result is a textbook Catch-22: accept whatever lowball number a pipeline company offers, or fight for a fair price in court and pay for the privilege out of your own pocket, effectively handing back a chunk of the settlement you just won. The ranchers, backed by the Institute for Justice, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Twelve state attorneys general filed briefs in support. As of late 2025, the Supreme Court was weighing whether to take the case.

Commentary: So to recap: a private company borrowed the government's power to force ranchers off their own land, offered them half of what it was worth, got caught, and then a federal court ruled the ranchers had to fund the entire three-year fight to prove it — out of their own settlement. The government handed a corporation a battering ram and then charged the people it hit for the damage. Remarkable system.

📰 https://www.agweb.com/news/business/farmland/lowballed-eminent-domain-nd-farmers-appeal-landmark-case-supreme-court

⚠️ This content was researched and written with AI assistance and may be fully AI-generated. All facts are sourced from the linked article and corroborating reporting from the Institute for Justice and North Dakota Monitor.

CCP Is Running a Slave Labor Empire in Plain Sight

 For years Beijing insisted its mass detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang was over — just a misunderstanding, some voluntary job training, a poverty alleviation program. That lie has now been shattered by the most detailed insider account ever obtained from within China's own security apparatus. Zhang Yabo, a Han Chinese police officer who served in Xinjiang from 2014 to 2023, has provided documented testimony describing what he witnessed firsthand: Uyghur detainees routinely beaten and tortured, a female detainee raped during interrogation by a colleague, deaths occurring with alarming frequency in overcrowded facilities, and armed government convoys transporting laborers to cotton fields with their identity documents confiscated so they couldn't leave. When the era of highly visible mass internment became an international embarrassment, Beijing didn't end the program — it buried it inside routine government administration. Forced labor transfers have since accelerated, reaching a record 3.4 million deployment instances in 2025, involving over three million individuals. Workers who refused transfers were subjected to coercive "thought work" sessions and explicit threats of detention. Exports from Xinjiang to the US, EU, Canada, and UK surged 465 percent between 2021 and 2025, meaning the clothes, electronics, and car parts in Western markets are increasingly built on this system. Five UN Special Rapporteurs declared in January 2026 that the severity of coercion in some cases may constitute the crimes against humanity of forcible transfer and enslavement.

Commentary: Beijing's masterstroke was realizing that the world would stop paying attention once the obvious concentration camps were out of the news cycle — so they traded barbed wire for bureaucracy, turning slavery into a line item in a five-year poverty alleviation plan. The products are still on our shelves, the profits still flow to the CCP, and the only thing that changed is that it's now much harder to photograph.

📰 https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/16/china-xinjiang-uyghur-camps-repression/

📷 Image: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Xinjiang_Uyghur_Autonomous_Region_-_Kashgar_Prefecture_-_Kashgar_-_panoramio_%28109%29.jpg/1280px-Xinjiang_Uyghur_Autonomous_Region_-_Kashgar_Prefecture_-_Kashgar_-_panoramio_%28109%29.jpg Credit: Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0 — Kashgar, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region

⚠️ This content was researched and written with AI assistance and may be fully AI-generated. All facts are sourced from the linked article and corroborating reporting from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Foreign Policy, and UN Special Rapporteurs.

Your Government Is Stealing Your Mail

For years, Indianapolis police have been stationing officers and drug dogs at the city's massive FedEx hub — the second largest in the country — and systematically seizing cash from packages passing through on their way between other states. Indiana has no connection to the senders, the recipients, or the transactions. The only connection is geography: FedEx routes packages through Indianapolis, and Indiana law enforcement has decided that's enough. When a drug dog alerts to a package and cash is found, the Marion County Prosecutor files civil forfeiture proceedings to keep the money — without ever identifying which law was broken or what crime was committed. Henry and Minh Cheng, a California jewelry wholesaling couple, had $42,825 seized this way — a legitimate payment from a Virginia client routed through Indianapolis by FedEx. Among the "suspicious" factors used to justify opening their package: the box had all its seams taped, exactly as FedEx recommends. Since 2022, Indiana has pursued forfeiture on more than $2.5 million from at least 130 packages in transit between other states, keeping roughly $1 million of it. The Chengs eventually got their money back after suing, but only after hiring lawyers and fighting a forfeiture action filed in a state they'd never set foot in.

Commentary: Indiana has essentially set up a toll booth on the FedEx conveyor belt — except instead of a dollar, they take everything in the package and dare you to come to Indiana and fight about it. The genius of the scheme is that most victims do the math, realize hiring an out-of-state lawyer costs more than what was stolen, and just let the government keep it. That's not a bug; that's the business model.

📰 https://reason.com/2024/08/12/lawsuit-claims-indiana-unconstitutionally-seizes-millions-in-cash-from-fedex-packages-every-year/

📷 Image: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/images/2020-06/drug-dog-sniffs-mail-2400.jpg Credit: DHS Photo by Benjamin Applebaum / U.S. Customs and Border Protection — Public Domain

⚠️ This content was researched and written with AI assistance and may be fully AI-generated. All facts are sourced from the linked article.

Your Government Will Shoot You Even If You Are The Hostage

One cop fires - all cops fire.

Even when the first one is a sniper and ordered to fire.

Also, Jason Neo Bourne?

https://blog.simplejustice.us/2025/11/15/the-point-isnt-to-kill-the-hostage/#comments

Official 2024 Election Prediction

OFFICIAL ELECTION PREDICTION!!!

Which in no way is based upon their fitness for office as neither is fit to be dogcatcher.

This is the LEAST confident I have ever been, but here it is:

Senate 51 R, 49 D (+/- 1)

House, 217 R, 218 D (+/- 5)

President:

Harris wins 313 electoral votes and the election taking 6 of 7 swing states - PA, MI, WI, AZ, NC, GA but losing NV

I also predict that America and the world will get better and better despite our shitty politicians.

Some notes on why:

For those noting the numbers favor Trump - they absolutely do, as I pointed out in a previous post. He is 4 plus point better than he was in 2020 and that SHOULD give him the wins if the polls are accurate. But they haven't been accurate for 2 elections and my money is on the pollsters overcorrecting.

The D's ground game has lately been better than R's but was hamstrung by COVID and the D's higher propensity to social distance.

I think their Get Out the Vote game this year could be decisive.

Extremely low confidence in this prediction. Could have talked myself into any of 4 different scenarios.

I also think Trump is an objectively worse candidate than he was in 2020. Much worse. I struggle to see how independents move his way except as a reaction to Harris/Biden narratives.

I also give a tiny bit of weight to my crazy theory that Trump wants to lose, close enough so he can claim he won, but doesn't have to do the shitty job.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/us-news/allan-lichtman-vs-nate-silver-whose-us-presidential-election-model-can-predict-correctly-experts-weigh-in-101730633097586.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawGVqvJleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHU5hevoKb9r_QA_biIyCiNu34le7ZtR427T5ByAFBNlTsQktYHRgGA6tkg_aem_Az7yqfneVCs0JI3DiHm1DQ

Your Government Murdered Peanut the Squirrel!!!!

 

I know the owner probably didn't follow all the rules...but have you looked at the rules? Byzantine would be the operative term here.

Rabies from a squirrel - NEVER happened - EVER!

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/instagram-squirrel-peanut-seized-by-new-york-authorities/

Chine Wants To Eliminate Tibet From History

Xi Jinping preparing his threats

China's Communist Party is notorious for threatening museums to pull their loaned materials if the content is not displayed "correctly". In this case, they want it labelled as with China's new name for Tibet, vice "Tibet".

I have an idea, tell them to "Fuck Off." When they demand the return of the materials say no. It would be no different than what China does all over the world. They can't be counted on to abide by agreements they made (see Hong Kong). Why should the museums. I would make a big deal out of this being a new form of art education, demonstrating the hypocrisy of China.

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/02/nx-s1-5132045/paris-museums-under-fire-for-changing-their-wording-describing-works-from-tibet