The Morning Roar: Bloomberg Will Try To Outspend The NRA, Cigarette Smuggling Boom, And Turkey Tries To Block Twitter

Welcome to your Friday edition of The Morning Roar!Former NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg Will Try To Outspend The NRAMichael Bloomberg is not fading quietly into the night after leaving his post as the mayor of New York City. He wants to take on the NRA in an effort to increase background checks. Check out his recent yahoo interview with Katie Couric.It shouldn't be surprising that Bloomberg uses fear and lies in order to gain support for his tyrannical policies. I can prove part of Bloomberg's statement inaccurate based on personal experience. In the video, he eludes to there being no background check for guns bought on the internet. This is a flat out lie. I have purchased a handgun on the internet. When you buy a firearm on the internet or order by phone it is shipped to an individual or business that holds a  Federal Firearms License (FFL). That FFL phones into the federal background check system with you present. You cannot walk out with your firearm until the system approves your information.Michael Bloomberg says he wants to "make your children safer" by making it harder for law abiding citizens to obtain guns. Thanks, but no thanks Mike, we can take care of ourselves just fine. Please stop meddling with the law of the land.Boom In Smuggling Cigarettes To Avoid TaxesCBS News provides coverage on this unsurprising development.

More than half of the cigarettes sold in New York State are smuggled in from other places to avoid the Empire State's taxes on smokes, which have soared nearly 200 percent since 2006, according to a report issued by the conservative Tax Foundation.New York is the highest net importer of smuggled cigarettes -- illegal smokes account for 56.9 percent of the state's total market. New York's cigarettes tax is $4.35 per pack, the country's highest. The situation there isn't unique. The Tax Foundation also cites a study that found that 58.7 percent of discarded cigarettes found in five Northeastern cities lacked proper tax stamps.

We talked about the growing black market for cigarettes in a recent installment of Felony Friday.

The State hates when individuals avoid their confiscatory tentacles, which serve to generate tax revenue. Agents of the State are always eager to collect and ensure compliance with all tax codes. The seizure of property by force is the fuel that enables the growth of the leviathan state.Personally, I abhor cigarettes and cannot stand being around others smoking them. This does not make it right for me to grab the wallet of a smoker and steal money as a punishment for their choice to partake in a harmful habit. Also, it is not morally right if a democratically elected “official” confiscates property from those that choose to smoke. The intention of a legislature should not be to affect the behavior of other free individuals. It is not morally right to do so and it results in a distorted marketplace that punishes non-violent people.The State has taken advantage of a very addictive habit in order to grow revenue. In essence, the State has enslaved the cigarette smoker.

Why Is Turkey Trying To Ban Twitter?It's no secret that authoritarian regimes despise the power of social media in exposing State corruption. The Electronic Freedom Foundation reports on a recent attempt by the Prime Minister of Turkey to ban Twitter.

Most reports state that the decision to block the site is in response to a leak of a voice recording of the prime minister that was published on YouTube and popularized on Twitter.  The recording, purportedly of Erdoğan speaking to his son by phone, contains references to a plan by the pair to hide cash in several safe houses.

The recording is just one in a series of triggers that have led Erdoğan to censor the platform. Earlier this month, he warned that his government could ban YouTube and Facebook following the upcoming March 30 elections. During last year’s Gezi protests, he called social media “the worst menace to society.”

The State views spying on the people as a necessity. When the tables are turned and the people spy on the State by using social media as a vehicle to expose corruption, this really agitates the elite. The State response in Turkey has been shockingly ineffective with curbing the use of Twitter. The same EFF article goes on to describe the futility of the State censorship campaign.

News of Twitter’s blocking immediately spread across the platform despite the ban; after many years of living with censorship, include that of popular sites like YouTube, many of Turkey’s Internet users are well aware of how to bypass a government blockade. Not long after the ban was implemented, DNS workarounds were being shared across social media. As one usertweeted amidst the furor: “Only in #Turkey: -Twitter is banned -5 hashtags are trending worldwide -with 77% coming from Turkey.” Another tweeted an image of a mobile phone running on the TurkCell network, filled with VPN apps.

It is great to see that the State is failing in Turkey with censoring the public, but this shows the true colors of the government of Turkey. More liberty infringing policies will be sure to follow.

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