Life is about choice. What we eat, what we read, who we elect; every day we make choices that determine how we want to live. But what if these choices are just an illusion? In an era where regulations and red tape rule every industry, where lobby groups and big business wield more influence than ever before, our daily choices have become increasingly limited. Focusing on key areas such as food, medicine, finance, and media, Freedom From Choice provides viewers with a glimpse at the myriad of ways their lives are being dictated, and tells us who stands to gain.
Title: Freedom from Choice (2014)
Director: Tim Delmastro
1h 18m
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If you listen to Benito Mussolini, he knew a thing of two about fascism. He said that fascism is the merger of state and corporate powers. Now people will deny that and they’ll say that’s not exactly what he said, but if you really look into it, that’s what he said.
(cheerful piano tune)
[Voiceover] Milk is an important part of every good diet. Use the best grade of milk available to you. Disease may be contracted through drinking unsanitary raw milk.
(milk splashes)
FREEDOM FROM CHOICE
(sirens wail)
[Voiceover] In 2010, there was a simultaneous raid on two different locations in California. Heavily armed agents stormed into private properties arresting several US citizens for dealing in a restricted substance. Now drug raids happen quite frequently in the US, it’s just one of the ways the authorities keep us free from malicious and harmful substances. Only this wasn’t a drug raid. The substance being sold wasn’t crack or crystal meth, or even bootleg hooch. It was milk.
[Jonathan Emord, Constitutional Attorney] This is an example of just how heavy handed the government is in routing out disfavored parties. In this case, the government operates on a public interest argument that raw milk is inherently unsafe, it is a breeding ground for bacteria and because it is not pasteurized, the argument is, it carries with it an enormous increased risk for consumers such that, it shouldn’t be available, this is the position of the Food and Drug Administration.
And the government cracks down on this one segment, and they do so with brute force, sending in storm troopers essentially, and shutting down the milk plant in it’s entirety, and confiscating all of the milk, regardless of whether it’s contaminated or not.
[Voiceover] The FDA raided this organic market in order to keep us safe from the dangers of unpasteurized milk, buying and selling unpasteurized milk that is.
They have no problem with you drinking raw milk, if, say, you find a stray cow on the way home and decide to milk it yourself, (mooing) but a reputable farmer trying to sell some to willing customers, that’s a big no no.
Although this organic market was a club, with each member having signed a waiver acknowledging the potential risk of drinking raw milk, this was not good enough for the FDA. Had these people not realized that raw milk is a gateway food, what next, people eating cheese, knocking back raw oysters, sushi, or heaven forbid, eggs? Luckily the FDA was there to step in and save these adults, at gunpoint, from the dangers of raw milk.
The reason why pasteurized milk doesn’t come under this scrutiny, and the reason why raw milk, as opposed to cheese, eggs, raw oysters, sushi, why they don’t come under the same FDA scrutiny, is that the major milk manufacturers, are a principle lobby within the FDA.
They have very small profit margins per unit, and so if in Whole Foods and other places there are significant numbers of consumers who come in to buy raw milk products. It is a significant economic effect on the large milk processors.
[Voiceover] The California milk raids were not an isolated event. Over the past few years, there have been raids all across the US to crack down on the sale of many organic products, but despite any claims of safety concerns or risk, one thing is clear, the actions of the regulatory agencies, and by extension, the politicians that manage them, are not motivated by any notion of public good. They’re motivated by the desire to stay in power, that takes money.
[Sheila Krumholz, Executive Director, Center for Responsive Politics] The problem with the US political system is that it revolves around money. And so, immediately, that sets off this dichotomy of those who can afford to play in the system and those who can’t. To run for office, you need one and a half million dollars, you need about 11 million dollars to run for the Senate. So if you don’t have money, where do you go?
You go to the people who have a hand stretched out with money, ready to fund your campaign, but they’re gonna want something in return, because, of course, they’re not giving this money for charitable reasons. It very clearly advantages big businesses because they have more capacity to devote resources to influence buying.
[Voiceover] Political influence has become just another arsenal in the marketing tool box of large companies. Only instead of promoting themselves, they use this influence to suppress the competition, and the key to it all are lobbyists.
[Mike Maloney, Monetary Historian] People think that we live in a free market society, and we don’t. Big government and big business are way too closely aligned today, especially in the United States, and this, you know, is because of lobbying basically. We have cronyism, we don’t have capitalism in the United States, especially when it comes to the military, and then big medicine, big food, like Monsanto, you know, with all the GMOs and stuff. Most people don’t want it, but yet it’s being forced on us because Monsanto has such leverage in Congress through all the lobbying of the food industry.
[Voiceover] So, what is lobbying? Well, simply, lobbying is the act of influencing decisions made by legislators, and regulatory agencies, you know, the guys who make the rules, and the people who exert this influence are called lobbyists. Well connected professionals with slick suits and slicker tongues. Lobbyists tend to be experts in the fields they lobby for, they advise law makers on how to make sure Americans are getting the most benefit from the laws they pass, while also reducing potential harm. It’s a good idea, why wouldn’t you want an expert’s advice?
Here’s where things get screwy. Sometimes the law makers decide the cash is greener on the other side, so they become lobbyists themselves. They leave government and join a private company, taking their connections and influence with them. This phenomenon is called the revolving door, people going from regulating an industry to working in that same industry, and sometimes back and forth multiple times.
Corporations love having such powerful people on their payroll, so they do everything they can to lure them over, and for their part, the regulators help out by making a few choice laws to benefit their future employers.
And with the spin of the door comes a host of new laws that benefit some companies, hinder others, but business keeps rolling and in the end, no one really gets hurt, except, of course, the people.
You’ll see members of Congress who will take on issues defending one particular special interest, and then go out to work for that special interest after they leave, and the same is true of all government agencies. In fact, that’s considered the normal way to do business in Washington.
[G. Edward Griffin, Author & Political Lecturer] Big government and big business essentially are the same, are they not? What’s the difference between a corporation and a government agency, when the corporation buys the politicians with campaign donations and the politicians do as they’re told in passing laws that the corporation would have passed had the corporation been the government.
[Voiceover] Sadly, this phenomenon is all too common today and it’s not specific to just one industry, rather, it seems that many of the agencies which have the power to influence our daily lives are corrupted by the revolving door.
[G. Edward Griffin] When you have delegated power to committees and government officials and agencies to regulate the economy, it always leads to corruption.
It’s too tempting for people not to use that power for their own personal agendas, and the revolving door is merely proof of the fact that when you give government and it’s agencies the power to regulate commerce, it always, always, will lead to corruption.
Nine tenths of all Federal law is not the product of those we elect, but rather the product of the unelected heads of these bureaucratic agencies. So we do not have a limited Federal Republic in the United States, what we have instead is an unlimited bureaucratic alogarten in which these bureaucratic agencies operate largely without any accountability.
[Gerald Celente, Political Commentator] This isn’t a representative form of government, they only represent the most powerful and the people that give them the most amount of money.
The corporations, the multi nationals have taken over, whether it’s agriculture, whether it’s broadcasting, whether it’s pharmaceutical, whether it’s retail, you name the field, a few control it all.
[Voiceover] Slow down, you’ll kill somebody.
[Voiceover] Laws and regulations are essential to any modern society.
There were some activities that need to be controlled or prevented for the sake of the common good, which side of the road you can drive on, whether a five year old should be able to buy a bottle of Jack, how many return trips you can make to a buffet in a single sitting.
(glass shatters)
Okay, maybe scratch that last one, but you get the idea. But with so much collusion between regulators and the industries they regulate, the laws governing our daily lives are becoming excessive, unnecessary, and often, downright nonsensical. Keeping the public safe and free is no longer the primary goal for a number of our lawmakers.
There is little done by the Federal Government that is not influenced by a choice to favor one special interest over another. A lot of regulations are adopted with a public interest veneer, but underneath they’re the product of negotiation between industry leaders and government to create a barrier to entry, and many of these actions taken have enormous economic consequences, both eliminating competition to a company, and enhancing their economic status.
[Voiceover] This relationship between big business and government agencies not only affects their competition and the economy, but all of us in our day to day lives.
[Peter Schiff, Economist & Money Manager] What you wanna do in economy is you wanna produce the products and services that are in greatest demand, and no one knows that except the market, but when politicians come in and they substitute their own judgement, generally they’re not even trying to outguess the market, and figure out what’s best for us, they’re generally just trying to give an advantage to one particular individual or a group of individuals at the expense of another, and so there are clear winners and losers. Whoever’s on the receiving end of a subsidy, or, you know, a government expenditure, versus who’s getting regulated or taxed, but regardless of the individual winners and losers, collectively we lose, because wealth is destroyed, resources are allocated in a less than optimal way.
[Sheila Krumholz] If you can pay enough money, you can make sure that you win on whatever issue you are concerned about.
Maybe it’s stopping legislation, maybe it’s to get something passed, but ultimately, you’re looking to shape policy, and that policy has real impact in our daily lives.
It shapes what kinds of product we can buy at the store, it shapes how safe those products are, it shapes what we are allowed to know about those products.
[Voiceover] The FDA’s war against unpasteurized milk is just one example of the way large food producers are using their connections in Washington to limit our choices at the grocery store, while increasing their own profits, but it is by no means the only example.
[Jon Rappoport, Investigative Reporter] Big government is in a collusion with big agriculture. There were never any scientific studies that determined that GMO food is equivalent to conventionally grown food.
The Food and Drug Administration in the United States said, “Well, Monsanto has vouched for the safety of GMO food, and Monsanto said “the FDA has certified it is safe.”
That’s big business, and big government together.
(peaceful music)
[Voiceover] But, some small, independent farms are choosing not to use patented GMO crops, or work for larger agribusiness concerns, some just wanna supply their local area with nutritious, farm fresh food. One such farmer is Joel Salatin.
He runs his farm based on an innovative and radical new technique which he calls, letting his animals out to pasture. Sounds crazy, but maybe he’s on to something.
[Joel Salatin, Farmer & Author] We have a very different set of, of production and processing criteria.
First of all, our animals move, they’re not in great big confinement animal feeding operations, our animals don’t do drugs, we don’t vaccinate, we don’t medicate, and we run our farm on the closed carbon cycle, as opposed to buying in chemical fertilizer from outside.
So, you know, the localization, the carbon cycle, animals move around, the lack of pharmaceuticals, all of that is 180 degrees different than today’s industrial, global, petroleum based food system.
[Voiceover] It turns out, there is a healthy market for traditionally farmed meat and produce, so why are there so few independent farms operating around the country?
[Voiceover] The story of Chicago and its great stock yards symbolized the amazing economic revolution that was underway.
On the farms, machines and improved techniques of agriculture began to produce an abundance of food for consumption both at home and abroad. The new world of mass production required increasing concentrations of capital, pooling the investments of many people, the corporation became the means to starting vast new enterprises.
[Joel Salatin] The globalization and corporatization of everything is gradually making it more and more difficult for independent farmers, independent people in the food system to market to their neighbors, to friends, to family, to whatever, and you do think everyday about what bureaucrat is going to invade my life today.
Every single time the government penetrates the market place, it always favors the biggest players because they’re the ones that are able to buy favors to curry concessionary privileges in a regulatory climate. And so I know that many of the consumer advocacy folks mean well when they say, “We need more oversight, we need more regulations for this bad thing that happened over here.”
What they don’t realize is that by the time that regulation actually gets enacted, and filters down to the farm level, it always, always, always, hurts small producers and helps the large producers.
[Gerald Celente] It’s the revolving door, don’t eat healthy, only eat crap. A few companies control everything, there’s only a small group of agribusiness companies that control the entire food production. They’re putting everybody out of business. They don’t want any competition.
The small farmer’s always a threat. If 50 million people in the United States decide on their own that they would prefer to buy their produce from small farmers or at Farmers Markets because they think it’s healthier, that’s a defection out of the system. The government doesn’t want that, and Monsanto certainly doesn’t want it nor do any of the big agribusiness companies want it. So better to do anything possible to wipe out the small farmer in America, make him go bankrupt, make him sell his land, which is then taken over by some larger, agricultural entity, until eventually the entire food chain is controlled by big corporations and big government.
[Voiceover] The regulations forced upon small independent farms like Joel’s, have created a hurdle which limits the size and scope of his operation, and whether these regulations are well intentioned, or imposed just to give an unfair advantage to the big guys, the end result is that many of the products Joel would like to sell have been deemed illegal.
[Joel Salatin] The things that we would like to do from curing meat to selling raw milk, for example, you know, we would love to sell raw milk, and we have customers who would love to get raw milk, but it’s illegal.
We just had a health department inspector, they told us that our slaughtering shed for the poultry was illegal, and wanted to close us down, and their contention was that if it’s actually open to the air, it’s inherently unsanitary.
(chickens clucking)
What’s so fascinating is a feed lot, in deplorable conditions, with no trespassing signs, gets away with almost anything, but because we are extremely transparent, outdoors, you know, out here, it makes us vulnerable to the anthropomorphism of ignorant people.
[Voiceover] You’re probably thinking that these agricultural regulations are meaningless to you. If these regulations are limiting your choices, how come you can walk down any aisle in the supermarket and find dozens of different brands, and hundreds of different foods? I mean, how much choice do we really need?
[Joel Salatin] The average person walks into the supermarket right, and they see all this stuff on the shelves. They say, “What do you mean I don’t have choice? “I can get Count Chochula breakfast cereal, “Fruit Loops, Cracker Jacks,” whatever, okay, “I can get potato chips from 10 different companies.” You know, “What do you mean I don’t have choice?” And so, it’s a hard sell, because people have a hard time understanding what they can’t get. You know, what you can’t get is raw milk, what you can’t get is backyard slaughtered poultry that never went through a great big processing plant.
There’s a tremendous amount of artisanal heritage type food that is unavailable now, because it has been criminalized and outlawed.
[Voiceover] In the end, it comes down to risk. Some things, like raw milk, are just too risky to let out to the public. After all, contaminated raw milk could, theoretically, be as harmful as poison.
(plane engine roars)
Actual poison, on the other hand, is apparently fine.
[Joel Salatin] If you wanna talk about risk, isn’t it fascinating that the very entity that gave us DDT, that gave us Mad Cow, that gave us cloning, that gave us GMOs, these are very risky things. I mean, whether or not you believe in ’em or not, you have to appreciate those are all very high risk things. And they’re the ones that we say, “I wanna put my faith in you for my food.”
I think people participate in risky behavior all the time. You know, I think if you’re feeding your kids pasteurized milk, Cocoa Puffs, Count Chochula cereal, and Fruit Loops, that’s risky behavior. But the government has decided that that’s not risky behavior. What’s risky behavior is drinking a glass of raw milk.
[Voiceover] When it comes down to it, not being able to get raw milk isn’t that big a deal. I mean, who needs raw milk when you can get deep fried mozzarella sticks, or tasty, tasty chicken fingers? After all, food is food, right?
[Joel Salatin] I think it’s important to realize that in 1979 when the first USDA Food Pyramid came out, you know, with grains on the bottom, that was the beginning of the obesity and Type II epidemic because it put carbohydrates on the bottom. And, you know, it’s quite a profound reality that America today would be far, far healthier if the government had never told us what to eat.
(oil sizzles)
[Voiceover] So, maybe you overdue it slightly on the saturated fats and the imitation cheese, who cares, we’ve got access to the best drugs in the world.
Whether you have a resting heart rate of 116, that third cheeseburger has you sweating like Shaq at the line, or you’re just feeling queasy from all the drugs you’re taking. There are drugs out there to help you, and we can all agree, if there’s one area where we want strict regulations, it’s pharmaceuticals. After all, no one wants unsafe medicine getting out to the public.
[Jonathan Emord] There are, of course, several drugs, many drugs, that are helpful, but what concerns me is that a significant minority, significant minority of drugs that have been approved by FDA, have been approved over the FDA’s own medical reviewers’ objections on safety grounds, and many, many, unsafe drugs have been admitted into the marketplace that actually cause death, liver failure, kidney failure, heart attacks, these drugs are on the market, many of them still, and are approved yearly.
[Voiceover] It is thanks to such rigorous quality control by the FDA that a drug like Vioxx, which caused over 100,000 heart attacks, tens of thousands of deaths, was swiftly pulled from the market, after only five years, and 2.5 billion in profit for the pharmaceutical giant Merck.
[Jonathan Emord] When an FDA commissioner knowingly approves an unsafe drug like Vioxx and keeps it on the market even though there are 140,000 heart attacks from Vioxx, and 60,000 deaths from it, and still stands in defense of that company Merck, there’s something wrong here, there’s something dreadfully wrong. Why can’t that person be held accountable, and yet they get away with it. Not only do they get away with it, but in the case of the commissioner who did that, Mr. Crawford, he ends up being employed by a company called Policy Directions Inc at a very high capacity, and that company represents Merck.
(dramatic music)
[In October 2006, the U.S. Department of Justice charged Lester Crawford with violating conflict-of-interest laws. Crawford pled guilty by falsely reporting information about stocks he owned in food, beverage and medical device companies he was in charge of regulating. He was sentenced to three years probation and a fine of $90,000.]
(machine hisses)
[Voiceover] Perhaps the Vioxx incident was just a one off event. There are a whole host of helpful drugs in the marketplace, and the FDA shouldn’t be scrutinized for one little slip up. I mean, it’s not like this is happening regularly.
[Jon Rappoport] The FDA says that all of these pharmaceutical drugs that are everywhere in America, they’re safe and effective, that’s how they get out into doctors offices and drugstores, and that’s why people ingest them. Well, 106,000 people every year in the United States are killed by FDA approved pharmaceutical drugs. The FDA admits this on their own website, but they say nothing about taking responsibility for it, it’s just another medical fact to them.
[Voiceover] Huh, over 100,000 deaths from prescription drugs every year. You’d think with all the stringent testing the FDA does before it lets a drug out onto the market, they’d detect some of these life threatening side effects.
[Voiceover] These are the bottles which finally will find their way to doctor’s offices and clinics all over the country. Even as they reach the end of the production line, other tests are in progress and samples are sent to the government. The manufacturer’s protocol is first reviewed, then subjected to a whole battery of complex, scientific tests.
The FDA’s whole system of drug review is bogus. It’s designed to protect and advance the interest of the drug industry. A lot of people don’t realize this, but FDA never tests the drugs it approves. FDA does no independent testing at all. It relies entirely on the testing done by the drug advocate, the proponent of the drug application that has a self interest and a conflict of interest, that party is looked to for all of the drug testing. They do their own testing.
[Voiceover] So the FDA does no independent testing of the drugs it approves, but with so many new drugs being manufactured, can you blame them for outsourcing the testing to the drug companies themselves? After all, if you can’t trust a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical conglomerate, who can you trust?
There have been multiple instances of corruption in this process where negative information has been kept away from the FDA so the FDA will approve a drug. In fact, Sanofi-Aventis, with this drug Ketek, relied principally on a clinical trial that FDA’s medical reviewers were sharp on the case discovered didn’t even happen. They made it up. And there were FBI investigations and prosecutions.
But what did the FDA do? The medical reviewers said that the commissioner, gee, they relied on a fraud for this application. We should deny it. But the FDA commissioner granted it. He put Ketek into the market.
So you see, it’s that degree of influence and corruption that makes it impossible for the American people to be protected.
[Voiceover] With drugs being approved by the FDA, despite the objection of their own medical reviewers, there can be little doubt the revolving door is alive and well in the pharmaceutical industry.
And just in case you do have some tiny shred of doubt remaining, consider the case of Billy Tauzin. You may want to have some anti-nausea pills on standby.
Congressman Billy Tauzin was the head of the energy and commerce committee in the House. He was the man assigned the task of ensuring that a provision would be put into the law that would prevent the entire government from negotiating down the per unit price of drugs required to be acquired under Medicare Part D, based on volume. So in other words, they’re forced to pay whatever price the drug industry sets per unit for the drugs purchased under Medicare Part D. And that is something that could enable a drug industry at its will to bring the nation to its knees financially. And so it is that this provision was put into the law and the Bush Administration. Tauzin left the government, left his position in Congress, became the head of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association. And made the highest salary they had ever then paid to that date, $2.5 million a year as a compliment for his selling out the nation to protect the drug industry.
[Voiceover] So while the government may be choosing, often poorly, which food and drugs they think are safe for us to have, at least they aren’t trying to force any of them on you.
Except, perhaps, for vaccines.
George Lambert is a representative of the New Hampshire statehouse. He has a leading proponent for vaccination of choice in his state.
[Rep. George Lambert, New Hampshire State House] When I got to the statehouse, somebody asked me if I would work on a bill for vaccination choice. The more research I did, the more I found out that in the risk of an epidemic, they can go out and vaccinate everyone without choice.
To say that vaccines are compulsory, which in the U.S. is the struggle right now, every state has their own exemptions that parents can claim. But now, the push is on to say that we’re gonna force you to get vaccinated, whether you like it or not. You don’t have the freedom to decide.
[Rep. George Lambert] If we talk about medical safety and freedom, everybody should have the choice as of what medical procedures they want. You can get a medical exclusion, you can get a religious exclusion, but you can’t get a consciousness exclusion. We had an issue in New Hampshire a couple years ago where there were some injections that were contaminated, that might actually contain meningitis.
But if you were required to get a vaccination or an injection, how do you know the injection isn’t contaminated?
But if you want your children to go to school or participate in any of these other activities, the government says, “You either do this, or you’re excluded.” That’s the problem because when the news says, “There’s something that puts your life at risk,” you should be able to make an educated decision.
[Voiceover] That’s what freedom really comes down to in the end. The freedom to decide, for good or bad, how you wanna live. And that freedom should not be overruled by the government, except in the most extreme cases. Or to keep us safe from the most diabolical threats.
[Voiceover] Weed, grass, ganja, joint, dooby, doo, chronic, haste, lobo, loco, loveboat, bud, buddah, blunt, pot, pat, pin, cheeba-cheeba, four two zero, and hasheesh or hash for short.
No matter what you call it, no matter what hip street led it’s referred, or reefer to buy, it all comes from the same stash. It’s all marijuana.
(chilling scream)
[Voiceover] Marijuana, one of the most dangerous drugs known to mankind. Responsible for almost as many deaths per year as asteroids or shark attacks, it can cause an otherwise healthy adult to giggle, or get a bit hungry. Thankfully the brave men and women from numerous agencies have been waging a tireless and expensive war against this dangerous plant for decades.
[Gerald Celente] The war on drugs is a war on the people. It’s a war to fight the pharmaceutical industry. So they get to sell their psychotropic drugs. I mean, Jesus, how many people? Then I hear horror stories from their children whacked out on Vicodin. Oh, that’s a beaut. Yeah, how about a little Oxycontin, you know, to make you happy. Feel some pain, this’ll get rid of it. But don’t get high, man. No weed, it’s gonna kill ya. You saw Reefer Madness.
[Voiceover] Reefer Madness is a celebrated PSA film, produced for the US government. Known for its even-handed and unbiased approach to the subject of marijuana, which it claims is worse than heroin, it saved generations from the dangers of marijuana. Even a single puff of Mary Jane can make you dance like a fool, laugh uncontrollably, (bellowing laugh) or violently murder your friends. (thud) How embarrassing.
NORML is a nonprofit organization whose aim is to legalize cannabis throughout the United States.
[Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director, NORML] There are 800,000 people a year arrested in the United States on marijuana charges. 90% for possession only. So over a 40 year period now, that’s roughly 27 million people have been arrested on marijuana charges. So it’s created a huge universe of people who have been effectively screwed by the government.
When we sued the DEA in the classic case, NRML versus DEA, the judge ruled in 1988 in his final decision that marijuana quote “is the safest, “therapeutic substance known to man.” That’s a pretty strong indictment against the rest of the drugs.
[Voiceover] So the courts acknowledged that marijuana is the most therapeutic substance known to man, but since as early as the 1930s, marijuana has been the subject of countless, heavy-handed, and fallacious propaganda.
[Voiceover] Long-term use of marijuana can lead to a psychological dependency. Soon, you’ll be taking all sorts of measures to get your fix. People will start calling you names like Pothead, or Smokey McBongwater, losing all motivation, it’s likely that you’ll drop out of school, take a sudden liking to sitar music, and maybe even get felt up by a cop or two.
Marijuana has been propagandized by the United States government and its surrogates at the state level for at least 75 years.
There are 1,200 Partnership for Drug-Free America ads, and 85 to 90 percent of those ads have been against marijuana. And the name alone, Drug-Free America, deserves nothing but pure laughter. Drug hypen Free America? This is the most drug-adult society in human history. And the Drug-Free America Association was originally founded by the alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutical companies, which, last I checked, their business model is distributing drugs.
[Voiceover] Personal feelings about marijuana aside, there is no denying the fact that criminalization of the substance bears little parity with other substances in the same area, such as alcohol or tobacco.
But with all the millions being spent on preventing its use and prosecuting individuals who use it, who stands to gain?
[Allen St. Pierre] There are entities out there that strongly lobby for the status quo to stay in place. Law enforcement, the very government agencies born of the prohibition, like the Partnership for Drug-Free America, the D.A.R.E. program, the DEA, the drugs are his office, they will always oppose legalization. Three would be the alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical companies that play both ends of the middle. They try to start things like the Partnership for Drug-Free America, but pretty clearly don’t wanna really have a drug-free America.
The fourth entity are companies that are able to make money off of the prohibition. And that would be private prisons, drug-testing companies, this is probably the most naked of our opposition, because if you get caught with marijuana, you can either choose the route of prosecution and potential conviction and then going to jail, or you go to rehab.
Well, even the director of NORML, if I got caught by police with a small amount of marijuana, I’m given a choice between going to jail and going to rehab, I’m gonna pick rehab. And so 80% of their clientele are effectively pushed in the door by the government. So this is an incestuous relationship that has been set up between the drug rehabilitation profiteers and the government that brings their clients right to their door, and we, the taxpayers, pay for the rehabilitation.
Now, in the language the addicts use among themselves, they never say to each other, “Let’s smoke a marijuana cigarette.” They say, “Let’s turn on,” or, “Let’s blast a joint.”
[Voiceover] As with drinking raw milk, smoking a marijuana cigarette carries with it obvious health risks. But whether you want to blast a J or buy an outdoor slaughtered chicken from your local farmer, powerful lobbying groups have colluded with regulatory agencies to limit your freedom of choice.
When the government violently kicks down your door, and comes onto your property with guns drawn trying to get you to stop, engaged in a certain behavior that’s harming nobody else, that is a social injustice.
(sirens wail)
I personally think of cannabis as just a metaphor for freedom. I think of it almost purely, at this point now, as a discussion over personal freedom and how much can the government intervene in your life, and intervene violently, with guns drawn.
[Voiceover] Okay, we’ve talked a lot about food and medicine and lobo, but enough of that hippy talk. Everyone knows the world revolves around one thing and one thing only, milk. I mean, money.
(cash register dings)
But similar to independent farmers, small firms in the financial sector also face heavy regulations, which benefit the large players.
[Peter Schiff] I act in the securities industry, and there’s all sorts of rules and regulations that I have to abide by. The vast majority of it doesn’t protect my customers, the individual investor. And that’s not why I believe it’s there. That’s the excuse that the politicians give the voters, but the real reason is because there are very large banks and brokerage firms that don’t like small firms like mine competing with them. And so they wanna tie us up in red tape. See, they can afford to pay for the regulations. It’s the small firms that can’t. But they didn’t do it to help the investor, they did it to help the big brokerage firms that wanted protection from competition. And so that’s what happens, but, of course, the revolving door is when these guys leave Washington, they get cushy jobs at the companies they used to regulate. And, in fact, they go back and forth. They go from the industry to the government, back to the industry to the government, and what they’re really doing, is they’re pedaling their influence. They go to Washington to get clout, to get influence, to make friends, and then they sell the influence to the highest bidder when they leave.
[Voiceover] Sadly, the finance industry may be the best illustration of the intertwining of government and big business.
For example, the current Secretary of the Treasury, Jacob Lew, was reportedly given a $950,000 bonus by his former employer, Citigroup, just for taking a job at the Treasury.
(light piano music)
If you want to see the proof of fascism, all you have to do is look at four simple words, too big to fill. The larger state and corporate powers, we, in America, had a financial crisis in 2008. (snaps fingers) The whole game changed.
The banks got in trouble, they bring out Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, former CEO of the Goldman Sachs gang. It says we have to bailout the banks, they’re too big to fail.
[In November 2007, President Bush nominated Neel Kashkari to be the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Economics and Development. Kashkari authored and oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) which allowed for the bailout of Wall Street. Kashkar, nicknamed “The Bailout Czar” was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.]
[Goldman Sachs received $10 billion in bailout funds in 2008. They paid out 4.8 billion in bonuses that year.]
[Voiceover] The subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 was the biggest economic crash since the Great Depression. In the midst of the crisis, the financial media demanded stricter regulations on the financial industry.
Economist, Peter Schiff, who predicted the crisis years in advance, believes that not only was Wall Street to blame, but more importantly, it was the regulators colluding with the financial industry who were responsible for the crisis.
Well the regulators caused the crisis. It was the regulation that created the problem. I was talking about the coming housing crisis in 2002, three, four, five, six, and I was pointing out exactly how the government and the FED were creating the problem. See, the people that now said we didn’t have enough regulation, where were they back then? Why didn’t they say we needed more regulation in 2004, in 2005? The fact of the matter is it was the regulations that were in place that caused the problem.
The Federal Reserve, in order to stimulate the economy, brought interest rates down to 1%. And what that did is it enabled people to borrow money more cheaply to buy houses. In the meantime, too, the government was also guaranteeing the mortgages, and this was the real problem. The way the market regulates banks is that individuals want a safe place for their money. And so they will shop around for a safe place. Therefore, market pressures force the banks to do prudent things to attract deposits. But once the government comes in and says, “Your money is safe no matter what,” now the customer doesn’t value safety anymore because the government has guaranteed it. But the problem with the government regulation is it’s ineffective and it ends up being politicized. Because if you remember, during the housing days, as lending standards kept being lowered and lowered and lowered, it was the government that was leading the charge to lower standards. Because the voters wanted to buy more houses. Because housing was thought of as a way to get rich. And the only obstacle was the down payment, their credit score, and so it was the government that was pressuring banks, hey forget about credit scores, lower those down payments. So the banks are risky, the mortgages are risky, nobody cares about anything because the government’s trying to make everything good. The government is trying to say, “Don’t worry about risk, because if you fail, “we’re there to catch you, we’re there to prop you up.” And then when it doesn’t work, capitalism gets a bad name, as if any of this has anything to do with capitalism.
[Voiceover] Skipping ahead to 2011, we find the story of MF Global, a commodities brokerage firm headed by former Senator, turned Governor of New Jersey, Jon Corzine.
[Voiceover] It wasn’t a pleasant return to Capitol Hill for former Senator, Jon Corzine. He was subpoenaed to tell lawmakers how the company he headed, MF Global, collapsed, and what happened to $1.2 billion dollars of customers’ money.
[Jon Corzine] I simply do not know where the money is or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date.
[Voiceover] Don’t you hate it when you can’t find your keys, your phone, or a billion dollars of other peoples’ money? It’s so frustrating. But as uncomfortable as Corzine may have been, sitting there and pretending to feel bad, others felt a little more M-Fed by the situation.
[Gerald Celente] I got burned by the MF Global scandal. That’s when Jon Corzine, the former Governor, democratic Governor of New Jersey, and former Senator of New Jersey, and former head of the Goldman Sachs gang, after he did his stint with those, he was the head of MF Global, yeah MF, perfect. MF Global went into my segregated account and stole my money. Six figures, and I work hard for my money. I wasn’t speculating in the markets. He went in and stole my money.
[Voiceover] While investigating how this money was stolen out of his account without the financial regulators intervening, Mister Celente’s investigations found the telltale squeak of the revolving door.
A CFTC is the agency which regulates brokerage firms like MF Global. At the time of the MF robbery, the CFTC was headed by one, Gary Gensler, a close colleague of Corzine’s.
[President Obama] Gary’s never once let his team forget what this is all about, the American people.
Do you know what the Commodity’s Future Trading Commission did to Jon Corzine, after robbing me and thousands of others? Nothing, nothing. Gary Gensler was his lieutenant at Goldman Sachs. And he’s the head of the Commodity’s Future Trading Commission? You wanna, I mean, to say that the fox is watching the chicken coop is stupid. That’s, it’s worse than that.
[Voiceover] The MF Global collapse is an example of the alliance between regulators in big business in the financial industry.
But a more troubling phenomenon called a bail-in was recently seen in Cyprus.
[Nigel Farage MEP] Even in my diarist predictions in this parliament over the years, about the way EU bosses were behaving, never did I think that they would in a completely unprecedented manner resort to stealing money from peoples’ bank account.
(shouts of protest)
[Mike Maloney, Monetary Historian] Recently in Cyprus, the banks had been irresponsible and it was the public, all of the depositors, that paid the price, and they called it a bail-in to make it sound different from a bailout.
[Jeff Berwick, Entrepreneur & Freedom Fighter] What happened was many of the banks in Cyprus bought a lot of Greek government debt. And as you know, over the last few years, Greek government debt has all but collapsed. So that made the Cyprus banks all but insolvent. And they went, just like always, the big banks went with the government and said, “Hey, we’re broke. Can you help us out and steal money for us?” And that’s what they did. They just said, “Take 50% of anyone over $100,000. Take 50% of all their money, just take it.”
Just the term, bail-in, is a lie. This is something that is a marketing tool to basically cover up a theft.
A bailout, they whip up currency and they give it to the banks, and then the public eventually pays for that through a tax called inflation. Because there’s now more currency in existence, a bail-in, they skipped the part of creating currency and they just take it from the depositors. But basically the banks win at the public’s expense either way.
[Voiceover] But that was Cyprus, not the US. There’s just no way the citizens of North America would allow something as underhanded as a bail-in.
Canada actually put in their 2013 budget a bail-in clause, the exact same thing. They said if the Canadian banks have problems, that they can just take it from Canadian citizens. The US has been talking about it, as well. The governments allow these banks to do these kind of things.
Cyprus was the model to see if they could get away with it. They got away with it, and so, now it’s proven successful so it is a solution they can use in the future.
[Voiceover] In hindsight, it seems obvious that the financial sector would be rife with corruption and backdealing. Finance, education, the prison system, the military industrial complex. Almost every industry in which there is money to be made, has been effected by the revolving door. Even relatively new agencies are subject to its spin. If you need proof, try to take some nail clippers onto a domestic flight.
(plane engine roars)
When you go to the airport, the TS agents, you know, wanna go out and they wanna invade your privacy, they wanna look through your bags, they wanna do all of this stuff. And you don’t have the option to say no. Once you get in line, you can’t get out.
Now, what is the point of the entire TSA system? It’s security theater. It’s to make people feel scared, not to make people feel safe. Because the more they can actually make people feel scared, the more they can actually take a little bit of their rights away all the time, and constantly remind them that they need the government to make sure that their safety is well taken care of.
[Voiceover] The body scanners that stop you from taking dangerous objects, like bottles of water, onto planes were installed due to TSA regulations. As head of the Department of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, required every airport in the country have those scanners installed. For our safety, of course.
[Michael Chertoff] This technology allows us to detect any item concealed on a person’s body, including molded plastic hidden under clothing.
[Voiceover] The scanners themselves are built and installed by a company called Rapiscan. Can you guess who worked as a consultant for Rapiscan after leaving Homeland Security?
[Gerald Celente] Oh yeah, I remember, let me see. Chir, Chirkoff, Jerkoff, Chirkoff, somebody Jerkoff Chirkoff, he was the head of the Homeland Security right after the underpants bomber. Right after that happened, Chirkoff, Jerkoff, whatever his name is, he appeared on all the national media.
“We have to get them X-ray machines in there.”
Rapiscan, Rapidscan, somebody’s scan, this name of the company. You know, they X-ray ya. They X-ray ya.
Oh, son of a gun. Wow. Chirkoff is a consultant for that company after he left Homeland Security.
(playful music)
[Voiceover] Okay, let’s get this straight. GMOs safe, raw milk unsafe, preparing poultry in the open air is unsanitary, but drugs that cause heart attacks are fine. Blasting a joint will make you wanna kill. Getting X-rayed at the airport is vital to national security, and stealing from your customers is okay, provided you do it a billion dollars at a time.
With regulatory agencies so deeply entangled with big business, it’s almost impossible to know whether the rules we live by are there for our safety or someone else’s financial benefit. Whatever the reason, the end result is our lives are now so heavily manipulated by the desires of others, and our choices are becoming more and more limited.
[Peter Schiff] That’s what government regulation is all about. It’s all about limiting your choices. The government wants to make those choices for you. They wanna take away your freedom to choose, the choices that you make, the types of food that you eat, right. All of this is determined for you by the government.
And why can’t we make choices? Alright, that’s what freedom is about. The politicians think that, hey, it’s important that we all vote. They can trust us to vote, but they can’t trust us to make these basic decisions about whether we should buy a house, or whether we should rent a house. Or should we use this broker or that broker, or should I put on my seatbelt, or should I wear a helmet, or should I smoke cigarettes, or, you know, all these choices need to be made by the government, but somehow we’re smart enough to vote, but we’re too dumb to do just about anything else.
[Voiceover] This over-regulation has implications other than just limiting our choices. By giving government agencies the authority to regulate our lives, even in the name of protection, it has led to an expansion of government power at the expense of individual freedoms. What’s the old saying, give them an inch, and they’ll take your money, life, and favorite dairy products? Something like that.
The more laws there are, the more rules and regulations there are, the more taxes there are, the less freedom you have. I mean, that’s what freedom is. It’s freedom from government. So when people are free, it means that they do what they want, they don’t have to do what the government tells them.
Career bureaucrats are usually dedicated, pro-regulatory people. They are fans of state paternalism. A government making individual choices, and the result of that is to really deprive individuals of sovereignty. It makes individuals mere functionaries of the state, rather than people who can pursue their own self-interest and enjoy the benefits and blessings of liberty.
[Joel Salatin] It really does come down to, who owns me? Who owns the individual? You can’t have a system that denies choice, trying to protect us from the risk of bad choice. And preserve the freedom to make good choices. That’s the problem. You can’t have it both ways. Freedom requires risk.
[Voiceover] Should I wear a seatbelt? Is this bank a safe place to keep my money? Do I need insurance? We’re all so busy with our daily lives that making important decisions can become overwhelmingly daunting. A lot of people prefer the freedom from making choices. Even if it means the choices being made for them aren’t the best.
[Jonathan Emord] The idea that government should make our choices for us, is one that a lot of people prefer, rather than to make their own choices. But once the point is reached, like in the form of Soviet Union, when choices are made for you by the government to such an extent that it destroys the economy, that it destroys free agency, that it renders everyone a servant, and the state a master. Then at some point, individuals come in large numbers to the conclusion that they’re not getting what they were promised, that they are over-taxed, they’re over-regulated, that their choices are limited, the paternalism is disgusting, it’s caused me heartache and I’m going to reject it. I want my freedom.
[Voiceover] Until that point is reached, most people will be content with their comfortable lives and the choices still available to them.
The hardworking people don’t have time to watch or hear what’s going on. They’re working 24/7, they’re tryin’ to make ends meat.
So, what does America watch? Hey, you know, Kim Kardashian’s pregnant, she’s gonna have a kid real soon.
The media makes sure we don’t dwell very long on any really serious issue. We’ve all seen the phenomenon where there’s something very serious that comes up involving the serious aspects of what’s going on in the world. And it gets on the news for a very brief period of time.
And all of a sudden, now that’s been switched off and we’re soon distracted with Soapbox Operas, and Dancing with the Stars, and all kinds of things that are entertaining, and I’m not saying anything against them, but it’s not as serious as the lack of everybody’s freedom through a new amendment to the Patriot Act, for example.
[Voiceover] The media may try their best to give us a fair and balanced opinion of world events, but there are now other avenues available for those seeking unfiltered news.
[Parker Higging, Freedom of Speech Activist] The way that the net and the web were built involves a lot of decentralization. It moves power into the hands of the peoples sending and receiving messages, as opposed to the people in the middle that are handing them off. And that is a scary prospect for entrenched stakeholders.
Any alternative media, other than the, the corporate media that is so rigidly controlled, is a threat. The internet is certainly a threat, because the internet gives almost anyone access to the world. So, now, are we surprised when the political figures who don’t like that are constantly worried about how can we stop this?
Well, the formula has been tried and true, and it’s always worked. Just tell the people that there’s a threat out there that only the government can control. I mean, there’s a threat of child pornography, or crime, or terrorism, or cyber-terrorism, or something.
“We have to control the internet for your good, folks. Otherwise you’re gonna have a big problem.”
That’s why they’re working around the clock to try and scare people into thinking that the internet must be controlled by our fine, trustworthy political figures. They wanna be the ones that control the internet and tell the world what is proper and what is improper.
[Parker Higging] If you look at the history of communications media, people said, “With cable television, “we’ll finally be free of centralization and with the telegram, we’ll finally be free of centralization.” And really, the worse case scenario would be if we saw that history just repeat itself exactly. If we saw this amazing decentralized distribution method, the most effective one ever produced in the history of humanity. If we saw it captured by a handful of centralized stakeholders. And them controlling and surveiling the communications that go through it.
(burger sizzles)
[Voiceover] Good things, unlike processed cheese, never last.
In an attempt to regulate yet another slice of our lives, legislative bills are already in the works to try and control the internet. But rather than wait for pesky red tape, like passing laws, the government has been proactive in trying to censor the internet, for our safety, of course. For example, with the help of their good buddies in big finance, they were almost able to shut down the controversial website, WikiLeaks.
[Parker Higging] Think what you will about WikiLeaks, the point is that members of the government were able to just speak with payment processors and create this blockade and say, “You cannot transfer money to this organization.” And it’s not much of a leap to say, “Wait, hold on.” The government, or in some cases companies, can decide that nobody can do business with these people, or that nobody can see what these people are publishing? That’s obviously a problem in our, in our tradition of free speech.
[Voiceover] WikiLeaks was able to survive, thanks mostly to a very new concept. Decentralized money.
Unlike most currencies in the world, which are created and regulated by central banks, decentralized currency, such as Bitcoin, is created by the people. And as such, is almost as impossible to control.
[Trace Mayer, Monetary Scientist & Bitcoin Entrepreneur] Bitcoin’s a decentralized peer to peer currency. It’s actually an internet protocol, kind of like SMTP, that’s how you send emails. Well, it’s money over internet protocol. It’s how we can send money over the internet, and we can use it to transfer value without having a middleman. That means we don’t need a bank or a money transmitter between us, someone like Western Union. We can just send money like we send an email.
[Jeff Berwick, Entrepreneur & Freedom Fighter] Bitcoin’s, I’m incredibly excited about it, because it’s the first free market private money that’s also a technological money, it’s electronic currency. The great thing about it is it’s not controlled by a central bank, it’s not controlled by anyone. It’s actually really the people’s money. So it gives a lot of freedom.
[Trace Mayer] Why do we have this supply of money and the cost of money or interest rates set by some bureaucrats 3,000 miles away in Washington, D.C.? How efficient is that for our economy? Because interest rates that regulate production over time, and they regulate all the production within the economy. You know, whether we should save or whether we should build something. Bitcoin liberates that interest rate, because it’s a censorship resistant currency. So we don’t have to use their money system anymore.
[Voiceover] Decentralized currencies like Bitcoin offer an alternative to the highly regulated and controlled national currencies of the world. But as with the government’s push to regulate the internet, attempts to regulate the purchase of Bitcoin have already been seen.
[Jeff Berwick] I recently tried to start up a Bitcoin ATM. I hired some lawyers in the US and they told me, “You’re under five different regulators in the US, “you’re under banking, finance, money, even telecommunications ’cause we’re using the internet.” And we looked into the total cost just to start a Bitcoin ATM, a very basic product, no less than 25 million dollars, because we need all kinds of insurance bonds, there’s a money transmitter. This is how they keep competition out, ’cause they don’t want competition.
[Voiceover] These attempts to control increasing amounts of our personal lives, have some people very concerned. And with each successive law or regulation, the temptation to opt out entirely becomes more and more appealing.
There are some people that are abandoning ship. They see the ship is sinking, they don’t know whether it’s gone sink for sure, or stay afloat somehow. They don’t wanna stay around to find out. They’re just leaving while the getting’s good. Now, I’m not gonna tell somebody not to leave, ’cause I don’t know for sure how bad it may or may not get.
[Voiceover] Jeff Berwick is someone who has already decided to opt out. To this end, he formed a expat community in Chile, hoping to create a haven for freedom-loving people who can no longer tolerate the government encroachment in their personal affairs.
[Jeff Berwick] We started this community because we’ve really recognized that a lot of people around the world want to get out of these western countries.
Rising taxation, rising regulation, people are getting put in jail in the US all the time for nothing, victimless crimes. People have done nothing, except for maybe drink raw milk, or have some plants in their pocket, called marijuana.
What we’re trying to attract and what we’ve been attracting is more freedom-minded people. Everyone has their own personal story, sometimes it’s as simple as someone’s been pulled over like 10 times in a month and been searched. I’ve seen people who’ve had their entire businesses taken away through regulation and fascism in the US.
There was one doctor who came down recently. He had a practice in the US, he had almost 100% cure cancer rate within one month. And he had about 30 swat team come in one day and everything taken by the government.
And so many people are just had enough of being pushed around, stolen, beaten, put in cages for nothing, to have most of their money taken away, and even sometimes their entire livelihood taken away.
[Voiceover] Not all of us can just pack up our lives and move to Chile. So what practical options are left?
Identifying the root of the problem is a good place to start.
[G. Edward Griffin] The issue is there’s this merger of what would appear to be private enterprise and government. And the only way to break it is to restrict the power of the state. Once you give the state the power, the authority over our lives in all these areas, then there’s no stopping it because then the individuals who are in those fields are providing medical services, money, monetary services, banking services, power, and gas, and oil, and all these services, they will gravitate to the government, buy off the politicians, make the mergers, pass the laws to their best interest, and the average, you know, the gum-chewing public thinks, “Oh, well, isn’t that nice, well we voted for these guys “so I guess it’s in our best interest.” They don’t get it. If you take all the temptation, all the power away from political office, the only people who will go into it will be those who wanna serve their country. ‘Cause there’s no way to steal anything anymore.
[Mike Maloney] The only idea that I have, as far as trying to make government smaller, is that you, in the United States, we’ve got the Constitution, but every government could pass some sort of amendment to their Constitution or whatever, that says that for every law, Act, Code, or regulation that these screwballs wanna pass, that they’ve gotta find two old laws, Codes, Acts, or regulations that they have to repeal. That’s the only way that I can think of making government smaller, and the same thing goes for all of the agencies. If they wanna open up some other agency or department, they’ve gotta close two.
[Voiceover] Individual freedom is what defines humanity. Although, laws and regulations can make us feel safe from the threats we may face. All the safety in the world means nothing without the freedom to live as you choose.
[Jonathan Emord] Freedom is the most important and indispensable characteristic of mankind. We can be induced by promises from government to depart from our liberty, but there’s nothing more profound for an individual than when they are denied something they very much need. Because they made a decision earlier on to part with their freedom.
And so, when you’re terminally ill, and you suddenly discover that you can only have access to FDA approved treatments for your disease. And you’re told by the doctors treating you that there is no drug to treat your condition. And then, to survive, you’re going to have to find something else, and you discover that your desire and your freedom of choice to attain that end are blocked by the Food and Drug Administration. And so, when you need your freedom the most, it’s been taken away from you.
When you’ve been in a family that has had a milk farm for 300 years or more, and suddenly federal agents come in and they do a raid on your farm as if you were a drug kingpin engaged in international drug sales, and you’re only selling milk. And then you realize your whole life has been turned upside down.
Or you are a small businessman who discovers that just to operate a gas station, you have to comply with EPA regulations that will cost you more than it will to run the gas station and profit. Or you find out that you wanna have a food establishment, a restaurant. And you discover that federal, and state, and local regulations effecting your food establishment are so great, that you have to lawyers, and you have to have accountants, and you have to have individual, specially trained to comply, and you have to fill out all these forms, and you have to pay all these fees, and you have to get separate licenses just to be in the business of reselling food others have already manufactured and put in the marketplace. It’s the end of liberty.
How you regain freedom is a huge question.
The individual knows that he’s or she’s alive.
The individual knows that he or she is free to choose a future and a life, if they want. We either have free societies or we don’t.
There’s such a thing as individual freedom or there isn’t. That is the bottom line.
If you want to live a life, a real life, then freedom must exist.
So people have to step up to the plate whenever they see individual freedom threatened along any channel of human activity. That’s where you start from.
When I was growing up, New York was an ugly, ugly city, where there’s violence in the streets all the time. And the way that they cleaned it up was by going and getting people to go out and say, “No more.” Well that worked to stop the gangs, the same thing works when you get honest people who engage in government. And maybe we can stop the government gangs from sitting there and dictating the terms of our lives and preventing us from having the freedom and liberty, which we were guaranteed in an open democracy.
[Voiceover] We are all individuals. We have the ability to think, to decide, and most importantly, to be heard.
(milk splashes)
It may be time to start crying over spilled milk.
Crap, I just spilled this. This is not gonna be good.
Boy, I just saw those pictures of Kim Kardashian pregnant. I said, “Man, how could a chick like that, “why does everybody wanna look at her?” Ya know, (chuckles) yeah, she’s a star.
Well, ah, you don’t want him in there? Go down, go downstairs there, Gepetto.
No, I don’t know where you can get any weed. (laughs) That’s a lie. (laughs) That’s a blatant lie, too. No, no more today.
(playful music)
* * *
In an era where regulations and red tape rule every industry, where lobby groups and big business wield more influence than ever before, our daily choices have become increasingly limited. And with all our options so deliberately handpicked, are we really making a choice at all? Freedom From Choice is a feature-length documentary examining the current state of life and personal choice in America today. Experts from many different fields offer a frank and startling look at the hidden limitations in our daily lives. Focusing on key areas such as food, medicine, finance, and media, Freedom From Choice provides viewers with a glimpse at the myriad of ways their lives are being dictated, and tells us who stands to gain. Freedom From Choice is a film not about the choices we make, but rather the choices that are being made for us.
