Av3r@ge J0e

Husband, father, engineer, investor, entrepreneur.

[Owen @Owennfa]

In 2014, the IRS emptied Lyndon McLellan's entire bank account.

**$107,702.66.** Every dollar his family had.

His crime? None. He was never charged with anything.

Lyndon was a hardworking man who ran a small convenience store the L&M Convenience Mart in rural North Carolina. He'd built it up over years.

His "offense": he deposited his cash earnings in amounts under $10,000.

That's it. That was the entire case.

There's a law meant to catch drug dealers and money launderers who split deposits to avoid the $10,000 reporting rule. It's called "structuring."

The IRS didn't need to prove he was a criminal. They didn't need to charge him. Under civil asset forfeiture, they just **took the money** and forced HIM to prove his innocence.

The lawsuit was literally titled: *United States of America v. $107,702.66 in United States Currency.*

The government sued his money.

A federal watchdog later found that in **91% of these cases, the money was completely legal.** The IRS did this to hundreds of innocent people between 2012 and 2015 restaurant owners, jewelers, gas station owners, ordinary business people. Seized over **$17 million** from people who did nothing wrong.

Lyndon eventually got his money back but only after a public fight with the Institute for Justice.

Then he asked the government to cover the interest and the accounting and legal fees the ordeal cost him.

They said no.

He did everything right. Worked seven days a week. Ran an honest business.

And the government took everything he had — legally — without ever accusing him of a crime.

That's not a tax system. That's state-sanctioned robbery.

[Av3r@ge J0e @TheAv3rageJ0e]

Cool!

[Adam | Faithful Messenger @Adam_FaithfulM]

For centuries, skeptics pointed to Pontius Pilate as a problem. The Roman governor who condemned Jesus, named in all four Gospels, appeared nowhere in the archaeological record. No inscription, no monument, no physical trace. Some scholars suggested the Gospel writers had invented him, or at least inflated a minor figure into a Roman official who never held that office.

Then in 1961, an Italian archaeological team was excavating the ruins of an ancient theater in Caesarea Maritima, the coastal city that served as the Roman administrative capital of Judea. Reused as a step in a later structure, face down and nearly worn away, they turned over a limestone block. Carved into it was a dedication. The Latin was partly damaged, but four words survived clearly enough: Pontius Pilate, Prefect of Judea.

Consider what that block establishes. It confirms not only that Pilate existed, but that his exact title was correct. For years critics had claimed the Gospels used the wrong rank for him. The stone settled it. He was prefect, precisely as a governor of that period and province would have been. The men who wrote the Gospels knew the political structure of first-century Judea from the inside.

This is the pattern that repeats again and again. A biblical name is dismissed as legend. Time passes. The ground yields up the evidence, and the record proves accurate down to the title on an official Roman inscription.

To the world, the Gospels are pious stories, loose with facts, written long after the events by people who could not have known the details. But the stone from Caesarea bears the name of the very man who washed his hands and handed Jesus over to be crucified. He was real. The trial was real. The cross was real.

The God who preserved that testimony in stone has preserved His whole Word for you. It is trustworthy in the smallest detail. Build your life on it. Stake your soul on it. It will not fail you.

Jesus stood before Pilate so that you could stand before God, forgiven.

Thank You, Jesus.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Scientists have created one of the most detailed 3D reconstructions of a human cell (eukaryotic cell) ever produced.

This groundbreaking model, often termed a "Cellular Landscape Cross-Section Through a Eukaryotic Cell," combines data from X-ray tomography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and cryo-electron microscopy to map molecular structures in extreme detail.

[Mike Netter @nettermike]

Dont let go of the family at the center of yesterday's Supreme Court property tax ruling.

In 1991, Scott Pung bought a small three-bedroom home on half an acre for his wife and two children. It was their family home. When Scott died in 2004, his wife stayed there. When she died in 2008, their son and his family stayed. Same home, same family, more than two decades.

The whole time, it was their primary residence, taxed at the lower rate Michigan gives a family home. Then in 2010 an assessor decided, wrongly, that they should be taxed as if it were a second home. The family took it to court and won. The tribunal ruled they did not owe it.

The assessor's response, in her own words about the judge who ruled for the family: "I don't care what he says." She imposed the tax again. She left it off the original bill and added it later. When the family came in to pay, they brought a driver's license to prove it was their home, and paid what they actually owed.

It did not matter. Over roughly $2,242 that they did not owe and had already beaten in court, the county foreclosed. A trial court tried to give the home back over a notice failure. The county appealed to stop that. In 2018, after 27 years, the family permanently lost the home Scott Pung bought in 1991.

This is what the property tax can do. Not in theory. To a real family, over a bill that was never owed, because one official decided she did not care what the court said. And the Supreme Court said the Constitution will not make that family whole.

I reached out to the Pung family, and they gave me their blessing to share their story and this photo. My thanks to them, and my respect for the fight they carried all the way to the highest court in the land. It will help families they will never meet.

This is exactly why we are working to end the tax that made it possible.

Photo of Marc and Tia Pung at the U.S. Supreme Court, shared with their permission.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

The largest and sharpest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy — otherwise known as M31.

It is the biggest Hubble image ever released and shows over 100 million stars, thousands of star clusters in a section of the galaxy’s disc stretching across over 40 000 light-years.

[Derrick Evans @DerrickEvans4WV]

This is INSANE.

AIPAC controls 76% of the members of Congress, regardless of which party they belong to.

There’s def a uniparty, but it looks much different than I could have ever imagined.

I NEVER looked or paid attention to any of this until they took out Thomas Massie.

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

Why are Mag 7s suddenly scrambling to sell expensive equity? Because as we reported a month ago, the debt channel has shut (except for occasional SPVs). Good lucking funding $5 trillion in capex

[Dave Collum @DavidBCollum]

Read this and, if necessary, read it again. The GFC is gonna look like a Garden Party compared to what is coming if this analysis is correct because it is only part of the story...

https://t.co/0TCEmNeX8x

[Senator Rand Paul @SenRandPaul]

It’s Friday. Another week gone, and another 40 million of your hard earned tax dollars were sent to the Taliban.

In fact government does this every week.

Pass the no Tax Dollars for Terrorist Act, and end this humiliation ritual.

[Mario Zelaya @mario4thenorth]

A biophysics grad was just detained under BC's Mental Health Act.

All based on a psychiatrist's opinion after observing him in a cafe.

He looked at him & said “I’m certifying you”

THAT’S ALL IT TOOK.

No warrant.

No on scene evaluation.

No psych evaluation.

No paperwork shown.

No chance to comply voluntarily.

Just because a psychiatrist saw him in a cafe.

Meanwhile, the same city has a documented drug addicts, where one person, has been
apprehended 79 times and is still on the street.

The government can grab a credentialed researcher off the road in 20 minutes but it can't keep a chronic offender out of the same intersection for more than a week?

What a joke.

[Merlijn The Trader @MerlijnTrader]

THE FED IS ABOUT TO CUT WHILE THE ECONOMY BOOMS.

🇺🇸 New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh: AI is "structurally disinflationary." Per his WSJ op-ed.

Same pattern. Different decade.

1995: Greenspan saw the productivity boom. Let the economy run hot. Cut rates anyway.
Result: 7 years of risk-on. Nasdaq up 1,132%.

Musk, Altman, Bezos, Druckenmiller all agree: AI is deflationary.

Warsh just took the chair. June 16: his first FOMC.

The next few years are going to be insane.

[Ælþemplær @Aelthemplaer]

It is a little odd that a mid term got more votes than the national election

[Av3r@ge J0e @TheAv3rageJ0e]

@MagsDontDoThat @jessebday @RealRickRule He said a few months ago he was pivoting to silver miners instead of physical silver. The margins if silver stays constant is more alluring than the potential upside on the metal.

[Otavio (Tavi) Costa @TaviCosta]

Fascinating chart.

Smart money already sees where this is headed.

Wait until the US is forced to step in and contain surging yields through some form of yield curve control.

A weaker dollar alongside artificially suppressed yields creates the perfect environment for emerging markets to significantly outperform US equities.

https://t.co/WcXE3mH8RS

[Wide Awake Media @wideawake_media]

In 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent the President of the United States a formal proposal to commit acts of terrorism against American citizens and blame them on Cuba.

This isn't a "conspiracy theory". It was an official government document. Here's what it said.

THREAD 🧵

[Peak Financial Investing @PeakFinInv]

The free cash flows of the Big 5 (Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, and Oracle) have gone negative. If I see the free cash flow of a company dive like that, I will sell that stock every time.

Full report: https://t.co/G8F5tFYc9k

[Charlie Bilello @charliebilello]

The 16% gain in the S&P 500 over the last 6 weeks is the 11th biggest 6-week gain for the index since 1950.

What's unique about this rally?

It's the only example in the top 20 that did not occur either during a bear market or soon after a bear market low.

[The Kobeissi Letter @KobeissiLetter]

Americans have never been more worried about the economy:

The Consumer Sentiment Index fell -1.7 points in May, to 48.2, an all-time low.

This comes as current conditions dropped -4.7 points, to 47.8, also a record low.

Furthermore, the perceived financial situation among Americans declined to the lowest since 2009.

As a result, the Consumer Sentiment Index is now -13% below the 2008 Financial Crisis low.

By comparison, during the 1980s recession, this metric bottomed at ~52.0 points.

Consumer sentiment is at crisis levels.