who's your nanny?

The "Southern Avenger" on Lincoln

Hat tip to Thomas DiLorenzo at the LRC blog.

Keep Your Cell Phone Off When Driving in VA (or MD or DC)

At least, that's what I think you should do to avoid being pulled over by the police. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine signed into a bill banning texting while driving. Maryland and Washington, DC, already have such bans (no surprise in either case, really). The Examiner reports that

Under Virginia’s ban, which goes into effect July 1, police can’t pull a driver over just for text messaging but instead need a more serious primary offense to justify the stop.

If you believe this, immediately send me your name, address, and social security number. I have some relatives in Nigeria who need someone to hold a large sum of money in their bank accounts so that the Nigerian government will not confiscate their wealth. I'll pay you a generous fee for your services.

This law simply gives our "protectors" more probable cause to keep "protecting" us. If a police officer sees you checking your phone for any reason, including just checking the time, be assured that you will be pulled over and cited for texting while driving. I would predict that the likelihood of being pulled over would increase at night since a police officer can see the cell phone light and assume that you must be doing something with your cell phone. That's good enough to pull you over.

If you disagree with the ticket, to whom can you turn for justice? To a judge who is paid by the same government as the police officer. And what will the judge rule? Of course, you were texting while driving. Police officers are upstanding individuals who would never lie, unlike you serfs whom we must protect. Furthermore, the judge would say, the government would never pass legislation simply to collect more revenue from the public. Clearly these laws are only for your protection.

'Oprah Rich' You Ain't

If you only make $250,000 a year, especially after King Barack and his vassals are finished with you.

Paul Craig Roberts breaks down the differences between the truly wealthy and those in the middle class, who will bear the greatest burden when it comes to the Obamanator's taxes.

You Might Be a Terrorist If...

You read this blog. At least that what the Missouri Information Analysis Center originally said before rescinding the report thanks to the outrage it generated among conservatives. If you have not read the MIAC report, I highly recommend it. You can sum up the report as follows, "A terrorists is anyone who does not like the US government." Some of the excerpts are simultaneously laughable and scary:

"There is a great deal of anger towards the Federal Reverse System and all forms of tax collection." Well, there are people who actually do not like being ripped off and protest this. Who knew?

 

"Many militia organizations feel that the U.S. government will fall due to economic or racial issues..." Apparently these law enforcement officials believe that we can live off of fiat money and a heavily regulated economy indefinitely.

 

"They believe that during the chaotic fall of the government, moves will be made to install Martial Law, confiscate firearms, and imprison many citizens."  Perhaps this is because we have numerous examples of our government enacting such measures in our history.

 

"Statements made by President Elect Obama and his chief of staff have led extremists to fear the creation of a Civilian Defense Force. This theory requires all citizens between the age of 18 and 25 to be forced to attend three months of mandatory training." Apparently resistance to slavery is now considered "terrorist activity." A bit ironic given that Obama is our first African-American president.

 

In the Ideologies section:

"Sovereign Citizen: Individuals that see themselves as Sovereign Citizens question the legitimacy of the federal government. They argue that the government has gotten away from the intent of the Constitution and is thus not valid." Those inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence are SO overrated. Don't these people know that the intent of the Constitution was to establish a strong, centralized State?

 

In the Common Militia Symbols section:

"Anti-Government Propaganda-Militia members commonly display picture, cartoons, bumper stickers that contain anti-government rhetoric. Most of this material will depict the FRS, IRS, FBI, ATF, CIA, UN, Law Enforcement, and the 'The New World Order' in a derogatory manor." Do you think the person who wrote this picked up on the fact that he criticized militia members for believing in a "One World Government" conspiracy yet included the "UN" among the Federal Reserve System (FRS), IRS, FBI, ATF, and CIA in this passage on "Anti-Government Propaganda"? Yeah, I doubt it, too.

 

Clearly all those ideas about inalienable rights, government by the consent of the governed, the right and duty to alter or abolish a government which becomes destructive of protecting life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you know, the ideas which led to secession from the British empire, are outdated. Control of the individual by the State is now the new "black".

 

It should be clear to anyone who thinks that the radical ideology of freedom which led to the American Revolution was a good idea that the our government does not share our sentiments. As Ms. Becky Akers observes,

Many of the principles MIAC’s report denounced are the ideals to which the Founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Which makes Thomas Jefferson, the "Indians" at Boston’s Tea Party, Francis Marion, Nathan Hale, the farmers and shopkeepers who starved at Valley Forge, Sam Adams and George Washington as suspect in MIAC’s eyes as Americans today who’d rather die on their feet than live on their knees.

That pretty much sums it up and is why I believe that hatred of the State is the most patriotic disposition you can have. States do not exist to protect life, liberty, and property. All States function as a relatively peaceful mechanism for robbery. This robbery is relatively peaceful in that States generally do not engage in hot wars against its subjects. In a democratic State, the subjects believe that through voting and petitioning they can exercise some say in how the State treats them. However, the robbery continues apace as it always will because that is what the State was designed to do. The State cannot function any other way.

For all of the post-9-11 propaganda that claimed the terrorists hate us for our freedom, remember that no entity hates us more for our freedom than our own government.

"Sorry, no exceptions to a DWI roadblock"

For a year and a half I've been sitting on a heart-wrenching story from my buddy Kevin Pritchard, who runs the outstanding sports blog BfloBlog, because I've been waiting for an opportune time to share it.

Given that NFL running back Ryan Moats's recent encounter with a Dallas asphalt fascist traffic cop is still fresh in people's minds, I figured now would be an appropriate time to relay an unfortunate experience Kevin shared with me back in August 2007, after one of Florida's esteemed roadway regulators prevented him and his mom from getting to the hospital as they raced to be with Kevin's father before he passed away.

Kevin's letter follows in its entirety:

Hey, I read your piece on the 4th of July incident.  I think I can top it.

It goes back to when my dad passed away in March.

I made it down to Florida before he died, and stayed at the hospital for quite awhile.  Around 8:00, his nurse told us there wasn't much more we could do, we were welcome to stay, and that he had a chance to make it through the night, but there was a chance he would die as well.  And when he went it would be bloody and violent as he would hemorrage blood through his nose and mouth.

Well, I didn't want Mom to see that, so we went back to her place.

We got a call around 11:00 saying he would basically be dead in a few minutes.

We hopped in the car, got over the bridge, and got stuck in a DWI checkpoint.  We waited, and waited, while my dad lie dying in a hospital five minutes away.

The sheriff's deputy we got when we finally pulled up couldn't have been more than 25 yrs. old.  "License, registration, proof of insurance."

As I handed what I could find to him (it was my dad's car, he carried the registration, and he wasn't around to ask the location), I started to explain:

"Deputy, the hospital just called and my dad is dying.  I need to get my mom there right away."

"Sorry, no exceptions to a DWI roadblock."

Deep breath...

"Is this a 2006 Sebring?" as he looked at the insurance.

"Yes.  Er, no.  It's a Lincoln.  That's my mom's card.  Look, deputy, the hospital called about ten minutes ago and said he would be gone very quickly." 

Looks at my ID.  "Where's the registration for this vehicle?"

"Deputy, I don't know...It's my dad's car...he's dying...we just need to get to the hospital."

Finally, Mom loses it:  "My husband is dying you asshole!"

Deputy:  (Pauses) "Go ahead, sir."

No good luck.  No sorry for your loss.  Just waved the flashlight.

Needless to say, we were too late.  The odds were slim we would have made it anyway, nor would we have wanted to see it.  But the stress it added, especially for my mom, was almost unbearable.

Just another example of how the government's here to help.

Greener Grass

It's important in life to reach out, to strive for greater achievements, to go for that greener grass that is on the other side of the fence. But one must also be careful. Sometimes you can reach too far.

   

But when you find yourself over-extended and you're stuck in a situation that you can't get out of, there is one thing you should always remember:

 

Your government is here to help.

(Thanks to Paul C.)

Cop Who Detained Football Player Has History...

of being a bit zealous at enforcing the law. Officer Robert Powell who detained Houston Texans running back Ryan Moats in the parking lot of the hospital where his mother-in-law was dying also arrested former Dallas Cowboys linebacker Zach Thomas's wife. On July 27, 2008, Maritza Thomas was pulled over for making an illegal U-Turn. Yahoo! Sports reports that she "was issued five tickets by Powell, four of which were later dismissed. Thomas was handcuffed, placed in the back of a police cruiser, spent about three hours in the Dallas County Jail and was threatened with the possibility of spending the night behind bars."

Mr. Thomas knows that what happened to his wife is not the same type of violation that Mr. Moats was subjected to. Nevertheless, he stated, "But we wanted to tell our story, not knowing how many others have been affected by Officer Powell. We know the vast majority of the Dallas police force are good and professional people, but this guy just seems excessive."

As Trevor pointed out today and as I have pointed out in the past, as long as the State is the ultimate judge of conflicts involving itself, the State may provoke conflict and then rule in its own favor. Officer Powell could use excessive force if he deemed Mrs. Thomas was a threat. However, given that the definition of threat is purely the decision of the officer involved, the threat could be a real threat in which a driver pulls out a weapon or the threat could simply be a person who wishes to be treated like a human being.

The Stormtroopers Own Your Castle

Government invaders costumed in paramilitary gear broke into the home of Rita Patterson and William Hanavan on Saturday looking for a drug suspect and narcotics, reports The Buffalo News. Police left the premises without finding any drugs or arresting anyone, but not before terrorizing an innocent family and executing their two dogs "for no reason at all," said 68-year-old Daniel Patterson, who lives with his daughter.

Rita Patterson said she was cooking dinner in the kitchen when she heard loud noises at the side door. Hanavan was upstairs taking a nap, and at first she thought he may have fallen out of bed.

Before she knew what was happening, police wearing masks and helmets and carrying automatic weapons had broken through the door. They tied her hands with a zip tie and put her on the floor.

Her father pleaded with police not to shoot the dogs, but they wouldn’t allow him to grab the dogs and put them in another room, Patterson said.

One of the officers started firing a shotgun at the two dogs, one a pit bull and the other a pit bull-boxer mix.

One of the dogs was shot three times: once in the throat, once in the back and the last time in the leg while trying to run away, Rita Patterson said.

The other dog was cowering behind a table. Neither was a threat to the police, the residents said.

This atrocious behavior is the police state personified. The state's armed thugs have a legal right to trespass on our property brandishing weapons the rest of us aren't even allowed to own, use them in manners that would get private citizens thrown in jail, and are under no obligation to insure their information is even accurate before engaging in tactics that put the lives of law-abiding citizens at risk.

As abhorrent as it was that this family's pets were killed before their eyes, just imagine what might have happened had Hanavan or the Pattersons had the audacity to defend their home and dogs from these terrorists. One unfortunately need not engage in much speculation given that the precedent has already been set.

In the 1995 case Wilson v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment required police to knock and announce themselves before entering a private home -- a decision intended to protect not only innocent suspects but also police, who could be mistaken by homeowners for criminal intruders (those not protected by government-issued guns and badges, that is). However, the exceptions the court allowed have set into motion widespread and unbridled assaults on our civil liberties that have manifested themselves in the "war on substances the state would rather you not ingest." As Radley Balko explained in Slate Magazine:

But Wilson didn't eliminate no-knocks. In [its] decision, the court recognized three broad exceptions, called "exigent circumstances," to the announcement requirement. The most pertinent of these state that if police believe announcing themselves before entering would present a threat to officer safety, or if they believe a suspect is particularly likely to destroy evidence, they may enter a home without first announcing their presence.

A legal no-knock raid, then, can happen in one of two ways. Police can make the case for exigent circumstances to a judge, who then issues a no-knock warrant; or police can determine at the scene that the exigent circumstances exist and make the call for a no-knock raid on the spot. In the latter case, courts will determine after the fact if the raid was legal.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me that allowing police to determine for themselves the circumstances justifying no-knock entry essentially invalidates any requirement to approach a judge beforehand. After all, the state is the ultimate judge in conflicts involving itself, so the chances that it will rule against itself are between slim and none.

Balko's findings tend to support this assertion:

In the real world, the exigent-circumstances exceptions have been so broadly interpreted since Wilson, they've overwhelmed the rule. No-knock raids have been justified on the flimsiest of reasons, including that the suspect was a licensed, registered gun owner (NRA, take note!), or that the mere presence of indoor plumbing could be enough to trigger the "destruction of evidence" exception.

In fact, in many places the announcement requirement is now treated more like an antiquated ritual than compliance with a suspect's constitutional rights. In 1999, for example, the assistant police chief of El Monte, Calif., explained his department's preferred procedure to the Los Angeles Times: "We do bang on the door and make an announcement—'It's the police'—but it kind of runs together. If you're sitting on the couch, it would be difficult to get to the door before they knock it down."

Legalities aside, no one -- whether the private citizen or the government agent -- has a moral right to trespass on private property with the intent to initiate violence against nonviolent targets, much less carry out these threats by unilaterally inflicting damage to private property and harm on human beings.

Moreover, if you're inclined to excuse such tyrannical behavior even under select circumstances, consider the fact that when police kill innocent civilians during the course of these violent home invasions, they generally receive a paid vacation followed by an inevitable return to active duty; if you or I happen to kill a cop while attempting to defend ourselves from faceless assailants during the course of an immoral SWAT raid, we're looking at the death penalty or life behind bars.

Thus, the crux of the matter lies not with legality, but morality. Cory Maye is currently serving a life sentence even though there is no reason not to believe Maye when he said he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed Ron Jones during a drug raid in the middle of the night. Maye testified that police did not announce themselves, and that he ran to his daughter's room to ready a pistol in an attempt to protect himself and his little girl from harm that proved to be imminent. Though Maye said he believed the police were burglars, officers associated with the assault on Maye's person and property testified that they identified themselves as law enforcement officers, and Maye was ultimately convicted of murder.

Because we hold the concept of legality in higher regard than morality, Cory Maye is but one innocent man who may never spend time with his daughter as a free man again. However, morally it doesn't make one whit of difference whether Maye realized the intruders were police officers or not. Human beings who initiate lethal violence against other, nonviolent human beings deserve to be shot. It is the act of the offender that counts, not his attire.

We would be wise to consider the words of Will Grigg, who wrote in an article defending the right to self-defense:

Armed aggressors have no right to self-defense. An armed criminal has no right to shoot back if his victims offer armed resistance. That principle should apply to aggressors of any variety – including police who stage illegal and unnecessary home invasions, or who commit violent acts in the course of unlawful arrests.

It's more than a little ironic that the Supreme Court paid lip service to the "Castle Doctrine" when attempting to distinguish between police and criminal intruders in Wilson v. Arkansas: its decision in the case has guaranteed that the two are one and the same.

Excellent Quote on the Disintegration of Society

From a post on Disinter's blog:

“You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.”

Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 - 2005

SoMd PIGs Reject the Trough

A friend and former co-worker of mine, Jon Sola, has started a non-partisan grassroots political organization in Southern Maryland that goes by the name "PIG" -- Political Interest Group -- through which he seeks to help restore principles of limited government by attracting supporters ranging the political spectrum, but who likewise have become fed up with the increasing usurpation of individual liberties at the federal, state, and local levels.

At the behest of Jon, I attended the inaugural meeting last Wednesday night, and while the group is not nearly radical enough for my tastes, it is a political reality in this country that we're not going to be able to simply flip the proverbial light switch and recapture freedom lost to the ever-expanding state and its goon squad. Therefore, though I wish more people would reject coercive government out of hand, if we're to make any headway in beating back the state, we have to play within the system we've unfortunately created.

Of the nine attendees at the meeting, the majority identified themselves as either a Republican or independent, but almost to a person everyone had become dissatisfied with the big-government policies of the GOP; expressed a palpable fear of what's to come in light of the all-Democrat federal and Maryland state governments; and recognized that most politicians, no matter what their affiliation, ultimately join forces against the citizenry they ostensibly serve.

The SoMd PIG is a libertarian-leaning organization that rejects the "Democrat vs. Republican" politicization of the issues, and instead aligns itself more with Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty, Glenn Beck's 9-12 Project, and the "tea party" movements that are sprouting up across the country to protest the direction the country is headed.

This group is in its nascent stages and is looking for participants willing to volunteer some of their own time in working toward goals of 1) identifying pro-liberty candidates interested in running for local, state, and federal office, 2) formulating a well-organized network of like-minded individuals willing to publicly challenge our current officials, and 3) eventually putting an end to local government corruption.

Like Rep. Ron Paul, the SoMd PIG holds the U.S. Constitution in high regard and hopes to effect a return to some of the core values present at the time of the country's founding. While limited government clearly is preferable to the federal behemoth and its satellite nanny- and police-states we're currently shackled with, I hope to see this group eventually move in a more radical direction.

One thing that was evident at last week's meeting was the overall intelligence and open-mindedness of prospective members. Given that I've become personally acquainted with people who, through only a little self-study have finally started to realize that the Constitution and so-called "democratic" governments we install are themselves responsible for the very bloat and oppression we currently protest, I see no reason the SoMd PIG can't embrace a big tent of supporters who may differ when it comes to the particulars, but who nevertheless understand that individual liberty is ultimately impossible unless we (at least ideally) embrace the notion of self-government and reject the idea that we must be ruled by a political elite.

If you live in Southern Maryland and you're interested in joining this group -- or even if you live outside Maryland and wish to network with the SoMd PIG to strengthen your own local efforts -- shoot me an email at bothwelltj - at - yahoo.com and I can put you in touch with Jon Sola.

Dying Mom? What About Those Expired Tags, Sir?

These last two days have not been good for police performing "routine" traffic stops. Thursday we learned that a police officer in Dallas prevented a football player from seeing his dying mother-in-law to issue a citation for running a red light. On Friday Manuel Lora at the LRC blog linked to multiples sources which report that a traffic stop in Memphis might have contributed the death of the driver's mother. Wayne Ables was rushing his mother to the emergency room when a Shelby County Sheriff's deputy stopped Mr. Ables because his tags were expired. According to this source, Mr. Ables told the officer he was driving his mother to the hospital. He suggested that the officer follow him there and issue the citation when he arrived. The deputy told Ables he could not follow after a traffic stop. The officer chose to check Ables license and insurace and call an ambulance. Meanwhile, Ables' mother's condition worsened. She died in the back seat of the car. Says Ables:

"My mom is gasping, and he wants to see my insurance papers," Ables said. "He went to his car when I gave him my license. This whole time, there is an 83-year-old lady gasping for air, and he's asking for her age and health history."

This source quotes Shelby County Sheriff Mark Luttrell saying,

"Situations like this require extreme judgment," says Sheriff Luttrell,  "and it's very difficult to write a protocol for every judgment-type situation.  So we'll take a look at it and if it's a training issue, we'll emphasize that to our officers." 

Does Luttrell really mean to say that the Shelby County police need to be trained to exercise such uncommon sagacious judgment as, "if you stop a motorist for a routine traffic violation and the motorist or a passenger in the vehicle is dying, the officer should escort the motorist to the nearest hospital before deciding whether to issue a citation..."? Does such common sense really have to be on paper? Have police officers now all become trained monkeys incapable of using any discretion and numb to any empathy of the human condition? Should not concern for others been inculcated early in our lives through families and communities? Does one need to have it written in stone that if the driver needs assistance in order to get to the emergency room after a traffic stop, the officer should then escort the driver to the nearest hospital? If an individual missed such lessons in his upbringing I seriously doubt such character will be instilled in the police academy.

A fact in this story which really irked was the reason why the tags of Mr. Ables' vehicle had expired.

The problem with his car was the expired tag. He had tried to get a new sticker, but a cracked windshield caused him to fail inspection. His mother's previous hospitalization delayed taking care of the problem.

I wrote about a similar experience I had with when I took my father's car in for inspection. It, too, failed inspection due to a "crack" in the windshield. I find the whole idea of car registration and inspection ridiculous and outrageous. I can't think of any legitimate reason to register our vehicles with the State. Police have no incentive to find our vehicles if they are stolen. However, I can think of at least two spurious reasons the State requires us to register our cars. One reason is simple robbery. It charges us a "fee" for the privilege of driving our cars. Just like the mobsters who charges the shopkeeper a "fee" to protect his store from the mobsters. The second reason is that registration is another way for the State to find out where we live.

I'm glad to see the impudent and callous behavior of these police officers exposed for the public to see. I only hope that the analysis does not stop here, but also leads people to question the entire fraudulent system of State-provided protection and the laws our rulers pass and hire police to enforce.

 

A Surprising Source of Road Rage

It appears that people in some parts of the country are fed up with traffic cameras. This WSJ article reports that

"Drivers -- many accusing law enforcement of using spy tactics to trap unsuspecting citizens -- are fighting back with everything from pick axes to camera-blocking Santa Clauses. They're moving beyond radar detectors and CB radios to wage their own tech war against detection, using sprays that promise to blur license numbers and Web sites that plot the cameras' locations and offer tips to beat them."

The methods of resistance have varied. One man attacked a camera with a pick axe. Some people dressed as Santa Clause and covered the cameras with boxes. Some entreprenuers created a spray and a photoshield which are designed to reflect the flash of the camera, making the photo unreadable.

These counties have argued that these cameras are needed to keep people safe. Some are outraged because these cameras are operated by for-profit firms. One must wonder if these same individuals would feel better about the cameras if they were all operated soley by governments. Surely these governments would not use these cameras as a means of generating revenue. Why, the agents of the State only have our best interest in mind and want to protect our lives, liberty and property, correct? Alas, if any quixotic individuals ascribe such motives to the agents of the State, some economists have discovered that the agents' motives do not quite benefit the public:

"But a study in last month's Journal of Law and Economics concluded that, as many motorists have long suspected, "governments use traffic tickets as a means of generating revenue." The authors, Thomas Garrett of the St. Louis Fed and Gary Wagner of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, studied 14 years of traffic-ticket data from 96 counties in North Carolina. They found that when local-government revenue declines, police issue more tickets in the following year. Officials at the North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police didn't respond to requests for comment."

Who would have thought that the agents of the State would install traffic cameras for the money? But surely these efforts, although misguided, address a real problem. Surely most accidents are caused by people running redlights and speeding. Well, maybe not:

A study of crash causes released by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last July found about 5% of crashes were due to traveling too fast and 2% were from running red lights. Driving off the side of the road, falling asleep at the wheel and crossing the center lines were the biggest causes identified.

Has anyone else other than the libertarian thought perhaps one reason why there are so many bad drivers on the road is because the vassal States regulate the issuing of drivers' licenses? Perhaps if we had competition in the area of issuing licenses, society would benefit from more thorough and rigorous testing. A driving school would want to minimize the number of bad drivers which graduate from their schools and would design tests and traning to minimize the number of idiots on the road. No one would want to learn from a school in which many of its graduates have a lot of accidents.

I'm Your Pusher

I saw a bumper sticker one day which read, "Don't steal, the government hates the competition." We can now create a new bumper sticker which reads, "Don't deal drugs. The government hates the competition." The Examiner reports 

For decades, the government has authorized, funded and lobbied for studies in which otherwise illegal drugs were given to addicts in cities such as Washington, Bethesda, Baltimore, New York, Minneapolis and San Antonio. The studies continue today and have an array of aims, from documenting the ways cocaine warps the brain to the intensity of pain from morphine withdrawal....

Most government officials are not aware of the experiments, even though they have been going on since at least the 1970s.

I wrote yesterday in my post Conspiracies and Conservatives that general public does not really know what the State is doing. There is no such thing as transparency with the State and there can never be true transparency because there is no way to compel the State to provide information. The only reason this story became public was because ex-drug czar John Walters blew the whistle on these experiments. If his conscience had not compelled him to speak up, the public still would not know about this. If it took three decades for this to become public knowledge, what else could this government be up to? If you think our government is a force for good you will see this failure as an exception to the otherwise honest public servants who compose the State. If you think our government is a criminal gang, this is only the tip of the iceberg of malfeasance.

In another Examiner article, an ex-official defended the program. Bertha K. Madras was President George W. Bush's deputy director for demand reduction under the Office of National Drug Control Policy. She said, “It’s an important ethical issue and I’m glad you raise it, but holy cow, there’s so much more important stuff to focus on...Twenty-three percent of people who show up in health care settings are in need of an [anti-drug] intervention. We need a strategic plan for that.” Who knew that the best way to obtain cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth legally was to sign up for a government program? But the program was even better for drug addicts in that not only did they not have to spend their own money for these drugs, but they got paid to get high. And they didn't worry about getting arrested.

One question to ask is where are the government officials getting the drugs. If Michael Gaddy is correct, one source is Mexico. Another source is the "drug raid." Makes you look at those pictures taken by State agents and media members displaying all the drugs they confiscated differently, does it not?

Of course, this story does not shock me nor will it shock regular readers of this blog. Each day Trevor and I discuss the root failures of the State. One of these failures is that the State compels its subjects to obey laws from which it exempts itself because there is no entity to bind the State. This creates a system of dual law; there is one set of rules for the subjects and another set of rules for the agents of the State. This story is simply another example of the systematic failure of entrusting our safety to a territorial monopolist of law and order and ultimate decision making.

To Punish and Enslave

Yesterday, Brutus mentioned the story of NFL running back Ryan Moats and his family, who were detained and held at gunpoint by Dallas police officer Robert Powell in front of an emergency room entrance, because Moats rolled through a traffic light in his attempt to get to the hospital in time to see a family member one last time before she died.

As a storm of outrage gathered over his department, Dallas Police Chief David Kunkle called a news conference Thursday to apologize for the behavior of an officer who detained a distressed family outside a hospital emergency room.

Kunkle said Officer Robert Powell had been placed on paid administrative leave in connection with the incident last week, in which he stopped a family rushing to visit a dying mother, keeping them for 13 minutes to write a traffic ticket. The woman died before two of the family members were able to see her.

Kunkle deserves credit for apologizing to Moats and his family, but because this incident occurred ten days ago, I'm inclined to believe this is little more than damage control now that the department has been caught terrorizing innocent civilians.

Here are the specifics of the story:

Moats' mother-in-law, 45-year-old Jonetta Collinsworth, had been struggling with breast cancer. That night family members received word that they needed to hurry to the hospital because she was dying.

"You really want to go through this right now?" Moats pleaded to Powell. "My mother-in-law is dying. Right now!"

An argument followed, during which Powell lectured Moats and threatened him with arrest.

Kunkle acknowledged Thursday that Powell also drew his gun at the start of the incident.

"I understand that he admits to drawing his gun but not pointing it," the chief said.

Moats' wife, Tamishia Moats, has said otherwise.

"He was pointing a gun at me as soon as I got out of the car," she said. The video shows her pleading with him a moment, then ignoring him and walking into the hospital with her great-aunt.

This type of police behavior smacks of what my wife was put through last summer by a county cop in Maryland, albeit to a lesser degree, as she was hurrying from work to pick up my son from daycare and take him to the doctor after she got a phone call informing her that he couldn't swallow or eat. Thankfully my son was OK, but you don't have the benefit of hindsight in the midst of an emergency situation.

Adding insult to the situations that the Moats family and my wife experienced is the fact that they were harassed over minor traffic infractions, which exist primarily to raise money for the state in the first place. But for his troubles, Moats got a gun in the face and an extended detention even though Powell knew a peaceable family was simply trying to get to a dying relative.

Forget the fact that emergency situations morally excuse the obligation to observe petty traffic laws; the state isn't even legally required to assist you in times of crisis. But that matters not. The authorities are here for our protection and our protection only; please move along.

What 'Free Market?'

I'd hardly consider Paul Jacob a radical libertarian, but he's spot on today in discussing what's not to blame for our current economic debacle: the free market. Amid rampant finger-pointing by pundits and politicos, the author of the Common Sense newsletter makes a very astute observation about the American economy:

We haven’t had a free market. We live in a heavily regulated, subsidized, coddled-and-attacked, over-taxed society. If the current debacle proves any system unfeasible, then the one proven wrong is the one we have. It’s the mixed economy that has proven to have worse than mixed results.

Too bad common sense is just about the most uncommmon thing around.

More Highwaymen Acting as Police Officers

Bill Anderson at the LRC blog links to a story of an NFL player being pulled over while trying to get to the hospital as his mother-in-law was dying. The absolute arrogance and inhumanity of the police officer is simply amazing and enraging. David Kramer draws our attention to the second paragraph in the article:

"As he rushed his family to the hospital, Ryan Moats, 26, rolled through a red light. A Dallas police officer pulled their SUV over outside the emergency room [emphasis mine] at the Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano."

Mr. Kramer then comments:

Shouldn't any cop with even half a brain (I'm pretty sure there must be some cops out there who have that) have first assumed that if he were chasing a speeding car that eventually ended up outside the entrance to a HOSPITAL'S EMERGENCY ROOM, that perhaps there was someone in the car who had an emergency--rather than there being a criminal aspect involved in the driver's speeding?

Another disturbing paragraph:

A Dallas police spokesman said that Officer Robert Powell told his commanders that he drew his gun, but did not point it. Lt. Andy Harvey said it is not unusual for officers to draw a gun without pointing it. Drawing a gun is not unusual in traffic stops where officers feel threatened.

As the erudite William Grigg has pointed out, demanding to be treated like a human being rather than a slave is considered "threatening behavior" by some police officers.

This story would not have made the news had it not been for the fact that this happened to an NFL player. When police abuse the average Joe, such stories only get noticed by libertarians and civil liberties groups who monitor police abuses which are legion in this country. Unfortunately, Ryan Moats and his family might place the ultimate blame on racism:

The Moatses, who are black, said Wednesday that they can’t help but think that race might have played a part in how Powell, who is white, treated them.

While it is possible, even likely, that Officer Robert Powell treated the Moats family as he did because they were black, we cannot stop there with our analysis. As I wrote several months ago in my essay The Miseducation of the Negro,

Certainly some police officers are racist and abuse people for this reason. But they could also abuse us because they simply did not like how we looked at them; they did not appreciate our tone when we replied to a question they asked; we did not get out of the car fast enough when asked; we got out of the car too fast when asked; we did not get on the ground when commanded; we did not stand up when commanded; we protested a ticket; we filed a grievance against them with their supervisor; they were just in a bad mood; they wanted to abuse us and knew that they could get away with it.

This is because the State is an territorial monopolist of law and order with an absolute monopoly on violence. It attracts people predisposed to the use of force to resolve conflicts. These people covet the power of the State and enjoy lording its power over the masses. Until the State is abolished and security is provided on the free market as all goods and services should be, such abuse by police officers will not end.

Conspiracies and Conservatives

Lew Rockwell links to the neocon echo chamber Little Green Footballs which is upset over the Judge Napolitano Show. The comments are particularly interesting in that they reveal the statism of conservatives. There was some discussion of conspiracy theories on the show and the conservative commenters went postal: Conspiracy theorists are idiots, kooks, nutjobs, irrational, and unamerican. Those who question the motives of State agents are unpatriotic. Those who think that the US government would kill its own citizens are traitors. These reactions result from the absolute faith the conservative places in the State, i.e., the US Federal Government, as the ultimate source of law and order in the world. The conservative cannot understand why the radical does not share his faith.

In the mind of the conservative, the State is the protector of our lives, liberty, and property, worthy of our respect and admiration. We would not be able to enjoy our freedom without it. While evil liberals may occasionally take control of the State, this does not mean that the State itself is evil and that the aggression of the State is immoral. Moreover, it is simply unfathomable for the conservative to believe that his own government would intentionally kill its own citizens for its benefit. Surely foreign governments such as Iran, Iraq, or North Korea will kill their own citizens, but the US Government would never do that. The conservative believes that his elected representatives would never conspire to kill Americans to advance their interests. Thus, when the government investigated itself regarding the 9-11 attacks, they believed every word. Yes, the US government failed to protect its people, but it is simply impossible that the US government provoked or even was directly involved in the attacks. Read some the positive reviews of Debunking 9/11 Myths at Amazon, for example. Those who believe the writers' arguments essentially believe that the government would not lie about their investigation into these attacks. The full faith and credit of the United States Government is a sufficient measure of the veracity of the governments claims.

The radical, on the other hand, believes that the State is a criminal gang writ large. He believes that the State is the enemy of freedom and humanity and will kill whomever it wishes if doing so will advance its interests. The radical believes that all States will kill their own citizens if murder will advance its interest, including the US government. The radical knows that the US government will kill its own citizens to advance its interest because it did so in 1861 when Lincoln ordered an invasion of the South to collect the tariff, just as he threatened in his inaugural address. We know that the US government will sacrifice the lives of Americans to build up support for wars because both Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt did so.

Fighting the 'Drug War' with Food Stamps

Instead of bribing drug users with money confiscated from private citizens, how about we just stop subsidizing laziness, incompetence, and irresponsibility in the first place?

Want government assistance? Just say no to drugs.

Lawmakers in at least eight states want recipients of food stamps, unemployment benefits or welfare to submit to random drug testing.

No one should be forced to support anyone else. The problem here isn't drug use; it's government theft of private property, which is taken from its rightful owners and redistributed to others who put it to less productive uses, thereby decreasing overall wealth.

Nobody has a moral right to tell persons X, Y, and Z what they're allowed to do with their own bodies as long as they hurt no one else. However, politicians muddle this reality as soon as they force "society" to assume ownership over welfare recipients. In short, when you foot the bills, you generally deserve a say in how your money's put to use.

Welfare programs are merely one way in which politicians engineer society to their own liking. They are dependent upon force and fraud instead of freedom, and until we withdraw our consent from such behavior, we'll all remain slaves of the state in one form or another.

Speaking Truth to Power

If only a few American politicians had the courage to speak to the president they way this EU parliament member speaks to the Prime Minister of Britian.

Some Liberals Are Noticing the Lack of "Change"

Ted Rall assesses the Obama presidency to date and sees pretty much the same criminality that occured under Bush. He writes,

During the 2008 campaign Obama's critics accused him of saying nothing, albeit beautifully. Now that we've gotten to know him a bit, it's time to refine that assessment: He's just a weasel. An eloquent weasel. But a weasel who says the right things while doing the opposite.

On March 9^th Obama ordered federal agencies to suspend Bush's infamous "signing statements," sneaky documents issued after the signing of a bill that ordered government agencies not to enforce the very same bill he'd just approved in front of the cameras. Signing statements, says the American Bar Association, use one-man dictatorial rule to negate the people's will as expressed by Congress and are thus "contrary to the rule of law and our constitutional separation of powers."

"Yet two days later--literally--Obama signed a $410 billion spending bill and appended to it a signing statement claiming that he had the Constitutional authority to ignore several of its oversight provisions," writes Glenn Greenwald of Slate.

Of course, the sheep still believe in change, and pay no attention at all to what their master is actually doing. Don't you just love democracy?

Mr. Rall concludes,

Unlike the word count limit of this column, Obama's perfidy knows no limits. He's already become more dangerous to democracy and basic human rights than George W. Bush. Unlike Bush, he has no political opposition. Cheney may nitpick, but most Republicans are happy to see Bush's policies remain in place. Meanwhile, liberals remain loyal, silent, and tacitly pro-torture.

Wow, a liberal stating that Obama is more dangerous than Bush. I never thought I would ever read such a bold comparison from a liberal. Perhaps not all liberals are drunk on the Kool Aid of Change.

*Hat tip to Anthony Gregory at the Independent Institute blog.

China Should Go for the Gold

To China's credit, its central banksters have suggested replacing the U.S. dollar with a new international currency. To its detriment, however, it argues that this currency should still be controlled by the IMF.

No fiat currency is stable in the hands of statist opportunists with the desire to inflate and therefore destroy it, whether it be the dollar, the yen, or the yuan.

While China's economy has become freer in recent years as its leaders increasingly embrace capitalism, Chinese officials will no doubt be rebuked out of hand by American critics on account of the country's well-known political oppression. While clear-thinking Americans might wonder how, in fact, this differs from how government officials here at home view citizens who fail to worship completely at the alter of the state, it would be wise to remember that the ticket to achieving political freedom is economic freedom.

China can jail nonviolent dissidents and censor YouTube all it likes, but this behavior would ultimately cease to exist if it actually embraced the one item of exchange suitable for use as a global currency: gold.

Economic freedom is the cornerstone of political freedom. If you prevent the state from trading in fiat currency and literally creating money out of thin air, thus allowing corrupt tyrants to legally confiscate private property and wealth, you automatically prevent them from engaging in the very act from which all political power is derived.

Perhaps the Editorial Writers at the Examiner Read this Blog

An Examiner editorial puts the AIG bonuses into perspective:

There is nothing quite so ridiculous as a bunch of Washington politicians running at break-neck speed to get in front of an American public frothing in a righteous uproar over something in the news. The first casualty in such episodes is invariably a clear picture of who actually deserves the public’s anger, and so it is with $165 million in AIG executive bonuses. Leading the charge now are members of the same Congress that approved the $700 billion bailout and the $787 billion economic stimulus bill that authorized the bonus payments without reading either of the 1,000-page monsters. These same people are screaming to confiscate a bonus amount that equals one-tenth of one percent of the $1.5 trillion total they blindly approved for the bailout and stimulus legislation. The lack of proportion here is staggering. (emphasis added)

Perhaps some of the editorial writers have been reading my posts. Unfortunately, the editorial's math is incorrect. As I pointed out last week, the bonus amount is one-tenth of one percent of the $170 billion that AIG received from the Federal Government. This bonus amount is approximately one-hundredth of one percent of the approximated $1.5 trillion total from the Bush and Obama plans. And that's only the estimate on paper. Some have argued that the actual cost will be around $3 trillion. Given that the Federal Government tends to underestimate the costs of its own programs, $3 trillion is not an implausible guess for the true cost. In fact, $3 trillion might be an underestimate as well.

The editorial points out that this brouhaha diverts attention from the role of Goldman Sachs in this robbery:

Goldman Sachs alumni have been in the forefront of the government’s response to the crisis under both the present and former presidential administrations. Tim Geithner served in multiple roles at the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration when long-time Goldman Sachs head Robert Rubin was Treasury Secretary. Geithner then worked closely with Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, another long-time Goldman Sachs executive, in crafting the $170 billion AIG bailout. Also among the many other Goldman Sachs alumni who have served in key Treasury Department positions under recent presidents is Assistant Secretary of Treasury Neel Karshkari, who heads the Office of Financial Stability.

Moreover, the editorial reports that Goldman Sachs received $12.9 billion of the AIG bailout money.

But this is a conservative paper, and alas, the editorial writers still hold to the naive belief that Congress ought to pay closer attention to Goldman Sachs. I can think of at least 1,035,095 reasons why that won't happen.

Are You a 'Hater?'

Do people call you a "hater" because you oppose coercive government programs whose goods and services could be provided just as well, if not much better, by the private sector?

Manuel Lora has a quick and dirty litmus test if you're interested in determining whether or not you (ironically) find yourself among the hated.

Liquor in the Front, Poker in the Rear

Via Radley Balko, such an advertisement (among many other things) is strictly prohibited under Virginia's tyrannical liquor laws.

It's nothing new for states to use promises of violence to get nonviolent people to conform to their criminal mandates, so we really have to thank the petty tyrants when they offer up arbitrary diktats that are so absurd that we simply cannot avoid noticing how worthless these people are. The VABC does not disappoint.

Another Death That Absolutely, Positively Wasn't Caused by a Taser

This time, it's a 15-year-old Michigan boy killed by government police.

The American Mugabe

Because the Zimbabwean economic model has led to unparalleled prosperity, His Highness apparently figures counterfeiting another trillion will help pull America out of depression.

The Obama administration's latest attempt to tackle the banking crisis and get loans flowing to families and businesses will create a new government entity, the Public-Private Investment Program, to help purchase as much as $1 trillion in toxic assets on banks' books.

Hey Barack, if the destruction of the dollar was the answer to our problems, we would've solved them long ago.

If you're interested in the sane approach, here's Ron Paul in an interview with Glenn Beck earlier today (be sure to click on part two after the first segment expires).

The 21st Century Version of the Fugitive Slave Law

Briggs Armstrong has a good article on the Mises blog about the expatriation tax. An excerpt:

The American Jobs Creation act of 2004, passed by the Republican-controlled government, amended section 877 of the Internal Revenue Code. Under the new law, any individual who has a net worth of $2 million or an average income-tax liability of $127,000 who renounces his or her citizenship and leaves the country is automatically assumed to have done so for tax avoidance reasons and is subject to some rather unbelievable tax laws.

Any individual who is declared to have expatriated for tax reasons is forced to pay US income taxes on all US based income for 10 years following expatriation, regardless of the country in which the individual resides. Additionally, in the 10 years following expatriation, if a qualifying individual spends 30 days in the United States during any year, he or she is taxed as a US citizen on all income derived from any place in the world. To make matters worse, if an individual happens to die in a year in which he or she spent at least 30 days in the United States, the entire estate is subject to US income tax law.

The idea behind the Fugitive Slave Laws of 1793 and 1850 was that slaves were property. Slave masters do not lose their right to their property just because said property has run away to another territory, although said territory may prohibit the private owning of humans.

Similar reasoning undergirds expatriation tax law. The US Federal Government believes that it owns the labor and property of all people. Certain rich people who wish to flee and take their labor and property with them really have no right to their labor or property. Their emigration is actually theft; they are taking their labor and property which belong to the US government to other territories in which the laws of the US government "do not apply." However, the US government believes it does not lose the right to the property and labor of its subjects who flee its boarders, and has created this law that reflects such thinking.

Lysander Spooner exposed the true nature slavery during the War against Southern Independence:

And there is no difference, in principle --- but only in degree --- between political and chattel slavery. The former, no less than the latter, denies a man's ownership of himself and the products of his labor; and asserts that other men may own him, and dispose of him and his property, for their uses, and at their pleasure.

It's unfortunate that so many Americans define slavery as chattel slavery of Africans. The idea that a minority of people may use the property and persons of the majority as that minority wishes does not offend most Americans. In fact, most Americans will encourage and support such violations of natural rights when politicians appeal to patriotism or envy. This is why people can be outraged over AIG executives receiving a pittance of the loot which Congress, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank have stolen from the public but express little or no anger at the robbery itself. The fact that the expatriation tax applies to people with net worth of $2 million appeals to the envy of the public. The original income tax was supposedly only to be levied on the rich as well. We see how long that lasted. The net worth criterion will continually be defined down until the US government decides no one can leave. But as long as Americans continue to their idolatrous worship of the State, these attacks on our lives, liberty, and property will not end.

 

Candy Cigs the Next 'Gateway Drug?'

A group of teenage fascists-in-training in Minnesota are pushing the St. Paul City Council to ban candy cigarettes.

"I was like, 'Are you serious?' " That was Shanicee Billon's reaction when a 2-year-old girl she was with grabbed a pack of candy cigarettes at a convenience store and showed them to her.

"They were bright and colorful, so I guess they caught her eye. I thought to myself: That's just not fair. We should be teaching little kids how to be healthy and eat vegetables. Candy cigarettes? Really."

Apparently parents are so incapable of determining what their own children should and should not be exposed to that they now have to take their marching orders from other people's brats.

I used to love buying chocolate and bubble gum "cigarettes" when I was a kid, and I thought it was especially cool that the ones rolled in powdered sugar would actually let you blow "smoke." Though neither of my parents smoked (my father quit before I was born), Minnesota's trendy-tween nanny-statists might be interested in knowing that although my mother bought these candies for me, she also would never let me leave the dinner table until I ate all my vegetables.

I dabbled in cigarettes off and on while I was in college, but I can testify that my decision to do so was hardly the result of my "irresponsible" parents' decision to treat me to candy cigarettes every now and then when I was just a tyke. Back before taxes on cigarettes cost just as much as a pack of cigarettes themselves, smoking was a fairly affordable way to maintain a buzz in the bar without having to spend a ton of money on beer.

But something tells me these amateur activists don't have much objection to using the state to prevent kids from drinking either.

Channeling Anger

In Crisis and Leviathan, Robert Higgs describes how the Federal government got away with implementing a draft during World War I. Leviathan understood that if it sent soldiers to the homes of citizens and dragged men off to war, there would be outrage. Instead the War Department assigned the lowest level of administration of the to local civilian boards rather than military personal. Writes Prof. Higgs, "Grass-roots administration had enormous utility in focusing effective moral pressure on those selected for induction." These boards were corrupted by local prejudices; Southern boards, for instance, discriminated against blacks and "the obligation of service fell disproportionately on the powerless and the poor."

But these boards served a nefarious fundamental purpose. Provost Marshall General Enoch H. Crowder, who headed the draft, described the purpose as

buffers between the individual citizen and the Federal Government, and thus they attracted and diverted, like local grounding wires in an electric coil, such resentment or discontent as might have proved a serious obstacle to war measures, had it been focused on the central authorities. Its diversion and grounding at 5000 local points dissipated its force, and enabled the central war machine to function smoothly without disturbance that might have been caused by the concentrated total of dissatisfaction.

I thought of that passage in the book after I read these comments by Obama the Blessed and Merciful in The New York Times:

I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry,” Mr. Obama said, his voice reaching a peak seven days after learning of the bonuses given to employees of the American International Group. “What I want to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way.”

As I pointed out, the President played a direct role in this embarrassment. So far the State has done a good job dissipating the force of resentment and anger. People have blamed the "free-market", greed, lack of regulation, lack of oversight, and corrupt businessmen. The few people I have spoken with personally about AIG and the financial mess in general all believe that the "free market" failed. I have read similar evaluations in mainstream media and some blog forums on reactions to the crisis. Not only do these scapegoats divert attention away from the sole cause of our misery, the State, it has the remarkable side effect of channeling this anger into a generator of favorable public opinion for the State and its interventions. People are not only more tolerant of additional State intervention, they demand it. Such demands only empower the State even more and lead to more misery.

Prof. Higgs evaluates the Provost's comments as follows:

Such frank public admission of Machiavellianism is rare in American history. Clearly the top governmental officials where unmoved by the 'concentrated total of dissatisfaction.' Their ruling imperative was to feed the war machine whether or not people objected to being fed into it.

I believe that you can apply this analysis to anything the State does. The State exists only to serve itself. Any action it takes is designed is to aggrandize itself and accomplish its goals. Just as the governmental officials in 1917 desired to feed the people into its war machine regardless of the human cost, our rulers today desire to feed us to this Financial Frankenstein without regard to the pernicious effects on our economy or our lives.

It Appears that this Administration Really Believes We Are that Stupid

From Yahoo! news:

The White House says new projections of spiraling budget deficits won't stop President Barack Obama from achieving his goals or keeping his promise to cut the country's red ink in half within four years.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday that the administration is a bit more optimistic about the nation's economic growth over the long term than congressional analysts. The congressional projections released Friday say Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year over the next decade.

The Congressional Budget Office figures predict Obama's budget will produce $9.3 trillion worth of red ink from 2010 through 2019. That's $2.3 trillion worse than the White House predicted in its budget.

The White House spokesman Robert Gibbs (Squealer for those familiar with Animal Farm) is hoping to ease the fear through pronouncements, as if The Holy One can speak a prosperous economy into existence. I already wrote about why the Holy One's plans to shrink the deficit will fail. But let's say you think that I am an economic idiot because I don't have a noble prize or a position at the New York Times, and that The Holy One's plan will cut the deficit as he says it will. Can you really trust his administration's estimates when this very administration underestimated its own budget estimate by $2.3 trillion?

Will the Feds Respect States' Rights on Medical Marijuana?

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that federal narcotics officers will only enforce unconstitutional and immoral federal marijuana laws in states that have not legalized medical marijuana.

That would be a departure from the Bush administration, which targeted medical marijuana dispensaries in California even if they complied with that state's law.

"The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law," Holder said in a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Justice Department.

Well, whaddya know? If this shift in policy actually comes to fruition, I guess we'll no longer be able to say that Barack Obama has followed completely in the footsteps of his predecessor.

While this technically would signal a very small win for civil liberties at the federal level -- on this particular issue, the feds would at least acknowledge limitations on power that the founders intended to apply broadly -- it's hardly an indication that the Obama administration is interested in reforming oppressive drug laws. 

Indeed, though the feds have no business regulating drug use at all, Holder has made it clear that his office still intends to target, harass, terrorize, incarcerate, and even kill regular ol' peaceful marijuana users across the country, to say nothing of people who choose to use other, more dangerous drugs. And according to this report, it's entirely unclear what will become of people like Charles Lynch, who was convicted on federal charges last year for running a legal dispensary in California.

While a little marijuana freedom is clearly better than none at all, I'm a little skeptical of this push to legalize marijuana for medical purposes alone. I happen to be a proponent of outright drug legalization, especially at the federal level, but I can't help but wonder whether this narrow focus on marijuana's medicinal value won't simultaneously perpetuate its stigma as a dangerous drug that should remain illegal for everyone without a bogus permission slip from the state.

Certainly the argument can me made that it's almost impossible to recover lost liberties all at once. After all, Americans are living proof that if the state simply chips away at our freedoms one step at a time -- think progressively tyrannical smoking bans -- we'll apparently consent to anything; so it makes sense that such maneuvering would work when it came to regaining our rights, as well.

Therefore, we should by all means fight for any victory against the state, no matter how minimal, just as long as we keep the big picture in mind: the state is our enemy, and we all have a natural right to behave in any manner we choose so long as it does no tangible harm to anyone else.

What we need to bear in mind with regard to Holder's announcement is that the Obama administration is not contemplating this shift in policy simply because it retains a healthy respect for states' rights. Modern presidents don't just issue policy directives that limit their own power. If this change actually occurs, you can rest assured it will be because it works to the president's benefit in at least some capacity (and one that will likely remain unknown to anyone outside his inner circle).

So take a moment to cherish this supposed win for individual liberties -- but only a moment. You will know true liberty only when the state is disarmed and no longer retains a license to kill merely to preserve its hegemony over our lives.

No One 'Hates Us for Our Freedom' Nearly As Much As the Federal Government Does

From the American Revolution to the Cold War to the current war on tactics terror, the U.S. government has used fear-mongering, propaganda, surveillance, and overt violence in its attempt to quell dissent and silence peaceful political critics.

Anthony Gregory magnificently recounts some of America's gravest state-sanctioned atrocities in demonstrating why the biggest threat to the establishment is liberty.

What Depression?

New York governor David Paterson, who couldn't tell you something he wouldn't tax if you asked him, is living proof that while the common folk tighten their belts and face unemployment during Great Depression II, it's business as usual for the state, whose tax-eating parasites continue to starve their hosts in order to remain fat and happy.

Obamanomics Will Fail

I meant to link to this article by Lew Rockwell a couple weeks ago when it was first published, but no time like the present to remind the masses why socialism cannot work.

The article is invaluable for the links alone contained within, but this snippet illustrates the talent Rockwell has for putting even complicated ideas into a format that anyone can understand.

Without market prices for capital goods, accounting is not possible. You don't know if you are making money or losing money, saving resources or wasting them, doing the right thing or not doing the right thing. Think of all the decisions that have to be made on the production end that require you to know whether you are wasting resources or not. With steel, do you make more buildings or trains? Or do you make cutlery or computers? Or cars or cables?

You can't just rely on assessing consumer demand. The demand for stuff is infinite. What matters are choices in light of foregone alternatives. These can't be discerned with polls or intuition. What matters here is the weighting of all alternative uses of resources. They can only be worked out in real time, in light of the choices of consumers and the profitable production decisions of producers.

None of this is possible if you don't have real market prices providing the real stuff that makes cost accounting possible. Collectivize property and you abolish the market for capital goods. No prices emerge. Every choice you make is arbitrary. There is no more rationality remaining. You just end up groping around in the dark.

Read the whole thing.

Why the Left Accepts the Fascist State

Writes Lew Rockwell:

I really think it comes down to this: leftists, in their heart of hearts, hate capitalism more than they fear the total state. They can put up with anything so long as people are not free to make as much money as they want in the service of others. The resulting inequality in wealth distribution in this system, and the manner in which the free society raises up a class of natural aristocrats, is morally intolerable to them. They prefer to risk the creation of the totalitarian society rather than put their core hatreds on the back burner.

Read the whole thing.

Obama Shouldn't Have to Return Contributions from 'AIG'

Dan Spencer, my colleague at the Examiner who discusses politics from a right-wing perspective, is finding out today how swell it can be to get a link from Matt Drudge. Spencer's hit parade comes courtesy of his report that Barack Obama received $101,332 in political contributions from AIG, the insurance conglomerate that now finds itself in the president's crosshairs for using bailout money to pay out million-dollar bonuses to company executives.

I'm actually grateful to AIG for being so blatantly obvious in using the public's money for something so socially unacceptable as rewards for perceived mismanagement. If we're lucky, everyone in America will take note of the moral hazard that results when the state robs taxpayers to the benefit of its cronies -- even if all this hyperventilation over these bonuses provides a nice distraction from the real issue, which is that they constitute a veritable pittance compared to AIG's entire bailout package.

But back to Spencer's concern that Obama received a bonus from AIG despite the fact that the company finds itself the beneficiary of taxpayer-provided corporate welfare. Specifically, Spencer asks whether "recipients of A.I.G. 'bonuses,' including President Obama, will give what now ought to be taxpayer money back[.]"

In short, the answer is no. The government shouldn't be in the business of bailing out insolvent private firms, but it nevertheless decided to do so and AIG should be entitled to spend the money as it sees fit. In fact, given that the state engages in this behavior to co-opt private industry in the first place, that's reason enough to enthusiastically oppose its micromanagement.

And as far as Obama goes, I can't stand the guy; I think his economic policies will put the final nail in the coffin of the American economy for at least a generation; and he's every bit the warmonger his predecessor was; but King Barack did not receive this campaign funding "from AIG."

It's illegal under federal election law for corporations to donate money directly to candidates. There are ways around this, of course: Companies can establish political action committees that solicit employees for voluntary contributions, which are then passed on to candidates; and the laws don't prevent corporate executives from hosting private fundraisers. However, it doesn't appear that any of the money Spencer references was the result of anything but private donations from individuals who happened to work for AIG.

If we want to complain about government, great. Nothing would make me happier. But $100,000 of campaign cash is nothing. Complaining about this is no different than when neocons bitch about "earmarks" so they can pretend to be fiscally conservative while ignoring the other 99 percent of a budget used to grow the state.

So it's time to get serious, people, if that's indeed the intent. It's time to forget about treating the symptoms of kleptocratic totalitarianism and instead focus on curing the disease. We can start by withdrawing our support for a fascist federal government, which bankrupts individuals and families as it nationalizes private corporations and banks. We can spill onto the streets to protest the mismanagement of an economy that will only right itself when the government gets the hell out of the way of the market. We can lambaste parasitic politicians who intend to maintain their cushy lifestyles by feeding on their taxpaying hosts as we watch our 401ks dry up.

It seems Americans are finally starting to wake up to Wall Street-government tyranny, but if people truly give a damn about liberty, we've got a lot of work to do before we can afford to sit around and complain about a relative handful of folks who voluntarily part with a little spending money prior to election day.

The Smoke and Mirrors Are Working

MSNBC reports that taxpayers are angry about the bonuses being paid to executives, legitimately according to the very stimulus bill which The Holy One signed. Most reactions are what I thought they would be: These greedy executives are being rewarded for failure! Down with greedy executives! Yes, make sure that kitchen sink is spotless while the rest of house is burning down!

At least one person seems to understand the scam:

"I don't think they should be pumping more money to AIG. I don't think they should flush any more money down the Citibank toilet. I don't think they should flush any more money down any of these toilets. Tell them to 'sink or swim,'" said [David]Ziegler, who is from Thornton, Colo.

Completing My Homework

A reader pointed out that the stimulus bill which the Holy One signed into law did not include money for AIG. This is true and I do not wish to mislead readers. AIG was one of the original recipients of loot from the first abominable bailout bill signed by George W. Bush. But the holy one (lowercase because he was not president yet) did vote in favor of the Bush stimulus bill.

The bill which The Holy One signed included limits on executive pay. It amended Section 111 of the Bush bailout bill as follows: 

'(iii) The prohibition required under clause (i) shall not be construed to prohibit any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009, as such valid employment contracts are determined by the Secretary or the designee of the Secretary.

Since AIG had committed these funds in September, this amendment exempted AIG from the bonus prohibition. This provision was nicknamed "The Dodd Amendment" after Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who advanced the idea that the government should tax AIG to recoup the bonus money. Dodd claims that his original amendment did not include this provision and he does not know how it got in the bill. However, Rich Edson of FoxBusiness New reports:

...Sen. Dodd was AIG’s largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle with $103,100, according to opensecrets.org.  Also, one of AIG Financial Products’ largest offices is based in Connecticut.

Perhaps The Holy One did not know that this provision was in this bill. Nevertheless, he signed into law this bill including this amendment which exempted AIG executive bonuses among other executives of the Bush bailout plan. If he did not know about the amendment,should the American public have such faith in a president who signs bills into law completely ignorant of its contents? If he did know this amendment was in the bill, should we not realize that he, like all politicians, is a inveterate liar? In either case should we not realize that all this outrage is simply a diversion to distract the public from the real crime?

I Knew This Outrage Was Smoke and Mirrors

Doug Mataconis at the Liberty Papers blog has an excellent post on the AIG mess. Mataconis reports that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner approved the latest round of funding without addressing the bonuses:

President Obama, seeking to quell anger from taxpayers whom he soon may have to ask to support another bailout, on Monday called for trying to block the $165 million in bonuses that American International Group paid to reward top executives even after taking billions of government bailout dollars.

Mr. Obama called the move an “outrage,” but administration officials spent hours Monday attempting to explain why Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner gave AIG a new payout this month even though the bonuses had been on the books since last year.

But it gets even better. Treasury and Federal Reserve officials knew about the bonuses since last September:

For all of the furor since details of the bonuses became public over the last several days, the issue of retention payments to A.I.G. employees globally has been percolating publicly since A.I.G. was bailed out in mid-September. About $1 billion in retention payments for 2008 and 2009 are in question, but the controversy involves about half of that, about $450 million over two years, that was intended for employees of A.I.G.’s financial products unit. That unit was the source of the financial derivatives blamed for the near-collapse at the heart of the economy’s downturn.

The Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said they had known about the bonus program as far back as last fall.

But here's the pièce de résistance:

While the Senate was constructing the $787 billion stimulus last month, Dodd added an executive-compensation restriction to the bill. That amendment provides an “exception for contractually obligated bonuses agreed on before Feb. 11, 2009” — which exempts the very AIG bonuses Dodd and others are now seeking to tax.

The amendment made it into the final version of the bill, and is law.

Separately, Sen. Dodd was AIG’s largest single recipient of campaign donations during the 2008 election cycle with $103,100, according to opensecrets.org.

Yes, that would be the same stimulus bill that the Holy One himself signed into law. Hence, Il Duce is on the warpath, berating AIG executives who are receiving bonuses which he himself approved.

Priceless!

Maryland Needs New Acronyms for All Its Prohibitions

I know it must seem like I write frequently about Maryland's politics because that's where I live -- to an extent that's undoubtedly true -- but it would be a lot harder to do if the Nanny State on the Chesapeake didn't roll out new bans on personal behavior on an almost daily basis.

The latest legislation to breeze through the senate would prohibit phone texting while driving.

The bill would make violations a misdemeanor punishable with a maximum fine of $500. It would be a primary offense, meaning police would be able to pull over drivers solely on suspicion of texting.

We hear a lot about "gateway drugs." Funny, though, how politicians never talk about "gateway laws" -- seemingly benign legislation that allows police to forcibly detain nonviolent people against their will on the suspicion of breaking one law, only to use said detentions to "legitimize" further snooping and harassment in the attempt to write additional citations or make arrests.

Makes you wonder why the governor doesn't just cut to the chase and issue an executive order requiring daily "humanity checkpoints" whenever we set upon Maryland's overrun and overregulated roadways.

It's bad enough that we have acronyms like DWI and DUI as a result of absurd drunk-driving laws. But considering we can now be rounded up by the state for Driving and Texting Under the Influence While Smoking In Front Of Young Children, it's really time for Maryland to start consolidating its tyranny so we can keep it all straight.

Your Government at Work

Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley's office is in spin mode today after Grassley suggested that AIG executives who are responsible for the collapse of the insurance giant should either resign or commit suicide.

"I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed," Grassley said. "But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.

"And in the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology."

No word yet on how Sen. Grassley plans to punish himself for ignoring his constituents and consenting to the Great American Ripoff used to insulate corporate execs from of the consequences of poor decision-making.

Perhaps Obama Is a Fascist

Via Karen De Coster-There's "I Pledge"... And Then There's "I Pledge"

Obama's No Socialist

So says Billy Wharton a self-avowed socialist. Robert Higgs has described our situation as participatory fascism. If you want to count the angels on this pin, then I would agree with Wharton that Obama is technically not a socialist. But in general, I don't have the patience to distinguish the various differences among fascists, socialists, communists, nationalists, etc. They are all statists and their policies are all evil.

Diverting Our Attention from Robbery

The Holy One's ire has been ignited and he will attempt to block AIG from paying its executives $165 million in bonuses. He said in part,

"All across the country, there are people who work hard and meet their responsibilities every day, without the benefit of government bailouts or multimillion-dollar bonuses. And all they ask is that everyone, from Main Street to Wall Street to Washington, play by the same rules."

I damn near fell out of chair laughing at the last line. Wall Street and Washington play by the same rules? Tell me, o blessed one, what article in the Constitution authorizes the federal government to give banks over $1 trillion dollars to "save" them? Leviathan does not even obey its own laws much less universal laws such as thou shalt not steal and thou shalt not murder. These criminals play by their own rules and they always have. Yet the sheep will hear this line and think to themselves, "Yes, these wall street fat cats are greedy. Thank goodness we have a caring government that means well and reflects our will to keep these greedy people in line."

But I think the real diversion is the very act of singling out AIG executives who are receiving $165 million of a $170 billion bailout. These executives are receiving about one tenth of one percent (0.10%) of the bailout money. Am I really to be fired up that $165 million is going to executives and ignore the $170 billion that AIG got in the first place?

Abolish the Federal Reserve

Mises University scholar and economist Robert Murphy believes the government should get out of the money industry entirely. However, if we must have a central bank, "it makes a lot of sense to put in place rigid restrictions on it," he writes today in defense of the gold standard as he debunks the argument that gold-based monetary systems are "overly restrictive" and "volatile."

In countering the claim that gold currency is unstable, Murphy asks rhetorically:

So you tell me: looking at the graph below of the Consumer Price Index, when was the value of the dollar stable and predictable, and when was it really volatile? In which environment could businesses and investors confidently make long-term decisions? Remember that FDR took away private citizens' right to redeem dollars for gold in 1933, and then Nixon finally removed even the ability of central banks to do so in 1971.

   

People who oppose the gold standard have no particular aversion to gold or any other precious metal per se. They are statists, so what they really oppose is the imposition of any standards whatsoever that would at least inhibit central planners from retaining control over the value of our property and, by extension, control over our lives.

Though it's hard to argue with pictures, many people will look at the graph above and still try to convince you that the answer to the current economic crisis is to enable the government to carry on with the same policies that created it -- that is to say, printing paper money backed by nothing more than the thin air out of which it appeared. But this really ought to come as little surprise, for the same types of people will insist that crime can be reduced by increasing government gun restrictions, which tend to encourage crimes in the first place.

Of course, Murphy's article needs no additional endorsement or explanation from the likes of me. He nailed it from the very beginning when he said, "To criticize a monetary system based on gold as 'rigid' only makes sense if you believe that printing green pieces of paper makes a country richer."

Chutzpah

We're all guilty of hypocrisy in at least some capacity, but the latest comments by Dick Cheney are just a bit much.

Vice President Cheney charged Sunday morning on CNN that President Obama is using the recession “to try to justify” what is probably the largest expansion of federal authority “in the history of the Republic.”

“I worry a lot that they’re using the current set of economic difficulties to try to justify a massive expansion in the government, and much more authority for the government over the private sector[.]”

How Bush Got Away with Abu Ghraib

James Bovard has written a must-read piece on how the Bush administration politically defused the Abu Ghraib scandal. The Bush administration used pretty much everything in the State's arsenal to politically squash this crime. Propaganda, lies, appeals to jingoistic nationalism, attacks on whistle-blowers, hiding evidence, you name it. Bovard sums up the most important reason why this article is a must-read in his second paragraph:

It is important to understand how the Bush administration managed to blunt the torture scandal, since it is likely that other presidents will use similar tactics to whitewash other atrocities in the future.

 

Ron Paul Schools Stephen Baldwin on Marijuana Legalization

I Don't Know Much About Gov. Mark Sanford...

and given that he is a politician, I am inclined to dislike him for his choice of occupation. But so far he's taking a "principled" stand against taking any bailout money for spending. Instead he wants to spend the money on paying down South Carolina's debt. Of course, the truly principled stand would be to not take any tax money at all, although I could condone a justified attempt to take back only the tax money paid in by the residents of South Carolina to pay off the State's debt. A more orthodox radical would say that a principled stand would be to not become governor at all. Gov. Sanford may be doing this for political points, but they are high risk political points given the odium heaped upon him by his oppoents. Bill Anderson at the LRC blog shares my skepticism, but also welcomes Gov. Sanford's remarks regarding the bailout.

Don't misinterpret my negligible optimism and think that I am losing my radicalism. It's just that with so many other governors and mayors prostrating themselves before the throne of the Holy One, it is nice to see at least one person refusing to bow down.

I Hate Environmentalists

Not people (like me) who don't go out of their way to trash the environment by littering wantonly or dumping chemicals into lakes and rivers, mind you; but people who are responsible for lobbying the state to either force or incentivize businesses and consumers to use certain products over others.

Take, for instance, coffee cups. I'm not a huge coffee drinker, and until very recently I never drank the stuff; but combine a toddler, reduced sleep, and nine-hour workdays and, well, you get the point.

So I figured I'd grab some coffee during my lunch break today. If I'm being honest, unless I'm drinking a caramel frappuccino from Starbucks -- which, let's face it, is really a milkshake with caffeine -- I think most coffee tastes like crap in the grand scheme of things. (To me, drinking coffee is purely utilitarian: I put it in my body, I stay awake longer -- or at least long enough to get home from work and replace it with beer.)

Of course, it would be nice if I could simply judge coffee on its merits alone. Unfortunately, however, there's no coffee that can't be made worse by serving it in a paper freaking cup. In fact, I refuse to drink coffee out of cardboard if styrofoam is available -- which, thanks to the green bigots, is less and less likely by the day.

Since I can basically only afford gas station coffee on a regular basis, it's usually Sheetz vs. Wawa -- and I find myself purchasing the brutal brews from Sheetz instead of the tastier stuff Wawa has to offer because Sheetz provides styrofoam cups. Once you throw Wawa's into their paper cups, thus scalding your fingers on the napalm-hot surface despite the addition of those worthless cardboard "protector" rings, it's no contest.

Crappy coffee is still better than less crappy coffee if it tastes like you're licking the latter off newspaper.