who's your nanny?

Pessimistic but Still Fighting

Last January I wrote an essay title "As Long as It Keeps Us Safe" in which I predicted that the American public would submit to the newly installed pornoscanners in order to be "safe" from terrorists. I concluded that essay saying:

Each year it seems that Americans increase their tolerance of oppression. Despite so much empirical evidence before them that the State fails at security, the one task even minarchists believe should be the only task assigned to government, they continue to run to the protective arms of the State every time it fails to protect them. They have been indoctrinated with nationalism and disabused of the notion that they are responsible for their own security; thus, they willingly disgrace themselves in exchange for security theater. I can hope that the USAToday/Gallup poll is only indicative of the type of people who read USAToday and the comments also only reflect the thoughts of the same sample. But why should I subject myself to such wishful thinking only to be brought crashing to earth after reading articles like this?

I never did allow myself to engage in such wishful thinking so I was quite suprised and encouraged when many Americans actually did resist the scanners and groping enhanced pat downs. I believed that there would be some resistance, but I never imagined that the anger of many Americans would penetrate the mainstream media and even unsettle our masters.  

But I also wrote in that essay:

The fact that so many people [are] willing to subject themselves to such ignominy for the appearance of security does not bode well for those who love liberty. Eventually someone will refuse to go through one of these scanners and will have to pay the consequences. When this person rebels, however, she will not be met with cheers of approbation or with approval from the masses. In fact she will be derided as making us all less safe. She will be an outlaw in our democratic society. That she wishes to protect her dignity from some TSA goon who is salivating at the chance to scan her "for the safety of fellow passengers" will be viewed as threat to national security because it may inspire others to wake up to the fraud being committed in plain sight. Thus, the moral fabric will continue to disintegrate as modesty gives way to voyeurism in the name of security. The few people who demand to be treated with the respect and decency they expect from other humans will be mocked as irresponsible individualists who will not give up some of their liberty for the safety of the collective. This will compel many people to skip air travel unless absolutely necessary because they simply do not want to be ogled by strangers just to board an airplane. [emphasis added]

We Will Never be Safe from Foreign Terrorists as Long as U.S. Foreign Policy Does not Change

States are institutions that cause conflicts and then present themselves as solutions to the conflicts they caused. Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Glenn Greenwald is baffled that no one seems to notice the obvious. He writes

Here we find one of the great mysteries in American political culture:  that the U.S. Government dispatches its military all over the world -- invading, occupying, and bombing multiple Muslim countries -- torturing them, imprisoning them without charges, shooting them up at checkpoints, sending remote-controlled drones to explode their homes, imposing sanctions that starve hundreds of thousands of children to death  -- and Americans are then baffled when some Muslims -- an amazingly small percentage -- harbor anger and vengeance at them and want to return the violence.   And here we also find the greatest myth in American political discourse:  that engaging in all of that military aggression somehow constitutes Staying Safe and combating Terrorism -- rather than doing more than any single other cause to provoke, sustain and fuel Terrorism.

The recent discussions on airline safety have lead me to the following conclusion: even if the TSA is abolished and airline security is completely privatized, we still won't be much safer. And the reason we won't be much safer is because we will still subject to the dishonest, insane and intolerable United States Federal Government. And this dishonest, insane and intolerable government continues to make enemies around the world who want to lash out at their oppressor. Until there is a radical shift in U.S. foreign policy there will always be people willing to attack this country.

Another Example of Practical Politics

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. H. L. Mencken

We must send our thanks to the FBI. They have thwarted another terrorist attempt that the agency itself planned:

PORTLAND, Ore. –Federal agents in a sting operation arrested a Somali-born teenager just as he tried blowing up a van he believed was loaded with explosives at a crowded Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, authorities said.

The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said. (emphasis added)

You really don't need to read anything else. In just the second sentence we are told that federal agents were guiding this entire operation. Normally we would call federal agents co-conspirators, but since federal agents are our masters, they operate under a different set of laws than we do, just as whites in colonial America operated under a separate set of laws than blacks.

Congress Witnesses XXX Security Theater

Via Techdirt I found this Politico article that reports the TSA demonstrated its groping enhanced pat-down to Congress. Apparently, the demonstration was not as well received as the TSA hoped:

The comprehensive briefing of House staff, by a TSA deputy, covered everything – the threat from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, screening procedures, pat-downs (standard and enhanced) – “the whole works,” one House staffer who attended the briefing told POLITICO.

He said that several House staffers were uncomfortable and averted their eyes when the TSA demonstrated an enhanced pat-down in the room of 200 people.

“The dumbest part: they did two pat-down demonstrations – male on male, and female on female,” the House staffer said. And they used a young female TSA volunteer “and in front of a room of 200 people, they touched her breasts and her buttocks. People were averting their eyes. The TSA was trying to demonstrate ‘this is not so bad,’ but it made people so uncomfortable to watch, that people were averting their eyes.”

“They shot themselves in the foot,” the staffer continued.

I think that the organizers of National Opt-Out Day hoped passengers would have similar reactions if they saw fellow travelers being groped in public. Such scenes at airport security did not occur thanks to the TSA's decision to shut down the scanners at many airports, thus removing the "opt-out" option. Of course, if the State must decide between protecting its subjects' lives or protecting its legitimacy, it will always decide the latter. Subjects are replaceable; the State's legitimacy is not.

I would like to think that the reactions of House staffers would lead to an end to enhanced pat-downs at the very least. But I'm not optimistic. 

 

Lew Rockwell Interviews Becky Akers

I highly recommend this interview. Ms. Akers has been writing about the TSA years for years, well before the outrage that we see today. She even warned us about the pornoscanners in 2005. I was still a war-mongering conservative then, so I would not have been open to anything she said at that time. However, given the palpable outrage at the TSA today, this might be fertile ground spread discontent about this dishonest, insane, and intolerable government and sow seeds of radical liberty in the hearts and minds of the masses. Thus, it would be good to read her past essays and point out to people that the TSA's plans for ruling over us were in place before the Underwear Bomber got his first pair of Hanes.

Just in Case You Need a Reminder...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an essay entitled "Conservatives Are Not Friends of Liberty". In that essay, I pointed out that just because a conservative comes out in favor of liberty in an essay or a speech (in this case it was resistance to TSA scanners and molestation), we must keep in mind that conservatives are statists. Thus, we cannot rely on them to be consistent defenders of liberty.

Here is another example, although this one is more obvious. Danielle Pletka at The Enterprise Blog which is hosted by the American Enterprise Institute has written a post entitled, "In Favor of Groping". Yes, she actually uses the word "groping" and not one of the mainstream media euphemisms like "inconvenience" or "pat-down". She writes

I got back from Lebanon and Israel last Friday to the complete insanity of the ongoing hysteria—TSA “junk” groping, pilots twittering, grandmas crying—that Matt Drudge purveys every day. Imagine leaving the Middle East and arriving in America, the land of totally crazy. Really, what are you people out there thinking? Do you think anyone wants to grope you? Ogle naked photos of grandmothers? Strip your crying kid? Is TSA really a secret porn operation with horribly indiscriminate taste? Get some perspective.

Sure, profiling would add value because few terrorists are grandmothers or babies. But terrorists were indeed willing to use their babies to blow up airliners. Sure, most people intent on blowing up planes have been Muslims. But not all of them have profiled as Muslims. This is about keeping us safer, and if it deters the next attack, I am for it.

Yes, you read that correctly. It is utterly insane to demand to be treated with respect and dignity from State agents when there are terrorists everywhere. Her colleague, Marc Theissan, wrote an essay entitled "Let's Give Thanks to the TSA", expressing similar sentiments. Fear is the conceit of both essays. "We simply must endure these humiliations and gropings in order to keep us safe. Otherwise the terrorists will get us! They are always trying to get us! And they will stop at nothing!" Yep, as long as it keeps us safe.

(I've noticed that only difference between conservatives who want Americans to submit to the TSA and liberals who want America to submit to the TSA is that these conservatives want profiling of Muslims and these liberals do not. I've always found the race issue will liberals laughable because they will condone any aggressive action of the State as long as they are convinced that the motivation is not race. The exception, of course, is when their man is in power, in which case race only matters if it helps them politically, see Obama, Barack, but I digress. )

This should serve as a simple reminder. Conservatives may paint themselves as friends of the American Revolution, cite the Founders' emphasis on freedom and natural rights, and argue that the Constitution was the best document ever created to protect liberty, but they don't mean any of this. You have no rights, you have no dignity, you have no privacy, you have no liberty except that which is granted by their god, the State. Conservatives, like liberals, want people to just shut up and obey their masters. And every so often, conservatives will tire of all this talk about liberty, dignity, and natural rights and let you know what they really think.

The Only Threats the TSA Is Heading Off Are Threats to the State's Legitimacy

I have been eagerly waiting to hear about how Opt-Out Day went at airports around the country. I wondered how many people would opt-out of the scanners for the groping. I wondered how many people upon seeing another fellow passenger molested would react with disgust and question the TSA's activties and, hopefully, even the existence of the agency itself. I wondered if there would be long lines for security screening. I wondered if the TSA would compel passengers to decide between scanning and molesting given that the agency was aware of Opt-Out day and even spent the past couple of says encouraging passengers to submit to whatever the TSA agents demanded so that passengers could make their flights on time.

So I was a bit surprised when I read this article in USAToday that reported minimal delays:

Although some travelers vowed to protest today against what they see as intrusive new airport security measures, fliers faced only the slightest problems as they headed to family gatherings for the Thanksgiving holiday.

Some people who arrived at airport security lines just as they opened this morning at airports such as Newark and Denver encountered longer than usual wait times, the TSA reported. But those lines dissipated quickly and since then it has been smooth sailing across the country, the agency reported.

There have been only a handful of passengers who have opted out of going through body scanners, which can peer through clothing to find weapons, the TSA said.

Loose-knit groups on the Internet, who believe the scanners are a violation of privacy, had urged passengers to boycott the scanners. That, in turn, would trigger the controversial pat-downs, which since Nov. 1 have become more rigorous at all airports, and could cause delays.

The first question that entered my mind was "Why?" Why would there be no delays when the TSA said all week that passengers should comply with TSA rules and even doubled down on its aggression by threatening to fine and detain people who leave the airport after refusing both the scanner and the groping? Did fewer people travel by airline today? Did Opt-Out Day fail because the vast majority of people simply went through the scanner like obedient subjects?

The Steady Decline of the America Continues

Before 9-11 a passenger on a plane who went to the bathroom multiple times on a flight might not get noticed. If he was noticed, his fellow passengers might have fun at his expense cracking jokes about drinking too much or abstaining from Mexican food before boarding an airplane. Some passengers might have some empathy for their fellow traveler as they might suffer from an enlarged prostate or urinary tract infection that compels them to go to the bathroom frequently. Perhaps the flight attendant would have asked the passenger if he was all right and if there was anything he could do to make the passenger's trip more comfortable.

However, post 9-11 such frequent trips to the airplance lavatory are now considered suspicious and require the police to detain said "suspect" for questioning as well as an thorough inspection of the airplane bathroom. The passengers on the flight said that the passenger was "acting weird". But it does not appear that anyone spoke to this passenger. So thanks to the post 9-11 "We are all agents on the look out for suspicious behavior" mentality that has been pounded into our heads for nine years, we treat anything out of the ordinary as "suspicious". Moreover, since we have been trained to not question or do anything on our own, but to "report suspicious behavior to authorities", we now treat all of our fellow citizens as "potential terrorists threats" and report them rather than ask any questions. Our masters have trained us well.

Hopefully this article is a joke and I can later report that I was punk'd by MSNBC.

 

Are We Officially a Socialist Country Yet?

From today's USAToday:

WASHINGTON — Health insurance premiums should go for actual medical care — not insurers' overhead and profits — the Obama administration said Monday in rules that for the first time require the companies to give consumers a rebate.

The regulation unveiled by the Health and Human Services Department calls for insurance companies to spend at least 80 cents of the premium dollar on medical care and quality. For employer plans covering more than 50 people, the requirement is 85 cents. Insurers that fall short of the mark will have to issue their customers a rebate.

Part of the new health care law, the rule is meant to give consumers a better deal. Administration officials said it will prevent insurers from wasting valuable premiums on administration, marketing and executive bonuses. "While some level of overhead costs is certainly necessary, we believe they have gotten out of hand," said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Anyone who dares to say that health care in this country operates in a free market should be shot. Libertarians have known that health care in this country has been State-controlled since the FDR administration. Yet we are incessantly bombarded with bombastic balderdash from economically ignorant liberals who continue to blame the free-market for our rising health-care costs.

However, it should now be clear to anyone with pulse that when the government of the United States openly tells health insurance companies that their premiums should not go to profits or insurers' overhead costs, i.e., that insurance companies should just pay for health care costs even if they cannot stay in business because they cannot make a profit nor pay their staff to make payouts for medical care, that we are not dealing with a free market in any sense of the term. This is a centrally-planned market in which the government tells health care companies not only how much they should charge, but also where their revenue must go.

This is the definition of socialism and I am damned tired of Obama sycophants saying that he is not a socialist. I'm also damned tired of folks arguing that because the Obama administration has not formally nationalized the health care system he is not a socialist. As long as the State has the final say over business decisions, the State owns the business. That there are private individuals who operate said business is irrelevant; these business owners are not free to use their property as they see fit. Thus, the State is the de facto owner.

So now that the US Government is openly telling health care businesses how it can spend its revenue (just as the US Government now tells banks how they can spend their profits and car companies what cars to build) can we now say that the USA is officially a socialist country or should we wait for the brown shirts to appear?

TSA, Newspeak, Security, Self Respect

Nota bene, bad language.

It has been said that people who would give up freedom for safety deserve neither.  The reaction of the sheeple to the on-going popular uprising against the TSA -- this "anything for safety" nonsense -- calls this old saying into a contemporary context yet again.  Here we have a peculiar strain of humanity that openly welcomes physical and/or sexual assault (a very real manifestation of danger being visited upon travelers as a matter of course, complete with the victim's foreknowledge of the certainty and disgusting details of the act) as a trade-off for the very minute chance of being killed or harmed by "terrorists" who would hijack or bomb the plane on which they hope to travel.  If ever there was a better example of the hideously destructive power of Newspeak, I have yet to see it.  No shit, it has come to this:  people feel safer after trading in a minute chance of being harmed for a one hundred percent certainty of being harmed.

(Exactly what fucking planet am I on, and how in the name of all that is holy did I get here?)

Yet Another Way Democracy Disarms the Masses

From MSNBC:

A retired special education teacher who said he was left humiliated, crying and covered with his own urine after an enhanced pat-down at airport security said he received an apology Monday in a phone call from Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole.

“First he apologized,” said Thomas D. “Tom” Sawyer, 61, of Lansing, Mich. “And I thanked him. Then I told him off a bit. And he said, ‘Tell me more. What do you think needs to be done?’ ”

Sawyer said that he suggested to Pistole that TSA screeners undergo more training to better understand travelers with medical conditions.

“I offered to attend a general staff meeting to show the staff what an ostomy bag is and help with that training,” Sawyer said. “Pistole said he just may take me up on that.”

Sawyer is a bladder cancer survivor who now wears a urostomy bag, which collects his urine from a stoma, or opening in his abdomen. An msnbc.com story on Saturday detailed Sawyer's Nov. 7 experience flying from Detroit Metropolitan Airport to Orlando, Fla., to attend a wedding. Sawyer said he was ‘humiliated’ after an enhanced pat-down procedure broke the seal on his urostomy bag and left him soaked in urine.

He said he tried to warn the security officer that “he would hit the bag and break the seal on my bag, but he ignored me. Sure enough, the seal was broken and urine started dribbling down my shirt and my leg and into my pants.”

Humiliated, upset and wet, Sawyer said he had to walk through the airport soaked in urine, board his plane and wait until after takeoff before he could clean up.

He said that he accepted Pistole's apology.

“It made me feel good,” said Sawyer, “It means that my voice was heard all the way up to Washington.” (emphasis added)

I've noticed that when people are harmed by private industry, they tend to go all out in an effort to be compensated. They file lawsuits, they contact the media, they contact the Better Business Bureau, they contact the FTC, they tell everyone they know that Evil Private Capitalist has harmed them; that they should be compensated; and that the State should punished Evil Private Capitalist.

However, when the State harms people, I have noticed that many of these victims of State malfeasence relent as soon as a State official deigns to listen to them. The official does not actually have to do anything. He only need listen to his subjects' sufferning, make promises to reform, and then make a half-hearted attempt at reform. But the complaints decrease because the victims have had their audience with the State and now feel that their voices are being heard. This process has parallels to voting. Most people who vote really believe that their votes matter; that their voices are being heard; that they are taking part in the political process and, thus, something greater than they are. And as such their outrage at a particular presidential administration or at Congress becomes diffused through the feelings of good will they receive from participating in the process.

Of Course You Can Kill People, Just Don't Say You Enjoy Your Job

An Iraq veteran has been barred from a college campus for writing about a desire to kill.

In an article titled "War is a Drug," Charles Whittington, a student at Community College of Baltimore in Catonsville, Maryland, details what he calls his addiction to killing.

"I got used to killing and after a while it became something I really had to do," he wrote. "Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive." He went on to write that killing was something he really needed in order to feel like himself.

"I still feel the addictions running through my blood and throughout my body," Whittington wrote. "When I stick my blade through his stomach or his ribs or slice his throat it's a feeling that I cannot explain, but feels so good to me."

Concerned about school safety, the college's administration has temporarily removed Whittington from campus, issuing a notice of trespass that does not allow him to enter the campus or attend classes, according to a school spokeswoman.

At first I thought that the school had a principled stand for peace, but after doing a little research, I realized that this is not the case. The college has a Catonsville Military Veterans Association. On the Career Services Page, every branch of the armed forces is listed as a potential employeer. There is a page that lists financial assistance for soliders and veterans. So it appears the real problem here is that the college officials have a hard time facing the possiblilty that some of their veteran and active duty students might actually enjoy jobs these same college officals help their students get.

The TSA and the Milgram Experiment

Many subjects will obey the experimenter no matter how vehement the pleading of the person being shocked, no matter how painful the shocks seem to be, and no matter how much the victim pleads to be let out. This was seen time and again in our studies and has been observed in several universities where the experiment was repeated. It is the extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority that constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation. Stanley Milgram-Obedience to Authority

As Stanley Milgram discovered in his series of experiments beginning in 1961, humans will obey authority figures and commit acts that violate their personal consciences. His experiment has been repeated with the same result. The results of a recent informal survey of TSA agents, while not a rigorous study, seem to confirm Milgram's finding.

Via Radley Balko I found this post that finds many TSA agents unhappy with the enhanced security measures. These rules and passengers' reactions to them are sapping morale. Steven Frischling conducted an informal survey of 20 TSA agents. Here are some of the comments he received about the new rules:

“It is not comfortable to come to work knowing full well that my hands will be feeling another man’s private parts, their butt, their inner thigh. Even worse is having to try and feel inside the flab rolls of obese passengers and we seem to get a lot of obese passengers!”

The Cloak Has Been Removed

States, by their very nature, are perpetually at war — not always against foreign foes, of course, but always against their own subjects. Robert Higgs

In the normal course of State affairs, officials and agents of the democratic State have to disguise their nefarious motives in various cloaks to deceive the masses. They dress up their plans with expressions such as "national security" or "law and order" or "the public good", etc. Such language disarms the masses, hereafter referred to as "subjects", who have bought into the legitimacy of the democratic State and persuades them that the officials and agents of the State, hereafter referred to as "masters", actually do care about them.

However, there are times when the subjects begin to resist the actions of their masters and even begin questioning their masters motives. The masters then react with their usual propaganda in an attempt to disabuse the suspicious subjects. They tell their subjects that they have their subjects' best interest in mind; that they are doing what they believe is necessary to protect them; that they must give up some of their rights in order for their masters to protect them; and that the subjects who continue to resist are endangering everyone.

But everyone so often, the masters' efforts at reinforcing the political ideology that permits them to rule is not as effective as they hoped. At this point the masters are faced with a dilemma. They can lower their time preference and alter their plans or wait until a more propitious moment to accomplish their goals. Or they can respond with brute force and hope that the fear they create among their subjects will stunt their resistance.

Why Scaredy Cats Make Us All Less Safe

The grassroots movement against the TSA is continuing to gain momentum. Legislators in New Jersey and New York City are speaking out against the TSA and calling for the abolition of the porno-scanners. A district attorney in San Mateo County promises to prosecute TSA agents who inappropriately touch passengers. And the always heroic Ron Paul has drawn up a bill that would apply sexual assault and child pornography laws to TSA agents. Nevertheless, there are still voices of opposition. Many of those voices are from the TSA and Department of Homeland Security bureaucrats who simply want to masses to submit to all the robbery and humiliation their masters have planned for them. But there are also regular citizens out there who think that porno-scanners and molestation are simply prices we must pay to be safe and to be protected. But if we are willing to give up our dignity and pride just to feel safe, just what kind of lives are we supposedly entrusting the government to protect?

In fact, these citizens, hereafter referred to as "scaredy cats", willing to give up their dignity and pride just to feel safe make us all less safe. Their docility and their willingness to debase themselves for the chimera of security demonstrates that they do not have the mental tenacity to resist obvious violations of their person and privacy. They have been successfuly disabused of any notion of natural rights and, moreover, they have no emotional connection to their dignity, pride, or decency. For example, a parent who condones a TSA agent groping his daughter because we need to balance privacy and security has clearly lost touch with his paternal instinct that would have beaten the TSA agent to a pulp even if doing so meant his being arrested and beaten by airport police. If they are unwilling to resist this, then it is quite unlikely they would resist threats to their lives if they thought that through their submission, they might be allowed to live.

In contrast, a free invidual who is willing to resist such violations of his privacy and his modesty is much more likely to resist any threats to his physical body. If he is willing to risk violence to his person just to be treated with dignity, then he is most likely to strike back if his life were actually threatened. It is also likely that such an individual would find alternative means of transportation and opt out of flying altogether if it became clear that he could not fly without risking such violations of his dignity.

"Loko" FDA

The FDA is set to ban the use of caffeine in alcoholic beverages.

Four Loko, Joose and other fruit-flavored, alcoholic beverages will no longer be able to contain caffeine under a series of regulatory actions expected from the Food and Drug Administration and other agencies this week, according to U.S. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D., N.Y.) and people familiar with the matter.

Because no one's smart enough to buy an energy drink and mix it with alcohol.

We're All Terr'ists Now

Whether "enhanced interrogation" techniques by the military or "enhanced patdowns" by the sexual sadists at the TSA, it's all torture.

We now live in a country where innocent citizens, ostensibly entitled to Fourth Amendment protections, are automatically assumed to be criminals of the same sort we're supposedly fighting overseas. I say "supposedly" because this so-called "war on terror" is merely a smokescreen for the real war being fought by the U.S. state and it mercenaries at home and abroad: the War on American Liberties.

It would be laughable if it weren't so insane.

Glad to See Our Government Trying to SAVE Money

The second winner of the Obama administration's SAVE award program has been announced. Trudy Givens of Wisconsin will meet with the president to discuss her plan to end mailings of the Federal Register. The first winner of the program was Nancy Fichtner, who proposed that veterans be allowed to take home leftover medications that were being thrown out. Somehow I doubt that either of these proposals would have much impact on our $1,350,0000,000,000+ deficit this year, much less our $13,700,000,000,000+ national debt. But, hey an A for effort!

What I find interesting about this award program is that all the proposals to trim the federal budget come from federal employees. This is surprising given that Jeffery Zients, acting director of OMB, stated:

One of the most important changes that the president has brought to Washington is the belief that the best ideas usually come from outside of Washington....That's why he launched the first ever SAVE Award last year to get ideas from federal employees on the front lines to make government work smarter for the American people and to make sure taxpayer dollars are spent wisely.

This statement is an interesting glimpse into the mind of a federal bureaucrat. Mr. Zients equates "federal employees on the front lines" as being "outside of Washington". So who the hell is "inside Washington"?

The proposals this year included:

...a reusable, environmentally friendly government green box that could be used to purchase food from office cafeterias; an end to renaming government buildings and bridges; installation of automatic dispensers into bathrooms; elimination of delivery of newspapers to federal offices and a lowering of the minimum retirement age.

Yep, these all should really but a dent into that deficit. And, get this, federal employees not only create the proposals, but they also vote on the proposals to name a winner. Yep, we should expect real earth-shattering and radical proposals emerging from this group.

How about these proposals: "Please abolish the [name your three-letter acronym of useless federal department(s) here]"? Or "End the war in [name countries full of brown people and/or Muslims here]"? Or "End [name entitlement(s) that have bankrupted the country here]"? Perhaps these suggestions would save just a bit more money than ending daily mailings of the Federal Register.

Never Talk to the Feds!

I was watching a repeat of "Without a Trace" tonight and I realized that in this show, and many of these cop/fed shows, people always talk to the cops or feds without lawyers. However, in many of these episodes, the people who talk are later discovered to have lied or through their actions they have broken some artibtrary law. In the episode I saw tonight, a young man was conned by a woman he thought was in love with him. He lied to the feds to protect her and he aided her because he thought she was in trouble. He took out $600,000 for this woman because he thought she needed help, but this was a scam. After the interrogation (without a lawyer present) the feds told him to call his lawyer because "he wasn't going anywhere".  Presumably he was going to be charged with aiding and abetting a felon and lying to a federal officer. So he was scammed out of $600,000 and then charged by the feds whom he helped with his information.

I know that this is just a TV show, but I think that these cop shows are an accurate portrayal of police tactics and teach an invaluable lesson to the public. People talk to the police or feds without a lawyer and then admit something illegal which the cops or feds then hold over their heads until they give up information. And in some cases, the people are still charged even after they assist the cops. Thus, these shows demonstrate a truth that needs to be repeated daily-Never talk to the police or the FBI or the DEA or the ATF or any federal or local law enforcement agent without a lawyer.

Swerving, Speeding, and Failure to Use a Turn Signal

A teenie bopper on her way to school this morning?

No, silly. The cop I followed for five miles on the way to my son's medical appointment.

I tried to take a photo as the guy was playing "Monorail" with the white shoulder line, but my phone's memory was full. Of course!

Never Call the Police

There is no situation that can be made better by calling the police. Sue Aitken found this out the hard way when she called the cops because she was worried about her son. Via Bill Anderson, this story by Radley Balko is almost beyond belief, as 27-year-old New Jersey resident Brian Aitken now faces seven years in prison for being a responsible gun owner.

Seriously, don't ever call the police. For anything. If you can think of any examples of crimes being prevented because the cops were called, please send them along and I will post them. In all of my reading and research, I can't recall offhand even one instance where someone's life or property was saved as a result of calling the police. I can, however, recount dozens of occasions where someone's life was ruined or abruptly ended by doing so.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that you should never call the police unless you're prepared to see violence visited upon either yourself or the person about whom you're calling (unless, of course, that person is a criminal, who will almost always have time to commit his crime and/or flee the scene before the police show up to tape it off and photograph the carnage).

For an unfortunate yet necessary illustration of what can happen when you call the police to "help" someone you love, read this story I wrote in 2007 about Southern Maryland Police State victim Jamie Dean.

Die, TSA, Die!

Here is an excellent article from Art Carden on abolishing the TSA.

Yet Another Crack in the Welfare State

Greece and France have been dealing with riots ever since the governments of those countries announced cuts to their entitlement programs this year. Could riots also occur in the US? This Associated Press article suggests that we might. Social Security judges are facing more violent threats from claimants who are angry at being denied their benefits or frustrated with long delays in processing claims. Here is an excerpt from the article:

There were at least 80 threats to kill or harm administrative law judges or staff over the past year — an 18 percent increase over the previous reporting period, according to data collected by the agency.

The data was released to the Association of Administrative Law Judges and made available to The Associated Press.

One claimant in Albuquerque, N.M., called his congressman's office to say he was going to "take his guns and shoot employees" in the Social Security hearing office. In Eugene, Ore., a man who was denied benefits said he is "ready to join the Taliban and hurt some people." Another claimant denied benefits told a judge in Greenville, S.C., that he was a sniper in the military and "would go take care of the problem."

"I'm not sure the number is as significant as the kind of threats being made," said Randall Frye, a judge based in Charlotte, N.C., and the president of the judges' union. "There seem to be more threats of serious bodily harm, not only to the judge but to the judge's family."

Fifty of the incidents came between March and August, including that of a Pittsburgh claimant who threatened to kill herself outside the hearing office or fly a plane into the building like a disgruntled tax protester did earlier this year at the Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas.

A Senate subcommittee is expected to hear testimony on Monday at a field hearing in Akron, Ohio, about the rising number of threats, as well as the status of the massive backlog in applications for disability benefits, which are available to people who can't work because of medical problems.

Nearly 2 million people are waiting to find out if they qualify for benefits, with many having to wait more than two years to see their first payment.

Judges say some claimants become desperate after years of fighting for money to help make ends meet.

"To many of them, we're their last best hope for getting relief in the form of income and medical benefits," said Judge Mark Brown, a vice president of the judge's union and an administrative law judge hearing cases in St. Louis.

While no judges were harmed this year, there have been past incidents: A judge in Los Angeles was hit over the head with a chair during a hearing and a judge in Newburgh, N.Y., was punched by a claimant when he showed up for work.

In January, a gunman possibly upset about a reduction in his Social Security benefits killed a security guard during a furious gunbattle at a Nevada federal courthouse.

Such behavior is a predictable result of the welfare State. In his essay, "On Time Preference, Government, and the Process of Decivilization", Hans-Hermann Hoppe demonstrates why decivilization is a necessary consequence of the welfare State (emphasis added):

Conservatives Are Not Friends of Liberty

I found what I thought at first was an rather excellent essay by Janet Porter assailing the TSA's porno-scanners and "enhanced" pat downs. She begins with this quote from Benjamin Franklin: "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." She cites the Fourth Amendment. She points out the safety risk of these scanners. She discusses the humiliation of TSA agents fondling men, women, and children. And then she ruins this rather excellent essay with this one passage:

At the heart of this is the warped view of the Obama administration that targets American citizens as "enemies," while refusing to recognize those who have declared jihad against us as "terrorists." Instead, Obama's Department of Homeland Security declared pro-Constitution, pro-life, pro-family, pro-Second Amendment veterans as the "most dangerous" terrorists of all.

Now you might be thinking, "Brutus, isn't that a harsh assessment? Sure she's a conservative and not perfect, but she recognizes tyranny when she sees it. Isn't any enemy of the TSA a friends of yours?" Well, I'm always happy to find enemies of the TSA, but the enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. In fact, as a libertarian, the enemy of my enemy is usually enemy. That is, although conservatives and liberals fight each other incessantly, both groups want to oppress me with their laws. And the fact that Ms. Porter thinks that the problem with the TSA is the Obama administration and not the State illustrates this.

Scaredy Cats Should Have Their Own Airports

I'm glad to see that resistance is growing against the TSA's pat downs and porno-scanners. However, there appears to be a sizeable number of people who believe that security trumps privacy. I clearly disagree with this position, but I do think that a compromise can be reached. Those who feel that they should be able to fly without being molested or scanned, and who believe that airline companies should assume security for their planes, staff, and passengers can have their own airports. We can designate these airports "For flyers who love freedom" and the TSA would be banned from these airports. On the other hand, those who really think that being molested and seen naked by a bunch of perverts makes them feel safer can have their own airports where the TSA can continue "protecting" them. We can designate these airports "For Scaredy Cats with no sense of dignity, pride, decency, self-respect or modesty who trust the same government to protect them that allowed the attacks of 9/11 to happen in the first place". Reasonable, yes?

The Salt Nazi

Mike Bloomberg, powermad nanny-in-chief of NYC, is targeting soup -- and no doubt soup manufacturers, distributors, and merchants -- by launching a taxpayer-subsidized ad campaign against salt.

Typical of most hypocritical politicians and fascists -- apologies for the redundancies -- Bloomberg is guilty of the "do as I say, not as I do" mentality -- the mayor admits to being a salt fanatic himself. No matter; them's the perks of wielding the guns.

As for the new ad campaign, which is running state and federal taxpayers $370,000, here's the skinny:

The ads, which will be plastered on subways for the next two months, feature a half-opened can of soup with a geyser of salt spewing from the top and forming a heap around the can.

Trying to put fear into the hearts of salt-aholics, the ads will warn that excessive sodium "can lead to heart attack and stroke" and list average amounts of salt in various foods, such as salad dressing and frozen pizza.

These cute little ads are just the precursor to eventual prohibition, suggesting that Bloomberg rather conveniently neglected to include one tidbit of information in them: Excessive authoritarian meddling in the lives of innocent citizens "can lead to self-inflicted gunshot wounds to the head" (when the police aren't doing it for us, that is).

TSA Predation: The Test of Our Lifetime

Just so we're all clear on this: Voluntarily walking naked in public will get you arrested in almost every state and township; refusing to get naked in an airport for sexual predators working porno-scanners for the TSA will get you and your children sexually harassed and treated like terrorists.

To me, the disgusting indignities we're forced to suffer simply by attempting air travel is the biggest test of our lifetime so far. If we allow the federal government to treat every nonviolent citizen like a suspected terrorist, our days of walking freely in the U.S. are over (if they aren't already).

The point here is that, if we haven't already fallen into the abyss of complete draconian rule, we are undoubtedly on the cusp, teetering on the brink of a complete national security state that even Orwell couldn't have imagined in his worst nightmares.

Know this: This TSA malevolence has nothing to do with preventing terrorist attacks specifically or "keeping America safe" generally. It is about control. It's about keeping us in a constant state of fear so the state can continually expand its power over us. And anyhow, America cannot be "safe" when Americans have no right to travel freely without being subjected to humiliation, degradation, arrest, or imprisonment for asserting their (supposed) individual liberties.

Thankfully, pilots have begun to reject naked body scanners over radiation and privacy concerns. However, this will only have so much of an effect on the current system, as opting out of a scan merely invites genitalia groping and other humiliation in front of fellow travelers. Only travelers themselves will be able to stop this abuse, primarily by refusing to consent to it in the first place.

In the short term this means refusal to fly, period, which of course may be a difficult thing to do. I for one am done unless my life or my family's literally depends on it. My wife asked me two days ago if I was interested in going on vacation with her family next August -- typically we go to the islands for a week -- and I said no. I'm not sure she really believes I'm serious about no longer flying commercially. Her parents can charter a flight if they want me to come badly enough.

From a libertarian perspective, I don't begrudge anyone for putting up with the TSA's obscene treatment of airline passengers. I realize many people probably don't have a choice in the matter, especially when their job requires commercial air travel (certainly there's no virtue in starving your family by quitting a necessary job). And, after all, we are the victims here -- the laws and regulations themselves are specifically intended to coerce us into conformance.

But neither should we expect freedom to come easily when we empower self-aggrandizing buffoons to govern us. So we indeed have some difficult choices to make. We can put up with this new subjugation at the hands of penny-ante thugs, thereby stating loud and clear that we're willing to surrender whatever semblance of liberties we have left. Or we can take a stand and withdraw our consent to being treated like criminals by insisting that airports and airlines be allowed to manage their own security measures.

We should just decide pretty quickly. Our lives probably depend on it.

Anti-Cop Hip Hop-"Pigs"

In August 1991 Cypress Hill released their self-titled debut album Cypress Hill. This is still one of my favorite rap albums. The first time I heard their first single, "The Phuncky Feel One", I knew that I had to have the whole album. The first song on the album, "Pigs", is a classic anti-cop track. B-Real uses the nursery rhyme "This Little Piggie" as a template and he covers just about every type of cop stereotype that existed in 1991, and still exists today. There are still cops who kill blacks and Latinos and get away with murder; cops who deal drugs; cops who beat up people for standing up for their rights; and cops who do nothing among other types of cops. Unfortunately, the situation has only gotten worse.

I never noticed it until now, but on the album "Pigs" is followed by the tracks "How I Could Just Kill a Man", "Hand on the Pump", and "Hole in the Head". I wonder just what Cypress Hill was trying to say.

The Future Will Not Be Pretty

Here is a great article by my friend Tom Luongo, who warns that the U.S. cannot kick the rest of the world in the teeth forever without repercussion. I particularly like this brilliant paragraph:

Ours was supposedly a society founded on the liberal principles of self-ownership and self-governance and yet we have morphed into a gigantic, fascist police state whose chief exports are debt and violence. Moreover, those most entrusted with shedding light on the truth turn their eyes inward, looking only at and serving those issuing the edicts as opposed to the effects of those edicts; cheerleading the empire, or worse, making excuses for it, while everyone else suffers.

Security Theater at the Train Station

Recently I took at train trip from Washington, DC to North Carolina. I had not been to Union Station in years and had not taken Amtrak since 2005. The last time I took the train, I did not see any TSA or other government security presence. Occasionally I would see a couple of DC police officers, but there was no government agency there to search passenger.

Now there are armed government agents there to "protect" train passengers. They have dogs who randomly search trains that come through Union Station. They also randomly search passengers' luggage. Plus, they have installed TVs that show a video of government agents performing these searches. The agents in the video are friendly and the passengers who allow these agents to search their belongings are compliant.

But for all of this show, I did not see any of these government agents at any of the station stops on the way to North Carolina. So if a terrorist really wanted to do something on a train, he would simply avoid Union Station and get on at the next stop.

Given the glaring holes in this attempt to secure trains, one may wonder why attempt such half-hearted security measures in the first place. Well, if one thinks that the purpose of Security Theater is really to protect the citizens, this is a legitimate question. However, for those of us who are simply too cynical to believe that the government's stated purpose of any activity is its real purpose, it would appear that the real purpose of this show of force is to acclimate the masses to regular violations of their liberty. In the name of "security" the State wants its subjects to consent to regular violations of the Fourth Amendment. This essentially lets the Federal Government treat each passenger as a criminal who has to prove his innocence by submitting to these random searches. A passenger who declines a search might find himself arrested or at the very least the government agents will prevent him from boarding the train, thus restricting his freedom to travel.

The Feds' attempt to protect the train stations is simply another chapter in Security Theater. Just like Airline Security Theater, Train Security Theater gives the masses the impression that the government is actually taking measures to protect them when in fact the government wants to inure the masses to violations of their rights, making them complacent and easily controlled. As long as the masses continue to believe that the government exists to protect them, Security Theater will continue until the government runs out of money to finance its production.

I'm Staying Home

The New York Times, well-established mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, published one of the its smarmier editorials in recent memory yesterday (that's saying something), urging voters -- especially young ones -- to "think carefully and then vote" -- as long as it's for a Democrat, of course.

The fear of GOP gains in Congress is palpable throughout the article. I particularly enjoyed the editors' shrieks over the potential privatization of Social Security or elimination of Medicare (as if), but the board's comic ignorance of political and economic repercussions of the Obama administration's policies is one for the books.

For starters, the Times argues that Mr. Obama is responsible for millions of previously uninsured poor children getting health insurance. However, why does it matter how you obtain health care if you're guaranteed to get it? Whether insured or not, there's not a single poor person in this country who is turned away from a hospital -- all states have participated in the Medicaid program since 1982. Of course, the editors don't bother to speculate how sporadic health care might be, say, ten to 20 years from now should taxpayers be too poor to sustain this unfunded liability.

The article also claims that the U.S. is gaining respect among its allies around the world. Nowhere does it mention that it continues to create enemies, however, with the continued killing of innocents in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen (to name but the obvious locations).

Furthermore, the editors not only claim that the stimulus "saved the country from a deeper, more destructive recession" but also blame Republicans for making sure it was smaller than it should have been. Apparently, patching a hole in the short term by piling up debt will have no long-term effects. Say, by directly causing future recessions.

There's more if you care to read it. Granted, the Times's editors made some accurate observations in their swipes against the GOP, but in their blatant cheerleading for the Democrats they really illustrate the impotence of their newspaper. Especially since they concede widespread anger and uncertainty among American voters, yet argue that "there is no excuse for staying home on Election Day." (You can't make this stuff up.)

So, fine. I won't give excuses as to why I stay home on election day; I'll give reasons. Here are just a few off the top of my head:

- I believe that initiating violence against peaceful human beings is immoral, and all modern-day governments depend on taxation (theft) for their existence and coercion (force) for their survival.
- I don't endorse criminality. Criminal A is no better than Criminal B, or vice versa.
- Democracy is tyranny of the majority. Theft, harassment, intimidation, torture, and murder are no more justified when 51 percent of the populace says they're okay as when 49 percent does.
- I have a better chance of being struck by lightning than of having my vote influence the outcome of an election.
- Government cannot (and indeed does not intend to) fix problems individuals either cannot or refuse to fix themselves.
- If things could get better merely by flip-flopping between two corrupt parties, wouldn't they have gotten better by now? No matter which party holds power, the Leviathan state and its national debt grow while our civil liberties diminish.
- Voting is a charade designed to dupe the people into thinking they are free. The state enforces a political monopoly, meaning that dissenters may not opt out of the system for any reason. Thus we are all slaves. The acquisition of liberty is dependent upon the majority's withdrawal of its consent to being ruled by a criminal gang, not upon tacitly or overtly granting it.

If I Were a Sexually Depraved Man...

but wished to have a "respectable" job that permitted me to engage in my depravity and even be praised for it, I would immediately apply to the TSA for employment. According to new TSA procedures instituted last week,

the manual search will involve a slide of the hand compared to the traditional pat down, NBC News has learned. TSA agents will use the front of their hands in searches, and the new process will include an agent running his or her hand up the inside of a passenger's leg.

Jeffery Goldberg of The Atlantic relates the following exchange with TSA agents that details just how far up a passenger's leg the agent's hands will go:

At BWI, I told the officer who directed me to the back-scatter that I preferred a pat-down. I did this in order to see how effective the manual search would be. When I made this request, a number of TSA officers, to my surprise, began laughing. I asked why. One of them -- the one who would eventually conduct my pat-down -- said that the rules were changing shortly, and that I would soon understand why the back-scatter was preferable to the manual search. I asked him if the new guidelines included a cavity search. "No way. You think Congress would allow that?"

I answered, "If you're a terrorist, you're going to hide your weapons in your anus or your vagina." He blushed when I said "vagina."

"Yes, but starting tomorrow, we're going to start searching your crotchal area" -- this is the word he used, "crotchal" -- and you're not going to like it."

"What am I not going to like?" I asked.

"We have to search up your thighs and between your legs until we meet resistance," he explained.

"Resistance?" I asked.

"Your testicles," he explained.

So male TSA agents will fondle men's testicles and female TSA agents will finger women's labia...all in the name of security and the war on terror, of course. The other option for passengers is to go through the porno-scanners so some TSA agent can enjoy looking at their naked bodies.  It seems clear to me that Security Theater is quickly approaching the Pee Wee Herman matinée.

So if I were a man who enjoyed fondling other men in public or I were a man who enjoyed watching women feel up other women in public or if I were a voyeur who liked looking at naked pictures or women and/or men in public or if were into sexual humilation and sadism, I would immediately apply for a job at the TSA. Nothing beats a job that matches perfectly with one's hobbies.