Month: March 2012

The State Won’t Protect You but They May Apologize

The rampage in Norway last year that left 77 people dead demonstrated the need for the right to carry a firearm for self-defense. Police took over an hour to respond and during that time people at the Labor Party youth camp were entirely helpless because Norway doesn’t allow its citizens the right to self-defense. 77 people may be dead, and the police may have taken over an hour to actually get off their asses and do their job, but people of Norway can taken solace in the fact that the police are apologized:

Norwegian police have admitted for the first time that they could have responded faster to a massacre at a youth camp last July.

Anders Behring Breivik opened fire on young activists gathered on Utoeya island last summer, killing 69 people.

The police, distracted by a bomb Breivik had set off in Oslo and hampered by technical failures, arrived an hour after his killing spree began.

State Police Director Oystein Maeland apologised on behalf of the police.

“Every minute was one minute too long,” he said.

“It is a burden to know that lives could have been saved if the gunman had been arrested earlier.”

Lives could also have been saved had one or more people at the youth camp been armed. When seconds matter the police are only an hour away.

Security Theater at Hennepin County Suburban Courthouses

Here in Hennepin County we’ve had a recent kerfuffle surround the security as suburban court houses. OK, the kerfuffle was stated by one judge who refused to hear any cases as suburban courtrooms because he didn’t feel they screened for weaponry enough. Instead of firing him the county eventually caved and spent major money on nothing:

“We don’t know that anybody will ever be injured in our courthouses, but we don’t want it to happen,” said Commissioner Jan Callison, who sponsored the resolution. “And we know that they are places that are high stress, with people under a lot of pressure. And people under pressure who have access to weapons do things they shouldn’t do.”

[…]

After considering closing the Southdale court in Edina — where it would cost about $900,000 to rebuild the entryway to accommodate a walk-through detector — the board decided to have visitors there screened with handheld devices for now.

A permanent solution for Southdale and the other two courts will have to await conclusions of a $150,000 study on court security that the board ordered Tuesday from the administration.

That report is due Nov. 1; in the meantime, a $77,000 security report commissioned from the National Center for State Courts will be finished this spring.

Emphasis mine. While nobody has actually been harmed in a Hennepin County courthouse they’re spending in excess of $1 million to boost security because of one whiny judge who was probably lazy and figured bitching about the lacking security at the suburban courthouses would get him out of working for a while.

But hark, a case proving the necessity of these additional security measures has appeared in Texas! Except, it hasn’t:

A man has opened fire outside a court in the US state of Texas, killing one person and injuring three, say police.

Again the emphasis is mine. Some people have been brining this case to my attention and claiming it as justification for spending money on additional security at the suburban courthouses here. Here’s the problem, the shooting at the Texas courthouse took play outside. Do you know what metal detectors and screening people entering the courtroom will do to secure the exterior of the building? Jack shit.

This case does bring up the fact that security the interior of the courthouse does nothing. If somebody means a prosecutor, judge, or other individual harm they will just wait for that person to exit the building. Once again the state is putting on security theater to solve a nonexistent problem.

Social Justice Doesn’t Sound Like Justice to Me

The term ‘social justice’ has been thrown around by collectivists since, probably, forever. Even though I’ve heard the term being thrown around I’ve never been able to understand the definition because, in context, it seems to mean a correction (in their eyes) of anything the speaker is against. Usually I’m quick to pick up a dictionary and look up terms I’m unfamiliar with but the dictionary doesn’t have an entry for ‘social justice’ so I turned to Wikipedia:

Social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution.

Now I’m even more confused than when I started. How is violent theft justice? Progressive taxation, like any form of taxation, is theft. The same goes for any type of redistribution. Redistribution, by definition, implies the taking of something from one person and giving it to another. Usually those screaming for social justice want to take property from the “rich” and distribute it amongst the “poor.” Their idea seems to be that the “rich” have “too much” and the “poor” “not enough,” so the only way to rectify the situation is to take some from the “rich” and give it to the “poor.” I had to use a lot of quotation marks because the definitions of rich, too much, poor, and not enough are entirely subjective based on the person you’re talking to. In my experience the definition of rich is usually “anybody who has more than the speaker,” too much is “more stuff than the speaker owns,” poor is “the speaker,” and not enough is usually “the amount of stuff the speaker owns.”

If social justice requires the initiation of force to achieve then it is not justice at all. It’s one thing if the advocates of social justice want stolen property return to rightful owners but in my experience most people demanding social justice want property taken from the “rich” and distributed amongst the “poor.” In my book justice is compensating for harm done by the harm doer. If you’ve stolen $100.00 from somebody it is right that the $100.00, plus any recovery costs, be returned to the original victim. I’d even go so far as to say it would be right if an additional $100.00 was then taken from the thief and given to the victim, since the thief really stole the right to $100.00 of property from the victim and fair compensation would be to have the right of $100.00 of property taken from the thief. The latter part is debatable, the former is not. Stolen property should always be returned to its rightful owner unless that rightful owner has said he doesn’t want his property retrieved (for example, if the owner is a pacifist).

Justice is not taking rightfully earned property from one and giving it to another, that’s theft.

The State Can’t do Anything Well

Who do you think produces the buggiest computer code? Some would say Microsoft, others would say Apple but the winner of this prestigious award actually goes to the state:

Humans aren’t generally very good at writing secure code. But it seems they’re even worse at it when they’re an employee of a government bureaucracy or hired as unaccountable federal contractors.

In a talk at the Black Hat Europe security conference in Amsterdam later this week, security researcher and chief technology officer of bug-hunting firm Veracode Chris Wysopal plans to give a talk breaking down the company’s analysis of 9,910 software applications over the second half of 2010 and 2011, automatically scanning them for errors that a hacker can be use to compromise a website or a user’s PC. And one result of that analysis is that government software developers are allowing significantly more hackable security flaws to find their way into their code than their private industry counterparts.

According to Veracode’s analysis across industry and government, fully eight out of ten apps failed to fully live up to the company’s security criteria. But breaking down the results between U.S. government and private sector software, the government programs, 80% of which were built for federal agencies rather than state or local, came out worse. Measuring its collection of apps against the standards of the Open Web Application Security Project or OWASP, Veracode found that only 16% of government web applications were secure, compared with 24% of finance industry software and 28% of commercial software. And using criteria of the security-focused education group SANS to gauge offline applications, the study found that 18% of government apps passed, compared with 28% of finance industry apps and 34% of commercial software.

Anybody will tell you that proper computer security is hard, but apparently it’s even harder when you’re an employee of a huge unaccountable entity that likes to throw money like it’s confetti at a wedding. It’s a good thing the state hasn’t claimed a monopoly on writing software yet, we’d beg for a return of Windows ME.

The Propaganda Arm of the Federal Reserve

I didn’t know this but it looks like the Federal Reserve has its own propaganda arm. The site includes games to indoctrinate children in kindergarden, publications full of economic falsehoods, and even lesson plans for teachers who want to get the kids believing in planned economies early.

I wonder how much funny money the Federal Reserve printed up to pay for this site? After digging through the site for a better part of an hour I can say that it contains no actual educational material. So far I haven’t found a single document explaining how the Federal Reserve’s printing of money causes inflation, which reduces the value of each person’s currently held dollars and therefore is nothing more than legalized theft. No document explains how the Federal Reserve has been bailing out European banks in secret. Hell, the name Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard doesn’t appear on the site anywhere, without referencing their material you can’t even teach economics properly.

What really gets me is the fact this site was funded through ill gotten means. The Mises Institute, which actually provides economic education, is entirely funded through voluntary donations and transactions.

This is Why I Don’t Call it a Justice System

Calling the system of laws in this country a justice system is entirely erroneous. What was have is a punishment system, a system that punishes you whether or not you’re guilty or innocent. Things have only been going down hill and now the state is so brazen that they have flat out stated being proven innocent is no longer valid ground for release:

Witnesses have testified that another man confessed to Deputy Hill’s murder. But in a January ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison lamented that even though he was concerned Will could be innocent, he had to deny his motion for a new trial.

“The questions raised during post-judgment factual development about Will’s actual innocence create disturbing uncertainties,” he wrote. “Federal law does not recognize actual innocence as a mechanism to overturn an otherwise valid conviction.”

Emphasis mine. Actual innocent isn’t recognized by federal law as a mechanism to have a conviction overturned? What? Isn’t that the entire fucking point of the “justice” system, determine whether or not somebody is actually guilty of a crime? I know the motto is “innocent until proven guilty” but if a person who was previous ruled guilty is later found to be innocent doesn’t that indicate they’re no longer proven guilty? Isn’t the “justice” system only supposed to punish the guilty?

Let’s face it, we’re in a police state and justice was given the boot ages ago.

Privileges of Authority

As I always say there are two sets of rules; one that applies to the rule makers and another that applies to us mere peasants. Another way of putting this is when you give a group a monopoly on the making and enforcing of laws they will be sure to exempt themselves from said laws:

SAINT PAUL, Minn. — State lawmakers are subject to the the laws they make, with one surprising exception. They can’t be arrested for a misdemeanor during the session.

“Every time we talk to legislators about this they pull out their card and tell us, ‘Oh, you’re talking about this card’?” Jayne Jones, a Concordia University adjunct professor, told KARE.

The card, issued to all 201 legislators, and signed by the Secretary of State, certifies that the lawmaker carrying it is entitled to privileges stated on the back of the card. The back quotes Article IV, Section 10 of the Minnesota Constitution.

“PRIVILEGE FROM ARREST. The members of each house in all cases except treason, felony and breach of the peace, shall be privileged from arrest during the session of their respective houses and in going to or returning from the same.”

Legislators in Minnesota have given themselves immunity from law for the length of their session. If a “representative” is drunk off his ass, gets in his car, and drives home he’s has immunity. Such exemptions require participation by two entities, the legislators that make the rules and the officers who enforce the rules. In the case of a drunk legislator driving home it’s in the police’s best interest to be an obedient dog of the state instead of keeping people safe since arresting a legislator during his or her session will lead to termination of the office.

I guess it’s easier to make laws when you’re basically immune to them.

Self-Righteous Hypocrisy in Action

A marketing group,Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), decided to try something new that stood to benefit homeless individuals, paying those individuals to carry around a 4G hotspot during South by Southwest. Instead of being commended on their rather innovative idea that benefitted all involved a bunch of self-righteous assholes decided to get offended:

A division of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) equipped 13 homeless people with 4G mifi devices in Austin, Texas.

It suggested the public pay $2 (£1.30) for 15 minutes’ access to the net.

Comments posted to the BBH’s site accused the project of being “unseemly” and “wrong”.

Members of Twitter asked “what has this world come to?” and accused the project of being a “gimmick”.

[…]

It invited comments on the idea. Early respondents seemed impressed – but later posters mocked the idea.

“My homeless hotspot keeps wandering out of range,” wrote one before going onto add “by literally labelling the person as a ‘hotspot’, you are priming an affluent, iPad-toting public to think of that person as a commodity”.

Another added: “Helping hipsters check their email is not charitable, in fact it’s potentially dangerous and detrimental to the situation the people on the street are facing.”

According to this story, the homeless individuals were being paid $50.00 a day. BBH entered into a mutually beneficial transaction with 13 homeless individual and people are upset about that. These self-righteous pricks are criticizing BBH for paying homeless individuals to provide a service while offering no help themselves. The sheer hypocrisy of these people is astounding, they rally against mutually beneficial arrangements claiming they’re dehumanizing but aren’t offering to pay these homeless individuals $50.00 a day. On top of the $50.00 a day the homeless individuals also had the opportunity of receiving more money from those using their hotspots, I’m sure people had little issue with giving a donation to use the hotspot.

This is what’s wrong with the world (well one of a billion things). People have put a higher value on self-image than voluntary association. When they see somebody entering a voluntary agreement they will jump up and scream that the agreement is dehumanizing or exploitative. “How dare this company exploit these homeless people by paying them money for a service!” they scream. When you ask them what they’re doing to help the homeless they can only give you unproductive responses like “raising awareness” and “stopping exploitation of the homeless.” Are they giving the homeless money? No. Are they offering their spare bedroom to a homeless person? No. Are they even trying to help homeless individuals get a job? No. They’re cutting off opportunities for the homeless and thus making their situations worse.

On top of that these bleeding heart pricks are also exploiting the homeless individuals for their own agendas. They point to the homeless and say, “Hark, a homeless person! His situation is an outrage! We must steal from the rich to provide for this homeless man!” This self-righteous hypocrisy is disgusting. They exploit homeless individuals and they claim the moral high ground. I don’t give a shit what some self-righteous hypocrite things, the opinion is as worthless to me as water is to a drowning man.

The Soviets Won’t Invade

You know what the gun community hasn’t debated? Whether the AK-47 or the AR-15 is a superior platform. Now that we’ve solved the argument about which is better between the 1911 or the Glock, Caleb over at Gun Nuts Media has decided to tackle the AK vs. AR debate and determine once and for all what rifle is better. Actually Caleb takes the common sense approach and just tells people to buy what they like, unfortunately fanboys on both sides of the aisle aren’t happy wich such conclusions and have started debating the finer points of each rifle platform.

Personally I don’t care, I own an AK and two ARs (one in 5.56 and one in .308) and find them both to be great platforms. The fanatical worshipers of each platform have arguments left and right but the most ridiculous one has to be from the pro-AK crowd: that having an AK will be beneficial when the Reds invade the United States because you can pilfer their ammunition and magazines. Why is this argument ridiculous? Because the days of foreign forces possible invading the United States are over. Invasions are expensive, really expensive, and enemies of America are no longer nation states by small groups working from various locations throughout the world. We’re in the fourth generation of warfare and the rules have changed entirely.

Groups wanting to take down the United States aren’t planning invasions, they’re planning on bankrupting the country. Why spend all that money to raise an army, provide logistics, and invade a foreign country when you can build some cheap explosives, bomb a high value civilian structure, and watch the United States go stroming into some country at the cost of trillions? What good is a massive multi-billion dollar aircraft carrier against a fleet of remote controlled speedboats with high explosives attached to them? How is a massive army any good against targets you can’t see because they don’t war identifiable uniforms?

Warfare has changed and we’re not facing an invasion by a military force. China isn’t going to march its army into the United States, devastating our economy is far cheaper and easier. You’re not going to be scavenging ammunition off of dead foreign soldiers (and if you were why not take their gun as well). In this new generation of warfare people should be defending themselves against economic collapse as that is the weapon now wielded by opponents of the United States. Al Qaeda learned how effective slamming a couple of planes into a couple of skyscrapers can be, it stirred the hornests’ nest of the United States military causing a ramping up of the police state at home and the expenditure of trillions abroad.

Technology has effectively made warfare cheap. A behemoth aircraft carrier is filled with some of the most expensive technology on the planet but a fleet of cheap remote controlled speedboats or aircraft and reign destruction down upon the floating fortress. Look what one speedboat did to the USS Cole.

You can debate ergonomics, calibers, and reliability of the AK and AR platforms but stop claiming the utility during a foreign invasion as a cornerstone of AK superiority. That isn’t the threat anymore and even if it were you can guarantee the United States would start drafting civilians into the military and arming them with far more than a semi-automatic knockoff version of a foreign fighting rifle.

Refutations to Common Objections to Capitalism

It’s not secret that I’m a big fan of capitalism. My reasoning is simple, the only alternative to capitalism is violence. That fact seems to be lost on collectivists who blame capitalism for every problem under the sun even though they don’t actually know what capitalism is (most of them believe it’s the economic system in the United States, which is actually cronyism and closer matches mercantilism than capitalism). Thankfully there are people out there who actually understand economics and one of them gave an excellent speech that refutes common objections to capitalism:

Yes, I’m a nerd who watches presentations like this for fun.