Month: July 2012

The Existence of Mermaids is No Longer Debatable

I’m glad to see the United States government take time out of their busy schedule to finally put one of the most heated debates to rest:

There is no evidence that mermaids exist, a US government scientific agency has said.

The National Ocean Service made the unusual declaration in response to public inquiries following a TV show on the mythical creatures.

I’ve never been a believer in mermaids and it’s good to see my intuition was right. Now that the state has officially come out and given their official report we can all rest easy knowing there are no strange half-human half-fish creatures swimming around in the ocean.

That’s Quite the Rap Sheet

It’s good to see that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) manages to find time to deal with real criminals like Matthew Swaye and Christina Gonzalez who have the audacity to film police officers being tyrannical dicks:

The flyer featured side-by-side mugshots of Matthew Swaye, 35, and his partner Christina Gonzalez, 25, and warned officers to be on guard against them. It was spotted by multiple people, including the couple, when it was taped to a podium outside a public hearing room in the 30th Precinct house last Thursday, where residents met for precinct council meeting.

“Be aware that above subjects are known professional agitators,” read the flyer, which bears the NYPD shield and a seal of the NYPD’s Intelligence Division. It also gave the home address of the couple.

“Above subjects MO is that they video tape officers performing routine stops and post on YouTube,” the sign said. “Subjects purpose is to portray officers in a negative way and too deter officers from conducting there [sic] responsibilities.”

How dare they film public officials, who are paid by the individuals through taxes, while they’re performing their work in public places! If citizens start holding the police accountable for their misdeeds the police state could be put at risk.

In all seriousness I find it funny that the NYPD are putting so much effort into “warning” officers about these two instead of realizing what the officers are doing is deplorable and should be stopped. The police have no right to stop and frisk individuals and any officer performing such action should themselves be arrested. Imagine what would happen if you stopped a police officer, threatened force against him if he didn’t submit to your authority, and began frisking him.

Good on Matthew Swaye and Christina Gonzalez, I hope other individuals follow in their footsteps. I would love to see police officers under constant surveillance by the people.

Obviously a Good Use of Taxes

Of all the things to spend tax money on I’m sure this is the most crucial:

The University of California – Berkeley Police Department (UCPD) has acquired a $200,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security to purchase an “Armored Response Counter Attack Truck,” a police department spokesman told Campus Reform on Friday.

The eight-ton vehicle, commonly referred to as a “Bearcat,” is used by U.S. troops on the battlefield and is often equipped with a rotating roof hatch, powered turrets, gun ports, a battering ram, and a weapon system used to remotely engage a target with lethal force.

It makes sense that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now giving armored personell carriers to campus police forces. DHS has already fully militarized state and city police departments so now they have to move on to arming campus police departments. I wonder when Berkeley will get rockets launchers?

Thou Shalt Not Interfere in the State’s Fund Raisers

In a classic example of “If you fuck with the state the state will fuck with you!” a woman has been place in jail for warning motorists of nearby speed traps:

Natalie Plummer was riding her bicycle home from the grocery store when she noticed several cars beng pulled over for speeding. Hoping to save a few drivers from a potentially pricey ticket, she turned one of her paper bags into a sign that warned of the waiting police ahead.

While she was doing so, an officer pulled up and arrested her.

“I was completely abiding by the law,” she told KRTK. “I was simply warning citizens of a situation ahead.”

The Houston police, however, were not amused by her tactics and arrested her for, believe it or not, “standing in the street where a sidewalk is present,” an offense that not only sounds ridiculous, but that Plummer also denies even doing.

Natalie attempted to prevent individuals from being victimized by the state and its fund raiser attempt. As she was interfering with the state’s wealth transfer they arrested her. While holding up a sign qualifies as free speech there is always a law that can be used to shutdown a meddlesome individual who has the audacity to help their fellow individuals.

Happy Fourth of July

236 years ago the Declaration of Independence was sign. Today we celebrate this historical occasion by barbequing, shooting guns, launching off explosives, and basically being Americans. While this country has certainly gone downhill since we tossed the British out I still enjoy the holiday because it really celebrates the overthrowing of tyranny, an idea I’m entirely behind.

What better way to celebrate this day than some good old cheesy ’80’s music? Here you go, Real American by Rick Derringer:

That’s all you’re getting today, I’m going to be busy blowing shit up (or staying indoors because the weatherman said 100 degrees was going to be the high and the humidity percentage will be almost the same).

The Effects of Subsidies

It touched briefly on subsidies in my earlier post today but I came across a story that demonstrates my point all too well:

Every day some 3,000 Indian children die from illnesses related to malnutrition, and yet countless heaps of rodent-infested wheat and rice are rotting in fields across the north of their own country.

It is an extraordinary paradox created by a rigid regime of subsidies for grain farmers, a woeful lack of storage facilities and an inefficient, corruption-plagued public distribution system that fails millions of impoverished people.

Once again the state not only allows thousands of downtrodden individual to die but they actively increase the number of starving by artificially increasing the price of foodstuff. Why doesn’t the state just give the unused grain to the starving? Simple, the receivers of the grain may being to trade it in exchange of other needed goods. This trade would increase the supply which would decrease the price. As the price decreases the farmers make less and therefore have less for the state to take.

Your Lack of Logic is Disturbing

The Illinois gun rights organization Guns Save Life decided to use the Chicago Police Department’s gun buyback program against them but donating junk guns and raising money for a youth camp that teaches children how to safely use firearms. Needless to say the gun control zealots were not amused and as always they have resorted to emotional pleas to demonize gun rights activists. As is standard for gun control zealots the argument being made by the author was nonsensical:

The group, Guns Save Life, based in Champaign County, said they’d use the gift cards to buy ammunition and firearms for a youth program that teaches gun safety and marksmanship.

Clever, huh?

While in town, though, we have to wonder if the pro-gun group happened to read about Heaven, the 7-year-old girl who was killed last Wednesday by goofs with guns who shot into a crowd outside her mother’s house. And we have to wonder if they happened to catch the news about the eight other people killed over the weekend, including a 3-year-old boy, and the 17 who were wounded — all shot by people with guns.

What’s interesting about this is how the Chicago Police perform their gun buyback program. When you bring a gun in the Chicago Police Department gives you a gift card and no questions are asked or records kept. After the event concludes the collected guns are destroyed, not submitted to forensics to determine if any of the firearms were used in a crime. The gun buyback is one of the most effective means of evidence destruction available to a criminal in Chicago. Because of the gun buyback program the perpetrators of the shootings mentioned in the article could have easily handed in the murder tool and got the Chicago Police Department to destroy the evidence.

Gun buyback programs, like every program conjured up by gun control zealots, are poorly thought out and thus come with numerous unintended consequences attached. The author then makes another interesting statement:

To mock those efforts, even as one might disagree with them, is offensive. Our children lie dead in the morgue.

What is more offensive, exploiting a poorly implement program in order to teach children how to safely use firearms or having the police destroy evidence in murder cases? To me the latter is extremely offensive because it prevents the perpetrators of the crimes mentioned by the author from being prosecuted.

A tip of the hat goes to Days of our Trailers for this demonstration of gun control zealot idiocy.

No Dissent is Allowed at the King’s Castle

What happened when a group of individuals decided to exercise their supposed Constitutionally protected right to protest their government over Fast and Furious? They were shutdown by the Secret Service:

Maurice Lewis, a student at the University of California, Merced, who marched in the event told Campus Reform that the Secret Service had seemed on edge well before the “suspicious package” was discovered.

“Several agents seemed hostile to our march and seemed anxious for us to leave the area,” said Lewis. “The discover the ‘unidentified package’ came just as the protest began gain traction.”

The Secret Service reopened the the portion of Pennsylvania Ave. that borders the White House shortly after protesters, who had been waiting nearby on 15th street for nearly half an hour, had dispersed. Agents did not communicate with organizers during that time.

Neither the White House nor the nearby Treasury building were shutdown. Employees of both building and members of the White House media were allowed to traverse the evacuated zone while protesters were kept out.

Apparently the “unidentified package” was severe enough to stop the protest until the protesters left but not severe enough to evacuate nearby buildings. Nothing about that claim doesn’t scream suppressing the right to seek redress from the government. It’s also not surprising, the king doesn’t like it when the peasants start protesting at the castle. What is surprising is that the Secret Service didn’t arrest any of the protesters under suspicion of leaving the “unidentified package” (then again if they arrested somebody they would have to explain their reason under more scrutiny so it also makes sense that no arrests were made).

The Violence Economy

Recently I’ve been working on an economic idea of sorts, one on the economy of the state, or as I like to call it the violence economy. It’s an expansion of my previous idea regarding the value of fiat currency.

The base of the idea is the fact that the state is an entity that exists entirely by violence. As explained by Albert J. Nock in his book Our Enemy, the State there are two means of obtaining wants, the political means and the economic means. The political means is voluntary trade amongst individuals whereas the political means it the use of the state’s violence to extract wealth from others.

Because of the state’s method of obtaining wealth it has a keen interest in helping and protecting the wealthy. Likewise the wealthy have a keen interest in protecting the state. The state requires the wealthy to leech off of while the wealthy desire the state’s gun to prevent competition and otherwise increase their wealth through political means. A good demonstration of this is how the state treats the poor.

Many people on the political “left” demand the state help the poor. This isn’t surprising as it is typical of a cooperative species such as our own to help those in need. The “left” believe the state is the best mechanism to assist those in need. Their belief is a mistake though because the state has no interest in the poor since the poor have nothing to take. Of course this doesn’t stop the state from claiming to help the poor, after all they are able to gain popular support for wealth stealing programs if they are disguised as methods of assisting those in need. With such justification the state is able to get public acceptance for new taxes, fees, subsidies, and other wealth stealing mechanisms.

Let’s look at subsidies for a second. During the New Deal the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 was passed into law. This act established subsidies for various agricultural goods. One of the provisions of the act was to limit the area farmers could dedicate to growing wheat. This restriction created an artificial shortage of wheat, which increased the price. The act was passed under the guise of helping poor farmers eek out a better living but the shortage it created meant many could not afford wheat-based products such as bread. The Supreme Court upheld the law, claiming it was Constitutional under the Commerce Clause in Wickard v. Filburn.

What benefit did the subsidies have? Making the farmers money. Why would the state want to make farmers money? To take a portion of that wealth. Farmers are producers of a needed good so it’s a safe assumption that they will continue to generate wealth. The more wealth they can generate the more wealth they have for the state to take. To ensure the farmers continue to give wealth to the state they are allowed to keep a portion of what they make (usually a greater portion). The state learned its lesson during feudal times when the nobility took almost everything form the peasants causing them to revolt periodically.

Looking at the economy of any developed nation leads one to realize how tightly the state and big producers are tied together. Every industry eventually gets regulated in such a way as to protect established producers. In turn more wealth is given to the protected businesses, a portion of which the state takes as “protection” money.

What we end up with is a vicious cycle, a violence economy. I plan to expand on this idea over time but I think the foundation of this idea is pretty solid at this point.

So Much for Conservative Supreme Court Judges

I’m not trying to turn this blog into wall-to-wall healthcare coverage but there are many things to be said about last week’s Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Healthcare Act. During the ramp up to this year’s presidential elections many people have been saying we must elect Romney because two Supreme Court justices are getting up there in age and will likely retire. Proponents of this argument claim that Obama would pick left judges, which would lead this country even further towards socialism. Thanks to judge Roberts dissent in the Affordable Healthcare Act we have come closer to socialism, and he was one of George W. Bush’s picks.

As far as I’m concerned this ruling entirely invalidates the argument that we need to elect Romney in order to prevent Obama from picking new Supreme Court judges (not that I gave any validity to the argument before). People still buy into the right versus left view of politics. It’s not about right versus left, it’s about us versus the state. Whether the state is right or left is irrelevant, it’s still an entity that is using a monopoly on force to take our stuff and make us obey its decrees. It won’t matter who picks the next Supreme Court justices because the picks will be statists. We’re not going to see Supreme Court judge Andrew Napolitano because he opposes the statist agenda.

Regardless which of those two clowns gets elected we’ll be in for more war, more debt, and more tyranny.