Month: July 2013

The State’s Idea of Fair and Impartial

The state claims a monopoly on justice services. It justifies it’s monopoly by claiming that is impartial and therefore the best agent to act as an arbitrator between disagreeing individuals. While the state likes to claim itself to be impartial there have been numerous cases where it has attempted to influence the outcome of court cases, especially when it sees some form of political gain in doing so. The George Zimmerman case has been one where every political busybody has tried to get in on the action. After the media raise a lynch mob but stoking the fires of racism, it became possible for members of the state to boost their political career by exploiting the situation. As it turns out, the Department of Justice (DoJ) decided to invest notable amounts of money on railroading Zimmerman:

Records obtained by Judicial Watch in response to local, state and federal public records requests show that the so-called peacekeepers are part of a large and growing division within DOJ called the Community Relations Service (CRS). Though CRS purports to spot and quell racial tensions nationwide before they arise, the documents obtained by Judicial Watch show the group actively worked to foment unrest, spending thousands of taxpayer dollars on travel and hotel rooms to train protestors throughout Florida. The peacekeepers also met with officials of the Republican National Convention, scheduled for several months later in Tampa, to warn them to expect protests in connection with Martin’s death.

  • CRS employee spent $1,142.84 to travel to Sanford, Florida from March 25-28, 2012 “to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies”;
  • CRS employee spent $751.60 to travel to Sanford, Florida from March 30-April 1, 2012 “to provide technical assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement agencies for the march and rally on March 31”;
  • CRS employee spent $1,307.40 to travel to Sanford, Florida from April 3-12, 2012 “to provide technical assistance, conciliation, and onsite mediation during demonstrations planned in Sanford”;
  • CRS employee spent $672.24 to travel to Tampa, Florida from April 18-20, 2012 “to meet with RNC official related to possible protests and demonstrations during the RNC”

If an organization wants to declare a monopoly on justice they should also state entirely out of potential and upcoming legal proceedings. But this is America and in America advancing one’s political career is far more important than upholding the supposed principles of justice. What should have been a serious case to determine whether a man lawfully defended himself or murdered a fellow human being turned into a media circus that allowed anybody wanting to advance their political career to play the race card by declaring Zimmerman guilty before the trail even began.

There’s Still Hope for Minnesota

When looking at the Minnesota government’s rules and policies one is often left with a feeling of hopelessness. Fortunately, this is a weird state politically and from time to time hope arises:

Say hello to Mayor Robert ‘‘Bobby’’ Tufts. He’s 4 years old and not even in school yet.

Bobby was only 3 when he won election last year as mayor of Dorset (population 22 to 28, depending on whether the minister and his family are in town). Dorset, which bills itself as the Restaurant Capital of the World, has no formal city government.

If you’re going to have a mayor you should elect one that is harmless. Some cities have accomplished that by electing a cat while other, such as Dorset, have done so by electing a small child. I hope other cities can learn from their example. In fact, now that I think about it, there is a Minneapolis mayoral election coming up.

Adam Kokesh Arrested Again

Adam Kokesh is an interesting man. First he calls for an armed march on Washington DC, then he cancels it, then he went anyways. While he was rather inconsistent about the entire march I must admit that he has brass balls for venturing into the city of the damned with a gun in defiance of the law. Not surprisingly, he was arrested:

Police searched the Northern Virginia home of libertarian activist Adam Kokesh Tuesday evening and took him into custody, according to a news release posted on Kokesh’s Web site.

Kokesh, a former Marine, was held overnight at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center, charged with possession of schedule I and II drugs while in possession of a firearm, said Lt. Steve Elbert, a spokesman for the Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office. No additional details were immediately available.

The search warrant was served by U.S. Park Police, a federal agency that is responsible for policing Freedom Plaza, the concrete park on Pennsylvania Avenue NW where in a video Kokesh appears to load a shotgun, in violation of D.C. gun laws.

Kokesh’s arrest demonstrates that rules are for thee, not for me. When David Gregory illegally possessed a standard capacity AR-15 magazine on national television he go off scot free because he was promoting the statist agenda. Meanwhile Adam Kokesh illegally possessed a shotgun and was arrested because he wasn’t promoting the statist agenda.

What Kokesh’s arrest really demonstrates is how arbitrarily laws are enforced in Washington DC. If you’re being an obedience serf you can get away with breaking the law but if you’re being a disobedience rabble-rouser you will be kidnapped and locked in a cage.

Malware: A Convenient Excuse to Upgrade Hardware

Many of you have probably heard about the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) act of outright destroying perfectly functional hardware because of malware infections:

The Economic Development Administration (EDA) is an agency in the Department of Commerce that promotes economic development in regions of the US suffering slow growth, low employment, and other economic problems. In December 2011, the Department of Homeland Security notified both the EDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that there was a possible malware infection within the two agencies’ systems.

[…]

EDA’s CIO, fearing that the agency was under attack from a nation-state, insisted instead on a policy of physical destruction. The EDA destroyed not only (uninfected) desktop computers but also printers, cameras, keyboards, and even mice. The destruction only stopped—sparing $3 million of equipment—because the agency had run out of money to pay for destroying the hardware.

The total cost to the taxpayer of this incident was $2.7 million: $823,000 went to the security contractor for its investigation and advice, $1,061,000 for the acquisition of temporary infrastructure (requisitioned from the Census Bureau), $4,300 to destroy $170,500 in IT equipment, and $688,000 paid to contractors to assist in development of a long-term response. Full recovery took close to a year.

The full grim story was detailed in the Department of Commerce audit released last month, subsequently reported by Federal News Radio.

Most of the people I’ve talked to about this story have written it off as ineptitude on behalf of the EDA’s leadership, specifically laughing about how poorly they understood technology. Even though I tend to attribute buffoonery to stupidity instead of malice in this case I think the leadership of the EDA knew exactly what they were doing. They were looking for a way to justify upgrading their equipment.

Computer technology advances quickly and hardware that his a mere two years old is already out of date. If you’re the leadership of a massive government bureaucracy looking to have the latest and greatest technology at hand what can you do? You can exploit the first tragedy that arises! The agency had enough foresight to hire a security contractor who likely informed it that there was no reason to replace any hardware. Yes the agency replaced a great deal of hardware. In all likelihood the EDA’s leadership knew there was no reason to do so but went forward with the plan anyways because they knew they could write off their act of destruction and simple ignorance. Everybody knows accountability is dead within the state after all.

Five Reasons to Abandon Politics

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know that I’ve moved away from the political means to attain my goals. Instead of begging politicians and destroying my soul by working within the political machinery I’ve decided to rely on civil disobedience and agorism. Oftentimes people still working within the political machinery ask why I can’t participate in politics and perform acts of civil disobedience and participate in agorism. Well, here are five good reasons:

  • It eats up a horrifying amount of time and energy
  • It’s an addiction
  • It doesn’t change anything
  • In the end, it’s about violence
  • Politics is a relic of a barbaric past

Details about each reason are provided at the link but suffice it to say each reason is an inescapable reality of participating in politics. If I still participated in politics I wouldn’t have time to perform acts of civil disobedience or participate in agorism. When I did involve myself in the political system I was constantly bombarded with demands to phone bank, drop literature, march in parades, attend meetings, donate money to candidates, and other activities I refused to do. Every campaign wanted my time and money and, in the end, they failed to change anything. Some of the candidates won, some of them lost, but the country is still a shit hole.

I don’t believe civil disobedience and agorism are strategies guaranteed to win but they are fun to do and radically different, which is necessary because their alternative, politics, has failed to achieve anything other than tyranny since its inception. When one strategy has failed miserably the need to do something radically different arises.

The Death of Barnes and Noble

Recent news regarding the leadership decisions taking place in Barnes and Nobel leads me to believe that the chain is now officially dead:

For the last several years there’s been a battle for Barnes & Noble’s soul. In one corner stood 72-year-old chairman and founder Leonard Riggio. A legend in retail, Riggio has been fighting to keep the chain focused on stores rather than jumping into the e-reader tablet wars.

Though he still owns 30% of the company’s stock, Riggio had been pushed to the side strategically in favor of former computer hardware executive and now-ex CEO William Lynch. It was Lynch who drove the company’s costly expansion into handheld Nook readers.

Last night Riggio emerged victorious when Barnes & Noble announced Lynch’s immediate resignation. Overnight Riggio went from figurehead Chairman to unquestioned king. All other executives at Barnes & Noble will now report directly to him and the company says it has no immediate plans to find a new CEO to replace Lynch.

The final nail in Lynch’s coffin was in late June when Barnes & Noble reported a staggering $477 million loss on Nooks and announced that it would be outsourcing the manufacturing of future e-readers. As discussed on Breakout at the time, the Nook debacle strengthened the hand of Barnes & Noble’s founder Leonard Riggio and his push to keep the company focused on the chain’s 675 stores.

History has not been kind to companies that try to maintain the old way of doing things when a new way has established itself. Buggy manufacturers didn’t do so well when automobiles began permeating society, business for typewriter manufacturers didn’t boom after the introduction of affordable personal computers, and traditional bookstores aren’t going to find their coffers filled with cash now that e-books have become popular.

While Barnes and Noble’s Nook division hasn’t been bringing the company profits the correct response isn’t to shift the company towards a dying model. Sure, losses will go down in the immediacy but as time goes on and Barnes and Noble focuses on heavy, space consuming dead tree books the company will become less and less relevant. But in the long run Barnes and Nobel will become irrelevant if it attempts to continue its old model.

We’re at the beginning of a new era where the cost of personal electronics has decreased to a point where it is viable to replace physical books with electronic books and e-readers. Trying to prop up the old model is a recipe for irrelevancy. Those wanting physical books will become a small minority that won’t be capable of maintaining Barnes and Noble’s currently large presence.

The Danger of Databases

Gun control advocates often find gun owners’ opposition to databases irrational. In the minds of gun control advocates a database of gun owners, or at least people prohibited from owning firearms, is a good idea because it can decrease the proliferation of firearms in society. They are generally unconcerned with possibilities of abuse because in their eyes the state is a benevolent entity that obediently serves the people (unless it reduces the number of restrictions on gun ownership, then they believe it is an evil monster controlled by the National Rifle Association).

Gun owners realize those assumptions are incorrect. Databases do nothing to decrease the proliferation of firearms in society because individuals with enough interest in acquiring firearms will find a way to do so in a manner that bypasses any databases. Furthermore, gun owners realize that databases in the state’s hands will be abused:

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s billed by the FBI as “the lifeline of law enforcement” — a federal database used to catch criminals, recover stolen property and even identify terrorism suspects.

But authorities say Edwin Vargas logged onto the restricted system and ran names for reasons that had nothing to do with his duties as a New York Police Department detective. Instead, he was accused in May of looking up personal information on two fellow officers without their knowledge.

[…]

NYPD recruits are warned that “if you misuse or you access information in an inappropriate manner … you are in serious trouble — such as being prosecuted, being fired and also big fines,” a police academy instructor testified at the trial of Gilbert Valle, who was convicted in March in a bizarre plot to kidnap, cook and cannibalize women.

In addition, an FBI compliance unit conducts spot audits to examine users’ “policies, procedures, and security requirements,” the FBI said in a statement. The FBI also requires each state to have its own audit programs and claims that “malicious misuse is not commonly discovered.”

But both the instructor testifying at the Valle trial and an Internal Affairs Bureau investigator who took the witness stand in an earlier case have conceded that officers can easily circumvent safeguards.

Databases will always, I repeat always, be abused by the state.

Eris is Calling on Gun Owners with Android Devices

Fellow gun owners, the goddess of chaos, Eris, is calling on all of us with Android devices. Advocates of gun control have released an app titled Gun Geo Marker. The app was created with the intent of marking the locations of gun owners for unknown reasons (although vigilante justice against gun owners is a likely reason). Eris asks us to spread discord by fill the Gun Geo Marker database with information. Andrew, who brought this app to my attention via Facebook, gave the excellent suggestion of marking every police station. I would suggest marking every public spot since it’s likely a person with a concealed firearm has entered those locations at one time or another. If the homes of various gun control advocates managed to find their way into the Gun Geo Marker database the goddess Eris would be pleased.

Now go forth wonderful agents of chaos and do the goddess’s work!

Asking the Important Questions

I’ve mentioned my love of newspaper opinion sections before. Those sections give a rare glimpse into the thoughts of the some of the most… interesting individuals in an area. Here in Minnesota opinion sections are often filled with some of the most insane rants known to man. Thankfully, in all of the insanity, one man has risen to ask an important questions:

Did the City Council’s actions opposing preserving marriage make the citizens of Duluth vulnerable? Duluth suffered a flood six months later, on June 17, 2012. Instead of accepting the truth that the City Council’s unnatural actions contributed to the city’s vulnerability, it was chalked-up to a bad infrastructure or global warming.

I once knew a guy who cheated on his wife. Years later the east coast was hit by a super storm. Did the man’s infidelity make the east cost more vulnerable?

I Guess We’ll Need a New Tax in Minnesota

At the beginning of this month a new tax on cigarettes took effect here in Minnesota. While proponents of the new tax claim it will help fund education the tax is actually being used to bailout billionaire Zygi Wilf since the proceeds from gambling having met the levels projected by the politicians who decided to provide public funding for the new Vikings stadium. Unfortunately, the politicians may have to find something else to tax now that cigarette sales have dropped:

DULUTH – After the Minn. state tax increase on cigerettes on July 1., Duluth tobacco shops and gas stations said their sales have decreased.

Some gas stations said cigarette sales are down by thousands of dollars a week.

Meklye Wahedi, a cashier at “Cigs for Less” said carton sales are especially down.

“People were buying 3 or 4 at a time, they would come in the next week and but 3 or 4 again, and yeah, it increased a lot,” Wahedi said. “When July 1 first hit, that’s when it was really slow.”

We will have to wait and see if sales increase but if they don’t the Minnesota legislation will likely have to create a new tax on something else. This demonstrates the issue with taxes, as taxes are increased individuals begin to avoid those taxes. If a new tax on cigarettes raises the overall price of cigarettes sufficiently less people will buy them and the state will take in less tax money, leading to more taxes. It’s a never ending cycle.