News You Need to Know – Page 32

Without Government Who Will Provide Services to Those in Need

Without government who will provide services to those in need? Anarchists:

ATHENS — It may seem paradoxical, but Greece’s anarchists are organizing like never before.

Seven years of austerity policies and a more recent refugee crisis have left the government with fewer and fewer resources, offering citizens less and less. Many have lost faith. Some who never had faith in the first place are taking matters into their own hands, to the chagrin of the authorities.

[…]

Whatever the means, since 2008 scores of “self-managing social centers” have mushroomed across Greece, financed by private donations and the proceeds from regularly scheduled concerts, exhibitions and on-site bars, most of which are open to the public. There are now around 250 nationwide.

Some activists have focused on food and medicine handouts as poverty has deepened and public services have collapsed.

In recent months, anarchists and leftist groups have trained special energy on housing refugees who flooded into Greece in 2015 and who have been bottled up in the country since the European Union and Balkan nations tightened their borders. Some 3,000 of these refugees now live in 15 abandoned buildings that have been taken over by anarchists in the capital.

Without government who will build the roads? Who will care for the homeless? Who will care for the elderly? These are questions statists ask because they believe they shut down the conversation. They think that providing those goods and services is so complex that only a government can do them and therefore any arguments against government can be dismissed with a wave of the hand. However, every good and service that is provided by government was previously provided by nongovernmental entities. When governments collapse those goods and services are again handled by nongovernmental entities. Why? Because people see a need for those goods and services and therefore find a way to provide them.

Is It OK to Disassociate with a Nazi

Voluntary association is a touchy subject here in the United States. Most people seem to believe that an individual has the right to associate with or disassociate from whoever they please… until they start a business. Once they start a business they can only disassociate from approved individuals. What makes this phenomenon more fascinating is how a lot of people will cheer such restriction when the people being disassociated with subscribe to ideologies they hate and then decry the very same restrictions when the people being disassociated with subscribe to ideologies they like.

When a Christian bakers wishes to disassociate with a gay couple who want to buy a wedding cake a lot of people scream bloody murder. But when a national socialist is booted from a gym the very same people cheer:

An Alexandria gym terminated the membership of white nationalist Richard Spencer last week after he was confronted by a Georgetown University professor who recognized him and lambasted him over his alt-right views.

Is it OK to disassociate with a Nazi? I believe it is. The only way you can truly be considered the owner of yourself is if you are allowed to choose who you associate and disassociate with. If you, for example, want to disassociate with somebody but a government steps in and says you have to associate with that individual can you really say that you own yourself or are you the property of the government?

The War is Not Meant to Be Won

Who isn’t the United States at war with? It’s a difficult question to answer because the list of nations continues to grow. Although most of its actions have been focused on the Middle East, the United States is starting to expand further into Africa:

Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe.

Today, according to U.S. military documents obtained by VICE News, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe.

In 2006, just 1 percent of all U.S. commandos deployed overseas were in Africa. In 2010, it was 3 percent. By 2016, that number had jumped to more than 17 percent. In fact, according to data supplied by U.S. Special Operations Command, there are now more special operations personnel devoted to Africa than anywhere except the Middle East — 1,700 people spread out across 20 countries dedicated to assisting the U.S. military’s African partners in their fight against terrorism and extremism.

Contrary to what many people believe, Trump won’t be the downfall of the United States. Russia won’t be either. What will ultimate kill the United States is its obsession with policing the world.

To quote the movie 1984, “The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labour. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.” While the United States’ purpose in war may not be to directly destroy the production of human labor, it’s an unavoidable side effect. Every building that is destroyed will have to be rebuilt. Every automobile that is destroyed will have to be replaced. War destroys the product of human labor so that it must be produced again.

And what does war return? Nothing. Some will claim that war stimulates the economy because the production of war materials and replacement of destroyed materials creates jobs. However, as Bastiat pointed out, we’re not seeing the unseen. The labor and resources that are involved in the war effort could have been used for productive things instead. Steel for tanks could have been used to build skyscrapers, automobiles, computers, or any number of wealth generating tools. Likewise, the labor could have been put towards building those skyscrapers, automobiles, computers, etc. Instead those resources are put into wealth destroying devices that must be replaced every time they are destroyed by an enemy.

So long as the United States continues to see itself as the police of the world it will continue to involve itself in more wars, which will just accelerate its demise.

Streamlining Extortion

Minnesota may be second only to California when it comes to socialism in the United States. One of the tenants of socialism is government providing goods and services to the people. In order to do this the government must have wealth. Since government produce nothing of value it cannot raise the wealth it needs through voluntary transactions and therefore relies entirely on extortion. This extortion is commonly perpetrated by the police. Traffic citations, parking citations, and other petty forms of extortion are examples of this. But every office knows that there are bigger money makers. In fact, petty forms of extortion such as traffic and parking citations are often used as justifications for initiating an interaction that may ultimately produce a more lucrative violation.

One of the roadblocks between an officer pulling over a motorist for, say, speeding and searching their vehicle for lucrative contraband is the requirement that a warrant be acquired before a search of a vehicle can be performed. In its lust for extorted wealth Minnesota is streamlining that pesky warrant process:

The road to a search warrant has sometimes been a long and winding one for Minnesota law enforcement officers, especially those working a late-night shift. But now there’s an express lane known as the eSearch Warrant, that public safety officials say will make a big difference in DWI prosecutions.

A legal process that used to be done on paper and required a face-to-face meeting between an officer and a judge is now being done electronically. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension said Monday the transition to sSearch Warrants started in October and is now finished statewide.

“Before eSearch Warrants, a peace officer would write a search warrant application and then drive it to the judge for review,” said BCA Superintendent Drew Evans.

Of course it was justified using drunk drivers. Everybody hates drunk drivers so they’re more than happy to roll over whenever the police expand their power for the purpose of catching drunk drivers. I very much doubt that this streamlined process was aimed at nabbing drunk drivers though. The lower barrier to entry is likely meant to be used to allow officers to perform more vehicle searches in the hopes of finding more drugs, weapons, and other lucrative contraband.

Unfortunately, many people will be fine with this because they don’t realize that every single expansion of government power, no matter how trivial, comes at the expense of the rights and privileges of the people.

Have Some Government

Let’s say the government has offered you half of a duopoly on a product that is otherwise illegal. However, the government has also placed a bunch of ridiculous restrictions on that product that will unnecessarily raise your production costs. Do you take the government up on its offer? If you’re smart, you don’t:

Minnesota’s two licensed medical marijuana manufacturers have lost a combined $11 million in just two years of sales, according to financial documents obtained by The Associated Press, continuing losses that hint at systemic problems with the state’s tightly regulated program despite a recent expansion that allowed thousands more patients to buy the medication.

Minnesota Medical Solutions posted a $1.2 million loss in 2016, a year after losing more than $3 million. But LeafLine Labs’ losses worsened: The company said it lost $4.7 million last year, after losing $2.2 million loss in 2015.

When the medical cannabis bill was passed in Minnesota it included a mind-boggling number of restrictions. For example, medical cannabis cannot contain any leftover plant material. Why? Who knows. What we do know is that the law made it so two companies with a duopoly can’t make a profit on a product that teenagers in every high school in the country manage profit off of.

Unfortunately, this will likely be the status quo in this state for many years. The problem with medical cannabis laws is that once they’re passed it makes passing full decriminalization more difficult. One of the best arguments for cannabis legalization is its medical benefits. When medical cannabis laws are passed that argument is no longer available to advocates of full decriminalization. This is another example of the good being the enemy of the better. Medical cannabis laws may appear to be better than full criminalization but they’re actually a detriment to full decriminalization.

A Nice Place to Live

I’ve been keeping an eye out for a nicer place to live. For me, a nicer place to live is a place where taxes are low (preferably nonexistent) and the government is ineffective (or, again, preferably nonexistent). I may have found such a place:

The story examines repeated voter rejection of tax increases in Oregon’s timber counties—Douglas, Curry and Josephine—and the resulting cuts in basic services.

Douglas County is closing its libraries. Josephine County has a catch-and-release policy for nonviolent criminals because voters defunded the jail. Curry County has no sheriff’s office staffing after midnight, and is running out of money to conduct elections. The Times reports: “Even conducting an election this fall could be beyond reach, said Reneé Kolen, the Curry County clerk, who has one full-time staff member left in her elections division, and is facing another possible 30 percent cut in funding this year in her budget.”

The police have to catch and release nonviolent criminals? The horror! And democracy may not be able to continue because there isn’t a money to have a poll to ask residents how other people’s money should be spent? That’s a shame!

The people of Douglas County appear to be some of the few people in this country who have their heads screwed on right. If everybody had the same attitude this would probably be a pretty nice country.

Chelsea Manning Finally Released

After spending seven year in a cage for the crime of doing the right thing, Chelsea Manning has finally been released:

US soldier Chelsea Manning has been released from prison after serving seven years for leaking hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and military files to Wikileaks.

A US Army spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that she had left Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas.

Most of what remained of her 35-year sentence was commuted by then-US President Barack Obama in January.

Unfortunately, she’ll never get those seven years back nor will she receive compensation for being wrongfully imprisoned.

I know, a lot of people will have issues with my statement that she was wrongfully imprisoned. After all, she broke the law and was found guilty. But remember that I’m one of those weird people who believes a crime only exists if there is a victim. Chelsea Manning’s actions didn’t create any victims. In fact, she provided evidence of actual crimes being committed. Her actions deserved commendations, not punishment. And she is justly owned compensation for being punished even though she didn’t commit an actual crime.

Karma

I can’t prove whether or not karma is a real thing but I certainly like to think it is. I especially like to believe in karma when somebody falls prey to the very policies they promote:

In 1918, while a deputy chief of the Cheka in Ukraine, he [Martin Latsis] established the principle that sentences were to be determined not by guilt or innocence but by social class. He is quoted as explaining the Red Terror as follows:

Do not look in materials you have gathered for evidence that a suspect acted or spoke against the Soviet authorities. The first question you should ask him is what class he belongs to, what is his origin, education, profession. These questions should determine his fate. This is the essence of the Red Terror.

Latsis himself became a victim of the Soviet regime in the 1930s Great Purge, when he was arrested on November 29, 1937 and was accused by a commission of NKVD and Prosecutor of the USSR belonging to a “counter-revolutionary, nationalist organization”. He was executed in 1938 by firing squad.

A lot of people either knowingly or unknowingly advocate for a guilty until proven innocent justice system for certain crimes. Socialists of various flavors often promote such a system when an accused individual is a member of a class they aren’t fond of. The problem with such a system is that it gets abused pretty quickly. An individual having a feud with their neighbor might inform the police that their neighbor is a member of a persecuted class. People in power are quickly to label anybody they don’t like as members of a persecuted class. Since class membership becomes the important factor, not the facts of the case, the system quickly becomes a convenient mechanism for one to eliminate their enemies instead of a system for delivering justice.

It warms to heart to know that somebody like Martin Latsis, who promoted a system that issued judgements based on class membership instead of guilt of a crime, fell victim to that very system.

The Socialist Hiding Behind the Curtain

It seems like there’s a socialist hiding behind almost every libertarian. If you prod most libertarians enough you’ll eventually find that one hot topic where they’re willing to put a bullet in the head of individualism and hang its corpse for all to see. For a lot of these libertarians that topic is international socialism. While they claim to be against socialism in all forms they will gladly join the ranks of the national socialists if they’re fighting international socialists. Another one of these topics that’s starting to creep up is universal basic income. A few libertarians have fallen for the automation scare and are using that as justification for why society must implement universal basic income.

Interestingly enough, this tendency of self-proclaimed anti-socialists to have very strong socialists sentiments isn’t isolated to libertarians:

I’ve critiqued that idea elsewhere, but what I find interesting about it is that for all these years, Murray wasn’t really an opponent of big government or the welfare state. He was just looking for a more effective way to administer it. So his legacy as a critic of welfare is in danger of being eclipsed by his advocacy for universal welfare.

You could make similar observations about how it was the Heritage Foundation that cooked up the “individual mandate” at the center of Obamacare, how “cap-and-trade” global warming regulations were dreamed up under the Reagan administration and pushed as a “free-market” solution, and how it was Milton Friedman who helped develop income-tax withholding.

I believe one of the reasons socialism has enjoyed such great success in spreading (even though it has been an abysmal failure when implemented) is because it has been able to infiltrate its opposition. Even people who consider themselves ardent anti-socialists have been infected with socialist thinking.

How could socialism become so pervasive in society? I attribute it to statism. Individualism is the antithesis of statism. That being the case, believers in the State have to believe in at least some amount of collectivism. If a person claims to be an anti-statist but advocates some amount of statism they have already established the cognitive dissonance in their head that allows them to claim to be individualists while promoting socialist ideas. Statists then push their belief onto children through the ~~public education~~ socialist indoctrination system. After all, it’s always good to them while they’re young! The children who were subjected to the indoctrination system then grown up, become teachers, and being the vicious cycle anew. Within a few generations the idea that individualism can even exist is almost completely removed from society.

Libertarianism can’t hope to win the fight against socialism if its biggest supporters are advocating socialist ideas.

Constitutional Crisis

It’s been fun watching Democrats who were calling for Comey’s head just a few days ago suddenly loving the man. Keith Ellison went so far as to call Trump’s firing of Comey a Constitutional crisis:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a Democrat from Minneapolis, released the following statement after President Trump fired FBI Director James Comey: “We are witnessing a Constitutional crisis unfold before our very eyes. On March 20, FBI Director James Comey confirmed under oath that the FBI was investigating the Trump campaign for its involvement with Russian officials to influence our election. Today, President Trump fired him”

But it’s not a Constitutional crisis. Not by a long shot.

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is a department of the Executive Branch. As president, Donald Trump is the current head of the Executive Branch. As head of the Executive Branch, Trump has the power to appoint and dismiss heads of departments of the Executive Branch. Dismissing Comey was well within Trump’s constitutionally granted powers.

In the distance I can hear a Democrat whose views on Comey flipped very recently shouting, “But, Chris, Comey was investigating Trump’s ties to Russia! This is obviously a coverup!” To that I will point out that the FBI shouldn’t have been put in charge of that investigation. No department of the Executive Branch should have been for reasons that are probably quite obvious now.

If corruption is suspected in the Executive Branch it falls onto the Legislative and Judicial branches to perform an investigation and take appropriate action. Remember back in civics class when your teacher explained how the three branches of government work as a system of checks and balances? This is what they meant.