Category: Politics

The Nazgûl Have Again Served Their Master Well

You have to hand it to the Supreme Court, or as my friends and I like to call them the Nazgûl, they serve their master well. Whenever a law interferes with agents of the federal government the Supreme Court is there to rule that law unconstitutional. Any law that helps agents of the federal government, even if the law requires people to buy something from one of the federal government’s numerous corporate partners, is ruled constitutional.

For a while there has been a thorn in the side of federal politicians. This thorn was a cap put on the amount of money that organizations and individuals could contribute to federal campaigns. I’m using the past tense because the Supreme Court has ruled such caps unconstitutional:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a major campaign finance decision, striking down limits on federal campaign contributions for the first time. The ruling, issued near the start of a campaign season, will change and most likely increase the role money plays in American politics.

The decision, by a 5-to-4 vote along ideological lines, was sort of a sequel to Citizens United, the 2010 decision that struck down limits on independent campaign spending by corporations and unions. But that ruling did nothing to disturb the other main form of campaign finance regulation: caps on direct contributions to candidates and political parties.

Judging by what I’ve read so far there are quite a few people upset at this ruling. But I’m not. Anybody who has been paying attention to money as it relates to politics already knows that campaign contribution caps were mythical. The laws merely required individuals wanting to send more money to federal campaigns to play by a slightly different set of rules. This ruling is a formality that simply removed a thin veil of deceit that made people believe there was actually some form of limit organizations and individuals to contribute to political campaigns.

For those of you who are upset by the Supreme Court’s ruling just remember that the Nazgûl are merely slaves to the One Ring.

Mark Dayton Sending Mixed Messages

For those of you living outside of the thawing tundra of Minnesota one of our current political battles is cannabis legalization. This battle hasn’t been going well for proponents because higher ups in the state, namely Mark Dayton, are basing their decision on that of the law enforcement lobby. The law enforcement lobby, predictably, opposes cannabis legalization because property stolen from suspected violators of the prohibition is a major income source for police departments.

Not satisfied with being a coward hiding behind a major lobby Dayton decided to open is mouth again. This time he acknowledged that cannabis may be beneficial for people suffering certain ailments, mentioned the fact that cannabis can be purchased in almost any city, and then reminded people that his will still order law enforcement agents to aggress against individuals buying cannabis for medical reasons:

ST. PAUL — Minnesotans who want marijuana to ease pain and deal with other medical conditions already can get it, Gov. Mark Dayton said Thursday.
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However, he quickly added, buying pot on the street is illegal, and he does not endorse it. In a conference call with reporters, he said that possessing a small amount of the drug could bring a fine about the same cost as a traffic ticket.

“I am not advocating anybody do whatever it is that they do,” Dayton said. “I am just trying to point out reality.”

Dayton added: “The fact is that you can go out in any city in Minnesota, I am told, and purchase marijuana.”

In other words those of you suffering from chronic pain, glaucoma, epilepsy, or other ailments that can be improved with cannabis can buy it but doing so will put you at risk of the only thing known to kill cannabis users: police aggression. While possession of small amounts of cannabis only officially results in a fine the fact of the matter is it also results in interaction with police officers, which is often very harmful to one’s physical well-being.

It’s funny watching Mark Dayton try to appease both advocates of cannabis legalization and law enforcement agents that profit greatly from cannabis prohibition. Either side could cost him the next election and that seems to be making him rather nervous (and that would be a good thing if he wouldn’t simply be replaced by a different psychopath).

CPAC Hilarity

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) recently went down in National Harbor, Maryland. For those who don’t know, which is likely few of your judging by the typical reader of this site, CPAC is the annual conservative circle jerk. The only thing that really happens there that people care about is the audition for potential Republican presidential candidates. While the conference itself is boring and of little consequence to those outside of Republican politics there is one redeeming feature, the Craigslist ads that appear for that area during the conference:

Ask anyone who lives in the D.C. area about Craigslist when CPAC is in town. They will tell you that the casual encounters ads are rife with attendees looking for some weekend love.

[…]

CPAC – I need a MAN. NOW! – m4m – 36 (CPAC convention)

Okay.
So. I spend so much time in rural Indiana, CPAC is my only outlet for this sort of thing.

What I’m looking for, you, a masculine Ayn Rand, me, the 47%. And I want you to slap me around hard and give it to me good.

Or. . .you could bust in my room, catch me trying to enroll in a healthcare market place/state exchange, and the punish me for it. Punish me good.

We can meet at the bar first, if you want. I will be wearing khakis and a navy blue blazer. (possibly a joke but fun anyway)

[…]

@CPAC looking for my Allen West – m4m (CPAC)

Patriots!

What an incredible day today was! Christie and Jindal and some great sessions. I am ready to unwind and have some fun. I am looking to make one of my biggest fantasies come true.

Me: Police Uniform

You: Army Uniform

I want you to bring a couple other guys for this fantasy too!

We begin by you storming into my room with the other guys. The other guys will proceed to beat me (paddles, whips, floggers is up to them! or be creative 😉

After I have been beaten, I want you to threaten my life and tell me that I am going to die for what I did. I got a nerf gun for this fantasy and I want you to blindfold me and place a garbage can next to me.

Here is the most important part…

Shoot the nerf gun at the garbage can and NOT me. I want to feel like you are going to shoot me but at the last moment you do not.

It may seem like a crazy fantasy but we all have our kinks

Afterwards we can hj, bj and a2m

Photos of the type of man I am looking for and of the nerf gun

With how much time most conservatives spend worrying about men and women who enjoy sex with others of the same gender it’s pretty damned funny to see ads like this appear during CPAC. I know that these ads could be posted by some “evil liberals” as an attempt to make the “moral conservatives” look bad but it doesn’t matter; these ads are comedy gold whether they’re real or just part of somebody’s Operation Mindfuck.

Individualists Must Act as a Collective and Other Political Inconsistencies

Libertarianism, at least here in the United States, is a strongly individualist philosophy. The core of libertarianism is built on the idea that we are each individuals who interact with one another. But according to libertarianism each individual has their own dreams, hopes, and aspirations that they are uniquely qualified to fulfill. Collectivism is the opposite point of view that see individuals as mere components in the real idea of importance: society. Where libertarianism asks what is best for the individual collectivism asks what is best for society. Which one is correct? I side with individualism but that doesn’t mean you have to. However if you subscribe to an ideology I feel that it’s important to be consistent.

Consistency is a problem many libertarians have when it comes to politics. One of the heated debates raging in libertarian circles at the moment is whether or not Rand Paul is good enough to deserve the support of libertarianism. This debate has lead to some real ideological inconsistencies such as this one:

Libertarians need a similar model to help decide which candidates they can support and which they can’t. Without these distinctions, it’s all too easy to reject a candidate who is wrong about an opinion-level issue even though he’s awesome on all “dogma” issues. Or libertarians might support a candidate who got a 90% on simple purity tests—but the 10% he got wrong was a “dogma” vital to liberty.

Concentric circles of politics give us a more dynamic rubric to help libertarians make logical, consistent voting choices without letting media spin, or—I’m gonna say it—the emotional fact that a candidate isn’t his dad get in the way.

So for libertarians who haven’t ordered their political opinions in a concentric circles model, your reason for hating Rand Paul pretty much (logically) sucks.

Libertarians as a whole need a model to decide which candidates they can support and which they can’t? That sentence screams of collectivism, which is ideologically opposed to libertarianism (at least as defined in the United States). Instead of demanding all libertarians adopt the same model for deciding politicians anybody who claims to be a libertarian should defer to each individual.

Who can decide whether or not Rand Paul is a candidate worth supporting? You can. In fact only you can. Based on my beliefs I cannot support Rand Paul. That doesn’t mean you can’t. We are all individuals and must choose our own paths based on our own beliefs.

Political battles are won by getting enough people to agree with your opinion, which makes politics necessarily collectivist (which is probably why socialist ideologies fare better in politics than libertarian ideologies). As an individualist I have found myself unable to remain ideologically consistent while participating in politics. That is part of the reason I have chosen to route of agorism instead.

There are a lot of libertarians who claim that “we” need to stand behind Rand Paul even if we don’t agree with him in order to win politically. Any victory that requires me to go against my most valued beliefs is no victory. Demanding that I do so and arguing that any reasons I have for not doing so are stupid is also a claim that you know better than I do, which you don’t because you’re not me. Claiming that you know what is best for me is, in my opinion, ideologically inconsistent with libertarianism. Therefore I find demands by so-called libertarians that “we” support Rand Paul to be doubly inconsistent with libertarianism itself as it relies on political strategy and requires the person making that demand to believe he knows what is best for everybody else.

The Debate Over Whether the Cops Can Steal Your Stuff

Here in Minnesota there is a rather heated political debate brewing. No, I’m not talking about the debate over whether or not cannabis should be legalized but this other debate does tie into it. The big debate is whether or not the cops have to find your guilty before keeping your stuff:

A move that would bar cops from keeping property and cash seized in drug cases when there is no criminal conviction is the flash point of a debate between law enforcement and civil liberties advocates that is ­heading to the Legislature as soon as next week.

Backers say the state’s civil forfeiture laws are long overdue for a little due process. The laws have become a growing source of cash for law enforcement agencies and were famously abused by the now-defunct Metro Gang Strike Force, which paid out $840,000 in settlements to ­victims who had their property illegally seized.

Under current law, police or sheriffs can keep property, vehicles and cash seized in drug cases or drive-by shootings — regardless of the outcome of the criminal case.

I find it funny that this is even a debate. The fact that the police are opposing reforms to civil forfeiture laws is telling. If the job of the police was to uphold law and order they would be all for reforms that prevent the state from stealing property from the innocent. But the police want to keep the laws as is because their primary duty isn’t to uphold law and order; it’s to expropriate wealth from the people for the state. The police really are a gang of thieves as evident by their opposition to require due process before property is stolen.

Civil forfeiture laws are one of the reasons I laugh whenever somebody says that the United States is a nation of laws and our legal system is based on due process. Perhaps that was true at one time but it certainly isn’t true today. The war on unpatentable drugs has made sure whatever due process that may have existed in the United States legal system is now dead and buried.

I’m Not Saying Legislators are Gold Diggers

But they are. Here in Minnesota the legislators have moved to remove the prohibition that prevents them from accepting certain gifts from lobbyists:

On opening day of the 2014 legislative session, a House committee approved a reversal of recent changes to the state’s long-standing ban on legislators accepting gifts from lobbyists.

As of the last legislative session, lawmakers can now accept food and beverages from lobbyists – for instance, at a reception hosted by a lobbying firm – so long as every member of the Legislature is invited.

I think this really shows how corrupt legislators are. The problem for them wasn’t that they could be wined and dined by lobbyists. It’s that some legislators were more apt to get wined and dined and that wasn’t fair to their colleagues. But if a lobbyist is willing to wine and dine all of the legislators then the gift of fancy food and drink can be accepted.

Power has its perks. When you can make the rules that apply to your profession, including what gifts you can accept and how much you can get paid, life is pretty sweet.

Senator Manchin Doesn’t Understand How Bitcoin Works

Senators are an interesting breed. They are actually paid to issue decrees about things they have no understanding whatsoever of. Case in point. Senator Machine has called for a decree to be issued that would ban Bitcoin in the United States:

Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has called for a ban on Bitcoin.

In a letter addressed to the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and multiple financial regulatory agencies, Manchin calls the digital currency “disruptive to our economy” and highlights its potential for abuse by criminals.

Obviously Mr. Manchin doesn’t understand how Bitcoin works. As a decentralized protocol that can be accessed pseudonymously there is no central point to take out and no way to know for sure who is using it. This means banning it is, quite literally, impossible because any prohibition cannot be enforced.

If Mr. Manchin understood the technical aspects of Bitcoin he would know that he’s on a fool’s errand. But he’s a senator, which generally means he doesn’t understand the technical aspects of, well, anything. It still amazes me that people actually believe senators are qualified to run our lives considering the complete lack of understanding they have in regards to everything they legislate.

Arizona SB 1062

A lot of emotions have been fired up due to Arizona’s SB 1062 [PDF] bill. If you’re not familiar with the number this is the bill in Arizona that would grant business owners of that state the legal ability to refuse to provide goods and services to homosexual and transgendered persons for religious reasons. The debate over this bill has gotten pretty heated. One side believes that this bill must be stopped because it enables discrimination and the other side believes the bill should be passed because it allows business owners to choose who they wish to associate with. Many libertarians are in the latter camp because of their support for voluntary association. I, insofar as I care about the bill, oppose it.

As a strong advocate of voluntary association how could I oppose a bill that would seemingly advance a business owner’s legal ability to choose he or she wishes to associate with? Simple. This bill doesn’t advance voluntary association, it creates another privileged class.

If you read through the bill it grants business owners the legal ability to refuse service to individuals (the bill doesn’t specifically state homosexual and transgendered persons) if providing that service would go against their religious beliefs. In other words if a business owner refuses services to somebody and that individual sues then the business owner can say that providing services to that person would have violated his or her religious beliefs and it would be a valid legal defense. So this law means religious individuals gain the legal privilege to discriminate against other individuals while nonreligious people do not.

Voluntary association allows any individual to choose who he or she wishes to associate with regardless of reason. This bill allows religious individual to choose who he or she wishes to associate with while leaving nonreligious people unable to do so. As longtime readers of this blog know I’m against providing legal privileges to specific groups. All should be equal under the law. Any attempt to grant specific groups privileges, which is what SB 1062 does, should be opposed in my opinion.

Watching the GOP Slowly Kill Itself

The Republican Party (GOP) has been slowly killing itself for at least the last couple of decades. It continues to pay talk about small government and individual liberty from one side of its mouth while it talks about oppressing the gays and killing brown people from the other side of its mouth. Needless to say the latter two things haven’t proven to be too popular with modern society.

Part of this slow suicide has involved purging any member of the GOP who advocates for something different than the party line. Here in Minnesota the state party demonstrated its desire to die by dismissing one of its elected representatives who voted in favor of legalizing same-sex marriages here:

GOP state Rep. David FitzSimmons became more than a conservative newbie last May when he secured passage of an amendment giving churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages sturdier legal protection, and then voted for the marriage-legalization bill. He became a good legislator.

FitzSimmons, a 35-year-old agricultural project manager, also became a political whipping boy for the social conservatives who control the dominant Republican Party in his Wright County district. Since May, he’s been the target of vitriol, untruths and threats severe enough to be turned over to law enforcement.

This is why the GOP is doomed. FitzSimmons voting in a manner that was popularly supported and the dickheads composing his party wanted none of that. Instead of embracing the fact that modern society no longer feels the need to use the state’s violence against homosexuals the GOP has put it foot down and loudly declared that it wants to continue its campaign of oppression.

Frankly I can’t help but laugh. During my misguided time in politics I worked within the GOP trying to get Ron Paul nominated. During this time I was surrounded by people who I could only describe as monsters. While there are some good people inside of the GOP, just as there are some good people inside of the Democrat Party, the vast majority were obsessed with striking out against the gays, bombing brown people in sandy parts of the world, and stopping immigrants from crossing the imaginary line that they refer to as a border. As far as I’m concerned the GOP deserve a slow and painful death.

Immigration

The issue of immigration appears to be back in the news. Democrats claim to want to make it easier for foreigners to become United States citizens and grant amnesty to non-citizens who are already in the country. Republicans claim to also want to make it easier for foreigners to become United States citizens but are against granting amnesty to non-citizens who are already in the country. In other words both parties are using individuals not from around here as political pawns (in other words, business as usual). As expected this has fired up both parties’ political bases.

When the Democrats and Republicans claim they want to make the process of immigration easier they really mean they want to cut down on the paperwork and waiting period for non-citizens to become citizens. Granted, I’m not really sure why somebody living outside of the United States would want to move here of all places but that’s not the issue at hand. The issue at hand is the fact that politicians are arguing about making the process of crossing an imaginary line easier.

If you want to cross an imaginary line on a map you should be free to do so without begging some suit-clad dudes in marble buildings for permission. People born on the other side of the imaginary line being unable to cross it freely is the problem. Nobody should be forced to seek permission from bureaucrats to cross public land. Especially when you consider the fact that the United States was founded by people who either came from the other side of the imaginary line or were descendents of people who did.

But the state has convinced many people living here that those on the other side of the imaginary line are barbarians and must be prevented from crossing that line. We’re told that the state has to inspect anybody crossing the line to ensure they’re not going to kill us all. How ironic that the organization that claims it must ensure people crossing the line won’t kill us is the same organization that crosses the imaginary lines of other nations just to bombing the fuck out of their people. I’m sure the state is a great judge of moral character.

The bottom line is that the entire issue of immigration is stupid. People should be able to move about freely without receiving some stupid stamp of approval. Being born on the other side of some imaginary line doesn’t determine the content of your character. After all, there are many people that have been born on this side of the imaginary line that are, in my opinion, assholes. If we want to argue about immigration let’s discuss drawing lines around all federally owned property so that every politician and federal agent is required to go through immigration in order to enter non-federally owned property. That would certainly be more beneficial to our society as a whole.