Category: Politics

Canada Doesn’t Want to be Outdone

Not wanting to be outdone, our neighbors to the north are looking to bring more tyranny upon its people:

A proposed private members’ bill would make it a crime for protesters to wear a mask or disguise while participating in a riot or unlawful assembly, and this week the Harper government put its weight behind the legislation.

The Conservative majority on a House of Commons committee that’s examining the bill took matters a step further Thursday by doubling the proposed maximum prison term to 10 years from five.

Government MPs passed the amendment over the objections of the NDP opposition, who argue the bill is a sham because wearing a mask to commit a crime is already an offence under the Criminal Code.

So it’s going to be illegal to wear a mask while participating in a riot or “unlawful assembly?” Isn’t participating in a riot already illegal? What the hell is an “unlawful assembly?”

What is the point of laws like this other than to expand the police state? I can think of none as these laws simple make acts that are already illegal more, uhh, illegaler I guess. Whether somebody is wearing a mask while participating in a riot should be irrelevant, the only things that are relevant are whether or not they hurt anybody or damaged property. Masks aren’t enchanted items that give +2 to melee or +2 to smashing shit and thus are not relevant regarding any crimes.

Oh well, this does demonstrate that the police state is expanding everywhere, not just in the United States of America.

The Kabuki Concluded

The Vikings subsidy is on its way to governor Dayton’s office:

After a grinding week of late nights and marathon floor sessions, the state Senate granted final approval to a new Minnesota Vikings stadium on the final day of the legislative session.

“We delivered,” said Republcican Sen. Julie Rosen, R-Farmington, who sponsored the stadium bill. “We are going to have first-class stadium we can all be very, very proud of.”

The Senate approved the $975 million project on a vote of 36-30 amid cheers from Vikings fans in the gallery. The House gave final approval to the bill at 3:30 a.m., after the team agreed to kick in an extra $50 million.

Once signed the kabuki will be concluded and I must say it was fairly well done. As is the tradition of kabuki the stadium deal followed the five acts formula:

Nearly every full-length play occupies five acts. The first corresponds to jo, an auspicious and slow opening which introduces the audience to the characters and the plot. The next three acts correspond to ha, speeding events up, culminating almost always in a great moment of drama or tragedy in the third act and possibly a battle in the second and/or fourth acts. The final act, corresponding to kyu, is almost always short, providing a quick and satisfying conclusion.

The planning phase, where Zygi started making his intentions of building a new stadium public would have been the first act. It really set the stage, let the audience become familiar with the characters, and slowly got the ball rolling. The second act started with Zygi started petitioning for public funding in Minneapolis. From there acts three and four revolves around Minneapolis pretending they were at odds with the deal and moved it up to the state level where the debates started and the possibility of failure was fabricated. The last several days were act five, a fast passed series of late night debates that cumulated into a conclusion that many felt satisfied with.

Overall I believe it was a well done play although it could have been better. If I had written the script I would have had a tragic death inserted somewhere in act three or four then in act five I would have had one of the characters introduce a plea to name the new stadium after the fallen individuals. It would have been a far more emotionally appealing ending and much more drama could have been inserted. Even without the tragedy and drama of death the play was pretty decent and had many people on the edges of their seat. A good playwright knows how to engage his or her audience and you can’t say the audience wasn’t engaged with this play. We had audience members at the capitol dressed up in costume cheering on the characters while other audience members stood by with signs decrying the stadium supporters. Both parties felt as though they had a say in the ongoings of the play just as many people believe hoping a character in a movie won’t die has some kind of outcome on the movie’s ending.

My compliments to the writers. While I find the play less than satisfying because I was easily able to predict the ending I respect how well it was executed.

Gullible Suckers

The gay community is standing up and cheering now that Obama has come out in support of gay marriage. Unfortunately Obama is suckering these poor people as his phrasing was very carefully chosen:

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own.

Isn’t it funny how Obama entirely oppose the concept of state rights until it’s convenient for him? Obama’s statement could be better phrased as, “Hey guys I want to say I support gay marriage to get the gay vote but I don’t want to alienate the conservative christians so I’m still going to leave myself a backdoor.” He didn’t actually commit to anything, he just said something he knew people want to hear and let them fill in the blank themselves.

What people seem to miss is that the debate over legalizing gay marriage entirely misses the point. The debate shouldn’t be whether or not to legalize gay marriage is should be whether or not the state has any right to enter the marriage businesses (by the way the answer is no). Voluntary association only involves the people associating so nobody else should have any say in the matter. If you want to marry another person of the same sex, multiple people, a battle rifle, etc. it should be entirely up to you. Just remember that as an ordained minister and soon to be license to perform marriages in the state of Minnesota I will happily marry you to whomever or whatever you want.

So it Shall be Written, So it Shall be Done

If you’re in Minnesota you likely know about the “vote” being taken by our “representatives” at the Capitol regarding the Vikings Stadium. I use the word vote in quotation marks because this isn’t a vote, it’s a formality. The bottom line is this stadium was ensured to be built the second Zygi Wilf, the owner of the Vikings, said he wanted the state to fork over a large part of the stadium’s cost. Zygi is a politically well-connected billionaire meaning anything Zygi wants Zygi will get, he merely needs to make the right deal. Apparently he made the right deal since the Minnesota House voted in favor of the stadium:

The Minnesota Vikings won a decisive and long-awaited political victory late Monday when the House passed a public subsidy package for a new stadium, sending the project marching toward final passage at the State Capitol.

When the final vote was announced, two dozen Vikings fans — most clad in team jerseys — cheered loudly outside the House chamber and sang the team’s fight song. Afterward, amid chants of “Build A Stadium, Save Our Team!” Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak made his way through the crowd and was congratulated by smiling fans.

The final vote came after a day of high drama and a weekend of intense lobbying by Gov. Mark Dayton and the team, and produced a relatively easy 73-to-58 approval in the House. Though Republicans hold a majority in the House, DFLers did the heavy political lifting on the final vote, producing 40 of the 73 votes. The victory was also noteworthy because House Speaker Kurt Zellers — the leading Republican in the House — voted against the project.

There is much to be said about this entire fiasco. First let me address the rampant hypocrisy involved in this decision. Many people who are demanding the state pay a chunk of the stadium are also demanding the state tax the wealthy more. In fact the Democratic Farmer Labor Party (DFL) is usually the party working to increase taxes on the wealthy yet were the ones to vote most favorably towards a publicly funded stadium. The hypocrisy is almost palpable, they just voted to give a bunch of money to a billionaire. Perhaps they believe the state should tax the wealthy more but subsidize the super wealthy?

Outside of the hypocrisy a question must be asked: what do the Vikings have to offer the politicians? Deals like these must be mutually beneficially and therefore Zygi must offer something of value to get his subsidy. Unfortunately these deals are always performed behind closed doors and thus we never learn about them until after the fact. Beyond campaign contributions I believe another thing of value was likely offered, jobs. When things were looking bleak for the Vikings stadium deal the National Football League (NFL) entered the game. What does the NFL consistently try to do? Get public funding for stadiums. What do you need to get consistent public funding? Lobbyists. As a general rule politicians are often offered plush lobbying positions by large corporations for favorable legislation so I wouldn’t be surprised to see several prominent Minnesota “representatives” receive jobs with the NFL after they exit politics.

What’s done is done. I am merely a commentator and thus have no power to influence the game, but I do have the ability to make some predictions. It’s no secret that the economy is getting worse, which would make an intelligent person ask why the Vikings want to build a new stadium now. With a crumbling economy won’t people become less willing to buy tickets to see a game? Of course. Does it matter to the Vikings? Absolutely not. Why? Because the same arguments they use to get public funding for a new stadium can be used to get ticket prices subsidized.

Zygi Wilf isn’t an idiot and thus has likely already come up with the same idea I’m about to present. Throughout this entire stadium fiasco the primary argument used by proponents of public funding for the stadium have been based on supposed economic benefits brought by the Vikings. The beauty of such arguments is they can be used to justify almost any subsidy. Let’s step ahead several years where further economic failures have caused ticket sales at Vikings games to falter. Zygi, seeing his profits plument, has decided he needs another subsidy. How can he sell it? Easy. All it has to do is tell the politicians that he will sell off the Vikings if they fail to be profitable. Such a sale would cause them to move elsewhere and thus deprive Minnesota of the economic benefit the team supposedly brings. Since the Minnesota economy is already at a very vulnerable point the loss of the Vikings will cause complete collapse and therefore the economy of Minnesota depends on subsidized ticket prices from the state. Using this argument the politicians will vote to subsidize some arbitrarily chosen percentage of ticket prices so more fans can enjoy the games and the Vikings can remain profitable. It’s all for the greater good after all.

Many people reading that likely scoffed and rolled their eyes but I believe my prediction is pretty sound. We must only wait and see (and if it does happen I’m going to be doing the biggest “I told you so” dance anybody has ever seen).

Idiot Endorses Moron

Coming as no surprise to anybody who actually pays attention to politics Rick Santorum has officially endorse Mitt Romney:

In a late-night email, he urged his supporters to back the presumptive nominee in order to deny President Barack Obama a second term.

Mr Santorum said he was impressed by Mr Romney’s “deep understanding” of economic and family issues, following a meeting with him last week.

I’m told that during his address Santorum said he was unable to endorse Ron Paul in good conscious because of Paul’s stark opposition of war and his lack of hatred for “brown people” and “the gays.”

The only reason Santorum’s endorsement means anything to me is because he holds bounded delegates. Bounded delegates are those who are stuck voting for a candidate at the Republican National Convention (RNC). The question of what will happen to Santorum’s bounded delegates when he suspended his campaign last month has been the subject of debate. With his officially endorsement of Romney the question raised (at least in my opinion) is whether or not Santorum’s bounded delegates will now be bounded to Romney.

I’m sure somebody can point to an official RNC rule regarding this but I have no delusions of the RNC actually following any set of rules. They’ve already threatened to not seat any delegates from Nevada if the state sends too many Ron Paul supporters. It would be trivial for the RNC to announce that any delegate bounded to Santorum must not vote for Romney. Of course doing that would put their justification for threatening Nevada into question. The RNC claimed its threat against Nevada was done because they didn’t believe the Paul supporters would obey the RNC rules and endorse the candidate they were bounded to. Many of Santorum’s supporters were vehemently opposed to Romney for various reasons and outright refused to give the former Massachusetts governor any support. These people may not play by the RNC rules either so it would only make sense if the RNC refused to seat any delegates from states that hold bounded Santorum delegates.

Once again I’m really hoping the RNC pulls something incredibly shady with this situation. The faster people wake up and realize the Republican Party isn’t for the people or by the people the quicker they can reduce the party to ash and hopefully start one or more new viable parties.

Looks Like Maine Won’t be Seating Delegates at the Republican National Convention

Ron Paul ended up taking a majority of the delegates in Maine:

With Mitt Romney’s GOP presidential nomination all but decided, Ron Paul supporters took control of the Maine Republican Convention and elected a majority slate supporting the Texas congressman to the GOP national convention, party officials said. The results gave the Texas congressman a late state victory.

In votes leading to the close of the two-day Maine convention, Paul supporters were elected to 21 of the 24 delegate spots from Maine to the GOP national convention in Tampa, Fla. The 24th delegate’s seat goes to party Chairman Charles Webster, who has remained uncommitted throughout the process.

Of course this likely means that Maine won’t be allowed to seat any delegates since the Republican National Convention isn’t too keen on the serfs choosing somebody besides Mitt Romney.

The Fix is In

Everybody believes Romney is going to win the Republican nomination this year and I can’t disagree with that belief. Romney is the chosen candidate of the Republican Party and they want him to be the victor this election. What the media hasn’t been reporting is the fact that Ron Paul is running away with tons of delegates, news that the Republican National Committee (RNC) is taking note of:

The Republican National Committee is warning the Nevada GOP that if supporters of Ron Paul are allowed to take too many slots for the national convention, the party may opt against seating the state’s entire convention delegation.

[…]

The RNC is concerned that the Paul campaign will game the state-level convention this weekend that selects delegates to the national convention. While Mitt Romney should be awarded 20 of the state’s 28 delegates, based on his dominating win in the state’s primary, it’s possible that Paul supporters could exploit their strength in the Nevada GOP to get named to some of those delegate slots.

The national party is apparently concerned those delegates would then ignore party rules that would bind them to vote for Romney on the first round of balloting.

Did you get that? If Ron Paul ends up winning too many seats in Nevada the RNC may simply refuse to seat the entire state during the national convention. Their excuse that the Paul delegates may refuse to play by the rules is feeble at best. If that’s a concern the RNC should refuse to seat any delegates from states that were won by Santorum since their disgruntlement over losing their candidate may cause them to not play by the rules.

Either way the RNC has made an ultimatum, send Romney delegates or we’re not going to count your state. You know what? I hope Ron Paul wins Nevada and the RNC refuses to seat the state’s delegates at the national convention. As a Ron Paul supporter this may sounds like a weird thing to hope for but such an action would, more than anything else, demonstrate the irrelevance of member input in the Republican Party. It would show that the RNC doesn’t care what the members want and will go to any lengths to ensure the RNC favored candidates receive nominations. Perhaps such an action would finally wake enough members of the Republican Party up and cause them to leave. Obviously the completely brainwashed party supporters wouldn’t leave regardless but I don’t want everybody to leave, just enough to rip the Republican Party’s teeth out and possibly create a new viable party.

At this point I really want to see the Republican Party burn. I’m not a fan of hypocrites and the Republican Party are some of the biggest hypocrites of all. They promise small government, fiscal conservativeness, and free markets but deliver huge government, major debt spending, and heavily regulated markets. At least the Democratic Party is honest when they promise government programs, regulated markets, and forced association (which they like to call integration). The Republican Party promises good and deliver evil while the Democratic Party promises evil and actually delivers evil, one point to the Democratic Party for honesty.

Unfortunately people continue to feed the Republican Party because they believe it’s less evil than the Democratic Party. Guess what? It’s not. The Republican Party is willing to disqualify delegates if those delegates don’t deliver the desired result. Why doesn’t the RNC just admit to its dictatorial aspirations and start appointing a candidate without the delegate process? At least that would be honest.

They’re All the Same

Whenever somebody brings up the oncoming Romney vs. Obama race I’m always quick to voice my opinion that it’s really an Obama vs. Obama race. Romney and Obama are indistinguishable beyond physical characteristics. Saying this usually gets a rise out of both Romney and Obama supporters who believe their candidate is different from the other. Those who are asking gun owners to support Romney will point out that his election will slow down the race to socialism (which is really a race to fascism and the race was over decades ago) and strongly oppose my opinion that he’s the same as Obama. The sad truth is both candidates are exactly the same in the only matter that matters, they both believe in initiating violence.

My problem with these two candidates isn’t their views on guns, war, marriage, or the economy because their views on these issues are a symptom of something worse. What do all of these issues have in common? They all require the state’s gun to enforce.

Gun control laws are implemented under the threat of violence. If you purchase a verboten weapon the state will kidnap you and hold you in a cage. That’s what gun control is, that’s what every state decree is.

War is no different. Currently we have a voluntary military (until you’re in, at that point you become property of the state even more so than other citizens) but if the recruitment numbers aren’t high enough to wage the wars then the state will start another draft just as they did during the Vietnam War. Draftees will be offered the choice of being thrown in a cage or sent to war in a foreign land. The fact that the state can initiate a draft at all demonstrates the fact that we’re all slaves.

What about marriage? When the state makes a decree about marriage they’re violating peoples’ rights to voluntarily associate with one another. If the state choses to only recognize marriage between a single man and a single woman they are disallowing those who wish to marry people of the same sex or multiple people from entering into a contractual agreement. This is partially a byproduct of the state maintaining a monopoly on the court system and partially a byproduct of basing various government institutions on marriage status. Because of the monopoly on courts same sex partners can’t enter into the contractual part of marriage and because the state bases various institutions on marriage status same sex couples can’t apply for the same tax benefits as heterosexual couples. This is where the violence steps in, if a same sex couple decides to give the state the middle finger and pay their taxes as though they were married the Internal Revenue Service (revenuers) will bring down the hammer. The revenuers will demand more tax money and will go so far as kidnapping (or murder if the victims don’t come peacefully) and theft to get that money.

Economic matters are no different. When the state hands out money to favored businesses, generates regulations that harm their favoreds’ competitors, etc. they are brining the state’s gun to bear. A good example of this are regulations, most of which are designed in such a way to favor one set of businesses over another (usually the big politically well-connect businesses over the small guys who can’t afford lobbyists or offer cushy jobs to politicians when they exit their office). Environmental regulations are great for this as the book Political Environmentalism points out. During the acid rain scare the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandated that all coal burning power plants install SO2 scrubbers to prevent sulfur from being released in the atmosphere. This regulation favored large power companies who could afford to install scrubbers and coal mines in the western United States. How did this regulation favor western coal mines? Simple, coal from the eastern part of the United States is low on sulfur content and burning it actually releases little sulfur, less than burning high sulfur western coal through scrubbers does. How does violence play into the equation you ask? Try building a power plant without the EPA mandated scrubbers while burning low sulfer coal and you’ll find out pretty quickly.

The bottom line is both Romney and Obama want to continue regulating all of these things and many more. There is no real difference between the two. Both candidates want to control your life and that’s the problem, that’s why no difference exists between the two. Whether you put a gun to my head to control what guns I own or what I eat is irrelevant to me, the fact you put the gun to my head at all is why I’m pissed off.

Nailed It

As you know I don’t believe in democracy, an opinion that is often socially unacceptable to hold. I also believe that the United States is now nothing more than a fascist regime. Needless to say I’m just about a cynical as one man can get towards politics but I could never express this cynicism as well as Franke W. James has on his blog:

Contrast our country today with the one I grew up with in the 1950’s. We were taught to fear the Red Menace as personified by the Soviet Union and its one party Communist state with internal ‘passports’, border controls and mandated state issued identification card.

We enjoyed ‘Freedom’, while they did not.

But now I ask, have you tried recently to get an airline ticket or even ‘board’ an airliner without a “government issued identification card”?

Have you tried to rent a safety deposit box from a bank without a Social Security Number?

Do yourself a favor, click the link and read the post.