Category: Politics

Simply Amazing

I follow politics, can you tell? I also do what I can to ensure legislation I want to pass is passed and legislation I don’t want passed is shot down. Often though I’m amazed at the apathy of most people when it comes to our political system. It’s almost impossible to rally people to make simple phone calls to their “representatives” asking them to vote against things like the PATRIOT Act. Until last week I didn’t think there was anything you could do that would get people active in fighting the cronies at our capitals. You want to know the secret to raising a political army? Get alcohol involved.

Minnesota’s liquor laws are quite special in their complexity and stupidity. Due to our laws a brewery can not sell more than 3,500 barrels of liquor a year and have a restaurant at the same time. This has put a kibosh on Surly Brewing Company’s plans for a massive new facility which would include a restaurant. All of the sudden the most politically apathetic people I know are all fired up to fight these laws. They’ve gone from yelling about fighting “the evil lobbyists” to meeting with a lobbyist group. The irony is delicious I will admit.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that the best way to raise a political army is to somehow involve alcohol. I’m trying to figure out a means of doing this with every political issue I care about and you should to.

House Voted to Extend PATRIOT Act Spying on Citizens Powers

No surprise here but the House voted to piss all over our rights yet again by extending the “surveillance powers” of the PATRIOT Act:

In a 275-144 vote, the chamber voted to extend until December provisions on wiretaps, access to business records and surveillance of terror suspects.

I’m sure it was only a coincidence that Janet Napolitano claimed that the United States currently faces it’s largest threat from terrorist attack EVAR!!!!OMGTHINKOFTHECHILDREN.

Seriously every so-called representative that voted for this should be instantly recalled by their states and brought up on charges of treason. The legislators in Washington are supposed to uphold the Constitution not use it a toilet paper to wipe their collective asses.

Arizona Intrastate Commerce Act

Arizona is working diligently to piss off the federal government. Honestly anybody willing to piss of the federal government is OK in my book and this new bill introduced in Arizona should really do the trick if passed. Several states have passed Firearm Freedom Acts.

Congress uses their power to “regulate interstate commerce” (which means something completely different than “abuse the shit out of your power” but alas) to justify gun control legislation. Justification is made stating guns traveling across state lines are interstate commerce and therefore subject to federal laws. Firearm Freedom Acts state any firearm manufactured, sold, and used exclusively in a state are exempt from federal laws since no interstate commerce took place.

I’ve often asked why these laws are written exclusively for firearms. When I was caucusing last election cycle we had an opportunity to present new platform agendas. The agenda I suggested was basically Arizona’s Intrastate Commerce Act. Obviously it didn’t go anywhere since most people at the caucus are a bunch of authoritarian neo-cons who can’t conceive of a law that would effectively enforce constitutional limits to Congress’s authority. If passed Arizona’s law:

SB 1178 will amend the Arizona Revised Statutes in order to provide that all goods grown, manufactured or made in Arizona and all services performed in Arizona, when such goods or services are sold, maintained, or retained in Arizona, shall not be subject to the authority of the Congress of the United States under its constitutional power to regulate commerce.

So it’s the Firearms Freedom Act applied to all goods and services manufactured, sold, and exclusively used in Arizona. Sounds like a good idea to me. Frankly I’m really enjoying this small surge in states telling the federal government to sod off.

Renewal of PATRIOT Act Provisions Fails in House Vote

Although nobody was paying attention anyways I thought I’d let you know that the attempt to fast-track renewals of certain provisions of the PATRIOT Act failed in a House vote last evening. If this were a landslide vote I’d have had a bit more confidence in our “representatives” but it narrowly failed to achieve the 290 votes by a mere 13.

The three clauses that are up for renewal are first the provision that allows the FBI to perform warrantless wiretaps, second the provision that allows the government access to any desired records on your person, and third the provision that allows the FBI to place people under surveillance who have no known ties to terrorist organizations.

This doesn’t mean the PATRIOT Act is dead. In fact the White House would prefer to have the three provisions extended until 2013:

The White House on Tuesday said in a statement that it “does not object” to extending the three Patriot Act provisions until December 2011 although it “would strongly prefer” an extension until December 2013, noting that the longer timeline “provides the necessary certainty and predictability” that law enforcement agencies require while at the same time ensuring congressional oversight by maintaining a sunset.

Hope and change ladies and gentlemen. The House and Senate both have competing bills for renewing these provisions of the PATRIOT Act. In face one of our all time favorite “representatives,” Feinstien, is on the case to rape your rights:

In addition to the House legislation, the Senate is considering three competing timelines, including proposals that would permanently extend the three provisions or extend them through 2013. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), both of whom have introduced competing proposals, said Monday that committee members continue to work toward an agreement but declined to speculate as to the end result.

Surprised? I didn’t think so.

Why Minnesota’s Economy is in the Tank

I’m sure many of you have heard of Surly Brewing Corporation. They are a local Minnesota brewery who makes some might find beer. Yesterday they announced plans to for a $20 million expansion that would include a restaurant and beer garden. This sounded great to me as it would create some great private sector jobs in this state which are sorely needed.

Well it would be great except for the fact that Surly can’t start construction because of currently existing legislation. Once again the government is getting in the way of private enterprises. So what is this legislation? Well, in Minnesota, only small breweries are allowed to sell beer for on-site consumption. Once you get beyond an arbitrary size you are no longer allowed to run a restaurant and a brewery because that would just make too much sense (you know there was a special interest bar lobby that pushed this to avoid competition with local breweries).

Once again instead of just being able to go about legitimate business a private company has to hire a lobbying firm in the hopes of getting a stupid law repealed. If the law can be repealed then said the legitimate business can actually go about helping the local economy by creating new positions for the currently unemployed. No wonder Minnesota’s economy is in the tank, legitimate businesses aren’t allowed to actually do business.

We Dodged that Bullet

Minneapolis/St. Paul have been under a major looming threat for a while now. The Democratic National Convention (DNC) has been threatening our fine metropolitan area by claiming they may hold their event here. Thankfully they decided to fuck over Charlotte instead.

Why do I say we dodged a bullet? Well the last time we had a national convention the only things that came of it were police abuse and protesters busting up private property. The Republican National Convention (RNC) was a fiasco. The police donned their riot gear, turned the area surrounding the RNC into a militarized zone, rounded up and arrested people planning peaceful protests, and illegally performed mass arrests of peaceful protesters. On the other side we had groups of protesters who decided it would be a good idea to smash in storefront windows, threaten the lives of Republican delegates, and do everything they could to not be peaceful. We don’t need that shit happening again.

Before somebody posts in the comments and claims that would never happen if with DNC all I have to say is do some research. The RNC itself wasn’t the problem, the problem was external factors. These external factors were completely oblivious to what party was in town (most of the protesters hated both parties). The exact same shit would have happened again and frankly I don’t want to put up with it. Seeing a police state in my neck of the woods once is enough for my lifetime.

Rand Paul’s Budget Cuts

It looks like Rand Paul may actually live up to some of his campaign promises. He’s put up a plan to cut $500 billion [PDF] from the federal budget.

People are already howling that he’s cutting money from “needed” programs like the Department of Education. Boo hoo I guess they don’t get more 12 gauge shotguns this year.

I do like how the Department of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and the International Assistance Programs receive zero funding. What I don’t like is the fact that defense spending is only reduced by 6.5%. Likewise instead of reducing the funding for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) by 40% he should have reduced it by 100%. Hell reduce the TSA’s funding by 150% and charge them for some of that porn they were looking at on the job. While you’re at it Rand do you think you could just have the heads of the TSA arrested and put on the terrorist watch list (just for completeness)?

Internet Kill Switch

I’m sure you’ve heard that Egypt has basically killed Internet access in a pointless attempt to censor those rightly angry with their dictator government. Many people are decrying this and rightfully so but many of these people are also making statements proclaiming how glad they are that such a situation couldn’t happen here. These people are stating that only fascists and dictators would do such things.

So, which on is our government? Personally I’d say closer to fascists since we don’t really have a single dictator in power at the moment. Either way our government has been pushing for legislation to create some form of “Internet kill switch” for some time now. They want to have the legal authority to shutdown the Internet in “times of emergency.”

This can happen here and our overlords representatives are trying to make it a possibility. If you don’t want to see the Egypt style kill switch here you need to complain to your so-called representatives now before they decide to pass it in some lame duck session.

Data Retention Moving in Subcommitee

With all the problems facing this country including unwinable resource consuming wars, a fiat currency that’s quickly devaluing, and an economy in shambles it’s good to know our government isn’t too busy to find a little time to stomp all over our rights. The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security held a hearing on creating legislation that would require ISPs to retain information on websites that customers have visited.

The usual bullshit was used as excused by our “representatives” to mandate ISPs retain all customer data dealing with interactions with anything online. Of course the people arguing that we need such violations of privacy don’t understand that retention of so much data will cost ISPs a small fortune in equipment to gather and store said information. But hey destroying businesses is what government does best… which is probably why they can’t figure out how to fix the unemployment rate.

I did find it rather cute that during the hearing Jason Weinstein called on the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) specifically for a guide they wrote back in 2008 titled Best Practices for Online Service Providers.

This will be an issue to watch in the upcoming months.

Interesting Charges in the Arizona Case

Mr. Arizona Shooter appeared today in court and I found the list of charges interesting:

Mr Loughner was charged with five crimes – the attempted assassination of a member of Congress, the first degree murder of two federal employees and the attempted murder of two federal employees.

Why do all these charges involve attempted or successful murders of government officials? Because they’re like you and me only better. You get a much tougher punishment usually if you commit a crime against a government official as opposed to a little peasant such as you or me. It’s rather telling what our government thinks about us when they decide not to treat all murders with the same punishment (we’re just not that important I guess).

Also the blame game is still going on as everybody is trying to show out the shooter’s politics mirror the politics of those they disagree with. It doesn’t matter if the shooter was a liberal, conservative, libertarian, socialist, communist, or anything else because the simple fact is he killed people. Once you kill somebody your political beliefs are irrelevant as there are far more non-violent people who hold any political belief than there are violent ones. Stop trying to demonize everybody you don’t like because of the actions of one fucked up individual.