Wall of Fame Assholes – Page 34

Tax Victims to Foot the Bill for the Vikings Stadium

Remember when the Minnesota legislature and Mark Dayton said Minnesota’s tax victims wouldn’t be on the hook to pay for the new Vikings Stadium because proceeds from electronic pull tabs would cover the costs? As it turns out gambling revenues weren’t as high as the estimates had people believing so Minnesotans are going to be paying the bill:

Gov. Mark Dayton wants to rely on new revenues from cigarette and corporate income tax to help pay the state’s share of a new Vikings stadium.

Myron Frans, commissioner of revenue, explained Dayton’s plan to the Tax Conference Committee Thursday.

It would include two funding sources: approximately $24.5 million in one-time revenues from tax on the current cigarette inventory once the tax is increased. Dayton is proposing an increase from the current tax of $1.23 per pack to $2.52 per pack.

It’ll state with cigarette and corporate income tax but I guarantee that the state will be pilfering from everybody in a short while. Meanwhile Zigy Wilf, the owner of the Vikings, will continue enjoying his life as a billionaire thanks, in part, to the fact we’re all paying for his Colosseum.

I always thought the point of bread and circuses was to distract the serfs from their miserable existence not remind them of it.

Increasing the Rate of Expropriation

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued a recommendation (i.e. do it or your state won’t receive federal highway funds) that states reduce the legal blood alcohol limit for driving from .08 to .05:

States should cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly half – from .08 blood alcohol level to 0.5 – matching a standard that has substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries, a U.S. safety board recommends. That’s about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 lbs., two for a 160 lb. man.

If somebody is willing to operate an automobile above the current .08 level what makes the goons at the NTSB think those people won’t do the same thing if the legal level is reduced to .05? In all likelihood they don’t believe that. Why would they recommend a reduction in the legal rate then? Easy, traffic tickets are big business and the lower the legal blood alcohol level is the more tickets can be issued. Setting the legal limit to .05 would put many people at risk of receiving a citation even after a single drink.

This latest “recommendation” isn’t about safety, it’s about expropriation.

We’re Number One

Although this news is likely to excite my “tough on crime” friends I find it rather disgusting, especially for a nation that calls itself the freest on Earth:

“Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today,” writes the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. “Over all, there are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America – more than 6 million – than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.”

Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That’s not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and Britain – with a rate among the highest – has 153….

That’s right, the United States, the supposed bastion of freedom on this planet, has more people in its prison system than the Soviet Union did under Stalin. Anybody who has paid attention to the prison-industrial complex in the United States is unlikely to be surprised by this news. We’re talking about an industry where children have been sold to prisons so those prisons could enjoy the benefits of young slave labor. It is rather sickening that people still claim the United States is some kind of bastion of freedom considering we have more people in cages than any other nation, including some of the most tyrannical regimes.

Obama’s Empty Gitmo Promise

After reneging on his original promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison (Gitmo) Mr. Obama promised that he would really close Gitmo this time. Of course he has no intention of closing Gitmo because if he did then the facility would be closed:

The relevant law is the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA). This statute confirms the president’s power to wage war against al-Qaida and its associates, which was initially given to him in the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed shortly after 9/11. The NDAA also authorizes the president to detain enemy combatants, and bans him from transferring Guantanamo detainees to American soil.

The NDAA does not, however, ban the president from releasing detainees. Section 1028 authorizes him to release them to foreign countries that will accept them—the problem is that most countries won’t, and others, like Yemen, where about 90 of the 166 detainees are from, can’t guarantee that they will maintain control over detainees, as required by the law.

There is another section of the NDAA, however, which has been overlooked. In section 1021(a), Congress “affirms” the authority of the U.S. armed forces under the AUMF to detain members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups “pending disposition under the law of war.” Section 1021(c)(1) further provides that “disposition under the law of war” includes “Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by” the AUMF. Thus, when hostilities end, the detainees may be released.

The president has the power to end the hostilities with al-Qaida—simply by declaring their end. This is not a controversial sort of power. Numerous presidents have ended hostilities without any legislative action from Congress—this happened with the Vietnam War, the Korean War, World War II, and World War I. The Supreme Court has confirmed that the president has this authority.

Since nothing is preventing Mr. Obama from closing Gitmo he must want it open, which means his promise to close the facility is empty. Somehow Obama’s supporters still believe he is against war. In reality Obama is just like Bush, a warmonger who gets off on the fact that he can personally order the assassination of anybody he wants. In fact Obama so enjoys order assassinations that he actually had to redefine “enemy combatant” and create new classes of enemies because he was running out of people to have butchered.

So Much for Leaving Afghanistan in 2014

Obama has made a big stink about getting the United States out of Afghanistan by 2014. When he first announced his plan I wondered how he was going to weasel out of it. When he said the United States was leaving Iraq he really meant that American soldiers were going to be replaced with mercenaries. It sounds like Obama is planning the same thing for Afghanistan except he’ll be replacing American soldiers with more flying murder machines:

The US military is due to pull most combat troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. But after that, an armed American presence could remain over Afghan skies, depending on what agreement for continuing operations is reached between the US and Afghanistan. Air Force Major General H.D. Polumbo, Jr, told reporters at the Pentagon today that drones, including armed unmanned aerial vehicles operated by the US, will likely continue to be used to support the Afghan army’s operations through 2014 and probably on into 2015.

I’m sure the Afghan government will become very agreeable when Obama explains that they either accept drones flying in their sky or face being added to the kill list themselves.

Rand Paul’s Apparently Flip-Flop on Domestic Drone Usage

Libertarian sites are expressing shock from the supposed savior’s change in attitude regarding domestic drone usage. Last month Rand Paul performed a 13 hour filibuster against domestic drone usage but yesterday he had an apparent change of heart:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Tuesday that he would have supported police using drones in last week’s hunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing.

“If there is a killer on the loose in a neighborhood, I’m not against drones being used to search them,” Paul told Fox Business Network.

[…]

Paul said that the question of an “imminent threat” was the pivotal one when considering drone policy.

“Here’s the distinction — I have never argued against any technology being used against having an imminent threat an act of crime going on,” Paul said. “If someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and $50 in cash, I don’t care if a Drone kills him or a policeman kills him, but it’s different if they want to come fly over your hot tub, or your yard just because they want to do surveillance on everyone, and they want to watch your activities.”

I said an apparent change of heart because the sentiment expressed above isn’t actually a change in heart. Last year Mr. Paul introduced legislation that he claimed protected Americans from being killed by drones. I noted that there was a major hole in the legislation that effectively rendered it useless:

Sounds good so far, right? Let’s have a look at the exceptions mentioned in the above paragraph:

(1) PATROL OF BORDERS- The use of a drone to patrol national borders to prevent or deter illegal entry of any persons or illegal substances.

So drones will continue to be used to monitor the 100 miles “Constitution free zone” that 2/3 of the United States population lives within? It appears as though Rand Paul’s bill only protects 1/3 of the population from these unwarranted drone uses. That appearance is deceiving though as there are more exceptions:

(2) EXIGENT CIRCUMSTANCES- The use of a drone by a law enforcement party when exigent circumstances exist. For the purposes of this paragraph, exigent circumstances exist when the law enforcement party possesses reasonable suspicion that under particular circumstances, swift action to prevent imminent danger to life is necessary.

There it is, the one exception that makes this entire bill meaningless. Law enforcement don’t need a warrant to use a drone if they have “reasonable suspicion” that circumstances are such that imminent danger to life exists. “Reasonable suspicion” is another way of saying “because law enforcement wants to.” It’s a catchall phrase that has been used by law enforcement agents to avoid that pesky Forth Amendment.

If his legislation was any indicator Rand Paul has always been fine with using drones to kill Americans so long as the state’ arbitrary “terrorist” label is applied to the target beforehand. Everybody can stop being surprised now. Rand Paul isn’t being inconsistent, he’s always been find with killing Americans with drones.

Is the War on Drugs Worth This

Many people, especially neoconservatives, believe that it’s the state’s duty to wage a holy crusade against drugs not produced by major pharmaceutical companies. In this holy crusade anything goes including theft and breaking and entering. As you would expect when the police decide to break into a home the consequences are often dire:

Brenda Van Zweitan, 51, was shot and killed during a 2010 drug raid on her home by the Broward, Florida Sheriff’s Department. According to police, Van Zweitan was holding a handgun when they approached her in the home, and then refused to drop it when ordered to do so. Van Zweitan’s boyfriend was arrested without resistance.

In the weeks before the raid, however, Van Zweitan had been robbed, and the man she believed committed the robbery had threatened her on the Internet. Her friends and family also pointed to the fact that she had no prior criminal record, and that the police entered the home in a particularly aggressive and terrifying manor — by smashing through a sliding glass door — to suggest that she likely wasn’t aware that the armed intruders in her home were police. Van Zweitan was also a PTA member, a grandmother, and a local political and environmental activist.

There is no reason Mrs. Zweitan had to die. The police could have knocked on her door, presented a warrant, and went from there. Instead they dressed up in their tactical high speed, low drag mall ninja gear, busted through a sliding glass door, and waived their guns around like gangsters. Anybody inside the house would have been justified in assuming the people breaking into their home were generic street thugs and the need for self-defense was immediate. The police, of course, saw the homeowner holding a gun, a result that should have been expected when kicking in a sliding glass door, and opened fire.

In situations like this people often point out that police officers have to deal with violent thugs every day and therefore are apt to shoot when they see somebody present a weapon. That excuse may be acceptable if the police are acting like something other than common thugs but when they’re breaking into somebody’s home they should expect to see a firearm presented, realize that the firearm is being presented because the person believes non-state thugs are breaking in, and hold their fire until being fire upon. If they don’t want to get shot at they can knock on the door and present a warrant instead of going from zero to commando in .05 seconds.

Collective Punishment Rears its Ugly Head

News outlets are announcing that the suspects in the Boston bombing are Muslims from Chechnya. As if on cue there are now calls going out to kill all Muslims and/or Chechens. In fact many people are bringing up the Chechnya’s violent history and using Besland school crisis as evidence that Chechens are evil people. People are also pointing out the usual fear mongering about Muslims.

While these accusations concern me in general, they really concern them when they’re being made by members of the gun rights community. If any group of people understood the problems inherent in collective punishment I would think it would be a group that becomes the subject of collective punishment whenever a shooting occurs. Apparently not. I don’t even have enough fingers to count the number of instances I’ve seen where a member of the gun rights community has either made mention of slaughtering the Muslims, Chechens, or everybody living in the Middle East.

I don’t even have words to properly express my disgust. For fuck’s sake people, we should understand that two individuals from a country that has 1,268,989 people doesn’t even make for a correlation, let along a case. The only people who are responsible for the bombing in Boston are the people who detonated the bombs.

Kansas City Police Kick Homeless Individuals Out of Unused Tunnels

While I agree with the expressed idea of self-proclaimed progressives that society should better care for the homeless I disagree with their tactics. Self-proclaimed progressives always want the state to get involved and, as I’ve explained, the state would rather see homeless people die off because they have on wealth to expropriate. Demonstrating the conflict of interest I talked about Kansas City police found a community of homeless people living in unused tunnels. What did the police do? Kicked the homeless out of the tunnels that they then filled in to ensure nobody could return:

Police and volunteers from Hope Faith Ministries first visited the camps on Tuesday to advise the residents they had to clear out by Friday. After repeated visits, they encountered only four people, but it was obvious that many others lived there. Cooley said three of the four either accepted services offered or said they would.

On Friday, city public works crews used a Bobcat to close up the tunnels and holes after they were searched by a police robot with a camera. Representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs also were on hand to offer services. Animal Control came because police had reason to think there might be a dangerous pit bull on site, but they did not encounter one.

Whenever the police strike out against the homeless they always concoct some excuse. Usually they claim to be enforcing health or safety regulations but this time around the police merely used the excuse that cooper had been stolen in the area:

It was found while police were investigating copper thefts in the industrial area of the East Bottoms, some of which are very costly. Police have previously encountered evidence of copper thefts at other camps and think some homeless people are responsible for some thefts and may serve as lookouts for larger theft operatives.

Even though the police had no evidence (at least no evidence has been put forward that I can find) that the homeless individuals in the tunnels were the thieves they rousted them anyways. In all likelihood the accusations copper thefts was merely a convenient excuse to kick the homeless out of the area so they could become some other city’s problem. Most large municipalities seem to believe that the best way to deal with the homeless is to make their lives so miserable that they flee to somewhere else. That’s the kind of “charity” you get from the state. If a person isn’t a revenue source they are roughed up and told to go elsewhere, locked into a cage, or outright murdered. Using the state to help those in need will never succeed because the state has no use for those who truly have nothing to expropriate.

You Keep Using that Word

Somebody needs to get Dianne Feinstein a dictionary:

Speaking to an audience of 500 people in her hometown of San Francisco, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that game publishers need to make voluntary actions to avoid glorifying guns and violence following the Newtown elementary school massacre in December.

She noted that Congress would take action if the industry didn’t do something, according to the Associated Press.

If the only options are do as the state says or do as the state says then voluntary action is impossible. Feinstein’s offer is coercion, she’s putting a gun to the heads of video game developers and threatening to pull the trigger if they don’t roll over and do as she says. I’m not surprised that Feinstein misunderstands what voluntary means since she is one of the most authoritarian tyrants out there.