Tag: Not So Crazy Libertarian Ideals

A Justice System Designed to Take Everything

As I said more commentary related to this story was coming, I just didn’t have time to write it all out yesterday when I penned the first post. Aside from the lack of “stand your ground” law the story of Mr. Lewis demonstrates a failure of our so-called justice system in general.

In fact I don’t refer to what we have in the United States as a justice system. Justice would imply compensation for your losses and life returning to normal if you’re incorrectly accused of a crime. The system we have in the United States would best be labeled a punishment system. My reason for saying this is because everybody, the innocent and guilty, are punished severely in our system either through prison terms or property loss. A perfect example of this is the recent case of Jay Rodney Lewis who lost everything for simply defending himself:

Ludwick, a former soldier and convicted felon, was driving four people home from a Halloween party. Documents say Ludwick slowed; Lewis passed him. Ludwick sped up, and the cars raced down 11th Street until they came to Regency Woods. They collided when Lewis, in front and on the right, started to turn left.

Lewis said Ludwick and a passenger, Justin Lossner, got out of the Taurus and began punching the Mustang’s windows.

They backed off when Lewis pulled out his .380-caliber pistol. But they came back.

Lewis said he was outside his car, evaluating its damage, when he caught Ludwick and Lossner trying to sneak up on him from two different directions.

The recording of a 911 call made by Lewis begins with Lewis yelling at the two to “just stay where you are. Get back! Get back! I’m going to start shooting!”

There are exchanges of profanities while Lewis explains the situation to a police dispatcher. Then, “Get away from me. Get away from me!” And a bang.

The 911 call makes it pretty obvious that Mr. Lewis attempted to resolve the situation without resorting to violence, which was later upheld by a jury. Considering the call and the situation I would not have initially arrested Lewis but the police not only saw fit to arrest him but the court saw it necessary to put such a high bail on his release that he had no hope of paying it:

The initial bail asked Lewis to post $225,000 cash.

Lewis, who made $32,359 a year at the IRS, didn’t have the money. So he sat in jail.

Bail is one of the most sickening ideas our punishment system has come up with. If you’re arrested you can give the state a pile of money and they’ll let you walk around freely until your trial date. Whether you’re found guilty or innocent the state gets to keep the bail money. It’s hard to argue that bail is anything besides a fund raising attempt by the state since an act of justice would be returning that money to any person found innocent of the crime they were accused of. I’m still unsure of how the average person came to accept the idea of bail as a justifiable idea.

The state didn’t get Mr. Lewis’s money though because he didn’t have enough, but they did make sure he lost all of his property by keeping him locked up:

One week after the shooting, a lawyer for Regency Woods typed up a notice that eventually was posted on the door of Lewis’ apartment. It described Lewis as a “clear and present danger to the health or safety of the other tenants.” As evidence, it cited Lewis’ involvement in “an assault with a weapon within 1,000 feet of the property described above” and the fact that he’d been arrested because of it.

[…]

Despite the fact that Regency Woods knew Lewis had been arrested, no one ever contacted him at the jail. Instead, the apartment complex won a default judgment when Lewis failed to appear in court on Nov. 22.

Lewis learned about all this at roughly 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 30. One jail guard led him to another, who was on the phone. The deputy serving the eviction warrant wanted to know if Lewis had any relatives who could get Lewis’ belongings off the 11th Street curb.

“All my relatives are in Kansas,” Lewis said.

The evicting deputy seized four handguns, three rifles, a shotgun and a machete that had been left in the apartment. But all his clothing and furniture disappeared on Nov. 30, along with a laptop containing the only copy of his fourth novel (a western).

First of all let me say this: fuck Regency Woods. Those guys must be some tremendous assholes if they’re not only willing to evict a tenant for defending his life but also to serve the eviction notice before the man has even been released from prison. I hope those fuckers go bankrupt.

Second I must say that holding Mr. Lewis in prison while his stuff was being tossed out is a terrible act built upon a terrible act. Not only did they hold him in prison for defending himself but they didn’t even both sending somebody to retrieve his stuff when their actions lead to the stuff being tossed out on the curb? Nope, instead they only send an officer to retrieve Mr. Lewis’s weapons, everything else be damned.

What tops this all off though is the fact Mr. Lewis will probably never be compensated for his losses even though he was found entirely innocent:

Prosecutors eventually dropped most of the charges. Trial on the sole remaining count, reckless use of a firearm causing injury, began on Feb. 6. and ended late on Feb. 8.

It was over early the following morning.

“I just don’t think the state did its job to prove he was guilty,” juror Mary Kinney said. “I think the man felt he was in danger.”

That’s a bittersweet victory if there ever was one. Sure Mr. Lewis is out of prison but all of his stuff is gone, he has nowhere to live, and months of his life have been stolen from him by the state that decided it was necessary to kidnap the poor man and throw him in a cage. Legislation is moving through the Iowa legislature that would have prevented this but that does Mr. Lewis no good:

Lewis’ case appears to fit the scenario envisioned by House File 573, a bill now working its way through the Legislature. It would expand current law to specify that a potential victim in a violent situation has “no duty to retreat” and has the right to “meet force with force.”

The legislation, which Sarcone argued against before a House subcommittee last month, also says a person cannot be prosecuted for using force against someone perceived to pose a threat, even if that perception is later proved incorrect.

Let me state that I’m entirely unaware of who Sarcone is, but I do know that he’s a completely asshole:

What Lewis’ case shows is that current law works, Sarcone said: “I don’t know why people are afraid of jury trials. I’m not.”

This has nothing to do with a jury trial. Mr. Lewis is a perfect example of all the punishments an innocent man faces. Sure the jury round him innocent but he lost all of his property and months of his life to a prison. He should have suffered nothing because he did nothing wrong. The 911 call should have been enough evidence to, at least, let Mr. Lewis await his trial date outside the confines of prison walls. Were he not kidnapped and held in a cage he would have been able to retrieve his stuff.

I truly hope Mr. Lewis can get some actual justice. The state should be compensating him for the loss of property caused by their actions of holding him for months. Unless his contract with Regency Woods allows them to evict tenants for defending themselves (since he wasn’t found guilty of any wrongdoing at the time of his eviction they can’t claim they were tossing out a criminal) he should have the right to seek compensation from them as well.

The United States justice system punishes everything. If you raise the ire of the state you will be hurt regardless of your innocence of wrongdoing. Tragedies like this should be made widely known so that people realize how horrible the police state they live in truly. The mantra, “You’re innocent until proven guilty” is a crock of shit and entirely irrelevant since being innocent doesn’t prevent you being punished.

Shit like this is why I’m a voluntaryist.

Another Locality Nullifying the Indefinite Detention Clause of the NDAA

Virginia isn’t the only locality refusing to enforce the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a town in Massachusetts is also nullifying the clause:

A small town in Massachusetts says it is “opting out” of a federal law that allows the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens without trial.

The city of Northampton on Thursday passed a strongly worded resolution (PDF) to protest provisions of the federal government’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which even President Barack Obama said he had “serious reservations” about signing.

“WHEREAS, the indefinite detention of any person without trial violates the 5th and 6th amendments of the Constitution of the United States, Article III of the Constitution of the United States, and the Posse Comitatus Act,” the resolution stated.

The document went to request that public agencies “uphold the Constitution… when requested or authorized to infringe upon those Constitutionally guaranteed rights by federal agencies acting under detention powers granted by the NDAA.”

This is the kind of spine more localities in the United States of America need to grow. Instead of bowing obediently to the demands of the tyrannical federal government, local bodies need to stop up and loudly say, “NO!” I sincerely hope that every town, county, and state tell the federal government where to shove it’s indefinite detainment clause. The Bill of Rights was written in an attempt to protect the American people from an overreaching federal government. While many give the Bill of Rights magical powers the truth is those amendments added to the Constitution that supposedly protect our rights are merely words, words that must be backed up with the courage to oppose any violation of them.

The Price of Enforcement

If you want to get any medicine that contains pseudoephedrine you’re in for a lot of fun. Because pseudoephedrine is used to manufacture meth and meth has been declared verboten by the state pseudoephedrine has become a controlled substance. In order to pick up even basic cold or allergy medicine you must go to the counter, present ID, get the purchase recorded, and make sure you don’t accidentally buy more than you’re allowed. Bruce Schneier, being a security minded bloke, found an article that talks about the cost of enforcing these controls:

Now, personally, I sincerely doubt that the pharmaceutical industry has reliable estimates of how many of their purchasers actually have colds–or that they would share data indicating that half of their revenues came from meth cooks. But let’s say this is accurate: half of all pseudoephedrine is sold to meth labs. That still wouldn’t mean that manufacturers of cold medicines are making “hundreds of millions of dollars a year” off of the stuff–not in the sense that they end up hundreds of millions of dollars richer. The margins on off-patent medicines are not high, and in retail, 50% or more of the cost of the product is retailer and distributor markup*. Then there’s the costs of manufacturing.

But this is sort of a side issue. What really bothers me is the way that Humphreys–and others who show up in the comments–regard the rather extraordinary cost of making PSE prescription-only as too trivial to mention.

Let’s return to those 15 million cold sufferers. Assume that on average, they want one box a year. That’s going to require a visit to the doctor. At an average copay of $20, their costs alone would be $300 million a year, but of course, the health care system is also paying a substantial amount for the doctor’s visit. The average reimbursement from private insurance is $130; for Medicare, it’s about $60. Medicaid pays less, but that’s why people on Medicaid have such a hard time finding a doctor. So average those two together, and add the copays, and you’ve got at least $1.5 billion in direct costs to obtain a simple decongestant. But that doesn’t include the hassle and possibly lost wages for the doctor’s visits. Nor the possible secondary effects of putting more demands on an already none-too-plentiful supply of primary care physicians.

$1.5 billion of additional costs just to enforce the government’s desire on prohibiting the possession and use of a specific substance. As with any government prohibition the cost is not merely financial but in the reduction of quality of life:

Of course, those wouldn’t be the real costs, because lots of people wouldn’t be able to take the time for a doctor’s visit. So they’d just be more miserable while their colds last. What’s the cost of that–in suffering, in lost productivity?

Many substances made illegal by the federal government have medicinal, or other, uses. Cannabis has been shown to help in the fight against cancer but has been declared illegal so billions of dollars have to be spent in order to research alternative methods of providing the same affects. Between the costs in enforcing the prohibition, finding alternatives, and the cost to consumers tacked on to recover the costs of researching alternatives the government has pissed away money that could have been used for far more productive uses. Instead people are forced to pay additional taxes to fund the war on drugs, which means each person has less money to use in improving their quality of life.

In the case of pseudoephedrine controls people could be forced to simply suffer symptoms that we’ve been able to mitigate for a reasonable price because the additional costs required to enforce these government controls are simply too much for most people to bear (compared to dealing with their cold symptoms). Doctors will also have less time to treat the truly sick as they’ll have their time taken up by those suffering minor ailments that need prescriptions to get medicine that was previously easy to obtain (and thus cheaper).

Let’s stop this constant attack on our quality of life by getting the government out.

It’s Presidents Day

Today is Presidents Day and in honor of the holiday I think we should all take a moment and reflect on what the President really is:

The modern institution of the presidency is the primary political evil Americans face, and the cause of nearly all our woes. It squanders the national wealth and starts unjust wars against foreign peoples that have never done us any harm. It wrecks our families, tramples on our rights, invades our communities, and spies on our bank accounts. It skews the culture toward decadence and trash. It tells lie after lie. Teachers used to tell school kids that anyone can be president. This is like saying anyone can go to Hell. It’s not an inspiration; it’s a threat.

The presidency – by which I mean the executive State – is the sum total of American tyranny. The other branches of government, including the presidentially appointed Supreme Court, are mere adjuncts. The presidency insists on complete devotion and humble submission to its dictates, even while it steals the products of our labor and drives us into economic ruin. It centralizes all power unto itself, and crowds out all competing centers of power in society, including the church, the family, business, charity, and the community.

The presidency is nothing less than a dictator whom wields almost limitless power through the issuance of executive orders. If a president wishes to round up a bunch of people and toss them into concentration camps he must only issue the executive order. Is a citizen of the country giving the state headaches? No problem, just order his execution! What is a president to do with a country he doesn’t like? Go to war without even consulting Congress. Speaking of Congress, what is a president to do if they pass a law he doesn’t approve of? Ignore it.

We shouldn’t be celebrating the presidency, we should be condemning it. This country was founded on the ideas of personal liberty, an idea that has been entirely stomped on by every president that has taken office. Yes, even George Washington.

Nigel Farage on Greece

Nigel Farage is hands down one of my favorite government actors in Europe. He’s always quick to bring up the sham that is the European Union (EU) and comes up with some stellar one-liners. His speech on the recent happenings in Greece was great:

Being good blokes the people who uploaded the video to YouTube also provided a handy transcript. One of the biggest hypocrisies in the EU is the constant use of the word democracy while the governing body of the EU is composed of appointed officials. After listening to his speech it’s pretty easy to see why the people of Greece are pissed off:

Well Commissioner, you picked the right man. Puppet Papademos is in place and as Athens caught fire on Sunday night he rather took my breath away. He said, ‘Violence and destruction have no place in a democratic country.’

What democratic country?

He’s not even a democratically elected prime minister. He’s been appointed by you guys. Greece is not run through democracy now, it is run through a Troika. Three foreign officials that fly into Athens airport and tell the Greeks what they can and cannot do.

The violence and destruction that you saw on Sunday is being caused directly because people are having their democratic rights taken from them – What else can they do?

Greece has basically been turned into a dictatorship with the rulers being appointed by the governing body of the EU. Obviously the people of Greece, whom believed they had a say in the happenings of their government (a mistake many people make), are unhappy that their democratic process has been tossed out the window and replaced with a puppet government likened to something American would put in a country that was looking to turn communist.

And I must say, if I was a Greek citizen I would’ve been out there, joining those protests on Sunday. I’d be out there trying to bring down this monstrosity that has been put upon those people.

This is why I like Farage, he’s willing to say things most politicians would never conceive of.

And in his efforts, in the Puppet’s efforts to get the MPs to vote for the bailout package, he warned them, that if they didn’t do so there would be a dramatic decline in living standards.

Well, has he looked out the front door?

Has he seen the fact that 50 per cent of the young people are unemployed already. Has he seen the fact, that the economy, far from stalling has contracted for five years in a row, and is now accelerating on a downward death spiral – a contraction of 7 per cent per annum.

Greece is being driven into the ground, and I think, frankly, when it comes to chaos, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

These policies are driving Greece towards a revolution. They need to be set free. If they don’t get the Drachma back you will be responsible for something truly, truly horrible.”

I’ve mentioned the economic issues in Greece and how the state promised the people everything but delivered nothing, while still taking everything. Unemployment is rampant, taxes are high, and the only thing that appears to be on the horizon is even higher unemployment as public employees, who makes up 22% of the employed people of Greece, are let go.

The government of Greece has broken its promise the the people and the people are not happy about it. Honestly I would love to see the people of Greece walk into Athens, toss the current bums that call themselves government out on the street, and be an example to every other state in the world of who has the true power. The attitude many of the founding fathers of this country held regarding revolution were correct, it’s the right of the people to overthrow their government when they feel the government no longer serves a legitimate purpose. The government of Greece no longer serves a legitimate purpose and the people are well within their rights to overthrow the current tyrants.

Nullification Alive and Well in Virginia

I’ve talked about jury nullification several times on this blog but I don’t believe I’m talked about the ability of states of nullify federal laws. Through state legislation federal laws can be rendered unenforceable, or nullified. This has been done numerous times throughout American history with my favorite example of Wisconsin’s nullification of the Fugitive Slaves Act. Various states also nullified the REAL ID Act by passing legislation prohibiting the act from being implemented in those states.

The passed of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was not a happy moment in American history as it granted the United States government the power to indefinitely detain American citizens without trial. While Ron Paul introduced legislation to repeal the erroneous provision Virginia has decided to simply nullify the provision:

On Tuesday, February 14th, the Virginia House of Delegates voted in favor of House Bill 1160 (HB1160). The final vote was 96-4.

The legislative goal of HB1160 is to codify in Virginia law noncompliance with what many are referring to as the “kidnapping provisions” of section 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA). The official summary of 1160:

“A BILL to prevent any agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the military of Virginia from assisting an agency of the armed forces of the United States in the conduct of the investigation, prosecution, or detention of a citizen in violation of the United States Constitution, the Constitution of Virginia, or any Virginia law or regulation.”

I hope other states will follow Virginia’s fine example.

Congress Setting Itself Up to Take Undue Credit

There was a minor controversy in the iOS world last week as it was discovered an application called Path uploaded the entire contents of the user’s Address Book to their servers. I call this a minor controversy because anybody familiar with the iOS Address Book API could have told you this is entirely possible (and hard to avoid because removing these APIs would make it impossible for any application to access Address Book data). Some are angry because Apple’s review process didn’t catch this and others are pointing out the fact that applications should require permission to access the Address Book (of course if the application is supposed to work with the Address Book this becomes an entirely moot point as users will give permission anyways).

What’s more interesting to me is how quickly Congress positioned itself to take credit for the fix Apple was going to present anyways:

The Path debacle just took another turn for the worse with House Energy & Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman and Commerce Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee Chair G.K. Butterfield issuing a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook (via The Next Web). In it, the legislators seek to find out whether Apple is doing enough to protect personal data on users’ iPhones, including their contacts. Specifically, the letter asserts there have been claims that the practice of collecting address book data without users’ consent is “common and accepted among iOS app developers.”

Now when Apple releases their iOS update that requires users to give applications permission to access their Address Book database Congress can point and say, “See! We protected the consumers from Apple’s bad practices! Unless we acted Apple wouldn’t have changed anything!” Of course the truth is Apple would have taken corrective actions whether or not Congress sent a letter or not.

Users were pissed about Path getting through the App Store approval process even though it literally stole the entire contents of the user’s Address Book database. Apple, wanting repeat customers, obviously noticed that angry customers are not good to have so they started working on a fix. This is how the market works: consumers provide feedback to producers and if those producers fail to act on that feedback consumers take their money elsewhere. Members of Congress understand this, which is why they always swoop in to “investigate” anything that has angered consumers (unless the entity that angered consumers gave Congress enough money, then it gets ignored). Those bastards in Washington DC realize the problem will get fixed without their action so making a token “investigation” guarantees free publicity for the next election cycle.

Don’t allow yourself to be fooled by this charlatans. The actions of Congress have no weight on whether or not Apple fixes the problem, consumers do. Congress just tries to exploit these situations to make it appear as though we need them.

Klobuchar Brings More Legislation that Ignores True Problems

Amy Klobuchar, one of the two idiot clowns elected to be senators in Minnesota, is presenting an amendment to a transportation bill that will supposedly address the shortage of medicinal drugs in the United States:

The recent shortage of a critical medicine for childhood cancer has prompted Senator Amy Klobuchar to attach her bill on drug shortages to transportation legislation under discussion in the Senate, the lawmaker said on Tuesday.

Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, along with Robert Casey, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, introduced a bill that would force drug companies to tell the Food and Drug Administration about looming shortages. The FDA said early notification helped it to prevent 99 shortages in 2011.

This legislation fails to address the actual problem. An interesting fact I came across in a previous, but related, post was the fact that the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) put quotes on the amount of drugs pharmaceutical companies can produce. I did some looking around and came across a Department of Justice (DoJ) report [PDF] that flat out stated this fact:

DEA limits the quantity of Schedule I and II controlled substances which may be produced in the United States in any given calendar year. By utilizing available data on sales and inventories of these controlled substances, and taking into account estimates of drug usage provided by the FDA, the DEA establishes annual aggregate production quotas for Schedule I and II controlled substances. The aggregate production quota is allocated among the various manufacturers who are registered to manufacture the specific drug. DEA also allocates the amount of bulk drug which may be procured by those companies which prepare the drug into dosage units.

Klobuchar is forcing pharmaceutical companies to report shortages to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) who will, I guess, report the shortage to the DEA who will raise it’s production limit. A simpler solution that would take care of this entire mess in one fell swoop would be to remove the DEA’s quotes on drug production. Instead of attacking the actual problem, the DEA’s power to create artificial shortages, Klobuchar has decided to put more burden on manufacturers.

The war on drugs has far wider implications than illegal drugs. Along with trying to control verboten drugs the DEA also attempts to control legal drugs and part of their scheme involves restricting the quantities that can be produced by pharmaceutical companies. These restrictions are responsible for shortages of other medical drugs yet the government refuses to attack the actual problem, instead they pile more bureaucracy on top of the already thickly layer bureaucracy. It’s not turtles all the way down, it’s bureaucracy all the way down.

Of course Klobuchar is going to be cheered on as a proponent of the people for this amendment because the average American doesn’t understand or care about the actual causes of problems.

Reductio ad Somalium and Roads

Whenever a libertarian argues with a statist either reductio ad Somalium or reductio ad roads comes up. For those who don’t know reductio ad Somalium is akin to the Internets general Godwin’s Law. That is to say when an argument between a libertarian and a statist goes one long enough the likelihood the statist will bring up Somalia approaches one. Reductio ad roads is the same thing except you merely replace the word Somalia with roads.

In the statist’s delusional world Somalia is the unavoidable result of too small or a lack of a state. On top of that statists also believe that it’s impossible for roads to be built or maintained without a state. Following such logic Somalia should be entirely devoid of roads, right? Think about it, Somalia apparently has no government and roads can only be built and maintained by states. Taking a look at Somalia on Google Maps showed me something unexpected… roads. Thinking that Google Maps must be inaccurate I checked Bing Maps, which also displays roads in Somalia. Thinking there must be some kind of corporate conspiracy I decided to check an independent project that claims to be compiling data about roads in Somalia, and surprisingly found the data they obtained wasn’t entirely empty!

What gives? Something fishy is going on. Either Somalia has a state or roads can be built and maintained without a state. Perhaps I’ve found a logical fallacy in statist thinking? I will have to research this more in depth and get back to you guys with my findings.