Chronicling the depravities of the State.
According to the commission on wartime contracting the United States government wasted some $30 billion in contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq. What’s truly frightening is the fact that $30 billion is barely a statistically notable amount when you look at the overall deficit this country carries.
In all honesty through I’d say every dollor spent on the wars in those countries was wasted.
The New York times has an op-ed piece titled “Republicans Against Science.” What’s ironic is the fact that it’s written by Keynesian economics Paul Krugman. That’s a bit like a pot calling a kettle black. Keynesians like to tout their scientific approach to economics through the use of empirical and mathematical methods but being economics isn’t a natural science, and individual factors can’t be isolated, traditional scientific methods prove to be almost completely useless. Any scientist will point out the fact that you have to use the right tool for the job and the only effective tool for studying economics is praxeology.
Even though the intelligent economists (better known as Austrian economists) have been warning governments against the false hopes of Keynesian economics since Keynes first published his works nothing has changed. Although it’s been demonstrated time and time again that “public works” projects serve no purpose other than transfer taxpayer money into the hands of politically well connect companies without any actual benefit to the people governments still implement them.
I know the government is adverse to hearing the arguments put forth by intelligent people but how many times do the government’s failures have to be pointed out until the people wake up and realize something has to change. Let’s look at the fairly recent stimulus plan and it’s effect on the “green” energy market:
According to a Feb. 17 letter signed by Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, Florida Republican, to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the Fremont, Calif.-based solar panel manufacturer should never have received a $535 million loan guarantee from the stimulus.*
The company became the first recipient of an Energy Department loan guarantee under the stimulus in March 2009, which was intended to “finance construction of the first phase of the company’s new manufacturing facility” for photovoltaic solar panels.
The Energy Department estimated in a March 20, 2009 press release that the loan guarantee would create 3,000 construction jobs and a further 1,000 jobs after the plant opened.
[…]
Instead, Solyndra announced on Nov. 3 it planned to postpone expanding the plant, which put the taxpayers on the hook to the tune of $390.5 million taxpayers**, or 73 percent of the total loan guarantee, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It also announced that it no longer planned to hire the 1,000 workers that Obama and Biden had touted in their speeches and that it planned to close one of its older factories and planned to lay-off 135 temporary or contract workers and 40 full-time employees.
A closer look at the company shows it has never turned a profit since it was founded in 2005, according to its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings.
This is the result typical of government intervention in any market, they prop up the companies who are politically well connected which gives them an unfair advantage over those who lack such connections. In a majority of cases the politically well connected companies are also those that are incompetent (birds of a feather flock together after all) and lack profits (because people view profit making corporations as “evil” and “greedy”). The companies that are actually competent and provide goods that consumers want are left to flounder and eventually be killed off by their competition who can afford to outspend them now that they have that half a billion dollars in stimulus money.
But the most heinous piece in this puzzle is the fact that money stolen from taxpayers is used to fund these stimulus plans without delivering any benefit to those taxpayers.
Getting good news out of Massachusetts is rare but certainly welcome. For a while Massachusetts has been enforcing its law against filming police in public much to the dismay of everybody but the police. Thankfully the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston have ruled that Massachusetts’s law is unconstitutional:
A Boston lawyer suing the city and police officers who arrested him for using his cell phone to record a drug arrest on the Common won a victory today when a federal appeals court said the officers could not claim “qualified immunity” because they were performing their job when they arrested him under a state law that bars audio recordings without the consent of both parties.
In its ruling, which lets Simon Glik continue his lawsuit, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston said the way Glik was arrested and his phone seized under a state wiretapping law violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights:
The entire ruling can be read here [PDF]. It would be nice to get the Supreme Court to take up one of these cases and rule the prohibition against recording police unconstitutional so we would no longer have to deal with these egregious laws.
Sebastian over at Snowflakes in Hell pointed out that Gibson, a well-known manufacturer of guitars, is a little pissed off that their property was stolen by the government without reason:
The Federal Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. has suggested that the use of wood from India that is not finished by Indian workers is illegal, not because of U.S. law, but because it is the Justice Department’s interpretation of a law in India. (If the same wood from the same tree was finished by Indian workers, the material would be legal.) This action was taken without the support and consent of the government in India.
It’s nice to see the government enforcing its interpretation of laws in foreign countries. Heck the Indian government didn’t even need to be consulted because our federal government is efficient like that. So what’s required to investigate a guitar manufacturer for potentially violating the United States government’s interpretation of Indias law? Apparently machine guns and theft but not criminal charges:
In 2009, more than a dozen agents with automatic weapons invaded the Gibson factory in Nashville. The Government seized guitars and a substantial amount of ebony fingerboard blanks from Madagascar. To date, 1 year and 9 months later, criminal charges have NOT been filed, yet the Government still holds Gibson’s property. Gibson has obtained sworn statements and documents from the Madagascar government and these materials, which have been filed in federal court, show that the wood seized in 2009 was legally exported under Madagascar law and that no law has been violated. Gibson is attempting to have its property returned in a civil proceeding that is pending in federal court.
A dozen agents with machine guns are absolutely necessary to raid a guitar manufacturer, they’re a dangerous lot after all with their thin wood strips and guitar strings.
This probably all went down because the head of the Justice Department wanted to give his kids guitars for Christmas.
Bad news for those of you living in North Carolina, a filed a suit over this last year but it doesn’t appear as though a verdict has been declared.
So what should you do? Well I would never recommend anything illegal… according to a just system of law where victimless crimes don’t exist. Personally if I lived there I’d just carry anyways, your right to self-defense isn’t suspended because some politicians decide to declare an emergency. In fact I’d argue that during an emergency is when you would need your firearm most. Anyways, we all need to perform a little civil disobedience once in a while.
Uncle is asking what is wrong with Britain and I want to know the same thing:
London schoolchildren are eligible for 125,000 Olympic tickets but these will not include any featuring guns, as Games organisers and City Hall fear a backlash from the anti-gun lobby.
What the fuck? The Olympics are fucking televised more heavily than almost any sporting event on the planet, the kids can watch these shooting sports at home but won’t be allowed to go to the actual event? Where the Hell is the sense in that? What the Hell is wrong with Britain? This makes no sense whatsoever… wait, I see what’s going on here:
Georgina Geikie, 26, a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist and Olympic pistol hopeful, said she was “horrified”, adding: “This is a chance for children to look at guns in a different way. They are taking away the opportunity for the sport to blossom. How do we educate people that it is a sport if they cannot watch it?”
The Olympics portray firearms in a positive light which would be a direct conflict to the state’s stance that guns are evil spawns of Satan. Seeing such an event may make children realize that guns aren’t actually evil devices forged in the fires of Hell but simple tools which can be used for good things. This type of thinking could then lead to the kids, after growing up, eventually lobbying to restore firearms rights in Great Britain which would lead to the serfs arming themselves and thus not being as easy for the state to control.
This is disgusting statism at its highest.
Dennis Henigan, the President of the Brady Campaign, has another article up on the Huffington Post, and as usual it’s full of fear mongering and blatant lies. It’s almost comical to read through his pieces because they make a lot of claims but never have citations to back those claims. In the scientific community making claims that aren’t backed by evidence gets you laughed at and usually ostracized by your fellows until evidence is brought forth. I think it’s time that we started treating the gun debate like a scientific inquiry where all claims must be backed by evidence. Those of us on the side of gun ownership have been doing this for years so we can kick back for a while and relax, but those crazies in the anti-gun community need to pony up.
For some fun I’m going to go through some of the article’s claims because it entertains me:
Remember two summers ago when most Americans were appalled by the sight of guns openly carried by protesters at presidential speaking events and town hall forums on the health care issue?
Remember two summers ago when the anti-gun media tried to make the entire situation look like racial tension, even going so far as to fabricate evidence? If your side was willing to make shit up in order to push their agenda then you can bet your sweet ass that I’m going to demand evidence that demonstrates “most Americans” were appalled by the sight of guns being openly carried at those events.
When it comes to carrying concealed weapons, Perry certainly walks the walk. He has a concealed carry permit and proudly says that he carries a gun when he is out jogging.
I know you’re trying to make a case against Perry (which is really fucking easy by the way, I can’t believe you’ve fucked it up) but you have to realize that pro-gun people who are politically active far outnumber anti-gun people who are politically active. Thus this statement is going to cause more harm to your movement than good as it will improve the status of Perry in the eyes of the politically active pro-gun people. Usually if something works against your movement you simply ignore it and never bring it up.
He didn’t respond by saying the question is ridiculous. He didn’t say that in the close quarters of a rope line, with a multitude of people pulling and tugging at him, a gun could easily drop to the ground or be taken from him.
That’s why police standing in front of protest lines have their guns taken from them all the time… wait never mind, that doesn’t happen. Henigan this claim is idiotic, provide some proof of this happening or shut the Hell up.
He didn’t say that an armed candidate would be a nightmare for the Secret Service.
It must be quite the nightmare being the Secret Service actually taught Obama how to shoot.
Rick Perry apparently doesn’t think the question is ridiculous. In fact, his sarcasm suggests he has no objection to political candidates carrying guns to campaign events; he seems to imply that he may do so himself. One thing is clear. The governor has been so thoroughly marinated in pro-gun ideology that he is unashamed about taking it to its logical extreme.
There you ago again, making Perry sound favorable in the eyes of the politically active pro-gun population. I guess you’ve has been swimming in cognitive dissonance so long that you believe politically active anti-gunners outnumber politically active pro-gunners.
I wonder if this thought ever occurred to Rick Perry: If a would-be presidential assailant is undeterred by Secret Service agents with Uzis, why would he be deterred by a presidential candidate packing heat?
Objection, relevance? A potential assailant isn’t going to deterred by knowing that Perry isn’t carrying a gun so this entire statement is completely meaningless.
Yes, it is a good thing that senators can’t carry guns onto the Senate floor because the presence of guns, even carried by well-meaning, law-abiding citizens, increases the risk that arguments and conflicts will escalate to lethal violence.
Let it be known that I’m declaring bullshit, either provide evidence of this happening or shut the Hell up. I’m not aware of a single case of an argument between one or more people legally carrying a firearm that escalated into a shoot out. You keep making this claim Henigan but so far have yet to provide any evidence.
It is the same reason that our national parks are less safe because (due to legislation sponsored by Senator Coburn himself) concealed carry of weapons is now permitted within their borders.
Once again evidence is needed, or as Wikipedia would say, “[citation needed].”
It is the reason that our streets, restaurants and coffee houses are less safe in states that have made concealed carry easier.
Again, you need to provide some evidence. This blog, as well as many other gun blogs, contain tons of evidence that demonstrates that violent crime has been dropping even though carry laws have continued to be liberalized (using the classical definition of the word).
It is the reason that college campuses remain far safer than the gun-saturated communities that surround them, because the gun lobby has been foiled in its efforts to force colleges and universities to allow concealed carry
You can’t compare apples to oranges. A proper statement would be, “It is the reason that college campuses that continue to ban students and faculty from legally carrying on site have a lower rate of gun-related crime than campuses that allow students and faculty to legally carry on site.” Of course that statement would also be false but at least it would be a comparison of like things.
They may well be the way things are in an American nightmare where, in political discourse, the guns speak louder than the rhetoric.
That’s why so many political debates between people carrying firearms turn into shoot outs… never mind, once again that’s not the case which makes Henigan’s statements irrelevant.
The stupidity… it hurts. It seems the mayor of Salt Lake City, Ralph Becker, is pushing an ordinance that would make it a offense (punishable by a fine of course) to idle your engine for more than two minutes:
And it has persuaded Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker to fight back. He wants to outlaw vehicle idling (beyond two minutes) as a means to cleanse the air. His proposed “idle-free” ordinance, which carves out exemptions for defrosting, extreme temperatures, emergency vehicles and work trucks — while carrying a fine of up to $160 for a second offense — gets its first airing Tuesday before the City Council.
While the environmentalists are jacking off to how awesome this legislation is I’ll just laugh at the fact that this law can be easily bypassed by tapping my gas petal every one minute and fifty-nine seconds.
I think everybody realizes by now that Obama is a complete prick (at least judging by his approval ratings). The guy is an arrogant ass but being a career politician that’s not at all surprising. During a town hall meeting in Atkinson, Illinois a local farmer asked the Obamessiah about upcoming rules and regulations that may be put into place to further fuck our farming communities over. Obama told the farmer to call the government and ask them. Guess what? A reporter did exactly that and found out that getting an answer from the government is kind of like finding teeth on a hen:
When this POLITICO reporter decided to take the president’s advice and call the USDA for an answer to the Atkinson town hall attendee’s question, I found myself in a bureaucratic equivalent of hot potato — getting bounced from the feds to Illinois state agriculture officials to the state farm bureau.
Here’s a rundown of what happened when I started by calling the USDA’s general hotline to inquire about information related to the effects of noise and dust pollution rules on Illinois farmers:
Wednesday, 2:40 p.m. ET: After calling the USDA’s main line, I am told to call the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Here, I am patched through to a man who is identified as being in charge of “support services.” I leave a message.
[…]
10:40 a.m.: A spokeswoman for the Illinois Natural Resources Conservation Service calls me, to whom I explain my multiple attempts on Wednesday and Thursday to retrieve the information I was looking for.
“What I can tell you is our particular agency does not deal with regulations,” she tells me. “We deal with volunteers who voluntarily want to do things. I think the reason you got that response from the Cambridge office is because in regard to noise and dust regulation, we don’t have anything to do with that.”
After playing a game of phone call hot potato that spanned across two days the reporter was unable to get an answer from the government. So is there anymore helpful advice that you can bestow upon the people Mr. President? Perhaps you have a little additional work to do before your promise of a transparent government comes to fruition.