Hey President Calderon I Have a Solution

It seems the President of Mexico is once again trying to tell us what to do:

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has told the BBC the US should do more to reduce the demand for drugs that is fuelling violence in Mexico.

You want us to do something to reduce the demand for drugs? Sure thing we’ll legalize it all and end the war on drugs. Much like Portugal we should see a drop in drug related violence once they’re legitimized. Of course that’s not acceptable:

Mr Calderon and his counterparts from Colombia and Costa Rica, Juan Manuel Santos and Laura Chinchilla, said legalisation of cannabis in California would send a contradictory message.

God damn it! We offer a solution and you spit on it. What the fuck are we supposed to do?

“It is confusing for our people to see that while we have lost lives and we invest vast resources in the drug war, in the consumer countries they promote proposals like the Californian referendum to legalise the production, the sale and the consumption of marijuana,” said Mr Santos.

I understand that potential freedom and liberty may be confusing to you as presidential equivalent of Columbia but trust me it works. You’d be surprised how popular the idea of liberty really is.

He reiterated his long-standing view that the problem of organised crime would remain as long as the US remained the biggest consumer of drugs in the world.

If it’s no longer criminals to grow, possess, and use the stuff then organized crime will no longer profit from it. Once organized crime no longer profits from it their power base will be knocked out and thus become much less of a problem. A similar thing happened when we ended prohibition in this country many decades ago. But no story about the troubles of Mexico would be complete without the mention of the Mexican gun canard:

Obama administration officials have acknowledged that the US shares responsibility for the drug violence, on account of the demand for illegal drugs and its inability to stop weapons flowing south.

I will give the BBC one thing though, they usually do a good job of covering both sides of a story:

However, US gun rights groups question whether the US is the source for the vast majority of the illegal guns turning up in Mexico.

The majority of guns confiscated by Mexico and submitted to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for tracing do originate in the US.

However, a large number of seized weapons are not sent for tracing.

There is your reason so many guns submitted for tracing are found to originate in the US, not many guns are being submitted. For instance there really is no point is submitting a fully automatic AK-47 to the US for tracing being finding such weapons for a reasonable price (as any such weapon made after 1968 1986 is illegal) is practically impossible.

EDIT 2010-10-27 21:05: Had the wrong date posted. It’s corrected now thanks to Jeff.

Everybody Has an Asshole

There was a recent incident at a Rand Paul rally where somebody stomped the head/shoulder (depends on who you ask) of a MoveOn individual. Of course bleeding-heart liberals are using this as an example of how violent the liberty minded side is. Snowflakes in Hell has a good write up on the situation.

Personally I’m not going to say both side were equally at fault here. Yes the MoveOn employee was being annoying but that isn’t illegal nor dangerous. People claiming themselves to be liberty minded (at least I assume that’s what the face stomper would claim judging by the pin he was waring) should know that everybody has the freedom of speech, even if you don’t like that speech. The MoveOn employee was being annoying but nothing else that deserved violence brought against her.

This brings me to a universal fact, everybody has an asshole. It doesn’t matter what your group stands for or what they’re trying to accomplish, somebody in that group will inevitably be an asshole at some point. In the libertarian movement we have the assholes who scream at anybody who doesn’t perfectly subscribe to their view of “correct libertarianism.” They’re annoying but certainly shouldn’t be used as examples of how the majority of the movement acts.

Of course we also have the people claiming the stomper is likely a MoveOn plant meant to stir up trouble. Personally I refuse to subscribe to such accusations without a lot of supporting evidence. I’ve not seen any such evidence and hence I believe the guy is just our asshole.

A Failure of Understanding

Quite a while ago a socialist news site did an article entitled Top 10 Jobs in Libertarian Paradise. It was the usual socialist stream of bullshit that proclaimed doom and gloom should big government ever go away. I mostly ignored it as it was over-the-top stupid but then I saw the very well done counter-article on The UK Libertarian (I’m pleasantly surprised they still have libertarians in the UK).

The main problem with people who’ve grown up with large government is they are completely unable to imagine a world that works without said government. Anybody with some knowledge of history knows that countries can survive and prosper without a large government. If you’re in the first group I highly advise you to read the linked UK Libertarian article and learn how those of us on the other side of politics think.

The Great Meme Machine

Wow, I can’t even begin to count the number of anti-gun memes in this article. Let’s count them shall we?

First we have the title which brings up the “big scary evil gun lobby that kicks puppies:”

ATF’s oversight limited in face of gun lobby

See that? The ATF’s oversight is limited because of the puppy kicking “gun lobby.” Those irresponsible lobbyists! How dare they work to defend a right confirmed in the Constitution this country was founded on! Meme two is the fact that there is no central database of gun purchases:

The government is prohibited from putting gun ownership records into an easily accessible format, such as a searchable computer database.

Most anti-gunners will claim such a database wouldn’t count as registration but it most certainly does. Any system that has a list of firearms sold and who purchased them is a registration system by default. Meme three is the claim that the ATF hasn’t the resources to complete this mission:

The agency still has about the same number of agents it had nearly four decades ago: 2,500. The firearms bureau inspects only a fraction of the nation’s 60,000 retail gun dealers, taking as much as eight years between visits to stores. By law, the ATF cannot require dealers to conduct a physical inventory to determine whether any guns have been lost or stolen.

Oh no! Not only can the ATF not handle the workload they already have but many guns are purchased from private entities (bonus points to the story writer who didn’t directly say “gun show loophole:”

Depending on how well a dealer keeps records, a firearms trace can take hours or weeks. But one-third of all gun traces come from the records of out-of-business gun dealers. In those cases, there is no one to call.

I’m going to just pull over for a side note and bring up this quote:

“Katrina was a mess,” Houser said.

Damn right it was! Katrina was a classic example of gun confiscation. The National Guard actually went in to New Orleans and stole peoples’ means of self-defense. Shit like this is a classic example of why gun owners are afraid of any registration system, then the government knows where to go to confiscate firearms. Of course this article wasn’t talking about that fact when they quote somebody saying Katrina was a mess. Oh no:

Gun dealers all over the Gulf Coast region were driven out of business by the hurricane, and they sent their wet and mildewing records to Martinsburg. For months, paper files sat in the center’s parking lot, drying in the sun.

The Mexico meme made a guest appearance in this article as well:

The difficulties at the tracing center have slowed efforts to trace guns seized from crime scenes all over the country – as well as in Mexico, where most of the seized weapons come from U.S. gun dealers, according to congressional reports.

Traces are most useful within the first few days, but it took the ATF an average of about two weeks to complete traces of firearms recovered in Mexico between 2004 and 2008, according to a congressional report last year on the ATF’s efforts to combat arms trafficking to that country. In addition, the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General said the ATF doesn’t have enough Spanish-speaking personnel and has been slow in developing a tracing system in Spanish.

I wonder if the author was getting paid by the meme for this article. And yet again the author brings up the meddling gun lobby:

Meanwhile, the change requiring Senate confirmation for an ATF chief allowed the gun lobby to have a say on Capitol Hill about the agency’s leadership.

Yet another meme is the ATF doesn’t have the legal authority to fulfill its mission:

The ATF’s hands are often tied when it comes to regulating dealers, according to interviews with current and former agency officials, as well as thousands of pages of internal files obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests.

Yes those bastards have to follow the letter of the law! How horrible!

It’s impressive that the author was able to fit all that bullshit into one article. The only thing missing was a blurb about children.

The Fallacy of Socialism

Here’s a shocker for you, I don’t like socialism. In fact I’d go so far as to say socialism is one of the more dangerous ideologies that the human race has ever spawned. My main problem with socialism is the fact it can only work if you use violence against the populace.

Socialism is the system of government where the state controls all means of production. The idea sounds all nice and flowery on the surface. The state ensures everybody has a job, home, food, access to health care, etc. In order to provide these services the state must also control society. For instance in order to ensure there is enough food for everybody the state will decide on the number of farmers required to grow enough food.

Ultimately the claimed desire of socialism is to ensure everybody is treated equally in every regard. The problem comes when equal really means the lowest common denominator. I’m not a very eloquent writer but Eugen Richter was. I have a great book for you to read called Pictures of a Socialistic Future. First let me tell you that it’s free from the link I provided (legally even) and short. Second let me tell you it’s also very disturbing.

The book is a fictional diary written by a man who just saw his country turn into a socialist nation. At first the author (of the fictional journal, not the book) is all for it and declares the greatness of socialism. Of course reality comes in as the state exacts more and more control over the populace to make their great system work. People are required to draw for jobs via a lottery because it’s the only fair way to give out jobs. Although work weeks are originally set very low the state constantly has to increase the hours because their country is producing less and thus are running up a trade deficit. Due to people fleeing the state closes the borders off because every person who leaves is one less laborer.

It’s a good book and although it was written as fiction you’ll notice a lot of similarities between what happens in the book’s fictional Germany and what happened on the Soviet side of Germany after World War II. This is even more significant since the book was first translated to English in 1893 meaning Mr. Richter did a good job at predicting what a socialist country would eventually turn into. If you believe socialism can work I’d advise you to read this book and compare it to what happened in Red Germany. After that please try to tell me with a straight face that socialism can work.

Education Spending

The Obamessiah is calling for hiring 10,000 more teachers in order to bolster math and science grades in school. Of course this doesn’t actually add up as pointed out over at Random Nuclear Strikes. Take a look at some charts.

The first chart shows the number of public school employees versus the number of students enrolled since 1970. Notice something odd there? The second chart is an adjusted for inflation (thanks Federal Reserve) display of the cost of K-12 public education versus the percentage change in achievements of 17 year-old students. Once again something is amiss there.

It seems simply throwing money at the problem isn’t helping. I know our current administration believes strongly that if something isn’t working you just have to do it again only harder but that doesn’t actually work. And interesting book I’m reading through right now (which is available for free in PDF form) is The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. The book goes through the history of education in America and indicates our country’s problems in academia seems to stem back to the turn of the century. The main issue is our country’s education system used to cherish education for education’s sake, now we do workforce training and teach kids to do as they’re told because they’re told to do so.

Cell Phones and Auto Accidents

A story today is saying the United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is pushing for a complete ban on cell phone usage while driving. This includes standard cell phone talking, texting, and the use of hand-free systems. He claims people are distracted by all of these things and it is leading to accidents.

Personally I’m always dubious of what politicians say so I’ve been looking into the matter. It’s pretty universally accepted that cell phone usage has been increasing exponentially for the last decade and a half. I’m not one to just take generally accepted ideas so I started digging for facts. CTIA has been keeping statistics on the number of cellular phone subscribers since 1985 [Waring: PDF]. Since 1985 the number of cell phone subscribers has went from 203,600 (which surprised me there were that many back in ’85) to 276,610,580 in 2009. In roughly two and a half decades we’ve literally went from hundreds of thousands of cell phone subscribers to hundreds of millions. I’d call that an exponential increase.

If Mr. LaHood’s claims are accurate and the ever increasing amount of distraction in automobiles are causing accidents there should be a noticeable increase in the number of accidents since 1985. This is where the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) comes into play (I sources them in my last post). In their 2008 report [Waring: PDF] page 14 lists the historical data of crashes by crash severity. The main thing I was concerned about was the total number of automobile accidents per year.

Like I said if cell phone usage has been causing automobile accidents it should be noted on the total number of accidents yearly. The data published by the NHTSA goes from 1988 to 2008 which is what we’ll concern ourselves with. So how much have automobile accidents increased? Here’s the funny thing, they haven’t. In fact the number of accidents has been on a slight downward trend since 1988.

In 1988 the total number of automobile accidents was 6,887,000, in 1990 it was 6,471,000, in 1995 it was 6,699,000, in 2000 it was 6,394,000, in 2005 it was 6,159,000, and finally in 2008 it was 5,811,000. It seems the only correlation that exists between the increase in cell phone subscribers and automobile accidents is a slight downward trend (which I’m absolutely not implying is causality).

Inevitably this is where somebody will point out the reason for the downward trend are laws banning cell phone usages while driving. The problem is that isn’t true. From what I’ve been able to find the first law banning cell phone usage while driving was enacted in New York in 2001. The downward trend in automobile accidents has been going on since the late ’80’s at the very least. If the downward trend was occurring before the first law banning cell phone usage while driving was enacted that indicate a third party reason. In fact a recent study confirms exactly what I’m saying.

Cell phone penetration seems to have no effect on the number of automobile accidents. I would wager that some people are just bad drivers. Cell phones don’t offer these people a distraction where there wasn’t one before, they just offer a different type of distraction. Before the popular use of cell phones how many times did you see somebody driving while applying makeup, brushing their teeth, shaving, reading, or some other such stupidity? Some people just want to be distracted and enacting laws barring the usage of cell phones while driving isn’t going to correct anything.

Please don’t read this and think I’m condoning texting while driving because I’m not. Texting while driving is just stupid and you must remove your eyes from the road. I just don’t think we need another law on the books to ban texting while driving, reckless driving laws already handle the problem. Especially considering the prevalent inclusion of GPS navigation systems on cell phones. What you might view as somebody reading an e-mail to texting could very well just be them reading a map and navigating. If you really want to remove all potential distractions from drivers you will have to ban GPS, radios, gauges (because looking at your heat gauge means you’re not look at the road), and passengers. Basically we all have to drive a single seat car with absolutely no accessories. Of course due to massive boredom we’ll probably have more people falling asleep at the wheel and thus increase the number of accidents.

I’m perfectly OK with the use of hands free system while driving as it’s no different than holding a conversation with your passenger and talking on your phone while driving without a hands-free system is dependent on the person doing it. Once again reckless driving laws already take care of the problem of bad and dangerous drivers.

The bottom line is I wish people would stop blaming cell phone usage for an increase in the number of accidents because there is no increase. Blame bad drivers for being bad drivers.

Remember All Those Saved and/or Created Jobs

I wonder where the Hell all those jobs that were saved and/or created by the stimulus bills. Apparently those jobs are hidden in some dark corner because this country keeps shedding jobs. For the fourth month in a row this country has lost more jobs. When will we finally admit that this whole idea of a regulated economy and Keynesian economics doesn’t work?

This Could Mean Two Things

No surprise to anybody here, Rahm Emanuel has announced that he’s going to run for the mayor of Chicago. Due to the mob mentality in that city he’s pretty much guaranteed to win. This really could mean two things. First Chicago is going to stay the cesspool that it currently is and its denizens’ right to keep and bear arms will continue to go ignored. It also means the work environment at the White House must have really turned to shit. Think about it, mayor of any city is a damn side lower position than being the White House Chief of Staff. Things must be pretty week at the home of the Obamessiah.

If You’ve Got Nothing to Hide

Recently the Obama administration has been trying to require all Internet communication companies such as Skype to place back doors into their protocols. These back doors are to be used for law enforcement personnel to eavesdrop on conversations. Obviously the standard mantra of our government is, “if you’ve got nothing to hide you shouldn’t be worried.”

Well there is another danger in placing back doors into communication software as Bruce Schneier brings up:

These laws are dangerous, both for citizens of countries like China and citizens of Western democracies. Forcing companies to redesign their communications products and services to facilitate government eavesdropping reduces privacy and liberty; that’s obvious. But the laws also make us less safe. Communications systems that have no inherent eavesdropping capabilities are more secure than systems with those capabilities built in.

Any surveillance system invites both criminal appropriation and government abuse. Function creep is the most obvious abuse: New police powers, enacted to fight terrorism, are already used in situations of conventional nonterrorist crime. Internet surveillance and control will be no different.

Official misuses are bad enough, but the unofficial uses are far more worrisome. An infrastructure conducive to surveillance and control invites surveillance and control, both by the people you expect and the people you don’t. Any surveillance and control system must itself be secured, and we’re not very good at that. Why does anyone think that only authorized law enforcement will mine collected internet data or eavesdrop on Skype and IM conversations?

Any lock can be bypasses. The best option is to have the fewest doors possible. Ideally you have no doors to enter at all. By requiring yet another door our government is purposely requiring these protocols to be less secure. Of course this law is meant to protect them (government) not us so they don’t care.