Tag: Shut Up Slave

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.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

If there was ever a story that demonstrates the fact that the primary job of the police is to expropriate wealth from the general populace it is this one:

The city of Keene has filed a lawsuit (copy here) against me and several other people regarding robin hooding (Respondents). Basically, the city wants the court to issue a “preliminary” and “permanent” injunction “restraining Respondents, or anyone under their direction, supervision, employment, or control, from coming within a safety zone of fifty (50) feet of any PEO [Parking Enforcement Officer] while that PEO is on duty.” Additionally, the city wants to stop us “from video recording, within a safety zone of fifty (50) feet,” and “from communicating with any PEO.”

The city alleges that “Respondents have repeatedly video recorded, interfered with, taunted, and intimidated PEOs during the performance of their employment duties,” which is ridiculous for several reasons, most importantly, according to the job description for a city of Keene parking enforcer, “This position requires a person” to “relate with the general public” and “Endure verbal and mental abuse when confronted with the hostile views and opinions of the public and other individuals often encountered in an antagonistic environment.”

For those of you unfamiliar with robin hooding, it’s a practice partaken by some residents of Keene that involves inserting quarters into expired parking meters so the unsuspecting owners of the car don’t come back to a parking ticket. The police don’t like the practice because it eats into their parking ticket revenue, which is why they’re filing a lawsuit.

Under statism no good deed goes unpunished.

How the Tables Have Turned

For the longest time news agencies have enjoyed privileges above and beyond what us mere serfs enjoy. When you look at the very biased news that pretends to be unbiased it’s not hard to see why these agencies have enjoyed special privileges, they were toting the statist line. Now things are beginning to change. The current administration, who many news agencies shilled for, is finally targeting journalists:

The Associated Press has described the US government’s secret seizure of its journalists’ telephone records as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion”.

Chief executive Gary Pruitt said AP was told on Friday the justice department had gathered records of outgoing calls from more than 20 phone lines.

The press are finally experiencing what the rest of us have been experiencing for decades, a complete loss of privacy and liberty. I hope the press responds but airing out the state’s dirty laundry but I doubt that will happen. In all likelihood the Associated Press will roll over after a little complaining because that’s what people in this world do today.

Targeting Political Opponents Through Taxation

The wonderful thing about government regulations is that they’re so versatile. Most people think of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as merely a government agency that collects taxes. However to an extremely devious, and somewhat creative, fellow the IRS can become a club to wield against your political opponent, which is what the so-called progressives did:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

I don’t have a horse in this race beyond explaining how the IRS can be used as a political tool beyond tax collecting. My beliefs generally oppose the beliefs shared by organizations with the word “patriot” or phrase “tea party” in their title. However it is worth noting, regardless of your political orientation, how the state can prevent certain messages from spreading without resorting to direct censorship. By using tax laws the IRS was able to harass specific political organizations. Such harassment sends a very clear message: if you don’t subscribe to the dominate state-held political beliefs you can either keep your mouth shut or your life will be made miserable.

What’s even more interesting is that the IRS claims the harassment was initiated by a low-level employee:

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. She did not say when they found out.

In all likelihood the low-level employee received orders from higher up and is now being used as a scapegoat. If that isn’t the case then the IRS just admitted that they have no real oversight and that even low-level employees can wield the agency’s power against specific targets. The implications of this are frightening. Imagine a low-level IRS employee sending the agency to harass an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend because the breakup wasn’t amicable. Suddenly vicious revenge is as simple as getting a job at the IRS.

Tax codes are just as useful for dealing with political opponents as outright censorship or passing laws for the specific purpose of targeting those opponents. Al Capone was taken down by wielding tax code because the state didn’t have enough evidence to charge him with anything else.

The power to tax is the power to suppress.

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.

You Can’t Stop the Signal

It finally happened, the state finally made it’s move to suppress 3D printable firearms:

On Thursday, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson received a letter from the State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance demanding that he take down the online blueprints for the 3D-printable “Liberator” handgun that his group released Monday, along with nine other 3D-printable firearms components hosted on the group’s website Defcad.org, while it reviews the files for compliance with export control laws for weapons known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. By uploading the weapons files to the Internet and allowing them to be downloaded abroad, the letter implies Wilson’s high-tech gun group may have violated those export controls.

“Until the Department provides Defense Distributed with final [commodity jurisdiction] determinations, Defense Distributed should treat the above technical data as ITAR-controlled,” reads the letter, referring to a list of ten CAD files hosted on Defcad that include the 3D-printable gun, silencers, sights and other pieces. “This means that all data should be removed from public acces immediately. Defense Distributed should review the remainder of the data made public on its website to determine whether any other data may be similarly controlled and proceed according to ITAR requirements.”

I think we all knew this was coming. To tell the truth I hoped it would come. This was the overt act of censorship that was needed kick the Streisand effect into action and, in so doing, ensure that the 3D printer models created and hosted by Defense Distributed will never die. As it stands the number of seeds for the Defense Distributed files has jumped to several hundred. I’ve even found a Tor hidden service that is hosting the files (you need to use the Tor Browser Bundle to access that link). As I’ve heard several people say, you can’t stop the signal.

As I stated in my post explaining methods to render the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) irrelevant, the need for anonymity and strong encryption is greater today than ever. The state is trying to spy on our communications and censor material posted online. While some may wish to beg the state to allow information to flow freely we know they aren’t going to comply. Because of their desire to control information we must bypass their ability to detect and censor information they find objectionable.

When the state makes attempts like this to censor information it allows us to test our ability to preserve said information. As it stands more people have downloaded the 3D printer models provided by Defense Distributed than would have if the state hadn’t made an effort to censor the models. In fact I’ve had several friends who were uninterested in 3D printed guns ask if I knew where to get the files. Now that the files have been declared verboten everybody wants a copy. The state really shot themselves in the foot with this one.

The Bringers of Violence

As I pondered the outcome of Kokesh’s armed march on Washington DC I assumed that if violence was to break out it would happen because the state initiated it. As it turns out Washington DC’s police chief may prove me right:

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier was firm in her response. “If you’re coming here to protest government policy, great,” she told NewsChannel 8 yesterday. “If you’re coming here to break the law, we’ll take action.” She added, “There’s a pretty good chance we’ll meet them on the D.C. side of the bridge.” Lanier better hold true to her admonition because nothing good will come of this.

In other words they won’t allow anybody with guns into Washington DC and if anybody with a gun tries to enter Washington DC the police will send people with guns to stop them. That sounds rather hypocritical now that I think about it.

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.

Happy Slave Day

I almost forgot to wish everybody a happy Loyalty Day:

In order to recognize the American spirit of loyalty and the sacrifices that so many have made for our Nation, the Congress, by Public Law 85-529 as amended, has designated May 1 of each year as “Loyalty Day.” On this day, let us reaffirm our allegiance to the United States of America, our Constitution, and our founding values.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 1, 2013, as Loyalty Day. This Loyalty Day, I call upon all the people of the United States to join in support of this national observance, whether by displaying the flag of the United States or pledging allegiance to the Republic for which it stands.

Demonstrate your loyalty to your masters but public demonstrating your willingness to obey. Fly the colors of your master, pledge your undying allegiance, and acknowledge that the United States is a country founded on obedience to our masters in Britain! If you’ll excuse me the Two Minutes Hate is about to begin and I plan to scream extra loud at the image of Emmanuel Goldstein to prove my undying loyalty!

The State Always Wants a Cut of the Action

There are several givens in life. Placing your hand on a hot stove will result in a great deal of pain and the state always wants a cut of the action. Cannabis legalization in Colorado may be going back to the drawing board. It’s not because there has been an uptick in violent crime, it’s because the state wants a cut:

The proposal for a marijuana ballot measure came as the House started debate Friday evening on bills to regulate and tax pot. One bill would state how pot should be grown and sold, and the other would tax recreational marijuana more than 30 percent.

A draft bill floating around the Capitol late this week suggests that a new ballot question on pot taxes should repeal recreational pot in the state constitution if voters don’t approve 15 percent excise taxes on retail pot and a new 15 percent marijuana sales tax. Those would be in addition to regular state and local sales taxes.

Give the state a 15% (which will increase over time) cut or it will make cannabis illegal again. There are no permanent victories when you rely on the political process. All that can be achieved are temporary victories that can be revoked on a politician’s whim. This is why I don’t rely on politics to achieve anything. By relying on politics you’re giving tacit permission to the state to regulate. Since the political means was used to legalize cannabis now the state believes it has a right to tax cannabis sales. If advocates of cannabis legalization doesn’t agree the state will merely make cannabis illegal again and the fight will start from square one. Civil disobedience works because it exploits the state’s biggest weakness, public opinion. When people see the state isn’t all seeing they become more willing to disobey its decrees and the state, therefore, has a vested interest in maintaining its omniscient image and is more apt to decriminalize behaviors that people are partaking in in spite of the law.