Tag: Superdickery

Without Government Who Would Tear Up All of the Roads

Statists claim that roads are a technology so complex that only a government can build and maintain them. However, if you live in the Twin Cities you know that the government is far more interested in tearing up roads than letting you actually used them. Most of the major arteries in the Twin Cities are currently under some amount of construction. There is an entire bridge missing from 169, 394 is under construction, 35W will be under construction later this year, 94 is under construction, and soon the Lowry tunnel will be torn up:

The Lowry Hill Tunnel is congestion central in the Twin Cities on most days. A tie-up in the tube can bring traffic to a crawl and have far-reaching effects, choking things on Interstate 35W and Interstate 394, routes that feed lots of vehicles into the tunnel on the west end of downtown Minneapolis.

Now construction there is slated to begin and it won’t be pretty, with the potential to cripple traffic at all hours of the day for the next three months. Motorists will share one side of the Lowry Hill Tunnel with only two lanes 10 feet wide in each direction and a lower speed limit. Drivers on I-394 and I-35W will feel the pinch, too, as ramps to and from those arteries will shut down at times.

And here’s the real kick in the teeth:

“This is a significant project and will be a challenge for drivers,” said Minnesota Department of Transportation spokesman David Aeikens. His warning also comes with a plea: “Give yourself plenty of time, plan alternate routes and don’t drive through neighborhoods.”

According to the Minnesota Department of Transportation motorists need to plan alternate routes but they should not use the only alternate routes that are still available, roads going through neighborhoods.

Only government could be incompetent enough to tear up all of the major traffic arteries at the same time. Were the roads privatized the owners would have a financial interest in keeping traffic flowing so they would likely perform maintenance in a staged fashion to minimize the disruption to their customers. But government doesn’t suffer when it inconveniences its subjects. They have to pay their taxes for the roads whether they can drive on them or not.

Legalizing More Thievery

Civil asset forfeiture is simply a euphemism for theft. Unlike most other forms of government theft, civil asset forfeiture doesn’t even have the thin veil of criminal or civil charges either being proven in court or confessed to by the accused to justify it. Instead civil asset forfeiture relies on the concept of guilty until proven innocent. If a man with a badge believes that your assets are in any way tied to a drug crime they can legally steal them and the only way you can get them back back is by proving they aren’t, which is an impossible task.

While there has been a lot of pushback in recent years to civil asset forfeiture by a handful of individual states, the United States Senate is working hard to expand it:

A new bill seeks to track your money and assets incessantly, will enjoin any business with government ties to act as a de facto arm of DHS, and would steal all of your assets — including Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies — should you fail to report funds when traveling with over $10,000.

Under the guise of combating money laundering, Senate Bill 1241, “Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017,” ramps up regulation of digital currency and imposes other autocratic financial controls in an attempt to ensure none of your assets can escape one of the State’s most nefarious, despised powers: civil asset forfeiture.

The best thing about a law like this is that most people won’t know about it and therefore will fail to comply with it out of sheer ignorance. Since ignorance of the laws isn’t an excuse a law like this creates a huge number of new criminals for the State to prey on.

There are a lot of banking laws that people violate every day because they are simply unaware of them and the government loves to go after them. The Internal Revenue Service was going after people who turned their legitimate deposits over $10,000 into multiple smaller deposits to avoid filling out reporting paperwork. Legally this is known as structuring and the law that prohibits it was passed under the guise of catching tax evaders but most people are entirely ignorant of it so they violate it accidentally. Senate Bill 1241 aims to create a similar law that will likely be violated by innocent people who are simply unaware of the law, which will give the State an excuse to seize their assets. Best of all, if it happens under civil asset forfeiture, the government doesn’t even have to prove guilt.

Government Holds Everything Back

What if I told you that we could have had cellular technology as far back as 1947 if the government hadn’t interfered? You’d probably label me a cooky conspiracy theorist and file me with the people who say that we could have had electric cars decades ago if it weren’t for oil companies. But a conspiracy theory ceases to be a theory when it turns out to be true:

When AT&T wanted to start developing cellular in 1947, the FCC rejected the idea, believing that spectrum could be best used by other services that were not “in the nature of convenience or luxury.” This view—that this would be a niche service for a tiny user base—persisted well into the 1980s. “Land mobile,” the generic category that covered cellular, was far down on the FCC’s list of priorities. In 1949, it was assigned just 4.7 percent of the spectrum in the relevant range. Broadcast TV was allotted 59.2 percent, and government uses got one-quarter.

Television broadcasting had become the FCC’s mission, and land mobile was a lark. Yet Americans could have enjoyed all the broadcasts they would watch in, say, 1960 and had cellular phone service too. Instead, TV was allocated far more bandwidth than it ever used, with enormous deserts of vacant television assignments—a vast wasteland, if you will—blocking mobile wireless for more than a generation.

The Fascist Communications Club Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was granted a monopoly on electromagnetic spectrum by the United States government (or, in other words. the government granted a monopoly to itself). Through this monopoly the FCC enjoyed and still enjoys life or death powers over a great deal of technology. Back in 1947 when AT&T wanted to develop cellular technology the FCC decided the technology should die. As television became more popular the FCC decided that the technology should live. It didn’t matter that there was enough spectrum for both technologies to coexist, the FCC wanted one to live and the other to die so it was made so.

The FCC’s power isn’t unique, it’s the inevitable result of any monopolized authority. Cannabis, a plant that shows a great deal of promise in the medical field, is prohibited because the United States government has a monopoly on what you can and cannot legally put into your own body. A lot of drugs and other medical technologies either don’t make it into the United States or are delayed for years because the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been given a monopoly on deciding which medical technologies are legal and illegal.

It’s a Cyberpocalypse

Have you ever had a sneaking suspicion that an author of an article was given a keyword and paid based on the number of times they managed to insert that keyword into their article? I’m fairly certain that’s what precipitated this article. Doing a page search for “cyber” resulted in 29 hits.

If you can overcome the tedium of reading the word “cyber” every other sentence, you’ll find an article discussing the difficult the United States is having with fighting the Islamic State. It turns out that treating a decentralized organization like a centralized organization results in bad tactics. Who could have guessed that?

What’s even funnier though is the little tidbit the author snuck in that is supposed to justify the United State’s prohibition on carry-on electronics on flights originating from certain airports:

Even one of the rare successes against the Islamic State belongs at least in part to Israel, which was America’s partner in the attacks against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Top Israeli cyberoperators penetrated a small cell of extremist bombmakers in Syria months ago, the officials said. That was how the United States learned that the terrorist group was working to make explosives that fooled airport X-ray machines and other screening by looking exactly like batteries for laptop computers.

Those must be some fantastically shitty x-ray scanners if they can’t actually tell the difference between legitimate laptop parts and bombs.

That tidbit might justify the carry-on electronics ban if it was in any way uniform. But the ban targeted specific airports, which means any terrorist with one of these highly advanced laptop bombs could get around the prohibition by flying to another airport, perhaps one in Europe, first and then flying to the United States from there. In other words, the “solution” to this threat wouldn’t have protected anybody and was therefore implemented for other reasons or was nothing more than security theater.

Police Body Camera Footage Being Placed Under Lock and Key

Equipping police with body cameras was supposed to help the public hold law enforcers accountable but like any solution the State agrees to, body cameras turned out to be yet another weapon in the State’s arsenal to expropriate wealth from its subjects. State governments are placing body camera footage under lock and key so it can’t be used by the public:

North Carolina, for example, passed legislation last year excluding body camera video from the public record, so footage is not available through North Carolina’s Public Records Act. That means civilians have no right to view police recordings in the Tar Heel state unless their voice or image was captured in the video.

Louisiana also exempts body camera video from public records laws.

South Carolina will only release body camera footage to criminal defendants and the subjects of recordings.

Kansas classifies body camera video as “criminal investigation documents” available only when investigations are closed. The Topeka Police Department may have wanted positive public relations with the release of its pond rescue video, but if a news outlet had requested that video through Kansas’ Open Records Act, that request would’ve likely been denied.

I stated pretty early on in the body camera debate that the footage would be useless, at least as far as holding the police accountable goes, unless the video was streamed directly to a third-party server that wasn’t under the control of any government entity. However, most body cameras upload their data to services, such as Axon’s evidence.com, that are controlled by parties with a vested interest in pleasing police departments. Combine that setup with the state laws that put the footage outside of the public’s reach and you have another tool that was sold as being good for the people that was actually very bad for them.

Leniency Will Not Be Tolerated

Justice is supposed to be a mechanism for righting wrongs but when it’s controlled by the State is becomes a mechanism for expropriating wealth and viciously punishing the disobedient. At one point in time some common sense could be exercised even within the justice systems of the United States. Nowadays common sense has been almost entirely removed from the courts by minimum sentencing laws, lying to juries about their rights and duties, etc. And when those mechanisms fail there is always the overriding ability of higher courts.

Here in Minnesota a man had the poor judgement to get drunk and tweet threats at the St. Paul Police Department over a speeding ticket (that wasn’t even issued by that department). Not surprisingly, charges were pressed against the man. As luck would have it, the man in the muumuu who oversaw his case wasn’t entirely vicious:

He wrote a letter of apology to the police and pleaded guilty to making terroristic threats and under the state’s sentencing guidelines, he should’ve been sentenced to 12 months and one day in jail. His attorney asked for a 365 day sentence because that would convert his crime from a felony to a gross misdemeanor.

“I don’t think you had the intent to do it,” the judge said at sentencing. “You didn’t have a gun. You weren’t going out to try to search where they live. You weren’t going to make a planned attack. You just wanted to send a tweet out to affect as many people as you can, and that worked.”

“To give you a felony sentence . . . at your age . . . I don’t feel in balance that that’s in the best interests of society. We got too many people on probation [for] felonies already, and . . . I can accomplish much of the same thing on a . . . durational departure on a gross misdemeanor,” Dakota County Judge Timothy McManus said.

And that’s the sentence Rund got — a misdemeanor: four months in jail, the rest of the one-year sentence stayed, three years probation, no booze.

Since it’s obvious the man had neither the intent or ability to carry out his threats, I don’t find any jail time to be appropriate. But jail time was inevitable so I’m happy that the judge saw that a felony was entirely out of line for this kind of behavior. However, the common sense he tried to introduce to the system was squashed by a higher court:

Today, the Minnesota Supreme Court said the judge shouldn’t have done that, ruling that none of the reasons for departing from the state’s guidelines for the crime are allowed under the law.

Another travesty of justice committed.

Punishments should fit crimes. A felony charge is often a life ruining event since it can render an individual almost unemployable and it strips them of many of their so-called rights. Getting drunk and tweeting unrealizable threats isn’t a life ruining act and therefore should not result in a life ruining punishment. The first judge understood that but the “justice” system was unwilling to let that kind of good judgement stand.

The Evils of the Drug War

The war on unapproved drugs may be one of the most evil acts being carried out here in the United States. It took an entirely voluntary activity, introducing chemicals into one’s own body, and turn it into an excuse for unprecedented levels of expropriation and criminal activity by agents of the State.

Using the drug war as justification, police have stolen cars, cash, and other property as well as sexually assaulted a practically uncountable number of victims. Their victims include the elderly, disabled, and even children:

But now, a lawsuit filed on behalf of several students and seeking class-action status for all of them makes some far more disturbing allegations:

a) Deputies ordered students to stand facing the wall with their hands and legs spread wide apart;

b) Deputies touched and manipulated students’ breasts and genitals;

c) Deputies inserted fingers inside girls’ bras, and pulled up girls’ bras, touching and partially exposing their bare breasts;

d) Deputies touched girls’ underwear by placing hands inside the waistbands of their pants or reaching up their dresses;

e) Deputies touched girls’ vaginal areas through their underwear;

f) Deputies cupped or groped boys’ genitals and touched their buttocks through their pants.

[…]

According to the lawsuit, the deputies had a list of 13 suspected students. Three of them were in school that day. For that, they searched 900 students. (And, let’s just point out again, found nothing. In a school of 900.)

If several adults went into a school and sexually assaulted 900 children most people wouldn’t even wait for a trial, they would grab the pitchforks and torches. But when the adults are wearing badges the behavior is suddenly seen as excusable in many people’s eyes. Oftentimes when officers commit such heinous crimes they receive no punishment, which encourages more wicked people to seek a job in law enforcement.

I’m hoping this lawsuit results in the involved officers being jailed. Even if the accusations of sexual assault are unfounded (which, considering the actions performed by officers in the pursuit of unapproved drugs, seems unlikely) the officers violated the privacy of 887 students (they only had a list of 13 suspected students) by searching them without any reason whatsoever.

Never Listen to the Government

George Carling said, “I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me.” That rule is perhaps one of the wisest one ever made.

Not too long ago the government was encouraging people to buy electric cars. Electric cars, according to the government, were more environmentally friendly than their fossil fuel powered counterparts. One of the incentives the government used to encourage electric card adoption was tax breaks. Electric car owners, for example, didn’t have to buy gasoline so they didn’t have to pay the taxes put on it.

But that was then, this is now. The government has now realized that electric cars are cutting into its profits so it has decided to renege on it’s position of encouraging electric car adoption:

Minnesota is joining a growing number of states to tack an extra registration charge on vehicles powered exclusively by electricity as a way to make up for lost gas tax revenue.

The new $75 surcharge approved by state lawmakers takes effect in January.

$75 may not seem like a lot but I guarantee that that fee will increase over time.

And this matter is made even worse because, unlike offers made by private entities, you have no recourse when the government decides to renege on one of its offers. Electric car owners must either pay the new registration tax or suffer the potential consequences of driving an unregistered vehicle.

Never Forget

Never forget… your password. Doing so could earn you some jail time:

US courts are still torn about how to handle defendants who refuse to give up passcodes for encrypted smartphones, judging by two recent court cases reported in the Miami Herald. In one, child abuse defendant Christopher Wheeler got six months in jail for failing to provide a correct code, despite pleas to the judge that he couldn’t remember it. In a different court, a judge let off Wesley Victor (accused of extortion), even though he also claimed to have forgotten his iPhone code.

The main difference in the cases is that ten months had passed after Victor’s initial arrest, and as his lawyer argued, “many people, including myself, can’t remember passwords from a year ago.” In the same case Victor’s girlfriend (and reality TV star) Hencha Voigt was ordered to divulge her code to police, but provided one that didn’t work. She’s also facing contempt of court charges, and is scheduled to appear next week. Both defendants are accused of threatening to release sex tapes stolen from social media celeb YesJulz unless she paid $18,000.

Holding somebody in contempt of court for claiming to forget their password is a fascinating concept to me. There is no way to prove whether or not somebody actually forgot something or lied about forgetting something. Under the concept of innocent until proven guilty a judge should have to refrain from punishing somebody for claiming to forget their password since it’s impossible to prove if they’re lying. But this country doesn’t operate under the principle of innocent until proven guilty, it operates under the principle of granting people in muumuus the power to arbitrarily decide whether somebody is telling the truth of lying.

Even the man who gave the police officer an incorrect password has a plausible excuse. He was in a stressful situation where an armed man was ordering him to do something against his will. It’s not unusual for people to forget or misremember basic information during stressful situations so it’s not implausible that the man simply misremembered his password at the time. But now he’s going to prison even though his guilt cannot be proven.

The State’s Definition of Justice

To most people the term justice creates images of people who were wronged being compensated by the individual(s) who wronged them. The State has a different view of justice. In the eyes of the State justice creates an image where it is compensated whenever anybody has been wronged. This skewed view of justice is what motivated the State to primarily pursue crimes that will be profitable to it instead of crimes involving a victim. It’s also why when the State wrongs somebody it resists compensating them:

A Tennessee man who served 31 years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit is petitioning the state to compensate him $1 million for the years of his life that were taken away. All he’s gotten so far is $75.

In October 1977 a Memphis woman was raped in her home by two intruders. She later identified one of them as her neighbor, Lawrence McKinney, who was 22 at the time. He was convicted on rape and burglary charges in 1978 and sentenced to 115 years in jail.

DNA evidence cleared him of the charges in 2008, and when he was released in 2009, the Tennessee Department of Corrections gave him a $75 check to restart his life.

This story is from 2016 but a search indicates that he still hasn’t been compensated beyond $75 even though the State stole 31 years of his life.

If you kidnapped somebody and detained them for 31 years do you think that you’d get off with a $75 fine? Probably not. You’d likely face a lifetime in prison. But when it comes to rules the State’s attitude is that rules are for thee, not for me. Mr. McKinney will be lucky if he ever sees more than $75 from his case because the State wants to profit off of every crime, even its own.