Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Obedience School

The public schooling system isn’t about providing children with an education, it’s about turning children into obedient subjects. Any education a child may receive is nothing more than an unintended consequence. Nowhere is this more evident that in the Texas schooling system, which now requires students to pass an obedience class in order to graduate:

Starting this school year, English, history and math, are not the only classes required to graduate high school in Texas.

A new state law requires students in grades nine through 12 to receive a class, paired with a 16-minute video, that aims to teach them how to deal with law enforcement during a traffic stop.

Known as the Community Safety Education Act, Senate Bill 30 was signed into law by the 85th Texas Legislature to help ease tensions between police and students in the wake of multiple shootings by police of unarmed citizens that have taken place across the United States in recent years.

Law enforcers are gunning down unarmed citizens and the response isn’t to punish the law enforcers but to put the burden of surviving a law enforcement encounter on the citizenry? This says pretty much everything that needs to be said about statism.

We’re All Collateral Damage

Politicians usually talk a benevolent game. Seldom do you hear one outright state that they’re going to steamroll a group of individuals. That’s why it was refreshing to hear Nanci Pelosi state that if the Democrats regain power, those who disagree with them will be collateral damage:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said American voters will simply have to deal with the “collateral damage” that comes their way if Democrats craft economic policies in the years ahead.

The California Democrat recently sat down with New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in the Big Apple to discuss public policy. The event, hosted by the Jewish organization 92nd Street Y, included a portion on climate change that sparked the lawmaker’s pronouncement.

“We owe the American people to be there for them, for their financial security, respecting the dignity and worth of every person in our country, and if there is some collateral damage for some others who do not share our view, well, so be it, but it shouldn’t be our original purpose,” she said Sunday.

At least she’s being straight up with us plebeians.

Truth be told, the opponents of the party in power are always collateral damage. Politics is nothing more than violence by proxy and the supporters of the party in power supported the party specifically because they wanted a truncheon wielded against their ideological opponents but were too chicken shit to wield it themselves.

Apocalyptic Financial Predictions Aren’t Just for Libertarians Anymore

Apocalyptic financial predictions are a staple of libertarianism. This isn’t without merit. Governments around the world implement financial policies that can lead to nowhere but ruin. However, the mainstream media has always laughed at these libertarian predictions… until now:

Financial experts noted several ominous economic indicators, including skyrocketing student loans and U.S. household debts, that could predict a crash “worse than the Great Depression,” according to a report in the New York Post.

Goldman Sachs predicted that this year’s U.S. fiscal outlook would be “not good,” and that U.S. household debt had been increasing since the 2008 housing crisis led to American taxpayers bailing out the big banks.

In 2018, experts said, a $247 trillion global debt will be the greatest cause of the next cataclysmic financial crash. Additionally, low wages and the U.S. national debt’s steady rise are expected to drag down the economy.

This is from Newsweek of all sources.

Granted, the only reason the mainstream media is jumping onboard of the SS Financial Meltdown is because Trump is in office. If Hillary had won and implemented the same policies that Trump has, the mainstream media would still be laughing at predictions of financial meltdown. Regardless of their reasoning it’s still funny seeing this kind of story appearing.

Fiscally Conservative

If you ask most people what one of the major difference between the Republican and Democratic parties is, they will tell you that the Republican Party tends to be more fiscally conservative. The Republican Party is in power now so a wave of fiscal conservation is upon us, right? Not so much:

The U.S. federal budget deficit rose in fiscal 2018 to the highest level in six years as spending climbed, the Trump administration said Monday.

The deficit jumped to $779 billion, $113 billion or 17 percent higher than the previous fiscal period, according to a statement from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. It was larger than any year since 2012, when it topped $1 trillion. The budget shortfall rose to 3.9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

It turns out that neither party is fiscally conservative. And really, why should they be? They’re not spending their own money. They’re not even primarily spending out money. They’re spending the money that they’re printing. Since they can print an infinite amount of money, there is no motivation for them to spend less… at least until the whole financial system collapses due to an irreconcilable misallocations of resources. But that’s a problem for the next generation, right?

Just Vote Harder

If somebody is a member of the Libertarian Party, I generally assume that they have at least a basic understanding of the evil of government. If somebody has been a member of the Libertarian Party for a few election cycles, I generally assume that they have firsthand experience of how the two ruling parties prevent third parties from gaining a foothold in the political system. If somebody has been a member of the Libertarian Party for a few election cycles and still believes in the political process, I generally assume that they’re an idiot.

If you’ve recently joined the Libertarian Party, or any third party for that matter, and believe that you’re going to make a difference by helping a candidate break into the two party political system, let me give you an idea of what you’re in for:

Third party candidates are used to getting snubbed when it comes to political debates, but Dale Kerns says he was promised a spot in an October 20 senatorial debate in the Philadelphia media market—only to have the invitation rescinded as the debate neared, apparently at the request of the station hosting it.

[…]

Emails obtained by Reason show that Kerns’ campaign was twice assured of a spot in a televised debate by executives at the state’s chapter of the League of Women Voters, which typically plays a role in organizing debates. In March, Suzanne Almeida, the then-executive director of the group, told Kerns’ campaign manager that Kerns would “certainly” be invited to “participate in candidate forums after the primary.”

In late August, the campaign again contacted the League of Women Voters seeking information about planned debates. Jill Greene, who had taken over as executive director in July, responded on August 29 to say that she was currently trying to plan a Senate debate with the League’s media partners and that she would “be sure to include Mr. Kerns and Mr. Gale.”

Six weeks later, after the debate had been scheduled for October 20 on Philadelphia’s ABC affiliate, WPVI-TV, Greene emailed Kerns’ campaign manager John Odermatt to deliver the bad news. The League had asked to include Kerns and Gale in the debate, she said, but “other organizers” did not “feel as if current polling warranted an invitation.”

This is nothing new. In fact, this is the status quo. This is also why voting doesn’t matter.

Apologists for democracy claim that voting is how the people let themselves be heard but one only needs to take a look at a ballot to recognize the facade. A ballot consists of a list of officer with approved candidates for each office. The first indicator that voting isn’t what the apologists claim it to be is the fact that the names that appear on the ballot must be approved. The second indicator is the fact that the only choice is what candidate to put into the office. What if you want to abolish the office entirely (which is what every self-proclaimed libertarian should want to do to every office)? You can’t voice that opinion on a ballot.

If you’re involved in a third party, you’re playing a game where the rules are set by your opponent. Not surprisingly, your opponent is setting the rules in such a way that you’re guaranteed to lose.

The Fake Facebook Profiles of Law Enforcement

Do you remember that really hot chick who tried to friend you on Facebook? The one who claimed to be single and horny? There’s a good chance that “she” was a cop:

Police officers around the country, in departments large and small, working for federal, state and local agencies, use undercover Facebook accounts to watch protesters, track gang members, lure child predators and snare thieves, according to court records, police trainers and officers themselves. Some maintain several of these accounts at a time. The tactic violates Facebook’s terms of use, and the company says it disables fake accounts whenever it discovers them. But that is about all it can do: Fake accounts are not against the law, and the information gleaned by the police can be used as evidence in criminal and civil cases.

Investigators know this, which is why the accounts continue to flourish.

This should come as a surprise to approximately nobody. Law enforcers have been busy turning this country into a surveillance state. Meanwhile, Facebook has been busy collecting every shred of personal information about as many people as it can. They’re a match made in Heaven, or more aptly Hell.

The best defense against this, other than not using Facebook, is to only add people whose identity you have personally verified. That doesn’t necessarily mean that a person you know in real life isn’t an undercover cop, but verifying identities will at least cut down on the low level efforts to surveil you.

The Plebs are Becoming Unruly

All isn’t well in the People’s Republic of Minneapolis. The patricians are having a tough time conducting their very important government business due to the fact that the plebeians are becoming unruly:

Maintaining order in meetings has become a struggle for the new City Council. It has created a dilemma for a council majority brought to power on a progressive wave, putting former activists in the difficult position of having to hush their constituents just to get through the agenda.

It appears that a bunch of plebs have realized that members of their ranks being elevated to the patrician class hasn’t resulted in a better life for the plebeians. I doubt this lesson will stick though. These activists will probably still scream about the importance of voting, which will perpetuate this cycle of former and current activists eating each other. At least it gives those of us watching from a distance an entertaining show.

Live Streaming Summary Executions

The Company Formerly Known as Taser (Axon) has announced a new line of body cameras that allow law enforcers to live stream their antics:

Police officers wearing new cameras by Axon, the U.S.’s largest body camera supplier, will soon be able to send live video from their cameras back to base and elsewhere, potentially enhancing officers’ situational awareness and expanding police surveillance.

[…]

Axon plans to test the device, the Axon Body 3, with a group of agencies early next year and ship to U.S. customers in the summer. (The initial price of $699 doesn’t include other costs, like a subscription to Axon’s Evidence.com data management system.) A built-in antenna transmits HD video over dedicated 4G LTE cellular networks, while another feature triggers the camera to start recording and alerts command staff once an officer has fired their weapon, a possible corrective to the problem of officers forgetting to switch them on.

Now the whole department can tune in for the summary execution of the unarmed black man!

Less you mistakenly believe that this live streaming capability might give oversight committees the ability to oversee law enforcers by randomly activating the live streaming capability, never fear, the live streaming capability can only be activated when the officer wearing the camera enables it:

Giving supervisors the ability to live-stream from officers’ chests has raised privacy concerns among police too. Axon’s system does not allow supervisors to remotely begin live-streaming from an officer’s camera unless it is in recording mode–that is, once an officer presses a large button in the center of the camera or is activated automatically by the sound of a gunshot, for instance. The video streams will also be limited to those with permission through the Evidence.com software.

That’s a relief! I was almost worried that there was a chance that an overseer might randomly activate an officer’s body camera can catch them doing something unlawful!

Of course the live video is streamed to Evidence.com, which is a service geared towards preventing the use of collected evidence from being used to defend an accused party or from bring charges against a law enforcer who has been caught doing something illegal.

Axon has covered all of its bases. There’s no possibility that these new features will be used to hold law enforcers accountable, which will make them popular with law enforcement departments.

Overcooking the Numbers

A lot of journalists rely on numbers reported by government agencies for research. When it comes to government reported numbers I tended to follow the advice of George Carlin who said, “I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me.” This advice has proven its value time and again because the government has a tendency to make shit up. Take the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The agency has been cooking the numbers when it comes to gun violence. In fact the agency has overcooked the numbers so thoroughly that even anti-gun organizations like The Trace, which should be happily gobbling up the fallacious numbers, had to call bullshit:

But the gun injury estimate is one of several categories of CDC data flagged with an asterisk indicating that, according to the agency’s own standards, it should be treated as “unstable and potentially unreliable.” In fact, the agency’s 2016 estimate of gun injuries is more uncertain than nearly every other type of injury it tracks. Even its estimates of BB gun injuries are more reliable than its calculations for the number of Americans wounded by actual guns.

An analysis performed by FiveThirtyEight and The Trace, a nonprofit news organization covering gun violence in America, found that the CDC’s report of a steady increase in nonfatal gun injuries is out of step with a downward trend we found using data from multiple independent public health and criminal justice databases. That casts doubt on the CDC’s figures and the narrative suggested by the way those numbers have changed over time.

This isn’t unprecedented behavior. The CDC has lied about gun violence statistics before.

In addition to not believing anything the government tells me, I’m also automatically skeptical of statistics. Statistics in of itself isn’t bad. There are a lot of great uses for statistics. However, statistics can be easily manipulated to show a desired result and more often than not it seems that people reporting statistics are reporting numbers that were specifically crafted to show the outcome that they desired.

Living in a Surveillance State

People often argue about whether Brave New World or Nineteen Eighty-Four more accurately predicted our current predicament. I tend to believe that both books predicted different aspects of the present. Governments have certainly invested heavily in dumbing down and distracting the population in order to make them more docile and therefore easier to rule. But they have also invested heavily in ensuring that they can watch everything you do wherever you go:

The next time you drive past one of those road signs with a digital readout showing how fast you’re going, don’t simply assume it’s there to remind you not to speed. It may actually be capturing your license plate data.

According to recently released US federal contracting data, the Drug Enforcement Administration will be expanding the footprint of its nationwide surveillance network with the purchase of “multiple” trailer-mounted speed displays “to be retrofitted as mobile LPR [License Plate Reader] platforms.” The DEA is buying them from RU2 Systems Inc., a private Mesa, Arizona company. How much it’s spending on the signs has been redacted.

This is why I laugh at people who leave their cellphone at home when they “don’t want to be tracked.” If you drive your vehicle somewhere, there’s an ever increasing chance that the license plate will be recorded by a government scanner. If you take public transit, there’s an almost guaranteed chance that your face will be caught on a surveillance cameras inside of the vehicle (and an ever increasing chance that facial recognition software will automatically identify you). If you walk, you’ll likely be recorded on any number of private and public surveillance cameras (which, again, are more and more being tied to facial recognition software to automatically identify you).

Everything has pros and cons. One of the cons of technology becoming more powerful and cheaper is that surveillance technology has become more powerful and cheaper. Tracking an individual, especially in metropolitan areas, is trivial. Fortunately, surveillance is a cat and mouse game. One of the pros of technology becoming more powerful and cheaper is that countersurveillance technology is becoming more powerful and cheaper.