Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Surveillance Is For Me, Not For Thee

Law enforcers always want more power to surveil. If they had it their way they would have cameras on every street corner and in very house and every form of communications could be easily tapped whenever they saw fit. They tend to be a bit hypocritical here because they don’t want to be spied up themselves. Santa Ana police officers are coming under fire for a raid they performed on an illegal cannabis dispensary. During the raid surveillance footage shows officers making derogatory comments towards a disabled woman and scarfing down an edible. The dispensary is unhappy with the officers’ conduct and the officers are unhappy that they were recorded:

SANTA ANA – Three Santa Ana police officers want to quash a surveillance video that shows officers making derogatory comments about a disabled woman and possibly snacking on pot edibles during a recent raid of a medical marijuana dispensary.

A lawsuit, filed last week in Orange County Superior Court by three unidentified police officers and the Santa Ana Police Officers Association, seeks to prevent Santa Ana Police Department internal affairs investigators from using the video as they sort out what happened during the May 26 raid of Sky High Collective.

[…]

The lawsuit argues that the video doesn’t paint a fair version of events. The suit also claims the video shouldn’t be used as evidence because, among other things, the police didn’t know they were on camera.

“All police personnel present had a reasonable expectation that their conversations were no longer being recorded and the undercover officers, feeling that they were safe to do so, removed their masks,” says the suit.

The dispensary also did not obtain consent of any officer to record them, the suit says.

“Without the illegal recordings, there would have been no internal investigation of any officer,” the suit says.

Pappas counters that the suit is baseless because the officers were aware the dispensary had video cameras and managed to disable most of them.

As far as arguments go that one is downright laughable. Places that use security cameras usually have a sign indicating the premise is under surveillance so it’s difficult to claim that you don’t know you’re being recorded. Furthermore the officers disabled most of the cameras so they knew the premise was under surveillance. With that knowledge the officers should have expected that they would miss a camera or two.

But the officers’ lawyer seems to be arguing that the officers had a reasonable expectation of privacy because they disabled most of the cameras. Somehow that makes the footage illegal, or something.

You have to hand it to law enforcers, they can twist logic to its absolute limits to justify their surveillance while arguing against being surveilled.

Without Government Who Would Arm The Terrorists

What’s the most effective way reduce gun violence in the United States? According to those who oppose self-defense mandating background checks for every firearm transfer would reduce gun violence. It’s an idea that sounds good to a lot of people on paper but only because they haven’t stopped to think about what that entails. Background checks require government approval for firearm transfers. Mandating background checks for every firearm transfer would, according to opponents of self-defense, ensure bad guys couldn’t acquire firearms. The biggest flaw in this plan is that it relies on government, which is more than happy to provide firearms to violent individuals:

Five years before he was shot to death in the failed terrorist attack in Garland, Texas, Nadir Soofi walked into a suburban Phoenix gun shop to buy a 9-millimeter pistol.

At the time, Lone Wolf Trading Co. was known among gun smugglers for selling illegal firearms. And with Soofi’s history of misdemeanor drug and assault charges, there was a chance his purchase might raise red flags in the federal screening process.

Inside the store, he fudged some facts on the form required of would-be gun buyers.

What Soofi could not have known was that Lone Wolf was at the center of a federal sting operation known as Fast and Furious, targeting Mexican drug lords and traffickers. The idea of the secret program was to allow Lone Wolf to sell illegal weapons to criminals and straw purchasers, and track the guns back to large smuggling networks and drug cartels.

Instead, federal agents lost track of the weapons and the operation became a fiasco, particularly after several of the missing guns were linked to shootings in Mexico and the 2010 killing of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in Arizona.

This is actually the same flaw every plan that relies on government suffers. How can you rely on an entity that steals, kidnaps, assaults, and murders people to stop theft, kidnappings, assaults, and murders? Do you really think an entity that drops bombs on child in foreign countries and pardons the violent actions of its law enforcers is going to have any moral opposition to handing a firearm to a person known to have a history of violence? Fast and Furious was a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) operation that involved selling firearms to people suspected of being involved with violent drug cartels. Supposedly the operation was meant to track where the firearms went. Those firearms did end up in the hands of drug cartels but the ATF didn’t do a very good job of tracking them.

A background check systems can’t work if it relies on an entity that is motivated to provide firearms to violent people. Since the government is motivated to do exactly that the background check system supported by opponents of self-defense can’t decrease gun violence.

When It Comes To Establishing A Police State America Will Never Have Anything On Mum

239 years ago the United States told its mum it was moving out. Mum, having always been a clingy parent, didn’t take the news very well but in the end there was nothing she could do. Every since then the United States seems to have always had a chip on its shoulder. It wanted to show the world that it could surpass its parent and in many ways it did. But to this day old age and treachery have proven far more able to establish a police state than youth and exuberance:

Nursery school staff and registered childminders must report toddlers at risk of becoming terrorists, under counter-terrorism measures proposed by the Government.

The directive is contained in a 39-page consultation document issued by the Home Office in a bid to bolster its Prevent anti-terrorism plan.

[…]

The consultation paper adds: “Senior management and governors should make sure that staff have training that gives them the knowledge and confidence to identify children at risk of being drawn into terrorism and challenge extremist ideas which can be used to legitimise terrorism and are shared by terrorist groups.
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“They should know where and how to refer children and young people for further help.”

But concern was raised over the practicalities of making it a legal requirement for staff to inform on toddlers.

That is some beautiful fear mongering. Toddler terrorists! How could any other country come up with such a concept and be serious enough about it to use it as the basis for a law? Here you have children who have probably just mastered the fineries of bipedal motion and have just begun learning the very basics of arithmetic and the United Kingdom as managed to apply the very complex concepts of radicalization and terrorism to them! To top it all off it then legally required school teachers to do the same!

I’m sorry but that’s some advanced level shit right there. I think it’ll take some time before the politicians here even begin to approach this idea. They simply don’t have the cunning dear old mum does.

The White House Is Still Pissed At Edward Snowden

Since Edward Snowden aired the National Security Agency’s (NSA) dirty laundry the United States government has wanted his head. Meanwhile far saner individuals have been begging the White House to pardon him. This begging came in the form of a petition posted on the White House website that has been ignored since 2013. After two long years the White House has finally given its answer — Edward Snowden will not be pardoned:

Unsurprisingly, the White House formally announced Tuesday that it will not be granting a pardon to Edward Snowden anytime soon.

Immediately after Snowden was formally charged in 2013 with espionage, theft, and conversion of government property, supporters began petitioning the White House to pardon the famed former National Security Agency contractor.

I don’t think anybody is surprised. Snowden’s actions made the Internet a safer place for everybody and that directly conflicts with the White House’s desire to spy on everybody. Any decent nation would give somebody like Snowden, who revealed unlawful activities being perpetrated by a government agency, a medal and declare a nation holiday in his honor.

Adding further insult to injury Lisa Monaco, who is apparently the president’s adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism, made this laughable statement to justify the White House’s decision not to granted a pardon:

Instead of constructively addressing these [civil liberties] issues, Mr. Snowden’s dangerous decision to steal and disclose classified information had severe consequences for the security of our country and the people who work day in and day out to protect it.

If he felt his actions were consistent with civil disobedience, then he should do what those who have taken issue with their own government do: Challenge it, speak out, engage in a constructive act of protest, and—importantly—accept the consequences of his actions. He should come home to the United States, and be judged by a jury of his peers—not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime. Right now, he’s running away from the consequences of his actions.

I say the statement is laughable because the last time a whistle blower tried to “constructively address” the NSA’s unlawful activities the state sicced the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) on them. Back in 2001 William Binney tried going through the appropriate channels to get the NSA’s domestic spying activities addressed. He ended up looking down the barrel of several FBI agents’ guns as they raided him home in an attempt to intimidate him into shutting up. That was one of several good stories he told on the panel discussion I was on with him.

When you threaten somebody at gunpoint for trying to get the NSA’s domestic spying addressed through proper channels you can’t expect the next person to do the same.

Bernie Sanders The National Socialist

The candidates running for the 2016 presidential election truly are the bottom of the barrel. None of them are qualified to lead a herd of cattle into a slaughterhouse, let alone a nation. Although the playing field will likely change between now and the actual election the current darling child of the Democratic Party is Bernie Sanders. The interesting thing about Sanders is that he, unlike most of those wishy washy ninnies in the Democratic Party, outright admits he’s a socialist. There are two major types of socialists, national and international, and the question has been which of the two schools does Sanders belong to. Now we know:

Ezra Klein: You said being a democratic socialist means a more international view. I think if you take global poverty that seriously, it leads you to conclusions that in the US are considered out of political bounds. Things like sharply raising the level of immigration we permit, even up to a level of open borders. About sharply increasing …

Bernie Sanders: Open borders? No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal.

Ezra Klein: Really?

Bernie Sanders: Of course. That’s a right-wing proposal, which says essentially there is no United States. …

Ezra Klein: But it would make …

Bernie Sanders: Excuse me …

Ezra Klein: It would make a lot of global poor richer, wouldn’t it?

Bernie Sanders: It would make everybody in America poorer —you’re doing away with the concept of a nation state, and I don’t think there’s any country in the world that believes in that. If you believe in a nation state or in a country called the United States or UK or Denmark or any other country, you have an obligation in my view to do everything we can to help poor people. What right-wing people in this country would love is an open-border policy. Bring in all kinds of people, work for $2 or $3 an hour, that would be great for them. I don’t believe in that. I think we have to raise wages in this country, I think we have to do everything we can to create millions of jobs.

He wants to keep all of the “benefits” of socialism to the United States so he’s firmly in the national socialist camp. It’s also hilarious to hear him claim that open borders is a Koch brothers conspiracy, err, proposal. The Koch brothers are to the left-wing statists what George Soros is to the right-wing statists, a boogeyman responsible for all that is wrongs in the world.

Sanders also subscribes to the camp that believes open borders would hamper the creation of millions of jobs. Apparently he thinks the government should protect the jobs of individuals who are legitimately challenged by individuals for foreign lands who have no formal education and can barely speak English. Personally I disagree (because if you suck at your job that much you deserve to be replaced) but I also don’t acknowledge the nation state as a legitimate thing, unlike national socialist Sanders.

Man Criminally Charged For Fixing The Roads

The roads are the purview of the state. Some claim this is because transportation infrastructure is so complex that the market couldn’t handle it. Of course this claim is bullshit. But the fact remains that the state will use its capacity for violence against anybody who tries to involve themselves in transportation infrastructure improvements.

A Massachusetts selectman got sick of the road repair teams not fixing the faded crosswalks in his town. Instead of impotently pounding his fist on a desk he actually decided to go out and fix the crosswalks himself. Now he’s facing criminal charges because, even though he’s an agent of the state, he didn’t respect the bureaucracy:

George Simolaris, a selectman in Billerica, about 25 miles from Boston, said he was tired of constituents asking when the white paint would be freshened up, so he fixed the problem himself. He said he bought cans of green paint, the town’s official color, and spent the weekend painting over six faded crosswalks.

“All I’ve heard for months is: ‘When is this going to get done?'” Simolaris said. “I got sick of it.”

Police and town officials said painting the street without authorization was illegal and charged him with two counts of destruction of property, according to Billerica police spokesman Roy Frost.

As if that wasn’t enough they are also planning to coerce him into “repairing” the “damage” he created:

He added that Simolaris would be required to repay the $4,000 cost of cleaning up the paint, which he said chipped and smeared.

Even though many of the crosswalks in question are going to be torn up as part of a pedestrian safety project:

Town Manager John Curran said the town was in the midst of a $400,000 pedestrian safety project that requires digging up the street including some of the crosswalks in question, which are slated to be repainted once construction is complete.

So he’s facing criminal charges for painting faded crosswalks that were slated to be ripped up anyways and he’s being criminal charged for it. I think this shows just how ridiculous the “justice” system in this country is. At most I’d say he could be demanded to pay for removing the paint if the crosswalks weren’t going to be ripped up anyways. But they’re going to be ripped up so I don’t think any grounds exist for punishing him in any way.

Either way, this story shows that the state will violently enforce its monopoly on transportation infrastructure. If people are willing to repair roads and the only thing stopping them are government guns then I think the entire claim that the market can’t handle transportation infrastructure has been rendered laughable.

Bring Back Trials By Ordeal And Trials By Combat

Jeffry Tucker wrote an entertaining piece advocating for different ways to judge political candidates. I wholeheartedly agree that we need to find new ways of judging political candidates because rhetoric and philosophy are so lacking in the modern political sphere that using them as judging metrics is futile. Us Americans can’t even enjoy the witty banter people in Britain are fortunate enough to experience.

Because Ticker is nice he proposed things like spelling bees, Mario Kart competitions, beer pong, and hackathons. I, on the other hand, am a bit more ruthless. Here’s a question for everybody reading this, did any of you watch Thunderdome, The Running Man, or Death Race and think the bloody competitions they portrayed would make excellent alternatives to voting for selecting politicians? I did, which is why I propose bringing back trail by ordeal for judging politicians and trial by combat for choosing which ones get put into office.

Let’s face it, elections are pointless this day and age, especially for the presidential election. Look at all of the currently announced presidential candidates. They’re shit. Not one of them is fit to lead a lemming over a cliff (that’s not to say I wouldn’t like to see them try) let alone a nation. Is anybody excited about heading to the polls to cast a vote for Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, or Hillary Clinton? I’m sure somebody is but almost everybody I have talked to has aligned themselves with the candidate they think sucks slightly less than the others.

Now ask yourself, would you like to see each candidate be submitted to a trial of boiling water, where they must each reach into a kettle of boiling water to retrieve a stone? How about an ordeal of fire where each candidate is required to walk, say, 100 yards (because no other country uses the length of a football field as a standard unit of measurement) over hot coals? If you answered “No,” I know you’re either the candidates themselves or you’re lying. Screw the caucus system. Trail by ordeal would be the perfect way to select each party’s presidential nominee.

After the nominees have been selected we could move to trail by combat. Who wouldn’t want to see Ted Cruz or Donald Trump in a cage match against Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton? Maybe we could setup a Thunderdome and give supporters one final chance to support their preferred candidate by handing them weapons. We could even pay-per-view the event to help pay down the national deficit!

I honestly see no reason trials by ordeal and trials by combat wouldn’t work just as well as elections for choosing politicians. In fact it’s a far superior method since we wouldn’t subjected to losers constantly trying to run again (who isn’t sick of seeing Huckabee run). And third parties would stand a fair chance of winning. See? It’s a win-win.

Rand Paul Supports Having A Powerful Federal Government

It’s no secret that I’m not a fan of Rand Paul. Unlike his father, Rand is an inconsistent man that sways whatever way the political winds are blowing. His supporters, or the Rand Rapid Response Team as I like to call them, are always quick to claim he is just playing politics to win the presidency so he can beat Americans in the head with liberty. They never seem to have an answer as to why Rand, upon winning office (which he’ll never do), don’t continue to play politics to get a second term but I digress. From an anarchist point of view Rand is a tyrant through and through. But even from a small government point of view Rand is a tyrant. For example, his latest tirade was against so-called sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities, for those who don’t follow the neocon news cycle, are supposed cities that refuse to enforce immigration laws. Neocons, Rand Paul included, really hate them:

Among those jumping on the anti-sanctuary-city bandwagon was presidential candidate and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

Paul proudly introduced the PACT Act (“Protecting American Citizens Together,” ugh), because, as he states in his office’s emailed press release, “Our nation now has whole cities and states who stand up and willingly defy federal immigration laws in order to protect illegal immigrants who have broken our nation’s laws. This must end and it must end now. My bill makes it clear, the American people will not stand for cities harboring violent criminals.”

The bill would cut off a range of federal law enforcement grants to localities from any city daring to go its own way on enforcing federal immigration law. This, from a politician who generally sells himself as a strong federalist welcoming local experimentation, especially when, as with marijuana law, respect for local decisions might halt government interference with people’s lives for no good reason. Medical marijuana states are themselves “defying” federal laws, yet that doesn’t bother Paul on principle.

Kudos on the name. The PACT Act not only rhymes but it’s a backronym! Obviously my anarchist perspective doesn’t give any value to the imaginary lines that separate one tyrannical regime from another but even if I channel my long-dead small government memory Rand’s actions are inconsistent with liberty.

Anybody who believes in decentralizing power, which is what small government advocates claim to believe, should approve of an individual state or city deciding who they want to let live there. What business is it of the federal government who an individual state or city chooses to allow in?

Neocons have a hard-on for hating “illegal” immigrants. Rand Paul is a candidate for the Republican Party and therefore has to appeal to neocons. Time and again he has showing a willingness to do whatever is necessary to please is neocon base, which will always hate him because of who his father is, and even go so far as to introduce legislation to push the neocon agenda forward. If Rand merely pandered to the neocons then the Rand Rapid Response Team may have some grounds on which to claim their messiah was just playing politics. But the guy is introducing anti-liberty legislation in addition to pandering.

Obviously I’m not going to tell you what to do, especially when it comes to politics since I don’t play that game anymore. But I will severely judge anybody who claims to be an advocate of liberty and a supporter of Rand Paul. The two things are not equivalent.

Rand Paul Wants To Bring Back Religious Profiling

Here’s a reminder, for those who need it, that Rand Paul is not a libertarian nor an advocate of liberty. After the shooting in Chattanooga the presidential wannabe took some time out of his busy schedule to urge for the reimplementation of a program that almost exclusively profiles Muslims entering the country:

Yet, Paul commented to Breitbart:

I’m going to have our subcommittee and maybe committee in Homeland Security look into whether or not we could reinstitute this NSEERS [National Security Entry Exit Registration System] program.

So what did this program do? It not only singled out Muslims entering the country for extra interrogation at the airport (which is stupid because if they pose a threat then why grant them a visa at all?), it required Muslim foreign boys and men over 16 years already in the country to personally appear before Uncle Sam’s functionaries and register. Explains the Migration Policy Institute:

Registration includes a meeting with an immigration official where the interviewees are fingerprinted (both digitally and with ink), photographed, and asked a series of questions under oath. In addition to the initial registration, foreign visitors must also appear at a U.S. immigration office within 10 days of the one-year anniversary date of initial registration. All of these foreign visitors are required to complete a departure check only at a designated departure port (of which there are approximately 100 nationwide) on the same day that they intend to leave the country. Willful refusal to register is a criminal violation; overstaying a visa is a civil violation.

Expecting terrorists to voluntarily stroll to an immigration office to be fingerprinted and IDed is absurd, of course. So the entirely predictable upshot of the program was that although it managed to obtain not a single terrorism-related conviction, it did ruin plenty of lives of peaceful Muslims caught in its dragnet. Consider the case of Abdulameer Yousef Habeeb, a refugee from Iraq. As per the ACLU:

he was lawfully admitted to the United States after suffering imprisonment and torture by Saddam Hussein’s regime. Habeeb was on a train from Seattle to Washington, D.C., to start a new life when Border Patrol agents singled him out for questioning without any individualized suspicion. As a refugee, Habeeb was not required to register with NSEERS, but when he showed the border agents his refugee documentation, the agents insisted—incorrectly—that he was in violation of NSEERS’ registration requirements. Detained for a week, Habeeb lost his job. Habeeb was terrified of being returned to Iraq, yet the government stubbornly continued deportation proceedings for six weeks. Ultimately, after the ACLU filed suit, Habeeb won an apology from the government stating: “[T]he United States of America acknowledges that, by not registering under NSEERS, you did nothing wrong [and] regrets the mistake.”

Paul maintains that immigration is not a right; it’s a privilege. But the Constitution guarantees immigrants in the country the same due process and other basic rights as citizens because it understands that a Leviathan that is authorized to abuse the rights of one set of people is not likely to respect those of others for very long.

I checked the link that explains what NSEERS is and it clearly noted that, “Except for North Korea, nearly all of the countries designated in Special Registration are predominantly Arab and Muslim.” In other words this program places special restrictions on people from specific countries that grants Border Patrol agents the right to harass them without cause. Even somebody who advocates for controlled immigration should acknowledge that placing additional restrictions on specific people is not an acceptable way of handling immigration. It’s necessarily collectivist in nature, which should be the first clue that it’s a bad program, since it focuses on where a person is from and not the person themselves.

Unlike his father, who was a true advocate for liberty, Rand Paul isn’t even pretending to be an advocate for liberty anymore. He just wants to be president and will say anything that he thinks will gain him the nomination. If he gets elected there is absolutely no reason to believe he won’t continue this trend of kowtowing to neocons as he will likely want a second term.

TSA: We’re Not Happy Until You’re Not Happy

When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently performed an internal investigation of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) security procedures it discovered a 95 percent failure rate. Were the TSA a private security provider you would probably have seen some serious housecleaning to rid itself of individuals who obviously don’t know what they’re doing. But the TSA is a government agency, which means you and I are punished for its failures. In response to the 95 percent failure rate the TSA is demanding more tax victim money and planning to make air travelers wait even longer to get through security:

The Transportation Security Administration has a new strategy for improving its woeful performance in catching airport security threats — and it will likely mean longer lines and more government bucks.

A month after the TSA was embarrassed by its almost-total failure in a covert security audit, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has ordered the agency to pursue an improvement plan that will require more hand-wanding of passengers, more use of bomb-sniffing dogs and more random testing of luggage and travelers for traces of explosives. It will also consider reducing travelers’ chances of being sent through the expedited PreCheck lines at airports.

Let us not forget the TSA motto: we’re not happy until you’re not happy. This “improvement plan” should tell you everything you need to know about government agencies. If you look at the list of “improvements” you’ll see the word “more” in front of everything. The TSA’s response to its 95 percent failure rate is literally trying more of the same thing only harder.