Your Government Doesn’t Love You – Page 113

Your Government at Work

When people discuss government waste the topics of extravagant dinners, vacations, lifetime healthcare for politicians, etc. usually come up. However the topic of law enforcement doesn’t come up nearly enough. Truth be told federal law enforcement agents are some of the biggest wasters of tax victim money out there. Consider the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI). One minute it’s creating terrorists for it to stop and the next minute it’s investing years into studying the lyrics of a song with several other alphabet soup agencies:

You know the song. You also know the lyrics are completely indecipherable. However, with Ely’s death, there’s been renewed attention to the fact that the FBI spent nearly two years investigating the damn song. It is just as ridiculous as it sounds, but the FBI has released the file on its investigation and it’s a rather hilarious read. It turns out it wasn’t just the FBI, but involved the FCC and the Post Office:

Apparently people reported that the song Louis Louis was obscene so the federal government decided it need to investigate just in case it had to stop down some free speech. But it gets better. Wasting money of fruitless investigations isn’t the only way the FBI has to waste money. Failing to call up other government agencies that could actually solve the investigation immediately is another way it likes to waste money:

Also, as Marc Randazza notes, it took nearly two years for someone in the FBI to think, hey, isn’t the song registered at the Copyright Office down the street? Maybe we should send someone over there to find out what it says? This was after the FBI had reached out to the record label (who gave them the accurate lyrics) along with the original author of the song, Richard Berry, who told them the lyrics.

Government waste comes in many forms and a lot of those forms have to do with enforcing victimless “crimes”. Even if the lyrics of Louie Louie were obscene no crime was committed because offensive lyrics don’t harm anybody.

How to Create an Anarchist

I, like many people, suffer from allergies this time of the year. Of all the allergy medications I’ve taken the only one that has demonstrated any effectiveness is Zyrtec-D. When you’re feeling like death warmed over the last thing you want to do is go through the process of buying Zyrtec-D.

Zyrtec-D is one of those wonderful drugs that contains pseudoephedrine. Pseudoephedrine, in addition to being effective medication, happens to be an ingredient used to make meth. Because the state is determined to fight the unwinnable drug war any medication containing pseudoephedrine is now locked behind the pharmacy counter. In order to buy it you must go up to the counter, which often involves standing in line for some time, and ask for it specifically. Before the pharmacist can give you the medication you must show your ID so it can be logged and sign a waiver that is nothing more than a threat to fine you $250,000 and/or lock you in a cage if you don’t use the medication in a state approved manner. After submitting yourself to that monkey dance you will get a box of 12 measly pills, which means you will have to repeat the entire process in 12 days unless your symptoms vanish. And before you get the crazy idea of heading to another pharmacy to get another box of allergy medication be warned that doing so is against the law. That’s why your ID was logged, after all.

I’m not that old but I still remember a time when I could just walk into the pharmacy, grab several boxes of Zyrtec-D, and be set for the entire allergy season. It was a good time when I wasn’t being punished for “crimes” (quotes used because making meth doesn’t have a victim and is therefore not actually a crime) committed by other people (gotta love the Freest Goddamn Country on Earth’s® collective punishment system).

This entire process really makes me consider buying meth, which is readily available, and converting it back to pseudoephedrine. That would be a lot easier than going through this monkey dance every 12 days.

Croatia Declares War on Liberland

That didn’t take long. Not even two weeks since Liberland declared independence the Croatian government has decided to declare war on the small country by kidnapping its president:

Croatian authorities could not be reached for comment to confirm the arrest of Vít Jedlička, a libertarian politician from the Czech Republic. A group calling itself the Liberland Press Association, which has spoken in the past for Jedlička, made the announcement in a statement emailed to FoxNews.com.

“The president of the self-proclaimed micro-nation of the Free Republic of Liberland, Vít Jedlička, has been arrested by Croatian police for illegally trespassing an international border,” read the statement. “The arrest may have taken place on no man’s land territory. This would raise issues on the Croatian-Serbian border and could start a new crisis in the Balkans.”

What was his crime? Occupying an unclaimed chunk of land apparently. I was kind of curious whether Serbia or Croatia would be the first country to declare war on the small nation. After all, the inhabitants of a 2.7 square-mile piece of unclaimed territory are quite the threat to established nations such as Serbia and Croatia. Perhaps Croatia was concerned its serfs would migrate to the small nation to enjoy the voluntary taxes.

Record Any Police Interactions You Come Across

Many people believe that police departments have only recently become corrupt cesspools. Others believe police departments have always been violent cesspools but pervasive cameras have allowed individuals to raise awareness of the problem. Either way it’s apparently that recording police interactions is absolutely necessary. To this end many departments have started mandating officers to wear body cameras when on duty. Although this could be a nice step in the right direction the two major problems with body cameras is that the officer wearing them can turn them off (and claim it malfunctioned) and the recorded footage remains under the control of the department. Even if every officer in the country wears a body camera I will still advocate what I’m going to advocate in this post: everybody should record every police interaction they come across.

It doesn’t matter if the police are interacting with you or you just happen to come across police interacting with other individuals; if you see cops interacting with people pull out your camera phone and start recording because that’s the only way shit like this gets noticed:

A Minneapolis police officer has been relieved of duty while his department investigates a profanity-laced video in which he apparently threatens to break the legs of a suspect if he attempts to escape.

The March incident was recorded on a camera phone by one of the young men being arrested in south Minneapolis. In the video, the unidentified officer can be heard telling the suspect: “Plain and simple, if you [expletive] with me, I’m gonna break your legs before you get a chance to run.”

Had the young man not recorded the interaction this claim would be nothing more than his word against the officer’s and we know courts tend to side with officers in such cases. The officer may not receive any punishment for his threat of violence, since officers usually get off scot-free, but the public now knows how this officer chooses to interact with people and that can help them better defend themselves against him. Videos like this are also important to raise awareness of the violence inherent in modern policing. Unless there is public outrage the problem will never be fixed and there won’t be public outrage so long as the public can keep lying to itself about the nature of modern policing.

If you come across a police interaction or are being threatened by police yourself make sure you record everything.

Why the Government Sucks at Building Roads

A common phrase you’ll hear amongst libertarian circles is “But without government who will build the roads?!” This phrase is a sarcastic remark meant to poke fun at statists who cannot conceive of an alternative to government transportation infrastructure. While statists continue to claim that government is necessary to build and maintain roads, us libertarians are asking why government roads suck so much.

As I mentioned yesterday, Minnesota has a lot of dilapidated bridges. Anybody who drives the roads around here knows that bridges aren’t the only part of our automobile infrastructure that sucks. Some roads are so full of potholes that I feel as though the off-road package on my Ranger is necessary when traveling on the roads. No tax increases or surpluses seem to change anything. What’s the problem?

The problem is incentives. Statists scoff at the idea of private roads but the fact of the matter is private entities that derive profits from roads have an incentive to maintain those roads. Businessed, for example, want to make it as easy as possible for customers to get to them. Organizations that own highways want to provide motorists the best experience possible so they’ll keep coming back. Governments have no such incentives.

The two biggest problem with government roads are monopolization and mandatory payments. In many states the government maintains a near monopoly on road infrastructure. This is done through regulations that make building roads illegal or prohibitively expensive. Regulations usually take the form of outright bans, building permits, property taxes, arbitrary environmental restrictions, etc. Effectively the state declares a monopoly for itself on any notable infrastructure. If people living in a state need access to roads and don’t like what the state has provided they have no alternatives so there is no concern that users will go elsewhere. Even if users stopped using the roads they’re still required to pay for them. Taxes, after all, aren’t voluntary. Using private roads to get around wouldn’t exempt you from paying the state gas tax when you filled up your tank. Property and sales taxes, which are sometimes used in addition to gas taxes to build infrastructure, are also not optional.

When an alternative can’t exist and you have to pay for something regardless there is no incentive for the provider to make you happy. Motorists weren’t able to go to a different provider when the 35W bridge in Minneapolis collapsed due to government negligence because there were no alternatives. Minnesotans also didn’t receive a discount on their taxes as compensation for being unable to utilize the bridge. In fact Minnesotans were expected to pay more. How’s that for an incentive? If the state government neglected more bridges to the point of collapse it could then demand even more tax money.

There are no shortages of entrepreneurs who want to build roads so the idea that nobody will build them if the government doesn’t is preposterous. The real question is what incentive does the state have to provide motorists with quality infrastructure?

Minnesota’s Bridge Problem

The politicians here in Minnesota have been pushing to raise gas taxes. Thanks to a recently release report on the condition of Minnesota’s bridges [PDF] the politicians have the justification they need to sucker people into accepting the increase. Without the increase in gas taxes, according to the politicians and the people who are stupid enough to believe them, dilapidated bridges won’t receive the repairs they need. But within the report a critical piece of information exists that seems to be getting ignored by the alarmists:

And a staggering 90 percent (750 total) of Minnesota’s 830 deficient bridges are maintained by local entities.

Herein lies the biggest problem. A vast majority of the bridges in need of repair are locally owned and maintained. That means local governments are responsible for raising the funding necessary to repair or replace those bridges. As the report notes the only other option these local entities have is to get down on their knees and beg federal and state governments for consideration in budgets they are unlikely to get:

In MAP-21, the current federal transportation law, Congress reduced access to dedicated funding for the repair of most locally-owned bridges. Although these bridges account for nearly 90 percent of all deficient bridges nationally, all dedicated federal bridge repair money now goes toward the ten percent of deficient bridges on the National Highway System (which do, admittedly, carry far more traffic each day.)

These locally-owned bridges provide essential links, and those who use them also deserve to be safe. Given the budget woes of so many local governments, there is little prospect of reducing the repair backlog absent federal or state assistance. As it stands now, however, these bridges are forced to compete with all other local priorities such as health care and public safety. At the state level, these bridges are often at the mercy of the budgeting process, and unless the state’s overall transportation budget grows through an increase in the gas tax or other funding sources, the condition of these bridges is unlikely to markedly improve in the coming years.

So the federal government only gives money for the maintenance of state-owned bridges and the state seldom provides local entities with assistance to repair or replace bridges. Supposedly increasing gas taxes will net more funding for local entities but I fail to see the logic in that conclusion. Especially when you consider how the state divvies up transportation funding:

In Minnesota, out of the $627 million on average spent annually on road expansion and repair from 2009-2011, only 40 percent ($250 million) went toward repair and maintenance.

The state appears to be more concerned with building new infrastructure than it is with maintaining what already exists. Unless somebody knows of some change in heart that exists at the state level I don’t know why anybody would believe additional gas taxes wouldn’t be used to increase expansion instead of maintenance.

What incentive does the state have to priorities local infrastructure over its own? Given the option of improving your home or your neighbor’s home what would you choose? Most people would choose to improve their own. For some reason people believe that the state is an exception to the self-interest inherent in humanity. It’s not. There is no reason to believe raising gas taxes would provide local governments with funding to improve their decaying bridges. And even if there was an assurance given by the state it could go unfulfilled or the conditions could be changed a year later. The biggest problem with political solutions is that they only last as long as the currently rulers. If the next set of rulers decide the last set’s policies were undesirable they will change them.

Obesity Could Save Lives

Obesity is being treated as a worldwide health epidemic. It makes sense. There is a whole slew of health problems that comes with being overweight. But obesity may very well be the key to saving an untold number of lives. How? By preventing militaries from being properly staffed:

Minnesota kids are too fat to fight.

That’s the message from a group of retired generals and admirals who say the state’s kids are too fat, eat too poorly, and don’t get enough exercise to qualify to join the military.

As part of a nationwide effort, the generals and admirals recommend more physical education classes and better meals in schools and more walking and biking trails in the state’s communities to get kids in fighting trim.

The report, released today, doesn’t pull any punches, even in the title: “Too Fat, Frail, and Out-of-Breath to Fight.”

If a military isn’t properly staffed it can’t go into a bunch of foreign countries and murder their people. Imagine if the United States lacked the personnel to invalid Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and every other country we’ve invaded for no good reason. 1.3 million lives could have potentially been saved [PDF].

As an aside it’s also worth noting the state’s motivation in fighting obesity. It’s not because the state feels as though it should be doing whatever it can to protect the health of its subjects. The only motivation it has in fighting obesity is to ensure it has enough meat for the grinder. Once again the state demonstrates that it doesn’t love you, you’re just a resource for it to use.

Rap Sheets

I haven’t spent any time discussing the death of Freddie Gray. Sadly the rate at which police officers kill people in this country is so high that it’s difficult to cover these incidents without feeling like you’re just repeating what you’ve said a thousand times before. But those wonderful neocons have given me something to sink my teeth in. Their love of “tough on crime” has, once again, lead them to dig up whatever excuse they can find to justify the officers’ actions. To this end they have latched onto Freddie’s rap sheet (read the comments for maximum face palm):

His arrest record includes at least 18 arrests:

March 20, 2015: Possession of a Controlled Dangerous Substance

March 13, 2015: Malicious destruction of property, second-degree assault

January 20, 2015: Fourth-degree burglary, trespassing

January 14, 2015: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute

December 31, 2014: Possession of narcotics with intent to distribute

December 14, 2014: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance

August 31, 2014: Illegal gambling, trespassing

January 25, 2014: Possession of marijuana

September 28, 2013: Distribution of narcotics, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, second-degree assault, second-degree escape

April 13, 2012: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, violation of probation

July 16, 2008: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession with intent to distribute

March 28, 2008: Unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance

March 14, 2008: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to manufacture and distribute

February 11, 2008: Unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance, possession of a controlled dangerous substance

August 29, 2007: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, violation of probation

August 28, 2007: Possession of marijuana

August 23, 2007: False statement to a peace officer, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance

July 16, 2007: Possession of a controlled dangerous substance with intent to distribute, unlawful possession of a controlled dangerous substance (2 counts)

How is this information relevant to the case at hand? It’s not. Except to neocons. They tend to believe that once you’ve been found guilty of a crime, whether it be a real crime or a made up victimless “crime”, anything an officer does to you in the future is justified. Due process, you see, is not a thing neocons hold especially dear.

In their zealous attempt to smear Freddie’s character in order to justify what happened to him the neocons have failed to bring up the rap sheet of the officers who interacted with him. From what I’ve found the only thing Freddie did was run away from a gang of armed men with a history of violence. That’s just common sense. But officers, like dogs, tend to chase anything that runs away from them. When some officers caught up with Freddie they assaulted and then kidnapped him. Why? Because he was in possession of a switchblade, which is one of those victimless “crimes”.

Not only did the officers assault and kidnap Freddie but they almost certainly have a long history of kidnappings, extortion, assault, and armed robbery if not more. Their job description might as well be extort money from the populace and beat or murder anybody who fails to pay their protection money to the state. Freddie’s rap sheet is small potatoes compared to the rap sheet of the average officer “just doing their job.”

If you want to condemn rioters for destroying the property of people who had nothing to do with Freddie’s death that’s fine. But dragging out a dead man’s rap sheet while ignoring his kidnappers’ rap sheets in order to criticize people committing an entirely unrelated crime is not the proper way to make a valid argument.

The United States Doesn’t Have Shit on France When it Comes to Religious Discrimination

The United States has a bad reputation when it comes to religious discrimination. This reputation isn’t undeserved as the country’s new boogeyman is Muslims. But the United States doesn’t have shit on France. France takes religious discrimination to new levels. Where else could wearing a long skirt be considered provocative? Apparently it is in France, at least as long as the skirt is being worn by a Muslim girl:

According to French media reports, a 15-year-old French Muslim girl was banned from her class twice for wearing a skirt that was too long, and therefore supposedly a conspicuous display of religion. France’s state secularism has led to very strict laws prohibiting students from wearing overtly religious symbols in institutions of education.

The student, identified as Sarah, already apparently removed her headscarf before entering the school, in accordance with French law. But her long skirt was deemed a “provocation,” and potential act of protest.

If a skirt is too short the poor girl would have probably been sent home for being sexually provocative. I guess the French policy regarding skirts is now that they must all be below the knee and above the knee. Unless the student is Christian, of course. Then I’m sure a skirt can be a long as the wearer wants without any issue.

Rubber-Hose Cryptanalysis is Effective

I’m a big privacy advocate, which means I urge people to encrypt their hard drives (amongst many other things). This protects your data from a thief who has stolen your device, snoopy significant others, and law enforcement agents trying to dig up a reason to throw you in a cage for the remainder of your life. But encryption isn’t perfect. Rubber-hose cryptanalysis is effect. What that means is that officers, thanks to their magical liability shields, can bypass your encryption by threatening or actually using violence against your person:

After a few hours of this, which involved an attempt to lure one of Cascioli’s suppliers to his building, the officers focused on Cascioli’s Palm Pilot, which they (correctly) believed contained the information they wanted. But Cascioli wouldn’t provide the password. He claims that police then tried to extract the password through intimidation.

Cascioli says [Officer Thomas] Liciardello asked him a question: “Have you ever seen Training Day?”

When Cascioli said yes, Cascioli says Liciardello looked him in the eyes and said: “This is Training Day for f—ing real,” and then instructed officers Norman and Jeffrey Walker to take him to the balcony.

According to Cascioli and the indictment, Liciardello told them to “do whatever they had to do to get the password.”

Out on the balcony, Cascioli says officers Norman and Walker lifted him up by each arm and leaned him over the balcony railing.

In his testimony at trial this month, Cascioli provided more details, under oath, about what happened that night. The Palm Pilot, he said, contained records on his $400,000 stash, which he had split for safekeeping between the home of his brother and the home of a friend. When the cops allegedly took him out to the balcony, Cascioli said he truly feared for his life.

“They started to lift me a little,” he said. “My feet were off the ground.”

He said he was afraid. “I thought they were going to drop me” over the railing. Cascioli said he then gave up his password.

As a side note it’s worth bringing up that no Palm Pilot ever supported storage encryption so the most Cascioli’s device could have had was a password that could be easily bypassed by plugging the device into a computer and syncing all of the data (which copies the data from the Palm Pilot to the computer). But that really has nothing to do with the case at hand.

What is important here is threat modeling. Police rarely suffer consequences for using excessive force or even committing murder. That makes them more likely to use rubber-hose cryptanalysis. Fortunately encrypted drives are usually easy to erase because only the decryption keys need to be wiped out. If you really want to keep your information secret it would be wise to begin formatting your computer and mobile device upon confirming police are trying to gain entry into your dwelling. Otherwise you’re at the mercy of the court, which will tend to side with the police, to throw out any condemning evidence (and there will always be condemning evidence since everything is illegal these days).