Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

The Only Prison for Libertarians is On the Right

As a libertarian one of the things that greatly amuses me is how elements on both the “left” and “right” sides of the political spectrum attempt to court us. One minute we’re an ineffective minority of extremists and the next we’re supposed to have a lot of common ground with whatever side is trying to appeal to us.

One of the more entertaining articles that tries to court libertarians to the “right” is this fine piece. You know the article is going to be a doozy when it starts with “The talented National Review writer Charles C.W. Cooke…” If there’s are two things that don’t go together it’s talent and the National Review. The laughs don’t stop there. The author, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, claims:

The political calculus for libertarians is relatively straightforward: They are a small minority — albeit an influential one — and are not completely at home in either party, but can get a lot done if they ally with one in particular.

See, when we’re being courted we’re influential! Gobry’s assertion that libertarians could get a lot done if they allied with one of the two major parties is particularly funny. A lot of libertarians decided to do exactly this and jumped onto the Republican Party ship only to get kicked off and boarded by many unsavory scoundrels. During this libertarian expedition they were told how valuable their views were and how they were welcomed with open arms. Then the Republican National Convention started getting closer and it appeared the libertarians captured a sizable number of seats in several states. This forced the Republican Party to show its true nature and it threatened to banish Nevada’s delegates if too many were going to vote for Ron Paul, had Ron Paul supporters arrested in Louisiana, and prohibited Ron Paul supporters in Maine from participation by forcing them to sign an oath of loyalty to Romney. As a final blow the Republican Party moved to change the rules to dissuade libertarians within the party from participating and even went so far as to hold up one state’s delegates to prevent them from hindering the rule change. Needless to say participating in the Republican Party didn’t do jack shit for libertarianism.

The article then makes the best argument against libertarians participating in either major party’s political process:

And self-delusion it was: On every issue of importance, the left has betrayed libertarians (if “betrayed” is the right word, given that they never actually bothered to promise them anything). Obama’s treatment of the Constitution has been as roughshod as any of his predecessor’s.

Saying Obama’s treatment of the Constitution, which libertarians are supposedly upholders of according to the author, was as roughshod as Bush’s really drives the point home that both parties give no fucks about any supposed restrictions to their powers. If both Republicans and Democrats are doing the same thing then why should libertarians support either of them? Here’s where the real laughs come in:

The reason why liberaltarianism was always doomed to fail is because, at the end of the day, progressivism is an all-encompassing ideology. And while libertarians won’t agree with conservatives on everything, the two can certainly agree on a lot, because of a key bedrock principle of libertarianism that is shared with conservatives but not progressives: the importance of localism.

Holy hell, that’s rich! Conservatives recognize the importance of localism? Is that whey the Republican Party is always pushing for national laws prohibiting same-sex marriages? Is that why they’re looking to replace the Affordable Care Act with another national healthcare scheme? Is that why they’re constantly supporting drug prohibitions on a national level? Is that why they’re always arguing that we need to keep “illegals” out of this country instead of allowing each border state to decide what it wants to do for itself? Conservatives lost the right to claim they supported local politics long ago. But the best laugh was saved for last:

It is exactly this sort of ideological, moralistic progressive urge that makes progressivism and libertarianism like oil and water and makes the conservative movement the natural home of libertarians. At the end of the day, an alliance with the conservative movement is the only plausible way for libertarians to effect meaningful political change in America.

According to Gobry the natural home for libertarians is an abusive one because, as I pointed out above, libertarians were living in that home and were beaten harshly for it. I think the biggest joke of this article though is implying libertarians want to effect political change. While some libertarians certainly do I am not one of them. I am part of the branch of libertarianism that wants to eliminate the state entirely. My goal, and those who share my goal, don’t want to put the right people in power, we want to remove everybody from power. In my opinion libertarianism’s natural home is in counter-economics. That’s because counter-economics allow individuals to act on their own accord and not as part of some political collective. Individualism is at the core of libertarianism so any collectivist strategy is going to be a poor fit.

The True Nature of Sanctions

For decades the United States government has been utilizing sanctions against nations that it doesn’t like. We’re told that sanctions are a humane alternative to war. The thinking goes that the lives of the people of the target nation will be made so miserable that they will rise up and overthrow their government.

First it must be pointed out that sanctions are an attack against the people of a nation, not the government. It must also be pointed out that sanctions assume the population of a nation or complete fucking idiots.

I believe the first point doesn’t receive enough acknowledgement. Sanctions prohibit the people of a nation from accessing goods and services. These goods and services can range from medical and sanitation supplies to banking services. Prohibiting access to medical and sanitation supplies results in a predictable outcome. But even prohibiting access to foreign banking services has a major toll. Notable funds kept outside of a target nation often aren’t taxed by that nation. When sanctions are placed on banking services that forces people of a target nation to keep their money inside of the country and that allows the target government to collect taxes and further enrich itself.

Sanctions also assume that the people of a target nation are idiots. Imagine you’re living in a small nation that has recently had sanctions placed on it that prohibit the importation of medical supplies. Your child becomes severely ill and dies because you cannot access the medical supplies necessary to cure them. Are you more likely to be pissed off at your government or the foreign government that prevented you from accessing the medical supplies your child needed? If you’re capable of any critical thinking whatsoever your anger will be directed at the foreign nation. And therein lies the problem with sanctions, they tend to further strengthen the target nation’s government because it gives them an enemy to point at and blame all of their nation’s problems on.

So one is left to wonder why governments use nations. I think the real reason they do is because the politicians of those countries have a psychopathic need to attack people of a target nation for being foreigners. This day and age it’s not acceptable to firebomb a city because it causes civilian casualties. Therefore other tools must be used to attack those civilians and sanctions are that generally accepted tools. This is something we should all consider whenever we hear about the United States government issuing new sanctions against countries it doesn’t like. When it does that it’s not attacking the government it doesn’t like but the people being stomped by that government’s boot. It’s cowardly to say the least.

My Offer to Denizens of Oklahoma

Republicans in Oklahoma, like Republicans in a lot of other states, know the source of this country’s woes. It’s not a dying economy or the perpetual state of war, it’s homosexuals. To fight against this scourge they have been busy trying to get amendments to state constitutions prohibiting same-sex marriages. They’ve also been busy rewriting marriage laws when they fail to prohibit same-sex marriage hard enough. In Oklahoma they are trying to ban the recognition any secular marriage certificates:

House Bill 1125, sponsored by Republican State Representative Todd Russ, is a radical measure that would end secular marriage licenses in the state. In addition, the bill would bar all judges and other secular officials from performing marriages in Oklahoma.

[…]

Under the legislation, atheists and others not wanting to be married by a religious official could file an affidavit through the court clerk’s office claiming a common-law marriage.

But there’s a flaw in this plan. I happen to be a Discordian pope and one of my official pope powers is to create new popes. I hereby offer to make anybody living* in Oklahoma an official pope so they can issue marriage certificates. Since they would be popes they would also be able to define what sorts of marriages they would be willing to recognized.

* Any Discordian knows this is a unnecessary offer since every man, woman, and child is already a pope.

What Happens When You Densely Populate a Desert

Things aren’t looking good for California. Not surprisingly for a desert water is in short supply. Unlike most deserts California happens to be very densely populated, which has lead to a major crisis:

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.

Assuming this estimate is accurate California is in for some very bad times. So what’s to be done? Let’s ask the statist that wrote this article:

Several steps need be taken right now. First, immediate mandatory water rationing should be authorized across all of the state’s water sectors, from domestic and municipal through agricultural and industrial. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California is already considering water rationing by the summer unless conditions improve. There is no need for the rest of the state to hesitate. The public is ready. A recent Field Poll showed that 94% of Californians surveyed believe that the drought is serious, and that one-third support mandatory rationing.

Second, the implementation of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 should be accelerated. The law requires the formation of numerous, regional groundwater sustainability agencies by 2017. Then each agency must adopt a plan by 2022 and “achieve sustainability” 20 years after that. At that pace, it will be nearly 30 years before we even know what is working. By then, there may be no groundwater left to sustain.

Third, the state needs a task force of thought leaders that starts, right now, brainstorming to lay the groundwork for long-term water management strategies. Although several state task forces have been formed in response to the drought, none is focused on solving the long-term needs of a drought-prone, perennially water-stressed California.

Not surprisingly the statist’s answer is stupid. Rationing, making new agencies, and establishing a task force isn’t going to accomplish jack shit. The problem is that California, at least the southern portion of the state, is a desert. Since the state decided to declare a monopoly on water rights in the region it ignored the very real fact that deserts are not the greatest places to pack a lot of people and agriculture into. Now California is densely populated and a major agricultural state. The only thing surprising about this fiasco is that it didn’t enter a critical level like this sooner.

So I return to the original question, what’s to be done. Fixing this problem isn’t feasible with central planning so the only viable answer is to remove the state from water rights and management and allow the market to do its thing. I would predict doing this would increase the cost of water in California dramatically and therefore encourage people and agriculture to move elsewhere. This is likely the only long-term solution for California’s water shortage but people don’t want to hear it because they prefer the fairytale that statism has been telling them, which is any economic rules can be nullified so long as enough people vote hard enough.

Venezuela Going Full Dictatorship

It was bound to happen. As the failure of centrally planned economics wrecks the lives of Venezuelans and the United States places more sanctions on the country to make those miserable wretches even more miserable somebody was going to demand absolute power in the name of fixing everything. That demand was made by the country’s president, Nicolas Maduro, and was granted:

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been granted the power to govern by decree until 31 December.

The measure was approved by the National Assembly, where Mr Maduro has a majority.

He requested the approval of the Enabling Law after the United States issued new sanctions against Venezuelan officials.

The opposition says he is using the incident to amass power and divert attention from the economic crisis.

Mr Maduro said he needed the special powers to deal with the threat posed by the United States, which he accuses of meddling in Venezuela’s affairs.

The opposition, that is to say the members of the National Assembly who aren’t completely ignorant of history, called it. Maduro is just exploiting a horrible situation to amass power. This is the exactly same playbook used by a million despots before him and will likely continue to be successful in the foreseeable future. What can Venezuela expect? It depends on how drunk with power Maduro gets. In the best case scenario little changes and his power to rule by decree goes away at the end of the year. But the worst case, which is also the more commonly case, involved his opponents all dying and his ability to rule by decree lasting indefinitely.

I really hate to see the lives of so many people become as miserable as the Venezuelans have. But our species seems entirely unwilling to learn from the mistakes of centrally planned failures. Even when we get reminders such as Venezuela the common reaction seems to be blaming the entire mess on not enough centralized power being wielded.

Story of the Week

The ultimate story of statism run amok occurred in China this week when the country’s government decided that the Dalai Lama can’t choose to not reincarnate without government approval:

Party functionaries were incensed by the exiled Dalai Lama’s recent speculation that he might end his spiritual lineage and not reincarnate. That would confound the Chinese government’s plans to engineer a succession that would produce a putative 15th Dalai Lama who accepts China’s presence and policies in Tibet. Their anger welled up on Wednesday, as it had a day earlier.

Zhu Weiqun, a Communist Party official who has long dealt with Tibetan issues, told reporters in Beijing on Wednesday that the Dalai Lama had, essentially, no say over whether he was reincarnated. That was ultimately for the Chinese government to decide, he said, according to a transcript of his comments on the website of People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper.

“Decision-making power over the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, and over the end or survival of this lineage, resides in the central government of China,” said Mr. Zhu, formerly a deputy head of the United Front Department of the Communist Party, which oversees dealings with religious and other nonparty groups. He now leads the ethnic and religious affairs committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body that meets at the same time as the Legislature, or National People’s Congress.

There’s nothing I can add to this story. It’s so ridiculous it stands entirely on it own.

This is What Happens When Officers Can Turn Off Body Cameras

Advocates of police accountability have been arguing that police officers should be required to wear body cameras while on duty. Although there was some resistance to this idea from police apologists that has mostly faded. Many of them are now on board with the idea because they understand that body cameras can collect evidence to prosecute more people and that officers and disable the cameras when they’re about to beat somebody down. That second part is important because it will render any of the benefits of body cameras useless. What we can expect in the future is what Denver is experiencing now:

As the nation’s policing agents scramble to provide street officers with body cameras, a new study released Wednesday shows that a majority of use-of-force incidents weren’t captured by Denver police officers who are piloting use of the technology.

There were a host of reasons for officers failing to turn on the body worn cameras (BWCs) in violation of Denver Police Department policy. According to an independent police monitor’s report, which surveyed the six months ending in December, only 26 percent of the use-of-force incidents in the studied policing district were captured on video.

If officers can disable their body cameras without consequence then any benefits of mandating body cameras, at least as far as the people are concerned, go out the window. Unless officers are punished, and by that I mean charged with a crime, for disabling their body cameras while on duty the only purpose those fancy devices will serve is to collect evidence to prosecute people.

Body cameras along won’t hold officers accountable. There also needs to be policies that will result in officer being fired, fined, and opened up to lawsuits if they disabled their cameras. I believe arguments could even be made for jailing an officer who disables his body camera during a use of force incident (in which case I would argue that doing so would effectively be an admittance of guilt in a court hearing unless evidence of non-officer related failure could be shown).

Tom Cotton Hates Due Process

Is the Republican Party holding some kind of contest to see who can make the biggest public display of asshattery? If it is it seems like Tom Cotton isn’t holding back. While his supporters have been busy touting him as a hero and fighter for liberty due to his military service as it turns out he isn’t a fan of liberty. In fact Cotton appears to be a rather big fan of torture without so much as a trail:

WASHINGTON — Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Monday said the U.S. should be “proud” of how it treats the “savages” it detains at the Guantanamo Bay military prison.

“Terrorists need no excuse to attack us here. They’ve shown that for decades and decades,” Cotton said on Fox News’ “The Kelly File.” “We should be proud for the way we treated these savages at Guantanamo Bay and the way our soldiers conduct themselves all around the world to include the people doing the very hard work at Guantanamo Bay.”

Let me translate what he said into layman’s terms:

Individuals who have been suspected of terrorism, sometimes on as little evidence as owning a specific wristwatch, need no due process. We should be proud of the way we’ve tortured these human beings at Guantanamo Bay without so much as a trail to establish their guilt. Our pride for our soldiers’ conduct around the world should be unconditional. Just because a soldier has been complicit in war crimes doesn’t mean we can’t take pride in their actions!

That’s what Cotton said and it’s a terrible statement that could make him a shoo-in for any contest of asshattery. Needless to say anybody who supports this fuckwit from here on out cannot be taken seriously if they claim to be a supporter of liberty. Due process is necessary for liberty to exist. Without establishing guilt beyond a reasonable doubt there is no way to justify, at least in a free society, the imposition of punishment.

The President’s Negotiations with Iran

The big controversy this week, besides Hillary Clinton running her own e-mail server, is the president’s negotiations with Iran. That’s right, the president is negotiating with terrorists!

Not only did Reagan deal with terrorists as president, as revealed in the Iran-Contra scandal, the preponderance of evidence now supports the charge that his campaign negotiated with Iranian hostage-takers while he was running for president in 1980, to delay the release of hostages before the election, which could have helped Carter win reelection — what was known as “The October Surprise.” Given that Reagan wasn’t president then, but was negotiating to thwart a president’s attempt to get hostages released, this is not simply questionable behavior, it is arguably an act of treason. Democrats’ reluctance to vigorously investigate Reagan’s misdeeds — the exact opposite of GOP attitudes toward Clinton and Obama — has left much of the true story still shrouded in mystery, but what we do know is damning enough in itself, and still cries out for a truly thorough investigation.

Oops. Wrong decade and wrong party. My bad. As I said yesterday, this entire debate has nothing to do with ideology or stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. The Republicans are butthurt over the possibility of President Obama successfully negotiating an anti-nuclear deal with Iran because it would be a feather in the Democratic Party’s hat. Historically the Republican’s darling child, Ronald Reagan (queue a chorus of angels singing as that seems to happen whenever a Republican mentions Reagan’s name), negotiated not only with Iran but with Iranian hostage-takers. In the end he also armed them as part of the Contra deal. So you’ll have to excuse me if I don’t find the Republican’s sudden outrage at Obama’s negotiations convincing. The only thing they’re upset about is that one of their guys isn’t negotiating the deal (which is probably good since the last time one of their guys negotiated with Iran it ended in the United States supply weapons to the country).

Bloomington City Attorney Wanted to Prosecute Mall of American Employees Who Supported December’s Protesters

There was a major protest inside the Mall of America in December. Since then the authorities have been working hard to find ways to punish the protesters and that has resulted in some ridiculous charges. But it seems that the Bloomington City Attorney wasn’t satisfied with only charging a handful of protesters. She wanted to punish the employees at the Mall of America who showed support for the protesters:

Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson said the emails “appear to be valid” after they were posted on Facebook Monday by Black Lives Matter Minneapolis. The group said it obtained the emails through a public records request.

The December emails show the city attorney and Mall of America Corporate Counsel Kathleen Allen weighing trespassing orders and civil charges to deter further unsanctioned demonstrations. In one, Allen says the mall’s owners did not want trespassing orders against Lush employees who showed support for the protest, citing “the potential for further press.”

Johnson argued for a six-month ban from the mall for employees (with an exception allowing access to work at the store) in order to “send a good message to all persons employed at MOA. … Future demonstrations cannot be tolerated.”

This shows that these charges have nothing to do with the law. Under the law the protesters, at most, may have been guilty of trespassing (depending on whether or not you believe a mall that receives massive amounts of tax payer subsidies qualifies as private property). Any working employee wasn’t trespassing since it was their job to be there. If their employer felt those employees had violated any policies it could fire them but there was absolutely no reason for the Bloomington City Attorney to even suggest going after them.

What these charges amount to is petty vengeance. The Bloomington City Attorney is pissed that people decided to ignore her employer’s authority and protest in the Mall of America after being told not to. In the e-mail she said she wanted to “send a good message to all persons employed at MOA.” that future protests will not be tolerated in any way. Putting that statement into plain English she wanted to send a message to all of the serfs at the Mall of America that any disobedience against their lords will be punished swiftly.

She should be fired immediately.