Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

The Death of Due Process

Our legal system is one where a person must be found guilty of a crime by a jury before punishment can be exacted. Well that was the idea at least, the reality is a bit different through. For example thanks to various legislation passed shortly after 9/11 you can be arrested and detained indefinably so long as the state labels you a terrorist. Apparently some “representatives” decided this was a good idea and put some provisions in the The Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011 that would strip the second amendment rights of anybody arrest of a drug crime, regardless of whether or not they were actually convicted:

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Sponsored by New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer and introduced earlier this month, the expanded background checks bill includes a “clarification of the definition of drug abusers and drug addicts who are prohibited from possessing firearms.” Under Schumer’s bill, the definition of a “drug abuser” would include anyone with “an arrest for the use or possession of a controlled substance within the past 5 years.”

But the “arrest” language of Schumer’s bill and a clarification from the ATF indicate that a greater number of innocent Americans would be barred from owning a gun if the Senate bill becomes law.

“Under the definition of ‘unlawful user’ … an inference of current use could be drawn if the one arrest resulted in a conviction for use or possession of a controlled substance within the past year,” the ATF told the The Daily Caller.

To clear up any confusion, Schumer’s bill would expand that “inference” to say: if you’ve ever been arrested for any kind of drug use or possession in the past five year, you can be denied the lawful possession of a firearm.

Obviously Schumer is an asshole but I’ve already said that several times on this blog. People who’ve read this blog long enough know I’m against continued punishment after your initial sentence has been carried out. What I mean to say is I’m against the stripping of somebody’s rights after they’ve served their prison sentence. Punishments should fit crimes and being stripped of the best means of self-defense does not fit using marijuana.

Drug use in of itself isn’t violent and permanently taking somebody’s right to keep and bear arms is flimsy even for violent crimes. There is absolutely no justification for taking somebody’s right of self-defense if they’ve committed a non-violent crime. But what lacks any justification whatsoever is taking somebody’s second amendment right because they were arrested for a crime but not convicted. You’re not supposed to be able to punish somebody for a crime they haven’t been proven beyond a reasonable doubt of committing.

This amendment would be completely open for police abuse. What happens if a sheriff in a shall-issue state doesn’t want to issue permits because he doesn’t believe citizens are as good as he is? Well you simply arrest them for a drug charge and release them. There you go that person is now no longer able to get a permit and the sheriff gets to continue his monopoly on the use of violence in all situations.

Can Anybody Say Conflict of Interest

There has been a lawsuit going on between i4i and Microsoft over a claimed patent involving XML editing. Microsoft started using XML as the basis for their Office document file formats partially due to urges by world governments for a more open format. That last sentence has no bearing on this story, I just like pointing out irony.

The lawsuit has finally reached the Supreme Court where Microsoft will argue to the federal court against i4i. Unfortunately for Microsoft the government has failed an amicus brief against them:

The U.S. government is backing i4i in its case against Microsoft that the Supreme Court is expected to hear in April.

Acting Solicitor General Neal Kumar Katyal filed an amicus brief supporting a U.S. Court of Appeal decision and i4i’s position on Friday. The brief represents the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

This is a major argument I have against the court systems in this country, they are loaded with conflict of interest. Ultimately the Supreme Court represents the federal government thus having other agencies of the federal government file amicus briefs creates a conflict of interest. That’s not to say the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled against federal legislation in the past, they certainly have, but the potential exists.

The Supreme Court shouldn’t have been made as an arm of the federal government but instead as a completely separate entity. If i4i wins this case a claim of conflict of interest would be valid but alas could not be appealed. It certainly becomes an interesting scenario when you think about it.

Priorities

With the spiraling deficit looking to cause a massive economic catastrophe it’s nice to see our “representatives” can find time out of their busy schedule to deal with the most important issues:

Four U.S. senators Tuesday called on Apple to yank iPhone and iPad apps that help drunken drivers evade police, saying the programs are “harmful to public safety.”

Sens. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Charles Schumer (D-NY), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) and Tom Udall (D-NM) asked Scott Forstall, the head of Apple’s iPhone software group, to pull an unspecified number of apps from the company’s App Store. The senators also made similar requests of Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and Research in Motion’s (RIM) co-CEOs, James Balsillie and Michael Lazaridis.

Yup instead of dealing with real issues they’re taking time whining about applications available for phones. Do we even know if these applications work? Has a drunk driver been able to evade arrest because of this application? These things should be answered before time paid for by tax payers is taken up by “representatives” to bitch about such applications.

I guess these “representatives” will also have to go after the police as they often advertise these checkpoints:

“Many police departments promote or advertise DUI [driving under the influence] crackdowns through the media as PSAs or through PR,” Scott said. “We are just taking it a bit further and pushing the info to drivers through GPS and smart phone technology. The idea is to deter drivers from drinking and driving. When drivers get alerts for DUI checkpoints on their smart phones and GPS, they will think twice about drinking and driving.”

Your Tax Dollars at Work Illegally Experimenting on American Citizens

I came across a really interesting article on Wikipedia titled Unethical Human Experimentation in the United States. Many of these experiments were government initiated and funded which is rather frightening.

A couple of the most interesting reads are the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment and Project MKULTRA (which isn’t just some conspiracy theorist malarkey, but an actual series of CIA experiments that later lead to a congressional hearing). It’s worth taking some time out of your day and reading through these because some of them are almost unbelievable.

The Raw Milk Battle Wages On

There has been a rather interesting although little know battle taking place in the state of Minnesota. The battle is over raw milk which is legal to sell in this state so long as some guidelines are followed. One of the problems, as pointed out by Nathan Hansen, is the fact the guidelines are fucking ridiculous. I think the most messed up one is the following:

4) Consumer must bring their own bottling materials. Forget about buying a nice jug of milk from an already inspected bottling facility. Bring your own jug, bring a bucket, bring your oil pan, bring your cat litter pan, all of these are acceptable over the dreaded farmer bottling the milk.

I’ve never understood what right a state has to tell you what you can and can’t put into your body. When somebody else is able to determine what you do with yourself you can no longer lay claim to self-ownership. If I wish to consume raw milk that’s my business, if I choose not to that is also my business. By coming in and trying to do everything by ban the sale of raw milk the state is laying claim to you as a consumer. They are claiming that you’re too stupid to make your own decisions and thus need somebody to step in on your behalf and tell you what you can and can’t do.

If a farmer wants to sell raw milk they should be allowed to. If you want to consume raw milk you should be allowed to. If you want to consume raw milk and a farmer wants to sell it the two of you should be allowed to make a voluntary transaction that is mutually beneficial.

Let’s Piss Them Off More

How can we piss off a nation we’re not technically at war with even more? By sending drones into their country to kill their people. It seems Pakistan is pretty pissed about the 40 people will killed in a drone attack and not surprisingly have vowed revenge. If I were a leader in a country where unmanned drones were be flown in to kill my people I’d be wanting revenge as well.

So who were the 40 people we killed? Obviously top officials in terrorist organizations right? Not exactly:

Thursday’s attack has caused fury – most of the dead were tribal elders and police attending an open-air meeting.

Yup the United States fucked up and that fuck up killed innocent people. That’s a great way of bolstering foreign relations if I’ve ever seen one. When people say the Middle East hates us because of our freedom they’re wrong, they hate us because of shit like this.

Granting Government Privileges to Unions

It appears the state of Illinois has determined people who are members of a union are somehow safer with firearms. As Thirdpower at Days of our Trailers points out there is an exemption in the Illinois carry bill allowing union workers to ignore ‘No Guns’ signs.

This seems like an odd exemption. There really exists no justifiable reason why union works could gain an exemption while non-union workers can’t. I guess union works are just better then the rest of us.

If You Don’t Like the Law Just Reinterpret It

Oh look yet another instance of a government department not liking the power granted to it and thus have reinterpreted a law to give themselves more power:

The letter says federal officials have reinterpreted the civil-rights laws that require school principals to curb physical bullying, as well as racist and sexist speech, that take place within school boundaries. Under the new interpretation, principals and their schools are legally liable if they fail to curb “harassment” of students, even if it takes place outside the school, on Facebook or in private conversation among a few youths.

Now civil action can be taken against school principals if they fail to stop physical attacks and monitor the actions of every student even when they’re not at school:

Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students.

Freedom of speech has been dead in public schools since… well since I was going to one. Will the Education Department soon require two way viewers in every home to monitor students just in case they’re “bullying” somebody online?

Not only do rulings like this destroy the concept of free speech but they also cause students to depend on outside help for everything. If somebody is bullying a student that student should have the right to fight back. Instead they are told to basically shut up and take it and after they’ve gotten their ass kicked they’re suppose to go talk to somebody in “authority.” Strangely enough the school is a government entity and acts as such because when a student reports a bully nothing is likely to happen. OK maybe the bully will get detention for a couple of days but they certainly aren’t going to learn a lesson.

Now that I’m thinking about it public schools works very much like the rest of our society. We’re told to depend on the state for protection and the state fails to offer protection. If somebody does something wrong they’re isolated for others for a short period of time with no other form of punishment. Should one of us defend ourselves we potentially get into trouble. Fuck, now I see where the victim mentality comes from in our society.

Here’s the thing if you’re a student at a school and somebody wants to beat the shit out of you fight back. Self-defense is a natural right afforded all human beings. If the bully is larger balance out the disparity of force with a good old threat-based weapon (for instance smashing somebody in the fact with a text book does some good damage). Nobody needs to submit to the violence of another regardless of what is taught in schools.

I’ll also say if you are cause true psychological trauma by things posted about you online man the fuck up. Words are words and can only cause the amount of harm you allow them. When somebody says something hurtful to you then it’s time for a witty comeback. I usually challenge a person’s cognitive capabilities myself and try to do so using old English but there are many means of doing this. Either way words can’t hurt you. If somebody is spreading lies or slander about you then it’s time to look into civil action. But asking the school officials for help isn’t going to accomplish anything because they’re in the interesting position of being unable to discipline unruly children while being tasked with disciplining unruly children.

United States Inflation Rate Increases

Anybody familiar with economics (real Austrian economics not that idiotic idea put for by Keynesian) will tell you printing money leads to inflation. Surprisingly many people don’t realize that the United States is no longer using a commodity backed money and instead gave authorization to a private entity (the Federal Reserve is a private entity, not a government entity as the name would imply) to print our money. During this economic downfall the Federal Reserve has been printing up a shit ton of money and not surprisingly it’s leading to an increased rate in inflation.

The inflation rate in the United States has rose 0.5% in February alone. 0.5% may not seem like a lot but it is when you realize this was in one month. The rate of inflation effects the price of all consumer goods. Some consumer goods have rising faster including food and fuel:

Food price inflation was a key driver of the increase. Food costs went up by 0.6% month-on-month, the most in two-and-a-half years.

Petrol prices rose even faster, up 4.7%. But apart from those two categories, price rises were more muted.

Fiat currencies are a bad idea and this demonstrates why. There is no control over how much fiat currency can be pumped into a system and the more that gets pumped in the more inflation occurs. Commodity based money on the other hand has a method of control, the commodity. There is good reason why Austrian economists promote reestablishing a gold standard; gold was a commodity chosen by the market to serve as money. Gold is fairly difficult to obtain so its value stays relatively stable (unless you’re buying it with constantly inflating fiat currency). Its also a self-regulating currency which restricts the spending of government (and regular people to) since any entity they borrow to can demand their debt be repaid immediately in gold. With this threat looming the government can only afford to borrow as much money as they have gold to back.

If you have any interest in commodity based money a great read on the subject is The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar by Murray Rothbard. I’d also recommend reading another title by Rothbard, What Has Government Done to Our Money. These two reads (both freely available at the linked locations) do a marvelous job of explaining commodity based money and the reason its needed. The titles also talk about the history of monetary policy in the United States which is probably the best argument for the return to the gold standard there is.