Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

Remember All Those Saved and/or Created Jobs

I wonder where the Hell all those jobs that were saved and/or created by the stimulus bills. Apparently those jobs are hidden in some dark corner because this country keeps shedding jobs. For the fourth month in a row this country has lost more jobs. When will we finally admit that this whole idea of a regulated economy and Keynesian economics doesn’t work?

I Thought 1984 was 26 Years Ago

A student found a rather interesting thing attached to his car a short while back, an FBI GPS tracking device. Of course being a smart guy he posted photos of it online. Well it seems the FBI wants their stuff back:

It took just 48 hours to find out: The device was real, the student was being secretly tracked and the FBI wanted their expensive device back, the student told Wired.com in an interview Wednesday.

The answer came when half-a-dozen FBI agents and police officers appeared at Yasir Afifi’s apartment complex in Santa Clara, California, on Tuesday demanding he return the device.

You know the second I found it I would have destroyed it and claimed I didn’t know it was federal property. “What? It was an FBI tracking device? Oh, I’m sorry I destroyed it as it was attached to my vehicle and I had no idea what it was. Maybe you should leave a phone number to contact on them or something.” I also love how the FBI confirmed everything by not saying anything

An FBI spokesman wouldn’t acknowledge that the device belonged to the agency or that agents appeared at Afifi’s house.

“I can’t really tell you much about it, because it’s still an ongoing investigation,” said spokesman Pete Lee, who works in the agency’s San Francisco headquarters.

So it’s an ongoing investigation meaning… there’s an investigation into this guy.

If you find anything attached to your vehicle that you didn’t specifically put there I recommend that item’s destruction.

This Could Mean Two Things

No surprise to anybody here, Rahm Emanuel has announced that he’s going to run for the mayor of Chicago. Due to the mob mentality in that city he’s pretty much guaranteed to win. This really could mean two things. First Chicago is going to stay the cesspool that it currently is and its denizens’ right to keep and bear arms will continue to go ignored. It also means the work environment at the White House must have really turned to shit. Think about it, mayor of any city is a damn side lower position than being the White House Chief of Staff. Things must be pretty week at the home of the Obamessiah.

If You’ve Got Nothing to Hide

Recently the Obama administration has been trying to require all Internet communication companies such as Skype to place back doors into their protocols. These back doors are to be used for law enforcement personnel to eavesdrop on conversations. Obviously the standard mantra of our government is, “if you’ve got nothing to hide you shouldn’t be worried.”

Well there is another danger in placing back doors into communication software as Bruce Schneier brings up:

These laws are dangerous, both for citizens of countries like China and citizens of Western democracies. Forcing companies to redesign their communications products and services to facilitate government eavesdropping reduces privacy and liberty; that’s obvious. But the laws also make us less safe. Communications systems that have no inherent eavesdropping capabilities are more secure than systems with those capabilities built in.

Any surveillance system invites both criminal appropriation and government abuse. Function creep is the most obvious abuse: New police powers, enacted to fight terrorism, are already used in situations of conventional nonterrorist crime. Internet surveillance and control will be no different.

Official misuses are bad enough, but the unofficial uses are far more worrisome. An infrastructure conducive to surveillance and control invites surveillance and control, both by the people you expect and the people you don’t. Any surveillance and control system must itself be secured, and we’re not very good at that. Why does anyone think that only authorized law enforcement will mine collected internet data or eavesdrop on Skype and IM conversations?

Any lock can be bypasses. The best option is to have the fewest doors possible. Ideally you have no doors to enter at all. By requiring yet another door our government is purposely requiring these protocols to be less secure. Of course this law is meant to protect them (government) not us so they don’t care.

Richest 1% of Americans

There is a lot of talk about how we need to increase taxes for the richest Americans. People spout lines about how the rich need to pay “their fair share.” What these people never do is actually look into how much the richest Americans pay in taxes. Solely because I like to rain on peoples’ parades I looked into the matter.

I’ve discovered that the richest 1% of Americans pay 40% of the federal income tax. That means of all the money stolen by the government via income tax 1% of Americans pay 40% of it. In dollars that means the top 1% pay more than the lowest 95%.

Here’s the raw data on the percentage of income taxes per income bracket. I’d say the top 1% are already paying their “fair share” and then some. Maybe instead of looking to gouge these people which gives them cause to consider moving somewhere else (and remember these rich people generally own companies that employ a lot of people) our government should look at reducing the amount of money they spent. I’ll help them out here.

First and foremost bring our overseas troops back home. Our spending on national offense defense is a huge majority of our spending. Cancel all government approved bailouts, if a company is facing bankruptcy they did something wrong and their assets could be sold off to small start up companies who actually have good ideas. Eliminate welfare and social security, we can plan for our retirements better than the government. Disband some of the hundreds of federal agencies because frankly we don’t need an agency that exists only to ensure taxes and regulations on alcohol, tobacco, and firearms are followed. Hell if the government follows my ideas we won’t even need a federal income tax to make ends meet.

My Problem with Socialism

I often voice my concerns about my country’s spiral towards socialism. Things such as welfare, social security, mandatory purchasing of health insurance, etc. are all aspects of a socialist state. When I speak out against these things others often say things such as, “If that’s socialism I want it!” Then they ask me what I could possibly have against socialism.

Here’s my problem, people can not be free in a socialist system. Upon bringing this up my more liberal friends will say they still have the freedom of speech in socialist countries. When I’m referring to freedom in this case I’m not talking about having rights. Socialist programs such as social security are mandatory, you can’t opt out of them.

If I went to the government and said I wanted to keep my money that would be paid into social security and in exchange will opt out and receive no benefits when I come of age they would just laugh at me. Social security requires everybody who is working to pay in on it because the people who are currently on social security are not paying in on it. The only way the system can even attempt to continue running is if everybody who is of working age pays for those who are beyond that point in their life.

When something is forcefully taken from you it’s called theft. Unemployment is the same way. Government steals money from my pay check and says I can have some if it back if I should lose my job. Here’s the thing though, I could take that same money and invest it to create more meaning if I lost my job I’d have more money to life off of.

In a socialist country the government has a gun to your head and demands you comply with their rules. That’s ultimately my problem with socialism, you are not a free person when the government steals your property using the force of a gun.

Hope and Change Baby

It’s so good we rid ourselves of that evil and tyrannical Bush administration and replaced it with the good civil rights aware Obama administration:

The Obama administration is developing plans that would require all Internet-based communication services — such as encrypted BlackBerry e-mail, Facebook, and Skype — to be capable of complying with federal wiretap orders, according to a report published Monday.

Oh… wait.

Well That’s Retarded

With ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, our economy in the toilet, our money losing value faster than Obama is losing voter approval, and hundreds of out major issues our representatives are wasting their time on political correctness:

The measure, passed by the House by voice vote Wednesday night, changes the phrase “mentally retarded” to “an individual with an intellectual disability” in existing health, education and labor law.

I think I finally understand something. Political correctness is directly proportional to the number of words used to describe something. Being “retarded” is one word it’s very politically incorrect but “an individuals with an intellectual disability” is six words so it’s six times more politically correct.

The only thing the politically correct crowd has accomplished here is turning the word disabled into a future insult. Insults such as idiot, moron, retard, etc. all derived from their legitimate medical usage:

At the May 18, 1910 annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of the Feeble-Minded, Goddard proposed definitions for a system for classifying individuals with mental retardation based on intelligence quotient (IQ). Goddard used the terms moron for those with an IQ of 51-70, imbecile for those with an IQ of 26-50, and idiot for those with an IQ of 0-25 for categories of increasing impairment. This nomenclature was the standard of the field for decades. A moron, by his definition, was any person with mental age between eight and twelve. Morons, according to Goddard, were unfit for society and should be removed from society either through institutionalization, sterilization, or both. What Goddard failed to see was that his bias against morons would greatly influence his data later.

So what is my point here? Simple people used the words moron, imbecile, and idiot as insults due to their medical meaning. A person who is being a dumb ass is often called an idiot because they’re acting with the mental age of an infant. Retard is used as an insult because it means somebody who is mentally slow. Changing the term from retard to individual with a disability is just going to make people start using the term mentally disabled as an insult in 10 years. At that point it will be politically incorrect to use the term mentally disabled and we’ll have to come up with a more flowery and politically correct term which will probably end up being at least 10 words in length.

Why the Hell am I paying my taxes for our representatives’ payroll? Oh that’s right because the government has a gun to my head.

Where Can I Buy One

Apparently Mayor Daley is trying to get his police for a new type of firearm. I’ve not heard of this but thanks to Every Day, No Days Off I know about the amazing new semi-fully-automatic weapon:

“Many times [the police are] outgunned, to be very frank,” Daley said at an event in the Englewood neighborhood. “When they come to a scene, someone has a semi-fully-automatic weapon, and you have a little pistol, uh, good luck.”

What these new semi-fully-automatic weapons are I haven’t a clue. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around this advanced technology. I’ll post up more details on this amazing new weapon system when I have them.