Tag: Your Government Doesn’t Love You

It’s Not Your Business

You don’t own your business, the government does. You just get to run it how they want you to run it:

PHILADELPHIA, Pa. (WTXF) – The push to remove bulletproof barriers inside Philly convenient stores just got past another hurdle.

The Public Health and Human Services Committee has passed a bill which enables the city’s Licenses and Inspections department to regulate the bullet-resistant barricade that stands between customers and cash registers in many neighborhood corner stores.

The officials pushing for this legislation are, of course, claiming it’s to fight “indignity.” Indignity is such a useful work in politics because it doesn’t have a fixed meaning. By citing “indignity” a politician can pass a piece of legislation aimed at shutting down some unfavored business without admitting to the purpose of the legislation. For example, if you wanted to shutdown a convenience store you could pass a piece of legislation that would put the lives of its employees in peril, which would either convince them to quit or lead to their demise. Either way the politician wins because without employees a convenience store isn’t convenient at all and will thus shutdown.

It’s the War That Never Ends

It’s the war that never ends.

It goes on and on, my friend:

Pockets of Nangarhar remain inaccessible to outsiders because of fighting, making it impossible to independently determine the cause of the fatal explosion. What is not in question is that in the 17th year of U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, American airstrikes are escalating again, along with civilian casualties.

Operating under looser restrictions on air power that commanders hope will break a stalemate in the war, U.S. fighter planes this year dropped 3,554 explosives in Afghanistan through Oct. 31, the most since 2012.

This is why I see no appreciable difference between the two ruling parties in this country. While they may disagree on a few minor point, they march lockstep on the issues that matter. Obama initially came into officer on the promise of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After eight years he didn’t end either war and involved the United States in several more. Trump never promised to end the wars so I can’t really call him a hypocrite for continuing to wage them but his commitment to continuing the wars shows that the two parties agree that war is good.

A Modest Proposal to End Arguing Over Tax Legislation

Now that they have power the Republicans are pushing through new tax legislation. If you listen to Republicans, the legislation will leave more money in all of our pockets’. If you listen to Democrats, the legislation will lead to the death of billions of people. However, like the Affordable Care Act, the tax legislation is being slammed through too fast for anybody to actually read so nobody can even refute the claims of everybody else. But that hasn’t stopped people from arguing incessantly.

Because I’m a peacemaker by nature, I’ve decided to make a modest proposal to end all of this arguing. That proposal is simple; let’s just abolish taxes.

Without taxes there is no need to argue about tax legislation. By abolishing taxes we can return trillions of hours of unproductive time to the American people so it can instead be used productively. Imagine the economic boom this country will enjoy with trillions of additional hours of labor!

As If Flying Didn’t Suck Enough Already

If you thought flying already sucked due to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) security theater, get ready for things to become even worse as the various TSA security bypass packages lead to an ever increasing number of security lines:

But as the plan moves forward, we’re seeing all sorts of new wrinkles that most observers had never even thought about. More types of vetting means more types of passenger (Global Entry passengers, No Fly List passengers, risky-but-unvetted passengers), and sorting through all of those passengers is tricky. Even if you can match all of the faces to tickets, you still have to get all of them to the right security line at the airport — so the most recent development has to do with lines. This fall, Homeland Security released two new contract solicitations focused on making airport lines smarter and more complex. One focuses on measuring how long a line is, basically a thermometer for how well all of this is working. The second one calls for “intelligent traveler wayfinding” technologies to direct people through the ever-more complex lines that are clearly on the way.

In the near future you will have to find the line that corresponds to the amount of money you gave the TSA. TSA PreCheck? Line 2. PreCheck+? Line 14. PreCheckDeluxe? Line 27. You didn’t pay the TSA any money for preferential treatment? Get over to that long line in the corner and accept that your wait time will be several hours, pleb.

Venezuela Tries Its Hand at Creating a Failed Cryptocurrency

A cryptocurrency managed by the same regime that tanked the economy of a country that has vast natural resource wealth? I can’t see how this could possibly go wrong!

CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked to the world of digital currency to circumvent U.S.-led financial sanctions, announcing on Sunday the launch of the “petro” backed by oil reserves to shore up a collapsed economy.

The leftist leader offered few specifics about the currency launch or how the struggling OPEC member would pull off such a feat, but he declared to cheers that “the 21st century has arrived!”

I’m doubting that we’ll see any technical white paper about the Petro since that would solidify implementation details and I’m guessing the Venezuelan government’s plan is to have a cryptocurrency it can change on a whim.

Fraud is the Status Quo for Government Agencies

What do you do when you’re a postal service that, in spite of enjoying a legal monopoly on delivering certain types of mail, has troubles making ends meet but also enjoy the immunity that generally comes with being a government agency? You commit fraud, of course:

She told CBS46 her former supervisors at the post office gave her specific instructions to misrepresent delivery times because, she says, they know what’s at stake if Amazon packages are late.

“At 7:15, whatever you have not delivered, pull your truck over to the side of the road and scan every single one of your amazon packages. We cannot have late packages because that will jeopardize our contract with Amazon,” said the former mail carrier.

CBS46 drove around and found a current mail carrier working in a different county who attested to the claims. She also asked to be kept anonymous.

“Basically, we have to falsify the timing, and a lot of carriers don’t want to do that, but we’re mandated to with a direct order,” she said.

While these carriers admit the official records at the post office are being tampered with, their advice to customers is this:

If you know for a fact that your package came late, make a complaint and stand your ground. Most of the handheld scanners that carriers use have GPS records that can be looked up if it comes down to it.

First, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is defrauding the people who ordered the packages because if the package is delivered after 20:00 they get a free month of Amazon Prime. Second, it’s defrauding Amazon by lying about when packages are being delivered. Since the USPS is a government agency there likely isn’t anything Amazon or its customers can do other than stop using USPS in areas where these practices are happening. Even then neither party can stop doing business with USPS entirely because it enjoys a monopoly on delivering certain types of mail. And the USPS has no motivation to fight these kinds of fraudulent practices because it’s a government agency and fraud is the status quo for them.

He Almost Had a Trifecta

Pocahontas joke? Check.

A painting of Andrew Jackson in the background? Check.

If Trump would have referred to the code talkers are “injuns,” he could have had a trifecta:

Native American groups have long objected to President Trump’s use of the nickname “Pocahontas” to deride one of his political foes, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

But even at a White House event specifically intended to honor the World War II Navajo code talkers — the heroic Native Americans who helped the U.S. Marines send coded messages in the Pacific Theater — Trump couldn’t resist.

The president of the United States is the face of the nation. More and more I’m convinced that Trump is the prefect representation of the United States. He’s loud, he doesn’t put too much thought into his words, and he’s demonstrated a complete lack of ability or willingness to follow through with any of his meaningful promises. Trump is the leader the United States deserves.

It’s the End of the Internet, or Something

The Federal Communications Commission Fascist Communications Club (FCC) announced its plan to revoke Title II status from Internet Service Providers (ISP) and to preempt state laws that would enforce net neutrality:

In addition to ditching its own net neutrality rules, the Federal Communications Commission also plans to tell state and local governments that they cannot impose local laws regulating broadband service.

[…]

It isn’t clear yet exactly how extensive the preemption will be. Preemption would clearly prevent states from imposing net neutrality laws similar to the ones being repealed by the FCC, but it could also prevent state laws related to the privacy of Internet users or other consumer protections. Pai’s staff said that states and other localities do not have jurisdiction over broadband because it is an interstate service and that it would subvert federal policy for states and localities to impose their own rules.

Predictably a large percentage of the Internet is in full on panic mode. Supposedly this is the end of the Internet and the only way to stop it is to call the FCC and your congress critters to demand that they, for the first time ever, listen to the will of “the people” (quotations used because “the people” doesn’t exist and therefore cannot be listened to).

Let’s take a step back, calm the fuck down, and actually think about this situation. First and foremost, the Internet was thriving before ISPs were granted Title II status. There’s no reason to think that everything is going to turn to shit if that status is revoked. So take a deep breath and relax.

Now let’s consider the situation as a whole. Everybody panicking about this seems to be recommending the same thing, contact the FCC and your congress critters and demand that they stop this. I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Neither the FCC or your congress critters give a shit about what you think. You’re a pleb. You can’t afford to buy these people. “Oh,” I can hear one of you saying, “I’ll threaten to vote them out of office during the next election!” Here’s the thing with threats, they only work if the person your threatening can be convinced that you have the power to follow through. Your vote doesn’t matter and your congress critters know that. Moreover, the head of the FCC is appointed, you don’t get to vote for them. And by the time the next election rolls around the damage will have been done anyways.

The real problem isn’t that the FCC is planning to take away Title II status and preempt state laws enforcing net neutrality, it’s that the FCC has power. Why should a single agency have the power to regulate the entire United States Internet? Why should the word of a single man decide whether net neutrality is mandatory or illegal? Take away the FCC’s power and suddenly it can’t decide what rules the entire damned country has to play by. If you want to do something, work to take away the FCC’s power. Whether you want to waste your time with a political solution or a real solution like replicating the work of the people who built the Guifi.net mesh network in Catalonia is up to you. But nobody has ever won a war by fighting the same battle over and over again. This battle between “the people” and the FCC has already been waged several times and will continue to be waged forever if a change in strategy isn’t made.

There’s No Kill Like Overkill

Proportionality is a concept that many law enforcers appear to have trouble understanding. For example, killing a man for selling untaxed cigarettes isn’t a proportional punishment for the crime. Likewise, blowing up a man’s house to catch a shoplifter is not a proportional response to the crime:

In June of 2015, Reason reports, a man named Robert Jonathan Seacat shoplifted from a Denver area Walmart. He stole a shirt and two belts and then fled, first by car and then on foot, before breaking into a nearby home to hide inside.

Seacat was known to have one gun on him, and officers claimed he shot at them, but after the fact, investigators didn’t find evidence he’d fired that weapon or the two other guns that were already in the house. That’s perhaps because, as would later be discovered when police eventually took Seacat into custody, he was by that time probably feeling awful, as he had allegedly swallowed a container of methamphetamine that began to leak into his body.

The house had a security system that alerted the police of the break-in, and the cops arrived armed to the teeth. As court documents show, “50 SWAT officers” assaulted the house using “40 mm rounds, tear gas, flashbang grenades, two armored Bearcats [a type of armored vehicle] and breaching rams,” plus “68 cold chemical munitions and four hot gas munitions.”

And they used all of it to totally destroy this home. Their harebrained plan was to blow up every room, one by one, to herd Seacat into a corner of the house so police could be certain of his location. This process was ineffective as well as counterproductive: It created so much rubble that a police robot was not able to deliver a phone to Seacat for negotiations.

What’s the value of a shirt and two belts from Walmart? It’s probably somewhere between $30 and $50. What’s the value of a house, fuel for a Bearcat, 40mm teargas rounds, flashbang grenades, breaching rams, chemical munitions, hot gas munitions, a remotely controlled robot, and 50 officers’ time? A hell of a lot more than $50.

Shoplifting doesn’t requires a militarized squad of law enforcers to deal with. It requires compensation. Walmart probably has insurance against shoplifting so it was likely covered. In that case the insurance company had a right to seek compensation from the thief, which it could have easily done in small claims court. If the thief refused to appear in court, the judge could have simply ruled in favor of the insurance company or, at most, sent a single officer to kidnap the thief and bring him to court. Such a response would have been proportional to the crime.

Watching the Dominoes Fall

The resent glut of sexual assault and harassment reports has been both sad and fascinating to watch. On the one hand it’s sad to see just how many influential individuals have a record of sexual assault and harassment. On the other hand it’s fascinating to watch the accused fall like houses of cards.

Two of Minnesota’s lawmakers, one from the red team and the other from the blue team, announced that they’re resigning their positions due to sexual harassment allegations against them:

A pair of Minnesota state lawmakers — one a DFL senator, the other a Republican representative — announced Tuesday that they will resign from office in the wake of sexual harassment allegations.

Word of the resignations of Sen. Dan Schoen and Rep. Tony Cornish came within two hours of each other, capping a stunning sequence of events that vividly demonstrated a new awareness of what many insiders say has been a long-standing tolerance of mistreatment of women working at Minnesota’s Capitol. Both men had been under pressure from leaders of their parties to resign.

I know very little about Schoen but I’m familiar with Cornish because he has played a major role in both gun rights and criminal law. While he was fairly reliable from the position of gun rights, he was an absolute bastard when it came to criminal law. As an ex-cop he was never shy about his absolute obedience to the blue line. He fought every piece of legislation that attempted to hold Minnesota’s law enforcers accountable. Moreover, he seemed gleeful about every piece of legislation that would make the lives of people found guilty of crimes, even the most petty of crimes, more miserable. Seeing this hardcore law and order politician fall from grace because he violated the law is karma in action.

Hopefully somebody will manage to convince Franken, Minnesota’s other grabby politician, to resign.