Tag: You’re Doing it Wrong

ALS Association Moves to Block Other Charities from Enjoying Similar Success

The ice bucket challenge has been very lucrative for the ALS Association. So far the marketing ploy has raised $94 million for the charity. I’ve often noticed that the more successful a charity becomes the more corrupt it also becomes. Now that the ALS Association has its money it’s working to prove my theory:

No one could’ve predicted what a sensation the Ice Bucket Challenge would become. It’s everywhere. It’s unavoidable. And now that it’s earned the ALS Association over $94 million in charity, the organization has filed for a trademark seeking ownership of the phrase “ice bucket challenge.” The August 22nd filings also request a trademark covering “ALS ice bucket challenge,” a slightly-more-specific description that’s proven equally popular across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media. The ALS Association wants complete control over “ice bucket challenge” whenever the three words are being used for charitable fundraising purposes.

So far I haven’t been nominated for the ice bucket challenge and with this latest move I will refuse to take part in the challenge if nominated. In fact I will never give the ALS Association so much as a dime. If the trademark is granted it would prevent any other charity from using an ice bucket challenge to raise money. That leads me to believe that the ALS Association views other charities as competitors, which goes against the whole idea of charity. And in its desire to destroy its perceived competitors it has chosen to use the state’s fiction of intellectual property.

If You Don’t Like It, You Can Leave! But You Have to Pay.

The go to retort for many self-proclaimed patriots who find themselves unable to argue against a criticism against their beloved mother land is “If you don’t like, you can leave!” This seems like the ultimate way to shutdown an argument because anybody who doesn’t like the United States is free to leave whenever they want. OK, that’s not entirely true. Anybody who can afford to pay the government off is free to leave and its price just went way the fuck up:

To leave America, you generally must prove 5 years of U.S. tax compliance. If you have a net worth greater than $2 million or average annual net income tax for the 5 previous years of $157,000 or more for 2014 (that’s tax, not income), you pay an exit tax. It is a capital gain tax as if you sold your property when you left. At least there’s an exemption of $680,000 for 2014. Long-term residents giving up a Green Card can be required to pay the tax too.

Now, the State Department interim rule just raised the fee for renunciation of U.S. citizenship to $2,350 from $450. Critics note that it’s more than twenty times the average level in other high-income countries. The State Department says it’s about demand on their services and all the extra workload they have to process people who are on their way out.

Leaving the land of the free isn’t free, which really refutes the claim that the United States is the land of the free. In the government’s eyes every citizen is property. If you pay it enough money is may be so kind as to grace you with the privilege of leaving but your taxes had damn well better be in order first.

This is why I usually refute “If you don’t like it, you can leave!” with “I can’t afford to leave so you’re stuck with me.”

Children Recite Pledge of Undying Allegiance in a Foreign Language; Neocons Freak Out

We’ve all heard the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a pledge written by a socialist (which should make it poison to neocons) many of us were required to recite in school before we had the ability to understand what it meant. In it the reciter promises to lay down his life for a piece of colored cloth that represents his or her rulers. Neocons, being an incredibly patriotic bunch, often jerk themselves off to the Pledge of Allegiance. But neocons also hate all things Middle East. So it’s no surprise that they’re flipping their shit over a school that allowed children recite the Pledge in Arabic:

A Colorado high school principal is defending his decision to allow students from a cultural club to recite the Pledge of Allegiance in Arabic — and denied that it was attempt to push an Islamic agenda.

Tom Lopez, the principal at Rocky Mountain High School in Fort Collins, told Fox News he has received a number of telephone calls and emails from outraged parents – but he stands by his decision.

“These students love this country,” he said. “They were not being un-American in trying to do this. They believed they were accentuating the meaning of the words as spoken regularly in English.”

The school recites the Pledge of Allegiance once a week and on Monday a member of the Cultural Arms Club led the student body in the Arabic version of the pledge.

What really gets me about this is that the United States doesn’t have an official language. Neocons love to say “If you can’t speak English then get the fuck out!” but they have no legal grounds, thankfully, for expelling people who can’t speak English. In fact neocons should be overjoyed that somebody has translated this oath of mindless obedience into other languages so children of foreign lands can pledge to die for this forsaken government.

Now let’s discuss the real problem here: children being told to recite a oath of undying loyalty by school officials. Having the pledge in school, in my opinion, is an attempt to get them while they’re young. Tell them that America is the freest country on Earth enough times that they begin to believe and also get them to mindlessly recite a pledge to fall over dead for some suit-clad assholes in a far away marble building enough times that they may actually do it. If there’s anything to be angry about it’s this attempted brainwashing of America’s children.

Down the Memory Hole

There’s no doubt that the Internet has been one of the greatest tools for information sharing every invented. Instead of having to go to the library, request a book, wait two weeks for that book to arrive, and squeeze every bit of knowledge you need out of that book in one or two weeks we not open a browser and type a search into Google. But it’s not limited solely to books. The state, failing to comprehend a future where the plebs could access and read its documents, put a bunch of stuff online for us to access. This saves a lot of people a lot of headaches having to go to a court to obtain a physical copy of records related to cases. Slowly the state is realizing its mistake and disappearing things down the memory hold:

The Administrative Office of the US Courts (AO) has removed access to nearly a decade’s worth of electronic documents from four US appeals courts and one bankruptcy court.

The removal is part of an upgrade to a new computer system for the database known as Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER.

Court dockets and documents at the US Courts of Appeals for the 2nd, 7th, 11th, and Federal Circuits, as well as the Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, were maintained with “locally developed legacy case management systems,” said AO spokesperson Karen Redmond in an e-mailed statement. Those five courts aren’t compatible with the new PACER system.

If your tax funded upgrade of a public system removes public records then the upgrade was not done correctly. As somebody who relies on being able to download the state’s dirty laundry and court records (but I repeat myself) to entertain my readers this kind of shit pisses me off. And I’m probably going to be pissed off more and more because I guarantee the state is going to “upgrade” more of its systems and toss a ton of online records down the memory hole. It’s a classic maneuver, if you can’t get away with destroying public records then you just make them very difficult to access.

Statists Gonna State

Statists, in general, are slightly confusing to me. The more statist one is the more confusing I find them to be. As you can imagine neoconservatives and neoliberals really throw me for a loop. Their philosophy appears to be nothing more than a thinly veiled desire to ruthlessly rule over others. Consider the wish made by a host of Fox News:

Responding to co-host Greg Gutfeld’s commentary on how President Barack Obama is dealing with ISIS, Guilfoyle said:

“Can I just make a special request in the magic lamp? Can we get like Netanyahu, or like Putin in for 48 hours, you know, head of the United States?”

I’m no fan of Obama but I fail to see how replacing him with another tyrant; and make no mistakes, both Netanyahu and Putin are tyrants of the highest form; is going to make anything better. Especially when Guilfoyle is living in the United States and therefore would have to live under the reign of Netanyahu or Putin even though she faces also zero threat from ISIS (I’m sorry but all the fear mongering about ISIS coming here to get you is bullshit just as all the fear mongering about al-Qaeda coming back to kill us was bullshit). I’m left to believe that Guilfoyle is a masochist and is upset that the current tyrant heading this country isn’t inflicting enough pain so we need to replace him with an even more vicious tyrant. If pain is what she wants there are numerous clubs that can provide it in an entirely voluntary way.

How to be a Hypocrite Staring Stefan Molyneux

If you’ve been involved in libertarian circles for a while you’ve probably heard the name Stefan Molyneux. He is a self-proclaimed philosopher who considers himself an anarcho-capitalist. In addition to that he’s also a narcissistic ass who mirrors a cult leader more than an individual who supposedly opposed rulers. As with most narcissists Molyneux doesn’t handle criticism well. Any form of criticism, in his opinion, must be ruthlessly crushed even if it requires him to be a hypocrite to do it. A group calling themselves Tru Shibes have been putting together videos on YouTube that point out instances where Molyneux has been inconsistent. Since Molyneux does hour and a half monologues Tru Shibes have had a lot of material to work with. But Molyneux decided he had to prove that his inconsistencies know no bounds. The man claims that he opposes intellectual property but decided to use the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to silence Tru Shibes:

Either way, Molyneux, who writes and speaks frequently about being against “state” violence and has spoken out about how he doesn’t support intellectual property law, apparently chose to make use of the DMCA to take down a bunch of videos from “TruShibes” an account that apparently has mocked Molyneux and apparently hypocritical actions/statements he’s made.

I think Tru Shibes should consider this their single greatest victory. This story also brings up a point that I feel needs emphasizing from time to time. Us anarchists subscribe to a philosophy that opposes the state. For me that means avoiding interaction with the state as much as possible. I don’t want to use the state to solve my problems, which means I have little interest in calling the cops on somebody, taking somebody to court, or filing a DMCA take down notice to silence my critics (don’t worry, all of my shit is public domain so I don’t even have claimed copyrights I could use for a DMCA take down). But from time to time I see self-proclaimed anarchists use the state they supposedly oppose to silence their critics either by filing a lawsuit or utilizing some stupid law like the DMCA.

If anarchism is to thrive it must be able to provide alternatives to the state. One of the state’s longest claimed monopolies is dispute resolution. When two individuals have a disagreement they take it to the state’s courts. Dispute resolution is one of the markets where anarchists could provide some truly creative alternatives. It’s also a market that acts as a litmus test for statists. As far as they’re concerned the only way to resolve disputes is to have a third party with a lot of guns command people who disagree to behave. If anarchists can come up with a functional alternative for dispute resolution it would do a lot to demonstrate its effectiveness.

So if you consider yourself an anarchist take Molyneux’s recent act of cowering behind the state and its DMCA as an example of what not to do. Instead when you find yourself involved in a disagreement work to find a solution that doesn’t involve the state and its coercive violence.

If You Don’t Like It, You Can Leave

If I had an ounce of silver for every time some statist told me “If you don’t like it, you can leave!” I’d be a very wealthy anarchist. It’s the go-to response for any statist that can’t justify their position but don’t want to admit it. But even when you follow their advice and attempt to leave their jimmies get rustled:

NEW YORK (CBS Cleveland/AP) — Burger King says it struck a deal to buy Tim Hortons Inc. for about $11 billion, a move that creates the world’s third-largest fast-food company and could accelerate the international expansion of the Canadian coffee and doughnut chain.

[…]

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is calling for a boycott of Burger King.

“Burger King’s decision to abandon the United States means consumers should turn to Wendy’s Old Fashioned Hamburgers or White Castle sliders. Burger King has always said ‘Have it Your Way’; well my way is to support two Ohio companies that haven’t abandoned their country or customers,” Brown said in a statement. “To help business grow in America, taxpayers have funded public infrastructure, workforce training, and incentives to encourage R&D and capital investment. Runaway corporations benefited from those policies but want U.S. companies to pay their share of the tab.”

Burger King didn’t like the taxes here so it’s follow every statist’s advice and leaving. In response some statist jackass from Ohio who spends most of his time sitting in a marble building is demanding people boycott the franchise. Shouldn’t the senator be cheering Burger King’s decision? After all it’s doing exactly what the statists keep telling everybody who criticizes any aspect of the United States. Hell, this guy should be visiting Burger King’s drive thru three times a day reward the franchise for doing exactly what it was told to do.

The last company to follow the statist’s advice, Medtronic, received an equally chill response. Some statists proposed a law, that would have been retroactive to before Metronic’s planned merger, that would prohibit companies from shifting their headquarters to anywhere outside of the United States.

Considering the response received by individuals and organizations that choose to leave when they dislike the conditions here I never want to hear “If you don’t like it, you can leave!” from any statists ever again. They obvious don’t honestly mean that. What they really mean is “If you don’t like, you can shut the fuck up! If you try to leave we’ll stop you!”

On the Michael Brown Shooting

I’ve annoyed a lot of electrons writing about the civil unrest going down in Ferguson, Missouri but I haven’t dedicated any time to the shooting that lead up to the unrest. There’s a reason for this. As of this writing there is no evidence supporting any side of the story. But there are a lot of people who are parroting the claim that the officer, Darren Wilson, was assaulted and a lot of people parroting the claim that Michael Brown was an angel. Let’s look at the source of these claims.

First, let’s look at the claim that Brown robbed a convenience store before the shooting. When Wilson’s name was released the Ferguson Police Department also released surveillance camera footage supposedly showing Brown stealing cigars from a convenience store. Others have used that footage to demonstrate that Brown did pay for those cigars. Which story is true? Who knows. Heck evidence exists that Wilson didn’t know Brown was a robbery suspect during their encounter, which would make the entire debate pointless.

Second, let’s look at the claims that Wilson was attacked by Brown. Claims have been made that Wilson suffered facial fractures, which would indicate he was in a physical confrontation with Brown. The first place I saw this claim made was the Gateway Pundit, which cited two unnamed sources. The x-ray imagine included with that article was sourced from this article describing blowout fractures, it isn’t an x-ray of Wilson himself. Fox News also picked up the story and also cited unnamed sources. In other words there is no evidence that Wilson was engaged in a fight with Brown. What we do have are some claims made by unknown sources. It could be true just as well as it could be false.

Third, some jimmies have been rustled over the claim that Brown was a gangster. This claim, as far as I can tell, was based on a picture released by a Kansas City police officer of a man with a wad of cash in his mouth holding a gun. According to the people circulating the picture it is of Brown. But, as it turns out, it’s probably a picture of an accused murder suspect in Oregon.

And that’s the problem with discussions about the shooting itself. No evidence exists to support any claims being made. None. Everything released so far is either speculation or fabrication. Until evidence is released about the shooting I’m going to continue to remain mostly silent about it. There’s just no point in shifting electrons to make words appear on your screen regarding it.

Betsy Hodges Puts Forward a Stupid Proposition

Betsy Hodges is the current mayor of Minneapolis. Those familiar with her probably read the title and said “No duh.” She’s a statist, which means she frequently makes stupid propositions. But her budget proposal really takes the cake. Specifically:

The most significant new spending is in the area of public safety. Hodges wants to spend nearly $2 million to hire 20 community service officers and an 18-person police cadet class, two of the most reliable feeders for the city’s police force. To drive down crime, she wants to boost the number of officers to 860, which is above last year’s budget but equal to the figure Chief Janeé Harteau has said she hopes to reach by the end of the year.

In the name of public safety she wants to add more people to the ranks of Minneapolis’s most violent gang. Talk about failing to understand the problem. The Minneapolis Police Department has a colorful history but even if you put that aside it still performs a lot of crime. For example, it guns down family pets. When it’s not performing raids on suspected drug users so it can confiscate their property (thankfully that’s slightly harder in Minnesota now). Minneapolis’s finest also find time to write a massive number of parking and traffic citations. And the department has a lot of connections with local business, which it helps drum up business for (my friend recently had his motorcycle stolen and Minneapolis Police Department made him pay to get it out of the impound yard after finding it).

What’s especially ironic about her proposal is that she knows that the city’s police officers are trouble:

Hodges wants to spend $1.1 million for police to wear body cameras, a program she trumpeted during her campaign that she hopes will reduce use-of-force complaints.

I’m all for making police departments wear cameras so long as the footage is always available to the public and cannot be tossed down the memory hole by government officials. But her proposal to make Minneapolis’s most violent gang members wear cameras is also an admittance to the fact that the department has a lot of use-of-force complaints against it. She knows the department has a history of unnecessary violence yet she still wants to provide it more funding to hire more thugs.

If Hodges really wanted to reduce crime she would either reduce the number of criminals in city’s officially sanctioned gang or, preferable, disband the department entirely and allow the market to fill the demand for protective services (something the Minneapolis Police Department doesn’t seem to focus on at all).

Wolf Blitzer Demonstrates That He Doesn’t Understand Firearms Use of Force

Wolf Blitzer has never stuck me as a particularly intelligent man. No intelligent man would willingly stay on board the sinking ship that is CNN. Then again he could still be there simply because nobody else will take him. Either way he decided to demonstrate his lack of intelligence by asking why police officers shoot to kill:

Blitzer’s questions arose during a discussion on the unfurling conflict in Ferguson, Mo. over the fatal police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

“They often shoot to kill,” Blitzer said of police. “Why do they have to shoot to kill? Why can’t they shoot a warning shot in the air, scare someone off if they think they’re in danger. Why can’t they shoot to, injure, shall we say? Why do they have to shoot to kill?”

Toobin said police are trained to “never fire a warning shot” and to “never fire a shot to injure.” He explained that if police fire their guns, they must “accept the risk” that they are “gonna kill somebody.” Adding that: “If you are not prepared to kill someone, don’t fire the gun.”

A firearm is considered a deadly force weapon and for good reason, they cause major bodily harm that can lead to death. Using deadly force is only acceptable in most areas if there is an immediate risk of great bodily harm or death. If anybody, whether they be a police officer or a peaceful human being, doesn’t feel that they are in immediate risk of great bodily harm or death they shouldn’t be employing a firearm in any way.

But what’s the harm in firing a shot into the air? The fact that Blitzer even asked that proves that he doesn’t understand how a firearm works. What goes up must come down (unless it achieves enough velocity to escape the effects of gravity but no man portable weapon can do that yet). If you fire a shot into the air the damn bullet has to come down somewhere and there is no practical way for the shooter to know where in the hell the bullet is going to land. It may land in an empty parking lot or it may land of grandma’s head. And attempting to inure somebody with a deadly weapon is really fucking stupid. Even if you put a hole in somebody’s extremity they still risk the possibility of bleeding out. It’s the same risk somebody would face if you ran a javelin through them.

The reason use of force continuums usually discourage using deadly force weapons for any situation not needed deadly force is because employing a deadly force weapon necessarily makes the situation potentially deadly. This isn’t rock science, it’s common sense. If a police officer needs to scare somebody they can grab a baton and extend it.