Tag: You’re Doing it Wrong

The Joe Biden Defense

Let this be a lesson to everybody, Joe Biden is not an expert on self-defense laws:

Barton reportedly admitted to deputies that he fired his weapon while chasing away people who he thought were breaking into his vehicles at 5804 NE 124th St. in the early morning hours Monday.

[…]

“I did what Joe Biden told me to do,” Barton told KOIN. “I went outside and fired my shotgun in the air.”

Barton was referring to a question and answer session the vice president had in February.

“If you want to protect yourself, get a double-barreled shotgun,” Biden said at the time.

“I said ‘Jill, if there’s ever a problem, just walk out on the balcony here … put that double-barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house,’” Biden added.

Joe Biden is able to get away with telling his wife to fire a shotgun into the air to scare of burglars because he is a member of the privileged political class. Since he’s the vice president no cop would dare arrest him or a member of his family. However, rules are for thee, not for me. Most of us aren’t members of the political class and will be arrested if we discharge a firearm into the air to warn off a potential threat.

With that said, I think Mr. Barton has a pretty good excuse. In our society we’re raised to follow the orders of the politicians. If they pass a law we’re expected to obey it, if they tell us to do something we’re expected to comply. Considering that cultural fact, nobody should be surprised when somebody complies with a very stupid recommendation made by a very stupid politician (I know, that’s a redundant term).

Malware: A Convenient Excuse to Upgrade Hardware

Many of you have probably heard about the Economic Development Administration’s (EDA) act of outright destroying perfectly functional hardware because of malware infections:

The Economic Development Administration (EDA) is an agency in the Department of Commerce that promotes economic development in regions of the US suffering slow growth, low employment, and other economic problems. In December 2011, the Department of Homeland Security notified both the EDA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that there was a possible malware infection within the two agencies’ systems.

[…]

EDA’s CIO, fearing that the agency was under attack from a nation-state, insisted instead on a policy of physical destruction. The EDA destroyed not only (uninfected) desktop computers but also printers, cameras, keyboards, and even mice. The destruction only stopped—sparing $3 million of equipment—because the agency had run out of money to pay for destroying the hardware.

The total cost to the taxpayer of this incident was $2.7 million: $823,000 went to the security contractor for its investigation and advice, $1,061,000 for the acquisition of temporary infrastructure (requisitioned from the Census Bureau), $4,300 to destroy $170,500 in IT equipment, and $688,000 paid to contractors to assist in development of a long-term response. Full recovery took close to a year.

The full grim story was detailed in the Department of Commerce audit released last month, subsequently reported by Federal News Radio.

Most of the people I’ve talked to about this story have written it off as ineptitude on behalf of the EDA’s leadership, specifically laughing about how poorly they understood technology. Even though I tend to attribute buffoonery to stupidity instead of malice in this case I think the leadership of the EDA knew exactly what they were doing. They were looking for a way to justify upgrading their equipment.

Computer technology advances quickly and hardware that his a mere two years old is already out of date. If you’re the leadership of a massive government bureaucracy looking to have the latest and greatest technology at hand what can you do? You can exploit the first tragedy that arises! The agency had enough foresight to hire a security contractor who likely informed it that there was no reason to replace any hardware. Yes the agency replaced a great deal of hardware. In all likelihood the EDA’s leadership knew there was no reason to do so but went forward with the plan anyways because they knew they could write off their act of destruction and simple ignorance. Everybody knows accountability is dead within the state after all.

The Death of Barnes and Noble

Recent news regarding the leadership decisions taking place in Barnes and Nobel leads me to believe that the chain is now officially dead:

For the last several years there’s been a battle for Barnes & Noble’s soul. In one corner stood 72-year-old chairman and founder Leonard Riggio. A legend in retail, Riggio has been fighting to keep the chain focused on stores rather than jumping into the e-reader tablet wars.

Though he still owns 30% of the company’s stock, Riggio had been pushed to the side strategically in favor of former computer hardware executive and now-ex CEO William Lynch. It was Lynch who drove the company’s costly expansion into handheld Nook readers.

Last night Riggio emerged victorious when Barnes & Noble announced Lynch’s immediate resignation. Overnight Riggio went from figurehead Chairman to unquestioned king. All other executives at Barnes & Noble will now report directly to him and the company says it has no immediate plans to find a new CEO to replace Lynch.

The final nail in Lynch’s coffin was in late June when Barnes & Noble reported a staggering $477 million loss on Nooks and announced that it would be outsourcing the manufacturing of future e-readers. As discussed on Breakout at the time, the Nook debacle strengthened the hand of Barnes & Noble’s founder Leonard Riggio and his push to keep the company focused on the chain’s 675 stores.

History has not been kind to companies that try to maintain the old way of doing things when a new way has established itself. Buggy manufacturers didn’t do so well when automobiles began permeating society, business for typewriter manufacturers didn’t boom after the introduction of affordable personal computers, and traditional bookstores aren’t going to find their coffers filled with cash now that e-books have become popular.

While Barnes and Noble’s Nook division hasn’t been bringing the company profits the correct response isn’t to shift the company towards a dying model. Sure, losses will go down in the immediacy but as time goes on and Barnes and Noble focuses on heavy, space consuming dead tree books the company will become less and less relevant. But in the long run Barnes and Nobel will become irrelevant if it attempts to continue its old model.

We’re at the beginning of a new era where the cost of personal electronics has decreased to a point where it is viable to replace physical books with electronic books and e-readers. Trying to prop up the old model is a recipe for irrelevancy. Those wanting physical books will become a small minority that won’t be capable of maintaining Barnes and Noble’s currently large presence.

Closed to the Public

Advocates of gun control are becoming more cult-like every day. A common feature of cults is to cut members off from outsiders. This helps prevent unwanted influences from convincing cult members to leave the cult. Gabrielle Giffords, the Arizona congresswoman who was shot in the head, decided to visit Raleigh, North Carolina to promote gun control. What makes her visit notable is this little tidbit:

Giffords and Kelly discussed ways that they say increased gun controls can coexist with the Second Amendment and the right of Americans to own guns. The event was not open to the public and was organized by Americans for Responsible Solutions.

Emphasis mine. In order to prevent dissenting opinions from messing up Gifford’s message outsiders weren’t allowed to attend. This separation was probably necessary to prevent members of Americans for Responsible Solutions from straying. It’s difficult to retain members when the entire platform your organization exists to promote is both an oxymoron and entirely impossible to achieve.

Conscription

One of the ugly concepts that rears its ugly head from time to time is the idea of mandatory “national service.” One of my friends, who is ironically as Democratic as they come, posted this opinion piece by Michael Gerson:

The impetus for this discussion has come from the military. During an event at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival last year, Gen. Stanley McChrystal offhandedly endorsed universal national service for young people graduating from high school or college, fulfilled in either a military or civilian setting. His particular concern was the growing disconnect between the less than 1 percent of Americans who serve in the armed forces and the rest of the country. The result is not only an unequal distribution of burdens but also the unequal development of citizens. “Once you have contributed to something,” McChrystal said, “you have a slightly different view of it.”

The first sentence really shows what mandatory “national service” is about, finding more meat for the grinder. America has embroiled itself in several overseas wars and it wants to embroil itself in more. Empire building on this scale requires a lot of soldiers and enlistment rates aren’t what they used to be. Conscription, which the fascists are trying to relabel national service, is an easy way to fill the military ranks.

Relabeling conscription allows the state to use another ploy, civilians service options. Before Obama’s election most of my friends that self-identify as Democrats were anti-war and most of them remain anti-conscription today. Needless to say, since my friend who posted this self-identifies as Democrat, I had to point out the obvious fact that “national service” is merely a fancy word for conscription. In reply he said that there would be civilian options for “national service” such as AmericCorps and the Peace Corp. The civilian option is the carrot on the stick that lures people who otherwise oppose conscription to support the practice.

While most of my friends who self-identify as Democrat oppose mandatory military service many of them support mandatory civilian service. Collectivism, after all, always entails some kind of mandatory service and people who self-identify as Democrat, at least in my experience, are generally collectivists in disguise. What my friend, and many supporters of mandatory civilian service, fail to consider is that the civilian options can be taken away. Passing a law that requires individuals to perform work of the state’s choosing is easier to accomplish if a majority of supporters of both major parties can be suckered into supporting it. Passing said law is difficult, changing the rules of conscription once the laws is passed is relatively easy. In the end, if said law was passed, the civilian option would be stricken from the record in a short amount of time. Before you know it “national service” will be synonymous with military service.

Those who accept conscription must also accept the idea that the state owns individuals. If the state owns individuals it can make them do whatever it wants. Since the state’s existence is entirely dependent on expropriation, and the primary purpose of the military is to expropriate wealth from foreign countries, it will use individuals to expropriate wealth, which means anybody conscripted will almost certainly be placed in the armed forces. I hear several self-identified Democrats saying, “But they promised a civilian option!” Once you accept the idea that the state owns individuals you also necessary accept the idea that the state can change the rules whenever it wants because the people are its property to do with as it pleases.

Mandatory conscription would be a disaster in this country. The only reason higher ups in the military advocate the practice is because they want more people to send overseas to die. No matter what they promise to get popular support for conscription they will ensure that, in the end, every conscript is forced into the military.

No Honor Among Thieves

State informants are some of the lowest of the low. Before becoming informants many are participants in crime rings (real crime rings, not anti-state activists). After becoming informants they continues their participation in their crime rings and they snitch on their fellows. Sometimes this cycle of subterfuge leads to hilarity:

For much of 2011, Icelandic then-teenager and self-described hacker Sigurdur Thordarson worked as both a WikiLeaks volunteer and an FBI informant.

[…]

In an instant message conversation with Thordarson Thursday, I asked him what he might have given to the FBI that could be relevant to its investigation, and he responded immediately with a log of an instant message conversation between himself and the member of the LulzSec hacker group known as Sabu, which he says he gave to the FBI and which he claims shows “that information was passed on from LulzSec that later got published by WikiLeaks.” Thordarson told me he believes the log supports a “conspiracy” charge against Julian Assange or others in WikiLeaks.

[…]

More interesting, or at least more humorous, is the fact that the chat log represents a conversation between two FBI informants, both of whom seem to be trying to lure the other into providing evidence they can turn over to their law enforcement handlers–or even into a meeting that could lead to the other’s arrest. Sabu, also known as Hector Xavier Monsegur, had agreed to work as an FBI mole within LulzSec months before his conversation with Thordarson.

It’s always nice to see informants wasting their energy on trying to turn in fellow informants. There truly is no honor among thieves.

The FDA Demonstrates Its Incompetence Again

In order to sell pharmaceuticals in the United States they must first be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Why does the state get a monopoly on determining whether or not a drug is safe? Because many people have been suckered into the belief that the state is some kind of egalitarian entity that is beyond corruption or mistake, unlike private approval agencies such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL). However, the FDA has a long history of failures. Its most recent failure demonstrates the danger of granting any organization a monopoly on assessing the safety and effectiveness of pharmaceuticals:

The FDA announced last week that the 300mg generic version of Wellbutrin XL manufactured by Impax Laboratories and marketed by Teva Pharmaceuticals was being recalled because it did not work. And this wasn’t just a problem with one batch – this is a problem that has been going on with this particular drug for four or five years, and the FDA did everything it could to ignore it.

The FDA apparently approved this drug – and others like it – without testing it. The FDA just assumed if one dosage strength the drug companies submitted for approval works, then the other higher dosages work fine also. With this generic, American consumers became the FDA’s guinea pigs to see if the FDA’s assumption was right. It wasn’t.

Why would an organization tasked with assessing whether or not drugs are safe and effective fail to test higher dosages of previously approved drugs? Because the organization has a legal monopoly on therefore knows no consequence will befall it for failing in its assigned task.

For a non-state approval organization reputation is everything. UL, for example, has an invested interest in testing every product before granting approval because failing to do so could harm its reputation. An approval organization that has a poor reputation isn’t going to be relied on by anybody. The FDA, and other government created monopolies, face no risks because their approval can be mandated by law.

It’s a Thug’s Life in the IRS

Look, I get it, the state needs to threaten people with violence in order to coerce them into paying taxes. If we’re going to give people guns and send them out to threaten peaceful people could we at least hire competent individuals:

Special agents at the IRS accidentally shot their firearms 11 times between 2009 and 2011, and at least three of the cases “may have resulted in property damage or personal injury.”

Agents actually fired their guns accidently more often than they intentionally fired them in the field, according to an audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA).

Emphasis mine. Give a man a gun and he’s held accountable for his actions. Give a man a gun and a badge and he’s unaccountable for anything. I still think gun control advocates should be focusing their efforts on these unaccountable government thugs instead of people like me. If I negligently discharged a firearm in public I’d be brought up on charges yet government agents who negligently discharge their firearm in public are let off. Who’s more dangerous, the accountable individual or the unaccountable thug?

The FBI Arresting People for Writing Bad Science Fiction

I guess the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has decided that creating terrorists to arrest is too much work and are now opting to arrest people who write intricate fantastical plots involving science fiction inventions:

New York (CNN) — Two New York state men have been charged in a bizarre plan to develop a mobile X-ray system that would be used from afar to silently kill people that they deemed “undesirable,” federal officials said.

Glendon Scott Crawford, 49, and Eric J. Feight, 54, were arrested Tuesday after an undercover operation by the Albany FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. They were charged with conspiracy to provide material support for use of a weapon of mass destruction, according to the criminal complaint.

Crawford and Feight were developing a device “intended to be mobile … designed to turn on remotely from some distance away” that would emit “some dangerous levels of X-ray radiation,” according to John Duncan, executive assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York.

Perhaps it’s too much to ask that a charge involving a conspiracy to build a weapon of mass destruction actually require the construction of the weapon to be plausible. If those two are found guilty it will sets a precedence that will allow the FBI will be arrested every male elementary school student who gets into a competition with his friends to see who can imagine the most powerful weapon ever.

Whether those two are found guilty or not the fact that they were arrested at all should invalidate any legitimacy the FBI claims to have. The agency actually invested resources into this investigation. As soon as the FBI agents assigned to this task heard that the plan was to build a ray gun they should have laughed, told the two to carry on, and went back to doing what the FBI does best, finding people with lukewarm intelligence to hand a fake bomb to so the agency can claim to have stopped another terrorist plot.

This story also demonstrates a total lack of creativity on behalf of the agents assigned to this task. The best science fiction plot they could drum up involved a ray gun? Really? That shit is so 1950s. Since I’m sure somebody in the FBI is reading this post (if they have time to investigate those two bozos they probably have time to watch me) let me post a proposal. For a small fee I will gladly write a low grade science fiction plot for the FBI that actually involves weapons of mass destruction. It could involve an orbital ion cannon, a walking robot that lobs nuclear missiles, a device capable of create localized black holes, or an alien invasion. If I get paid a little extra I’ll even get creative and come up with something halfway original. Then the next time the FBI encounters a group of people with science fiction fantasies the agents assigned to the investigation can suggest something far more interesting than a ray gun. After the arrest the agency can then claim they saved the lives of millions, or even billions, of people.

Seriously, I can’t even sum up how incredibly stupid this story is. If nothing else convinces the American people that the FBI is, quite literally, making shit up as they go nothing will.

Amazon’s Bait-and-Switch

Last month the Minnesota government passed an Internet sales tax law. Although proponents of this law claimed it would raise revenue (isn’t funny how statists always consider other people’s money the state’s revenue), those of us who opposed it pointed out that it wasn’t enforceable. The State of Minnesota can only enforce its laws against entities physically located here. This being the case, Internet merchants not wanting to pay Minnesota sales taxes need only relocate to another state.

In response to the passage of Minnesota’s Internet sales tax law Amazon has decided to terminate it’s Associates Program with Minnesotans, effectively ending its physical presence in this state:

We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to notify you that your Associates account will be closed and your Amazon Services LLC Associates Program Operating Agreement will be terminated effective June 30, 2013. This is a direct result of the unconstitutional Minnesota state tax collection legislation passed by the state legislature and signed by Governor Dayton on May 23, 2013, with an effective date of July 1, 2013. As a result, we will no longer pay any advertising fees for customers referred to an Amazon Site after June 30 nor will we accept new applications for the Associates Program from Minnesota residents.

Libertarians and other advocates of small or no government are jumping for joy because this move demonstrates that tax increases drive businesses away… or does it? If you continue reading their notice you’ll see that avoiding taxes, a noble cause, isn’t Amazon’s goal:

We thank you for being part of the Amazon Associates Program, and look forward to re-opening our program when Congress passes the Marketplace Fairness Act.

Herein lies Amazon’s goals, they want to drum up support for the Marketplace Fairness Act. The Marketplace Fairness Act promises to level the playing field between online merchants and traditional brick-and-mortar merchants. In reality, the law is blatent protectionism, which is why Amazon is in support of it.

The text of the law says any online retailer that has over $1 million in gross online sales must pay sales taxes in all 50 states. Since Amazon is an online retailer and has well over $1 million in gross online sales it would stand to reason that it would oppose this law, right? Not exactly. Amazon is a massive company that rakes in tremendous amounts of cash. It can easily absorb the costs associated with complying with 50 different tax codes. However, its smaller competitors may not be able to.

$1 million in gross online sales isn’t that much when you figure in the expenses of paying employees, maintaining a website, building and shipping product, etc. A company that made $1 million in gross online sales may not be turning much of a, if any, profit. Even if it is turning a profit that money is unlikely to be enough to ensure compliance with 50 different tax laws, which may require hiring 50 different tax lawyers. Whenever a large company supports a piece of legislation always ask yourself how that legislation will harm its competitors, because that’s usually its end goal.

Amazon wants the Marketplace Fairness Act to pass because it would reduce the number of competitors. In order to get the bill to pass Amazon is sending members of its Minnesota Associates Program an ultimatum: support the Marketplace Fairness Act or never again enjoy the benefits of being an Amazon Associate.

In the end, Minnesota’s Internet sales tax law was a lose-lose-lose for everybody besides Amazon. The State of Minnesota won’t gain any additional funds since online retailers can easily relocate to another state. Members of Amazon’s Associates Program are no longer able to rake in that program’s benefits because Amazon wants to use them as political pawns to crush its competitors. Finally, everybody in the United States loses because Amazon’s exploitation of Minnesota’s Internet sales tax law will likely create more supporters for the Marketplace Fairness Act, which would increase the amount of taxes we have to pay.