Glibertarians.com 2017 Archive

Category: Big Government

  • Journeys Of Entrepreneurship

    Back in 2010 I took a massive left turn at Albuquerque looking for Pismo beach and instead started a business completely out of my area of expertise.

    Up to that point, it had been a strange journey, but ever since I was a young lad I wanted to be in ‘business’ just like my pappy. Entrepreneurship was perfect for me for two reasons: the autonomy it accorded, and for a guy with ADHD and (other non-specified issues as my wife likes to remind me) that was gold. I forget the other reason.

    Oh yeah, I hated answering to people.

    Anyway.

    Alas, with with a newborn attaching its parasitical self to my hip the pressure was on to settle on something.

    Growing up, my father always tried to steer us away from business. He just felt that the aggravation and stress of dealing with debt, the public and employees was too much. Immigrants preferred telling their kids to go work for a company and get secured pension benefits. Hoping for stability was only natural given the amount of uncertainty they lived through. They wanted to keep their children shielded from such stress.

    However, and most of all, dealing with the government was a job onto itself. He always said don’t ever think you can outsmart the government. They will always win in the end so shut up and pay your taxes. Save yourself a headache down the road.

    Sound advice that we most definitely adhere to.

    We didn’t see all the ups and downs he was referring to – often in quite dramatic and crusty delivery.  It made for interesting dinner table one-way talk. You haven’t lived until you witnessed a man deliver an anti-government soliloquy over a plate of veal scaloppine alla Marsala, Sambuca black and cigarettes, while my mother oblivious to everything kept asking if we wanted more whatever endless stream of food she made for the night. My mother was Kitchen Caligula.

    All we saw was a man who provided, through his trade as a tailor, a nice upper-middle class living in the suburbs, thus allowing me the latitude to, well, use Roosevelt Franklin as my avatar. Like most immigrants (those dirty sons of bitches), he came from nothing with scant knowledge of English or French.

    So I wanted that; or something close to it anyway.

    All this to say, I ended up in private daycare by pure luck. I figured what the heck? Get the right people in place and up, up and away!

    And so I thought.

    This is where my real exploration into the nether-world of government regulations, business debt and entrepreneurial acumen began.

    Early on, I got in over my head and had to pull a Duddy Kravitz my way into making sure I had sufficient capital. When I applied for my permit I had to go meet two bureaucrats to make sure I was worthy. All I kept thinking, as they inundated me with paper work, was how useless it all was. One of the woman, probably noticing my irritation, decided to tell me in a more intimate moment in French, ‘I know it’s a lot. But it has to be done. You look at places like Africa…’

    I could scarcely believe my ears. In fact, given I have poor hearing, I didn’t want to believe what she said but the person I was with (a Filipino consultant. I know this story is writing itself) confirmed it.

    The bureaucracy, ladies and gentleman, is the only line of civilization dividing us from Somalia.

    Apparently.

    Alas, I had to go through the motions, sign on the dotted lines and keep my eye on the prize. The stress was through the roof. I talked to quite a few people willing to lend their insights. One person said something that was interesting:

    “People only see the end result and judge you on that. They don’t see the journey it took to get there. If you get there, it’ll be all the more gratifying.” Just like we couldn’t understand (and let’s face it, some people probably don’t even care) what my father went through. We just saw the result.

    Seeing it in this way skews a person’s perception about successful people. Hence, the ‘the owner does nothing all day! He’d be out of business if not for me!”

    I think his comment couldn’t have been truer. Which is why, I think, it’s easy for people to demand the government view businesses with skepticism if not as a source for cash to pay for ‘social needs’. What do they care, right? It’s not their business – don’t excuse the pun.

    I’ve always felt schools should teach business or entrepreneurship, if anything to enlighten students on what business owners face; that they won’t fall prey to superficial cliches and empty slogans about ‘paying your fair share’ and ‘you’re not a good business if you can’t afford to pay your workers a living wage’. In other words, not to be finance and business illiterates.

    It’s not fool-proof, since people do weird things. Case in point, the province of Alberta – Oil Country – voted for the NDP; the very party that views oil and gas with suspicion. Or the weird case of small business owners who sometimes vote for the NDP or Liberals. Or doctors who support universal health care which effectively leaves their labor in the hands of bureaucrats. It’s a head scratcher for sure.

    Small business owners are going to tire of being demonized in North America. The former leader of a provincial party here asserted ‘public daycare offers better services than private ones’ which is simply not the case and was a rather irresponsible declaration to make in public. But how to respond instead of the usual letter-to-the-editor or calling a political representative’s office?

    Here in Canada, through the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, business owners finally have a voice and fighting chance to question or challenge onerous government regulations and taxes.

    As a whole, I like to think the fire and brimstone pseudo-populist rhetoric from the likes of Sanders, Warren and Obama will backfire because they’re a stale and stagnant remnant of a dying progressive moment.

    They’re part of an unproductive class looking to rape the productive to further their progressive agenda.

    Despite what they might think, saying ‘you didn’t build that’ is not a an act of encouragement signalling people go out and build their own dreams. You’re coyly implying through such poppycock rhetoric, people serve the state. It’s thanks to the benevolent state we have the opportunity to be able to start and succeed at business.

    It takes a village and all that.

    Yet, while they ludicrously take indirect credit for your success because ‘roads’, they weren’t there when businesses struggled to make payroll or rent.

    All they know is to drive some sort of class warfare wedge waving fists claiming to ‘fight for the people’. Whomever fits the definition of ‘people’ because it sure isn’t me and others like me they’re ‘fighting’ for.

    It’s the reality of things. That person I spoke to was right. No one gives a shit about the process and they prove it in the way they talk about you.

    And that’s that.

    I don’t know. The calculation always seem pretty straightforward to me. No entrepreneurship, no cash flow to pay for ‘free shit’.

    Such is the reality.

    It may not be Pismo Beach, but it’ll do.

     

     

     

     

  • Reclaiming the Language

    “The pen is mightier than the sword.” Much has been waxed, wroth and poetic, about that phrase since it was first penned by Edwin Bulwer-Lytton in 1839. At first blush, it is a sterling statement as to the power of the written word; to entertain, to persuade, to transport the minds of men into other shoes and allow them to walk roads previously unknown and unknowable.

    I still prefer my laptop.

    At second blush – and second blushes are best blushes, since they are so unexpected – it is a testament to the ability to control. The sword can only kill a man; the pen can make him into something fit to make his mother cringe in horror.

     

    Words are thought. Language makes up so much of who we are and how our brains work that a native language can be expressed with not merely a linguistic accent, but also a physical accent. Blind humans who have never seen the common body language of the speakers of their native language, will both use physical gestures to communicate and will also use similar gestures as those who can see them. Words are not merely things of our lips and tongue; they go down to the bone.

    The ability to control the words of others is a blueprint to change their very thoughts. Society is rife with examples of altering what words mean or which words must be used in an effort to steer the conversation. Gun “safety”.  Pretty much all of the media coverage of Trump’s campaign. The loss of perfectly functional terminology and colloquialisms: “-splainin’”, racist, fascist, liberal, feminist, Nazi.

    Remember the push to stop calling people illegal aliens? It doesn’t matter which word one uses as much these days, as it’s all been lumped under the broad tent of immigration, of which one is either for or against. And being against immigrants makes the Statue of Liberty cry. You meanie.

    We’re not banning homeless people, gods bless you sir, no! We’re just banning urban camping. Nothing to see here. Move along.

    Insidious propaganda is insidious.

     

    When words have been altered, taken – molded, primped, shoved into a tight dress and forced to pimp themselves on the streets for their masters – there often comes a push-back. Satire, mocking and Poe’s Law come into play. Frequently, the objects of this linguistic assault retake the word by embracing it and celebrating it. Pick the derogatory demographic slur, activists and cultural music will use it in earnest if given time.

    This is not always as effective as intended. If in doing so we accept the new interpretation foisted upon us by those who seek to control the conservation, embracing a slur as a badge of honor is to win the battle but lose the war

    Remember, the good football tackle doesn’t aim for the shoulders. Aim for the knees.

     

    The first return for nationalism offers a definition as patriotic feeling, principles, or efforts. Wikipedia first line on it is: Nationalism is a complex, multidimensional concept involving a shared communal identification with one’s nation. Dictionary.com’s first two definitions are 1) spirit or aspirations common to the whole of a nation 2) devotion and loyalty to one’s own country; patriotism. Merriam-Webster dubs it thusly: loyalty and devotion to a nation; especially :  a sense of national consciousness exalting one nation above all others and placing primary emphasis on promotion of its culture and interests as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups.

    Excuse me, I have bad news for you.

    Google Trends shows that searches for nationalism have followed an identifiable pattern since 2004. Searches peak in November-ish and again in the spring before falling to an apathetic doldrum by summer. Searches have been trending upward since the summer of 2012, and sharply upward since spring of 2016.

    You know what else follows that pattern? Election coverage in the MSM. And maybe searches for the weather too, sometimes the pattern isn’t as important as first blushes imply.

    It would make sense that the language of the nation is particularly captured by nationalism when electing its national leaders. For the concept described in the aforementioned definitions, one can find it culturally expressed by the immortal Lee Greenwood, and no wonder politicians are so fond of borrowing nationalism’s evocative imagery.

    What a surprise it must have been to the average voter to find the word in the media as a derogatory slur. Being a nationalist was bad and basically like Nazis. (TW: Scare quote abuse. It’s brutal.) Nationalism is gonna getchoo. It’s quite confusing, because sometimes it might not be bad? Context and qualifiers are key to understanding, since white nationalism is… well, you’d think it would be nationalists who are also white but let’s see what Wikipedia has to say this time.

     

    White nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which holds the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity. Its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation.

     

    Well, that escalated quickly.

     

    When everything is Hitler, nothing is.

    As a propaganda tool, it couldn’t have a worse basis in logic. Every redneck, pool player, bar rowdy and biker who ever closed out Karaoke Night with a communal Greenwood sign-along for all those left standing hears the message loud and clear: Look, nationalism is bad enough, but if you’re white and a nationalist, you’re this guy.

    Say it insistently and often enough, and what’s the logical reaction? A hue and cry of white Americans shouting as one diversity-approved voice, “No! And we say again – no! We reject our heritage and traditional ideals, and the very familiarity bias with which all humans are afflicted, if the only other option is to be that guy!”

    My word. It is to laugh. Some of them will just shrug and say, “I guess, sure, if that’s what it means now, then I must be a white nationalist.” In a linguistic climate which seeks to normalize the idea that being born pale says all it needs about the content of one’s character, whites have been called worse and it’s exhausting to try to correct the barrage. Plenty attempt to argue, but true thinkers know that this is just the rationalization of lesser minds at work and pay no heed. Heeding would be actively harmful, in fact, since the white voice is over-used and the construct of whiteness is complicit in oppression.

     

    Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive. It likely would have been more accurate and fostered proper communication to describe Richard Spencer et al. as white-nationists. That might not have served the correct interests, however, and branding white nationalism dove-tails so handily with the efforts to cultivate racism as an actual significant problem, useful to those who would control us all.

     

    Reject it. This land is our land, and those words are our words. It’s a fucked-up land, to be sure; like an old broken-in boot – comfortable, ugly as sin but still bringing a sigh to your lips when the worn leather molds around you knowingly, as few things can. We’ve stepped in shit more than we meant to. These things happen to us all, we’re only human. The soles are sturdy yet, though, and there’s life left in the good leather and craftsmanship.

     

    We’re not the greatest country in the world… but we could be.

    Globalism is a fine concept when it comes to marketplaces. When it comes to ethereal communal ties, telling people they aren’t allowed to enjoy particularly the land of their birth is akin to an announcement that following any one NFL team is discriminatory and verboten. Good luck with that strategy. Let us know how it works out. American society is highly and vehemently tribalized. It’s astonishing that people can be reliant on tribal ties in virtually every aspect of society, from politics to clothes and wine, and yet a familiarity bias for the country we were trained to pledge allegiance to is the one tie it ought to be unthinkable to feel.

    Unthinkable? It’s practically reflexive. Are we trying to give people a complex?

     

    Much like immigration is now a broad subject one can only be for or against, nationalism is being used as a linguistic tool, a buzzword to steer the conversation. White-nationists such as Richard Spencer have been vaulted to the limelight as the media cries wolf about scary racists/nationalist for their own ends. This is how easily we are distracted from the real work at hand. We cannot do what we should be doing, we cannot talk about what needs to be addressed, because we are too busy discussing the will-o’-the-wisps the mainstream media and politicians would have us chasing. Just because someone has offered you poison, doesn’t mean you have to drink it.

     

  • A History Of American Public Education: Part 1 of 4

    PART 1: Awakening the Progressive Giant

    I wrote a paper on the topic of public education for a class a couple years ago, which I am heavily excerpting from for this article. The main purpose is to explain some of the 19th Century factors that went into the whole-hog acceptance of compulsory public education, and a little bit of analysis of how to roll some of this back. Part 1 addresses the religious circumstances in the 19th Century that led to compulsory public school. Part 2 will address the secular circumstances leading to compulsory schooling. Part 3 addresses implementation of compulsory schooling and the effects on society. Part 4 will address long term effects and rolling back compulsory schooling.

     

    The Second Great Awakening

     

    In the early 19th century, the United States was going through a massive theological change. The nation was in the midst of the Second Great Awakening, and revivals swept the countryside. These revivals led to the growth of Methodist and Baptist evangelical denominations throughout the country. One of the doctrines of major importance in this Awakening was the doctrine of postmillennialism.

    While postmillennialism is not popular in today’s church, it was a major part of antebellum Protestant doctrine.  Postmillennialism taught that Jesus’ second coming would occur after a millennium of peace and justice, which had to be initiated by the Christians. Therefore, these evangelicals worked to root out conflict and injustice, such as slavery and moral decay. The clergy found themselves walking a fine line between destroying the unity of the nation that they believed would bring a millennium of peace and justice and actually promoting that peace and justice. If they pushed too hard on slavery, it would result in the dissolution of the Union, but if they didn’t push hard enough, there would still be societal sin in slavery.

    As it turned out, they could not achieve this balance, and the evangelicals largely took the side of the Union during the Civil War. Some ministers, however, condemned this secular and religious concept of America’s perfectibility as idolatry, and tried to steer those impulses toward the betterment of the Church. Although the Civil War and the friction between different ministerial factions slowed down the revivalist nature of the Second Great Awakening, it also laid the foundation for the Social Gospel movement of the late 19th century.

    The Social Gospel

    The Social Gospel was an evolution from the postmillennialist Second Great Awakening toward the idea that churches were responsible for social action and the eradication of societal ills. This Social Gospel was not particularly theologically deep and was primarily a codification of New England liberalism with an appeal to “teachings of Jesus.” The Social Gospel was, in a sense, a mix of the prophesies of the Bible with the burgeoning public understanding of the science of evolution and its application to societal progress.

    In order to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth, and specifically in America, Social Gospel preachers such as Baptist pastor Walter Rauschenbusch believed that the nation needed a spiritual regeneration. The initial push of the Social Gospel movement was government-neutral, but the movement evolved. By the second generation, which was defined by the temperance issue, the Social Gospel had come around to using government for its advantage. Rauschenbusch recognized the change that was afflicting his movement. He saw the tendency of the Social Gospel to drift away from its mooring and eventually secularize as they gained wider acceptance. He warned against the movement sagging down “from evangelical religion to humanitarian morality.”

    However, despite his best efforts to prevent it, the Christian-led Social Gospel already had cracks of secularism forming. The Southern Progressives united their message with the Social Gospel being preached in the South, relying on the religiosity of southerners as a connection between faith and politics.  As those sympathetic to the Social Gospel waded into secularism through the Progressive movement, they put the Christian revival and spiritual betterment of society on the back burner.  The Progressive Era had been born, a secular manifestation of the populist energy that had been created by the Social Gospel, the muckraking labor movement, and Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting.

    The Social Gospelers were one voice among many in the Progressive movement, and the Progressives’ ideas gradually transformed away from the Social Gospel due to the “irrational hatreds of certain groups such as foreigners.” This was, in part, due to a second side of the Progressive movement, the Social Darwinists.

     

    (to be cont’d… Same Bat-time. Same Bat-channel.)

  • HR 610 – Restoring Parental Freedom to Pack Lunches, Etc.

    Congressman Steve King (R, IA) has introduced HR 610, titled Choices in Education Act of 2017. The bill does two things – establishes a nationwide voucher program and tinkers with the school lunch regulations. I’ll cover the voucher program at length in another article. Here’s a brief walk-through of the the school lunches part.

    Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!

    Section 9(a)(1)(A)(i) of the Richard B. Russell National School Lunch Act (42 U.S.C. 1758(a)(1)(A)(i)) is amended by inserting before the semicolon the following: “, to establish a calorie maximum for individual school lunches, or to prohibit a child from eating a lunch provided by the child’s parent or legal guardian”.

    That would amend §1758 to read as follows (changes in bold):

    • 1758. Program requirements

    (a) Nutritional requirements

    (1)(A) Lunches served by schools participating in the school lunch program under this chapter shall meet minimum nutritional requirements prescribed by the Secretary on the basis of tested nutritional research, except that the minimum nutritional requirements-

    (i) shall not be construed to prohibit the substitution of foods to accommodate the medical or other special dietary needs of individual students, to establish a calorie maximum for individual school lunches, or to prohibit a child from eating a lunch provided by the child’s parent or legal guardian; and

    (ii) shall, at a minimum, be based on the weekly average of the nutrient content of school lunches.

    So, no calorie maximums and no confiscations of lunches sent from home. Not that the Congress has any business meddling in education in the first place, but this is not the typical unfunded mandate to take positive action which Congress has traditionally imposed upon public schools.

    Public education priority. All your lunch are belong to us.

     

    The no-calorie-maximums part will doubtlessly cause hysterics among the usual suspects, but in practicality will free the school lunch folks from having to worry about going over the limit by one calorie and incurring the wrath of US DoEd retribution.  And while this is indeed micromanagement of the schools by Congress, it is a net gain because it rolls back existing onerous federal regulations; regulations which should not exist, of course. The US Secretary of Education would still be in the business of  prescribing minimum nutritional requirements for school lunches.

    The second part is a huge win for parents – no confiscation of lunches sent from home. HR 610 may also override the peanut butter bans in place in many schools.  While still meddling in education, this is a more libertarian-friendly form of meddling as it articulates an individual right which the government may not infringe – much like the First Amendment.

     

    The House Committee on Education and the Workforce, where HR 610 currently resides, has twenty two Republican members including Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (NC), Vice Chairman Joe Wilson (SC) and Tea Party star Dave Brat (Virginia).  The committee also includes seventeen Democrats. It will be interesting to see what they do with this.

  • Psychopathic Exhibition On the Menu

     

    Making the rounds on the outrage circuit is this latest update into the continuing saga of Trump – Oh, What An Ass.

    ‘‘This is what it’s like to be with Trump,’’ Christie said. ‘‘He says, ‘There’s the menu, you guys order whatever you want.’ And then he says, ‘Chris, you and I are going to have the meatloaf.’’’

    The big take-away we’re supposed to have is that Trump is such dickhead. How Dare He. The choice of supper entree for an enormous fat man already the subject of one failed lap banding is none of your business, sir – he has agency, you know!

    Pardon me if I hesitated to clutch my pearls. As many times as this story has been passed from shocked ear to shocked ear, people missed what I found to be the pertinent lede to the story, which defined a damning study in character itself.

    Trump and Christie discussed the nation’s opioid epidemic during the lunch.

    Christie on Wednesday signed a series of bills he requested to address the crisis, including a five-day limit on initial prescriptions for opioids and mandating state-regulated insurance plans cover treatment.

    I’m sorry, were we discussing agency here? The agency of someone afflicted with a self-inflicted morbidity known to cause early death, disorder and severe limitations on quality of life?

    Oh yes. I went there.

     

     

    Chris Christie believes there is an opioid epidemic. Is he correct? Possibly. To what ends? His own. If the opioid epidemic were a problem for the consumers of opioids, they’d be proposing their own solutions. They might even be doing so – we don’t know, since Top Men and the mainstream media do not appear to have invited them to the discussion. But the real problem here is that Christie ate meatloaf when he might have chosen something else. Sure.

    As detailed in my earlier article, Finding the Why, humans have a talent for spotting malfunction as defined through their own worldview. We apply self-serving corrections, and then when our best-laid plans end up tattered wrecks, we blame everyone else for the failure.

    I, personally, believe Chris Christie needs to put the snacks down and take the stairs more often. I am fully confident that if he does not do so, his life will be needlessly shortened and suffer a loss of quality. I might even be right. So, tell me, America – at what point do I get to override Governor Christie’s agency in order to apply my corrections to his choices?

    In my opinion, I don’t.

     

    If he wants to be a great big fat bastard, that’s his problem. Nothing to do with me. But what about his elevated healthcare costs, due specifically to his bad lifestyle choices and now foisted onto the backs of taxpayers? Who, exactly, paid for Governor Christie’s surgery; the one that didn’t work?

     

    Red herring. If we all eat enough of them, we’ll be thin as rails. The problem isn’t that Christie has a sweetheart Cadillac healthcare plan exempted from Obamacare’s onerous health-damaging idiocies, at the expense of people who lack such privilege. The problem isn’t even that he uses this sweet privilege to rectify the self-inflicted abuse of his body. The problem is that government picks my pocket to enrich people who think lunch should be not merely free, but an all-you-can-eat buffet. Those who rob Peter to pay Paul, will always have the support of Paul.

    Is the analogy too subtle? Perhaps it is. In the abundance of articles about poor, poor Christie’s stolen agency, not one thus far to mine eyes has pointed out these astonishing parallels. Christie is upset at the loss of his own agency, while taking others’ agency away with both hands and the expectation of applause.

    Governor Christie is the very thing against which he rails. He merely has trouble seeing this clearly, since he is as convinced of his own narrative rightness as every other human on the planet. He is the good guy, because that’s what his head tells him is so.

    Being the good guy isn’t a side, a team. It doesn’t come with the proper hand-waving to paper over what you did with a thin veneer of respectability and concern. It’s an action. Those who do bad things are not the good guys. Everything from there is rationalization.

    Prediction: If an opioid epidemic exists, it will not be cured by talking at opioid consumers coupled with the proper removal of just exactly the right set of agencies from the correct people, handing that power over to some bureaucrat whose claim to fame is a bachelors degree in fine arts and a cushy job divorced from the requirement for functional results. What we’ll get then is another set of dysfunctions, and more people insistent that more money and and more power to the people who caused the new problems are the next sole best solution.

    If there is an opioid epidemic, we’d be best served to start with finding the why.

    Why are more people consuming more opioids? If consumption has reached levels causing individual health concerns, why has that individual come to the conclusion that this was the most effective cure for their pain despite the risk-reward calculation? Lest anyone labor under the delusion that only people making good and proper social normie choices make risk-reward calculations, allow me to disabuse them of that notion. Everyone makes risk-reward calculations. The man drinking himself to death knows it. This choice nevertheless appears, to his mind, to be the most effective option available. If this calculation fails to make sense, I’d suggest asking him to explain it rather than assuming we know everything about the matter and can solve that problem for him.

    Chris Christie post-surgery is still grossly obese. If you want to know why, don’t ask his surgeon; ask Christie.

    Therein lies our real solutions. Taking away the proper agencies and handing more power and money to people ill-equipped to use them will solve nothing. Such actions have, in fact, gotten us to this state of disorder and chaotic whack-a-mole with accompanying enormous and rising costs; both fiscal and societal.

    We need to start involving those who we purport to assist. Not at them and to them, but with them, will these problems be solved. Every individual has agency, and re-labeling people as sub-human and otherwise lesser-than to excuse our actions in taking away their individuality does not make us the good guys.

    It makes us psychopaths.

    The… characteristics referred to as antisocial personality in the FBI report were as follows: sense of entitlement, unremorseful, apathetic to others, unconscionable, blameful of others, manipulative and conning, affectively cold, disparate understanding of behavior and socially acceptable behavior, disregardful of social obligations, nonconforming to social norms, irresponsible. These… were not simply persistently antisocial individuals who met DSM-IV criteria for ASPD; they were psychopaths- remorseless predators who use charm, intimidation and, if necessary, impulsive and cold-blooded violence to attain their ends.

    We are eating the very people we claim to help because it feeds our narrative and increases power and money in one direction only. The stated goals are never reached, and the subjects loathe us for our efforts; this is natural, since we are not helping them, that’s just our rationalization of our bad choices. This is tribal monkey behavior with evolved vocabulary, not civilized humanity.

    Civilization is a choice. Let’s choose it.

  • Thursday Afternoon Links

    • California Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez introduced a bill to make California a “shall-issue” state.

    “It is our Constitutional right to defend ourselves,” said sponsor Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, a

    Trump is calling contractors to discuss height requirements for his wall as we speak.

    Republican from Lake Elsinore. “Californians should not be subjugated to the personal beliefs of one individual who doesn’t believe in the Second Amendment. If a citizen passes the background check and completes the necessary safety training requirements, there should be no reason to deny them a CCW.”

     

    • Denver police officer Julian Archuleta forgot to turn his bodycam off. Hilarity ensued.

     

  • Obama was right to commute Chelsea Manning’s sentence

    by Lucy Steigerwald

    (Original article here.)

     

    After eight years of waging war on whistleblowers, and indeed, being president during former Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning’s sentence, trial, and three years of brutal detainment before that—President Obama finally delivered some pleasant news on Tuesday. Instead of 35 years in prison for 20 charges, Manning will be out in May of this year.

    A heroic whistleblower to some and a traitor to others, Manning was an Army private who leaked thousands of documents related to the Iraq and Afghan wars to WikiLeaks, which in turn shared some of those documents with various newspapers. Though U.S. officials and their most dutiful lapdogs cried out in outrage over this individualist act of light shedding, no one died because of these leaks, as some claimed. We did, however, get to see what war looks like live with the “collateral murder” video. Furthermore, Manning’s information gave us body counts for Iraq, reports of the U.S. failing to follow up on reports of torture and murder, and war crimes committed that were never prosecuted.

    There was all the reason in the world to assume Obama wouldn’t free Manning. His administration tried a record number of people under the espionage act. Edward Snowden fled to Russia rather than face the dubious justice that anyone unimportant would be granted for spilling government secrets. Former NSA executive Thomas Drake narrowly escaped the Espionage Act, and now works at an Apple Store, because he spoke to a reporter about privacy concerns he had with the agency, which he said was committing privacy violations worse than those which took place under Richard Nixon.

    General David Petraeus could have been charged under a section of the Espionage Act for leaking classified secrets to his mistress/biographer, but he wasn’t. He pled guilty to a misdemeanor, and retired as CIA director, and that was all. Six months later, there was talk of him being in Donald Trump’s administration.

    After two suicide attempts, miserable treatment, and draconian punishments for crimes such as possessing verboten books and expired toothpaste,

    The law is the law, and “illegal” has serious meaning which all should respect. Because toothpaste.

    and seven total years without freedom, Manning has five more months to go. It appears that President Trump will have no power to reverse this decision. Presidential clemency power is a beefy power indeed. Obama, after a term and a half of being known for a dubious healthcare law, and setting exciting new precedents in drone assassinations of Americans, finally started using that power in earnest, and is now breaking records there. As of today’s news, the president had commuted the sentences of more than 1500 people, and pardoned 212 people.

    Though the news of Manning’s imminent release is great, there can be at least a semi-cynical explanation. Having diluted his civil libertarian rhetoric with his, uh, actual record, Obama can now go out with a bang, one that makes even the crankiest small government fans cheer when they consider the 1500 people whose lives are improved (or in the case of the handful of people who sentences Obama changed from death to life imprisonment, saved). But he can also keep an elite credibility by saying Manning was punished already. The clemency was a surprise, but there’s a certain savvy logic to it as well.

    It’s not enough for security state vampires such as National Review’s David French, who found 35 years in prison for Manning to be an unsatisfying compromise, and seven measly years and torturous solitary confinement to be an insult. French and his ilk, such as former UN Ambassador John Bolton (and the Trump of 2010), thought Manning deserved death. She could have received the death penalty if she had been charged with treason, or if she hadn’t been acquitted of the charge of aiding the enemy. Manning’s sentencing must have been a sad day for people who demand their pound of flesh, and who think that 35 years behind bars is small.

    That’s the thing. This could be a brilliant compromise move. There are people who believe Manning deserved to be punished, and there are people who have been furious about her imprisonment for the past seven years.

    But the former could develop some proportionality and realized that seven years is a lot of life to lose. Manning was punished for trying to show the world what war looks like beyond George W. Bush and a “mission accomplished” banner, or even sanitized photos of flag-draped coffins. By freeing her, Obama gets to get back some of his civil libertarian cred, but also isn’t doing something “crazy” like pardoning Snowden. In a country that loves to punish too much (2.3 million people in prison), Obama ending his presidency with a cascade of mercy is a good thing, no matter what you think of the people whose sentences he has commuted, or the people he has freed. But it’s a shame that he didn’t have the courage to push for these things earlier. Or that he didn’t feel like risking some of the political capital that he spent on drones, Libya, and ObamaCare.

    Petraeus was showing off to his mistress. Hell, Dick Cheney has been enjoying his freedom for many years now. Henry Kissinger has a Nobel Peace prize, no matter how many Cambodians he helped to melt.

    What happened to Manning is proof that there are rules for them, and rules for the rest of us. There are rules for former heads of the CIA, and there are rules for Army privates who want Americans to know what is going on.

    They will go to war for us, and in our name. But God help anyone who wants to help the public get a picture of what those wars really resemble. No matter what Obama’s motivation was, sincere or otherwise, his freeing of Manning is a pleasant surprise, and a capper to a rocky, often-authoritarian presidency that Trump is about to inherit.

    Originally published at Rare.us on January 17th, 2017. Reprinted with permission.

  • Provide for the Common Defense and Promote the General Welfare

    They love you. They really, truly care.

    We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    Let’s see how that’s working out, shall we?

    A dozen airport and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) employees have been arrested for their alleged involvement in a massive cocaine smuggling operation in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced Monday.

    Which one of the preamble clauses do you think government drug smuggling and trafficking is? It must fall under one of those clauses, since that’s what the government is for and this is what the government is doing.

    Logic, how does it work. Like this, clearly:

    An Airport Aviation Services worker, who was a baggage handler and ramp employee, is charged with paying TSA employees to clear the suitcases stuffed with cocaine; taking the suitcases to their designated flights; and giving a drug trafficking organization member the “all clear” for mules to board the plane.

    “These individuals were involved in a conspiracy to traffic massive quantities of illegal narcotics to the continental United States,” Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, said in a statement. “These arrests demonstrate the success of the AirTAT initiative, which has successfully allocated a dedicated group of state and federal law enforcement officers, whose mission is to ensure that our airports are not used in the drug traffickers’ illicit businesses.”

    Emphasis added for effect. A government agency charged with providing for the common defense requires yet another government initiative and a dedicated team to police it to also provide for the common defense violated by the first agency.

    Children sing of an old woman who swallowed a dog to catch a cat that she’d swallowed to catch a bird that she’d swallowed to catch a spider that she’d swallowed to catch a fly. As analogies go, this works quite well.

    (Spoiler: no one knows why she swallowed the fly. Analogy still accurate.)

    It remains unclear how much it will cost to swallow the buffalo to catch the cougar needed to catch the goat, and it seems unlikely we can comfortably swallow the elephant currently being eyeballed. In the old days, before modern medical innovations, the patient usually died but one must keep in mind the profession only had horses to rely upon. We’ve learned so much since then.

    What a good thing the entire affair is such a demonstrated success.

    The TSA has dealt with a number of high-profile security lapses at airports in recent years, including a gun-smuggling operation uncovered at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in 2015.

    … awkward…

    So, how ’bout them Bears?

    Discussing football in public is a proud American tradition.

    Well. This is probably far preferable to and not even remotely similar to bathrooms and cloths and million-dollar birthday gifts. Sound off in the comments to explain which clause this feels like to you.

  • Monday Morning Links

    They see me rollin'...they hatin'
    They see me rollin’…they hatin’

    Lots happening this weekend, so let’s get going.

    Mike Flynn is skating on some pretty thin ice over his possible talks with Russia after the election but before he assumed his National Security position.

    A mother in England had her children taken away and put up for adoption because she allowed them to sleep in her bed. The children are both under 4 years old.

    Sarah Silverman went absolutely insane for a moment, with hilarious results.

    Immigrant community on high alert as deportations continue in major cities across America.

    And California inadvertently opens the world’s largest waterslide park.  Schlitterbahn has not announced plans on where they will try to outdo them at this time.

    Have a great day out there, y’all.

  • Big Brother Knows Best

    Want to see yet another example of where libertarianism and conservatism strongly part ways? Here you go. Conservatives would impose the judgement of a “moral” government to deny people their most fundamental right: that of self-ownership. “No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

    Of course, liberals would demand that this all be paid for by tax money.