Disestablishmentarianism

Defeating Terror, Part 1

2011-12-13T07:41:00.000-08:00

While some may say that the US government's War on Terror is a ruse, and you can't declare war on a tactic, the truth is this: a lot of people—terrorists—living in remote regions of Central Asia, the Middle East, and the continental United Sates, are so insanely jealous of the obscene amount of freedom we have here that they have vowed to spend their lives to destroy those very freedoms.

One example is written about by Claudia Rosett, although she has kind of a bad attitude about it. As you will be able to see after reading that, our Freedom Defenders in DC have taken a bold step toward keeping us safe from terror. Because really, if the terrorists hate us for our freedoms, and we keep removing freedoms, then they will have no reason to hate us, which means they won't need to attack us as they are now constantly doing. So, voila, we are free from terror. Thusly, freedom must be destroyed in order that we may be free. QED.

So don't complain when you can't buy 100 watt bulbs starting in January. Don't see it as an invasion of your home buy meddling bureaucrats in the indirect employ of fascist corporations which have purchased Our Dear Congress in order that their products may be purchased even though the marketplace has rejected them. See it as safety. Someone get George Bush to strut around in a flight suit so that we can recognize the fact that the mission has once again been partially accomplished.

This Is Why

2011-11-25T08:48:00.001-08:00

When—if—parents and other responsible adults begin to fight back against paramilitary bullies like Frank Gordo, it will be things like this that cause it. Because…

"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more — we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward." Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

Sooner or late the cursed machine will grind to a halt.

The Yin-Yang Heart of Elspeth Gilmore

2011-11-16T15:25:00.001-08:00

Laurence Vance just informed me (not personally, of course, but that's the great thing about the internet) about Elspeth Gilmore. He calls her "the dumbest of the 1%," referring to the now ubiquitous and probably mythical division of wealth in American society, the 99 and the 1,made popular by Occupy Wall Street. Mr Vance calls Elspeth Gilmore dumb because she apparently can't see the massive, glaring flaw in the logic she so proudly espouses in a recent commentary on NPR. Vance is correct in that the flaw is there—anyone can see that. Gilmore is begging—demanding, even—that the government help her give away more of her money. It does seem pretty dumb at first, but maybe she should get the benefit of the doubt until some further research can be done.

Here is Elspeth's plea from her sign at Occupy Wall Street: I inherited money at 21. I have had health and dental insurance my whole life. I want to live in a world where we all have enough. I have more than enough. Tax me! Rich kid for redistribution! I am the 1%. I stand with the 99%.

There are numerous questions that could be asked here, such as what health and dental insurance have to do with social justice, or what enough is, and what it is enough for. But the question I want to ask is whether or not Elspeth Gilmore is dumb. Isn't it possible that she just has a kind heart, and that when she sees a poor child with crooked teeth her heart breaks because it isn't fair for a child to go through life with crooked teeth? It could be that she is so selfless that she can't stand to see so many go without basic needs: "adequate infrastructure and roads, well-funded school systems, clean water systems, innovative transportation and health care for all." Way too nebulous, but well-intentioned, I'm sure, although I'm not sure that those are basic needs, let alone needs ("why are you crying little child?" "Because I don't have any innovative transportation!"). To provide for those needs she wants to close "loopholes for corporations" and "increase millionaire taxes." She wants to use her money to help others. How very nice of her. Her heart seems to be in the right place.

This apparent kindness is the yang side of her heart. Yang eventually turns into yin. Instead of choosing on her own how her money can help others (which is why Vance calls her dumb, in case you haven't figured it out yet), Gilmore wants her money to be forcibly removed by federal officials so they can decide how to help poor folks (note to Elspeth: shooting missiles and dropping bombs on poor people in foreign countries—which is what Uncle Sam would do with it—doesn't count as helping). It doesn't end there. She wants this choice to be made for everyone in her situation. Everyone with "more than enough" must be separated from a large portion of their wealth until they just have "enough." And then, apparently, everyone will have enough! The stupidity rears it head once again. Just in case you think the state doesn't forcibly take property, watch this hilarious video of Harry Reid in denial of that fact. So Elspeth wants people with guns to show up at the country club and threaten violence to raise a little revenue from the well-to-do. It only seems fair to her. They have more than enough!

Not realizing she can give her own money away is dumb. Not realizing that the state's only tool is violence is ignorance. Foisting this ignorance on the world in the name of fairness and equality is evil. The kindness of Elspeth's heart is also the darkness of her heart. I don't think she gets this. I can help her.

Last year the insurance company that we bought our dental insurance from decided not to cover orthodontia anymore. We had already agreed to the terms of contract, and we had already begun the process of installing braces. We had paid our portion of the cost. The insurance company had not paid their portion, and told the orthodontist that they didn't plan to pay it either. So we had to pay it. My wife was angry. Fortunately, Washington has an insurance commissioner's office to protect unsuspecting consumers from being victimized. This is what taxes are for, right? To pay for scads of lawyers to defend us from corrupt corporate predators, right? After weeks of waiting, an attorney from the commissioner's office informed us that the insurance company had canceled that portion of their service, and so obviously they couldn't be expected to pay for a service they didn't offer. This wise attorney also informed us that he had closed the case, which I assume is one of those extra mile services that can only be offered by a state-run institution. If it weren't for the insurance commissioner's office, we would be out $3500! Oh, wait, we were out $3500, despite all the efforts of the beneficent and magnanimous state to save us from that end. Huh. As an extra benefit, the insurance commissioner of Washington also protected us from similar dental plans because he had not personally approved them for our area of the state. You cannot imagine how protected I felt at that moment. I don't know if this is what Elspeth wants, but this is what her method would produce. Listen closely Elspeth—it was the very existence of this government agency that allowed the insurance company to act this way. Their corruption was protected by the state. It's a very simple process: the state violently takes money; the state violently entrenches agencies that promote a monopoly on services; the state violently enforces it's monopolistic policies; the state violently prevents individuals from breaking the monopoly; the state protects it's monopoly with violence. As an alternative, let's pretend there is some measure of freedom involved in the process. We buy orthodontic insurance. Our kids get braces as per the contract. So simple! Here's another one. We want to buy orthodontic insurance, or we want one of our kids to get braces. There is too much money involved. Elspeth sees this, and writes a check for the required amount. Simple yet again! No violence, no crony protectionist rackets, no fury. In the third scenario, three parties benefit. The orthodontist (or his wife) is able to continue spending large amounts of money on whatever, our kids gets straight teeth, and Elspeth feels good about using her inherited money to help the 99%. In the first scenario there is only violence.

If Elspeth Gilmore and other one-percenters really want to help the lowly ninety-nine percenters, they can start by not demanding that violence be done to us in the name of equality. We don't need more violence, we need more liberty. And people like her need more economic common sense.

Chris Sullivan on The Lesser of Two Evils

2011-08-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

How can you not be interested in a post that features the statement, "A Vote For Jesus Is A Vote For Lucifer," really?

Keeping The World Safe From Chinese Imperialism

2011-06-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

Hillary Clinton—everyone's second favorite Secretary of State, after Henry Kissinger—recently said, on a visit to Zambia (that's in Africa), “we don't want to see a new colonialism in Africa.” She was apparently speaking of the Chinese, because then she said that Washington was "concerned that China's foreign assistance and investment practices in Africa have not always been consistent with generally accepted international norms of transparency and good governance." I see. Chinese energy companies have been brazenly bribing African locales with new schools, roads, and other infrastructure, all in an attempt to gain access to natural resources, which it surely plans to selfishly horde. The gall.

Clearly though, the Chinese don't realize that transparency can be best learned from the government of the United States. In order to make your intentions known, the most obvious step should be a military invasion, or if that doesn't work out, then at least build a huge military base in the country next door and act belligerently until you get what you want. That would be the transparent thing to do, but no, China insists on pretending to be peaceful capitalist traders, using boosts to the local economies to make the people think it might be a good idea to do business with them. Hello Africa, these are communists! "Peaceful trade" my foot. How long can that last? 50 years? 100? And then boom! They'll communize you. Suckers.

In conclusion, Africa will be lucky if NATO, lead by the US, prevents Chinese colonization by invading as many areas as possible and building bases to prevent advancement by the Chinese. The NATO countries have historical experience in Africa anyway, so it would be a good fit. NATO countries like Portugal, Spain, Belgium, France, Italy, and the UK used to control the entire continent, so it would be perfect and fitting for them to invade, build tons of bases, and bring in hundreds of thousands of civilians from their countries to live there in order to prevent colonization. In fact, the US already has a plan for this, but they have wisely extrapolated it for the whole world. Here's a picture.

See? Divide it up into military zones, build a thousand bases, patrol the seas and skies with mighty military force, and everyone* is happy. Keeping the world safe from colonial oppressors, like usual.

*Except for the evil and oppressive Chinese imperialists, of course.

Patty Murray For The Win! Wait, Nevermind.

2011-06-20T22:52:00.000-07:00

I just got an email from Senator Patty Murray highlighting her many legislative achievements, including Protecting America's Workers by updating the 1970 OSHA travesty, Bringing Technology to the Classroom (huzzah! Children can finally learn!), Going to Bat for Seattle Sports Fans (exactly why she was elected, by the way), and Highlighting the Unseen Human Costs of War in Afghanistan, in which the Senator emphasizes the need for these often unseen human costs to be factored in drawdown decisions… what!? Could it be?

If you can make it through that awake, she was referring to the unseen human costs as it applies to Americans. And here I thought she was calling for an end to the needless and destructive occupation of a foreign country which has resulted in the (unseen) deaths of thousands of unwilling noncombatants, sometimes referred to as "collateral damage." That'll teach me to be optimistic.

Well, since we're on the subject, here's a video of some collateral damage.

Turns out "collateral damage" is actual people. Maybe if the Senator saw some of these unseen costs she'd be less of a lickspittle (see 0:05 to 0:12 in the video) to the murderous fiends who direct those heroic drone attacks.

Astonishingly, there are some Americans who wish this kind of destruction on their own country. One of them is an Elected-American, Congressperson Dana Rohrabacher of California, who recently hinted that Iraq should start thinking about paying the US back for the generosity it has shown over the last decade. The real kicker comes when he says, "We could certainly use some people to care about our situation as we have cared about theirs." See? He wants the Iraqi army—and maybe the Afghans too—to invade us, traipse around the country kicking in doors, confiscate weapons, execute disobedient mundanes, and generally assault the entire population while destroying the economy and pulverizing whatever infrastructure they come across. And then, of course, stage a mock trial and execute the president, and then install a puppet government that will do whatever needs to be done to make sure their bribes keep coming. I'm not sure why Dana thinks "we" could use that kind of care. Maybe it's because he's a jackass.

Michael Rozeff sees this kind of delusion as an insight into the mentality of the DC parasite class. While he does an excellent analysis on the meaning of the jackass Rohrabacher's statements, he doesn't go so far as to say that people like the jackass should, at a minimum, be handed over to the very people he demands payment from to collect from them personally, like I would have said. He would need to take beatings or personal checks in lieu of cash.

Compromise

2011-06-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

Normally I hate compromise. It reveals a lack of principle on the part of the compromiser, and it earns a healthy disrespect. But, as with everything, there are exceptions, and I've been thinking about this for a while and have decided that I'm willing to give some ground on an important issue.

In 1947 the Department of Defense was created to replace the Department of War and the Department of the Navy. I've been of the opinion that it should go back to War, if not Offense, but I realize that probably isn't going to happen. I can see how it would diminish the effectiveness of tricking the "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them over here" crowd into thinking that there is any actual national defense going on, so I have an idea. I'm willing to allow DoD to keep it's current name, but with one minor adjustment. It should be the Department of "Defense" instead. It still sounds the same, but reflects reality in a much more accurate manner. I'll try it out. In a recent report from the Department of "Defense," blah blah blah. I think it works.

Other executive departments that are named in such a way as to cause uproarious laughter due to the disparity of their name and their actual function:

Treasury
Justice
Agriculture
Labor
Health and Human Services
Housing and Urban Development
Transportation
Energy
Education
Homeland Security

Surprising Pro-Liberty Votes. Maybe.

2011-05-29T14:00:00.000-07:00

Twenty-three United States Senators voted against extending the non-eternal provisions of the contemptible and misleadingly named Patriot Act of 2001. The most vocal of the opponents had to have been Rand Paul, which is no surprise since Ron Paul has been the lone voice against the act from the beginning. The surprise—at least to the casual political observer—is that only four of the twenty-three dissenting votes were Republicans. Why would nineteen Democrats—you know, the ones who hate freedom and constantly try to control everyone's life from birth to death and beyond, according to conservative estimates—vote against something that allows spying on Americans who haven't committed any crime? Why vote against Big Brother when Big Brother is your goal?

The bigger surprise, at least to me, was that both Senators from Washington, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, were in that group of nineteen naysayers. The two Senators are both documentable "liberals," or in other words, not "conservatives," so it stands to reason, or so I assumed, that both would be on board with permitting the state to surveil, harass, and intimidate any person, anywhere, with no due process, on any grounds. Someone who stands by the selfgenerated right of the state to determine what kind of food you should eat, what types of light bulbs you should be permitted to have in your home, what type of business you should be able to operate, what kind of car you can drive and how far you should be able to drive it, how much of your money should go to the government, and which tools you should be allowed to defend yourself with, surely wouldn't mind a few wiretaps here and there. Just applying whatever logic got you to the conclusion that the state knows best would, or should, help you reach the conclusion that the Patriot Act and all of it's tenticular provisions are OK, and we can all trust the government to do the right thing and only watch terrorists. Something in the provisions must have rubbed these two the wrong way to make them vote against their own power.

I can only think of two reasons: civil rights and republicans. It could be that, even though both Senators voted for the original Patriot Act*, they have come to the realization that the act has been ineffectual in figthing terrorism, and the ramifications have been detrimental to society in general, and have been the greatest factor in creating an embryonic paranoid police state full of tasers and check points. It could be that they care somewhat about civil rights, even though they haven't seemed to see their way to caring about other things that libertarian-minded people care about. Yet. The other possibility is that House Republicans were the driving force behind getting the bill to the Senate (because Republicans care about freedom, and protecting Americans from terrorism, and also, they want to win the War on Terror, or course), and anything the Republicans want, the Democrats don't want. Petty partisanship, in short.

Either way, voting against this heinous incursion into our natural rights was a good thing. To paraphrase Pavlov, any behavior that is reinforced is likely to be repeated. It might be a good idea to contact Senators Cantwell and Murray—despite the odds against them actually reading an email—to let them know we appreciate their respect for civil rights, and hope to see more votes n the future against travesties of justice like the Patriot Act, and more votes for liberty.

*Did you know that USA PATRIOT Act is an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act? These government folks are clever.

Lose-Lose

2011-05-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

So Osama is dead. Supposedly. I'm not sure why anyone would take DC's word for it, since nothing resembling truth ever comes from that wretched hive of scum and villainy, but they say he is. Nice to know that "justice" has been done, and that the American variety of justice is now slimmed down and more efficient than ever, having been completely stripped of due process, fair trials, and innocent-until-proven-guilty tradition. And it's about time too! That stuff is just for the Soft On Crime types.

Anyway, if Osama is really dead, and they really ditched the body in the ocean in one of the most asinine and ridiculous moves in the history of executive assassinations, then it's only bad news for the rest of us. A foreign military, combined with a team from the elected dictator's private army, went into another country, unannounced and uninvited, raided a residence, killed several people, and then left a wrecked helicopter for the host* nation to clean up. Nice. I'm trying to imagine the righteous indignation of Ann Coulter or Michele Bachmann (if she could find a way to form coherent sentences) on hearing news of the death of a notorious Mexican drug lord at the hands of Mexican Special Ops. In Nebraska. Somehow I don't think everyone would be happy with uninvited foreign military operations in America. So along with bad PR (and honestly,who really cares about PR anyway? Can't we just let the brilliance of Hollywood be our ambassador to the world?), Pakistan has a serious grudge against us—which they probably already had, and for good reason—and the rest of the world knows that "we" (not me, really) will come barging in anytime, anyplace, with the gift of democracy or maybe with teams of assassins, and along with that a bunch of people will have a solid and rational reason to believe that the United States loves to kill muslims and then desecrate their bodies. As if they didn't have enough reason to believe that, but hey, slow learners over there I guess.

All of this, plus American citizens have been revealed as a gaggle of chanting dunces, prone to gathering spontaneously in order to celebrate the assassination of some hobgoblin or other, not to mention that it took the self-proclaimed bestest military ever in the world multiple trillions of dollars that don't exist and innumerable lives (that just happened to be in the way) to find and kill one guy. And some of his family. "We" lose.

But if none of that is true, it's a whole different story. Or at least a similar but different story, because now the world—which is full of muslims, who are, obviously, just waiting for any opportunity to explode in a fiery ball of primitive rage and force their brutal religion of violence and oppression on the grand civilizations of The West, obviously—knows, or thinks it knows, what the elected officials of the United States would do in that situation. So if the whole thing is a lie, it's a really stupid lie. Burial at sea? If you wanted to raise suspicions there is no better way to do it. If it's a lie, latent terrorists are still mad because they think all of that stuff happened. "We" lose again, for mostly the same reasons, plus being uncreative liars.

If neither of those is true—maybe he's been dead for years, maybe he's still alive somewhere—then the whole thing is a surreal circus event, inadvertently revealing how deeply the tentacles of an unspeakable parasite have entrenched themselves in everything, from an unthinking, collaborative network of media prostitutes, to the psyche of the people who call themselves Americans. Bin Laden, if he's still alive, continues to bask in the glory of his victory over the greatest and best freest country in the world. He laughs every time a TSA goon sticks their hands down your pants, smiles every time the border patrol searches a car at a check point nowhere near any border, and claims victory every time our wise leaders in congress borrow another trillion dollars from our great-grandchildren to spend on technology that was cutting edge ten years ago. Every time some moron claims we have to give up our freedoms in order to protect freedom, bin Laden puts another mark in his win column, two if that moron happens to be the president. If neither story is true, we live in a world where no lie is off limits, because the liars know that we'll believe anything we're told, and we'll endure any abuse to be safe from whatever it is the liars tell us is dangerous. If the raid and assassination are a complete fabrication, then we are obviously the gullible Eloi the Morlocks assumed we are. In which case, "we" lose.

*Do I mean "host" like the host of a party, or "host" like the host of a parasite? I don't know, maybe both. Pick whichever one you like better.

Original Gangstas

2010-10-28T07:49:00.000-07:00

Defending the Homeland, thousands of miles from home.

Thank Goodness I Live in a Free Country

2010-09-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

An essay of thankfulness, by Don Cooper. Yes, our public servants do serve, and serve well. Thanks and praise to them, and to the leaders and masters who make it possible. What ever would we do without them? Aside from making our own choices and living our own lives, of course.

Stealing From The Government

2010-06-27T23:40:00.000-07:00

Harold Crick: It says, in the file, that you only paid part of your taxes for last year.
Ana Pascal: That's right.
Harold Crick: Looks like only 78 percent.
Ana Pascal: Yep.
Harold Crick: So you did it on purpose?
Ana Pascal: Yep.
Harold Crick: So you must've been expecting an audit.
Ana Pascal: Um, I was expecting a fine, or a sharp reprimand.
Harold Crick: A reprimand? This isn't boarding school, Miss Pascal. You stole from the government.
Ana Pascal: No I didn't steal from the government. I just didn't pay you entirely.
Stranger Than Fiction, 2006

The idea of stealing from the government presents a discrepancy, and if thought about too deeply could result in the discomfort of cognitive dissonance. Of course, everyone knows stealing from the government is bad. It's worse than stealing from a regular person. If you steal cash out of a purse at the mall, you might get in some trouble and have to wear an orange vest and clean up a little trash along the highway, but try sneaking a book of stamps at the Post Office and you've really crossed the line. You stole from the government. Those were The People's Stamps, and you selfishly tried to make them your own. The cash was just from some lady—an individual—but the stamps, those belong to the people. Until an individual buys them, but whatever.

The government (technically multiple governments, but there's only one Capital G Government, because they all answer to, and beg money from, the federal one) has lots of property, and you can't steal any of it. Cars, trucks, buildings, land, anything really. Sometimes it's even called public land, but the public (that's us) has to ask permission to use it, and even then it can only be used in a very limited manner (unless the particular member of the public has tons of money, and then it's different). The big question is where does the government get all of this stuff? Does land automatically just belong to the government? How do they buy those fleets of vehicles? Well, the government is rich, right? It can just buy whatever it needs. Sort of.

Anyone who has ever paid taxes has helped the government acquire all of that stuff. Actually, some people who haven't paid taxes yet, and maybe aren't even born yet, will, in some distant future, be paying for the stuff the government has right now. Maybe you didn't know this, but the government, with the help of the non-government Federal Reserve, borrows more money than you can imagine. The government is not rich, the government has a huge credit card. So either way, whatever the government claims it owns, was actually paid for, or will be paid for, by the subjects it disingenuously calls citizens.

That begs the question, is it possible to steal from the government? The government (meaning, or course, the state, but that's a different topic) has forcibly* extracted money from everyone in the form of taxes, including the sneaky tax of inflation, in order to get whatever it is it needed to continue, in a less efficient and more brutal manner, to extract increasing amounts of money from the same everyone. If a private sector thief takes your property are you justified in trying to retrieve it? "Hey, that's my TV, give it back!" Seems legit. Try getting a TV back from the local TSA office. Even though he had an enormous mustache, Friedrich Nietzsche was right when he said, "Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen." If the state hasn't stolen everything it has, then why is there a need for an armed collection agency? Why are people coerced** into filing tax returns every year? If given a choice, we wouldn't buy the things the government buys, so they have to take it with threats of violence. Can you really claim to own something you bought with stolen money? Can you really be angry when someone steals what you stole first?

You can be prosecuted and punished for taking something the government claims to own, but is it stealing? Maybe, maybe not. You can be prosecuted and punished for not paying taxes—they call it stealing—but is it stealing? They are stealing it from you, not the other way around.

*Yes, forcibly. Just call the IRS and tell them you're never paying any taxes again and see what happens. They have guns.

**Watch this hilarious video of Harry Reid claiming the opposite.

Patriot Watch List

2010-05-19T23:14:00.000-07:00

I got an idea from Liberranter about requesting to be on the Southern Poverty Law Center's patriot watch list. Here is the request I sent them:

I was just wondering if I could be on your "Meet the Patriots" watch list. I'm not really a leader of anything, and I haven't done anything infamous or dastardly, but I do harbor a lot of those so-called anti-government sentiments. I hope for the dissolution of the IRS, CIA, FBI, DHS, as well as the Departments of Education, Energy, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs. I'm also not so impressed with Treasury and Defense, so those could go too, but at least the DoD could change it's name back to Department of War, right? That would make more sense. Or maybe Department of Offense would be more fitting. The State Department can stick around because someone has to be the official greeter for visiting dignitaries. I mean, I'm not totally unreasonable.

And another thing that's ticking me off is that Janet Napolitano sounds like a dude, but Tim Geithner comes off like a sissy. Obama, make Tim eat some meat once in a while! Toughen that guy up.

Here's another thing that might make me worthy of a watch list. I don't care about global warming, or climate change as they're calling it now. It's probably a big lie, but even if it isn't, the morons who are freaking out about it are just using it as another reason to regulate and control everything. Like Al Gore gives a rip about carbon emissions? Please!

Which leads me to another thing. I hate the UN. It would be great if the UN was just a collection of worthless money wasting blowhards, but they're worse than worthless, they're detrimental to civilization. They must think people are stupid, because they constantly send out "peace keeping" forces, but these "peace keepers" are riding around in tanks. And remember that one time when they helped the Hutus kill a bunch of Tutsis? Jerks.

And what about the Federal Reserve? I don't have time to explain how much I hate that whole corporatist swindle.

I could go on about things the government does that suck, but you'd be bored, I'm sure. If you want a more complete list, let me know. If it would help, I can try to organize a militia or something, but don't bother sending infiltrators. I can sniff those suckers out pretty easy.

Thanks a million and let me know what you think.

Sic Semper Tyrannis,
Isaac Stanfield

Do The Collapse

2010-05-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

"Only government can break the vicious cycles that are crippling our economy -- where a lack of spending leads to lost jobs which leads to even less spending; where an inability to lend and borrow stops growth and leads to even less credit."
Barack Obama

A person's last resort tends to be their most powerful god. A lifelong agnostic, hanging from a cliff by his fingernails, just might become less skeptical and try praying, just this once. So what happens when a nation's (or the world, but whatever) economy begins a downward spiral? Where do people turn? Barack Obama turns to government.* Only government can break this cycle (never mind that government intervention created the cycle in the first place). Only government is big enough, and powerful enough. Only government can raise taxes, redistribute wealth, regulate, legislate, and rescue industries in a way that would fix whatever problems ail us. In fact, one of the few moments of outright honesty since Obama's campaign started getting national attention came with an admission of that concept. The monopoly on violence government claims ensures the continuation of various attempts at rescuing the common folks from all manner of horrible and uncomfortable states of being. The federal government, being the largest and best armed, is the boss government, all others submitting to it.

If Obama (and Bush, and Cheney, and Romney, and all the rest of them) turns to government to cure our national ills, where do we turn? How do we display our faith? Who do we trust with the most important aspects of our civilization? Of course we don't trust our children to the government, that would be foolish. No, we raise our own children. Except for the 180 days a year of six (not including homework) hour days spent in government run schools, for thirteen of the first 17 or 18 years of their lives. Certainly not our homes, which belong to us, and are a sacred sanctuary from the world. Except government instructs us on how and where we are permitted to build (building permit, get it?), what materials we can use, how much we have to pay to keep it (property taxes), and the various agencies that can demand inspections and remove our children on the slightest whim, not mention the TV and radio—controlled by the government via regulation of radio and airwaves, among other methods—that are omnipresent within our homes. OK, fine, but not our personal safety. We can take care of ourselves! Except for guns, because the federal government needs to make sure that only safe people own guns, for our own safety. And knives. Some knives we can't have. And metal plates of a certain thickness. But other than that, it's just the taxes that are distributed (redistributed? Shock!) to the military for our national security. And to the intelligence agencies. And to the programs to connect the military, intelligence agencies, state police, and local police, for our own safety. Other than that, no way do we let the feds control our personal safety. I could go on about every aspect of modern life, but hopefully you get the point. I covered life, liberty, and property, so that should suffice.

What would we do without the federal government? What would happen if every person and every corporation stopped paying the extortion fee we call income tax? The federal government would collapse, right?** (Assuming they would run out of money, which they wouldn't because the Federal Reserve can print or "create" as much as it want, whenever it wants, without asking you, which it does on a regular basis.) And then what? Would the interstate highways crumble to dust due to neglect? Would communication break down and isolate us from distant populations? Maybe mobs would rampage through the streets, looting and pillaging, and warlords would conquer your neighborhood. There would be no food in the stores, because everyone knows that only the federal government can authorize food in the stores. Can you imagine the chaos if government appendages like the Department of Education ceased to exist? Who would educate the children? And the local favorite, the Department of Energy, what would we do then? Get the candles! Man the bicycle-driven generators! To assume that all of this flows from the federal government, or is in some way bestowed on us or allowed by it, is to assume that people aren't capable of doing these things themselves. That would be the same people who do it everyday, themselves, right now. Do power plant operators need a government agent to stand behind them everyday and convince them not to push the self-destruct button? Do they need the federal government at any point in their education, training, or career to be able to do what they do? Does any occupation? Dispelling the myth that we need federal agencies to guide every aspect of our lives only requires a little logic. So here it comes.

Pretend you somehow overcame the licensing and regulatory hurdles and you now own a dairy farm. What is your goal? To make money. How do you make money? People give it to you. Why do they give you money? Because you give them dairy products. So far so good. Everyone is happy. But wait, how can we be sure your milk isn't poisoned? Because we all know that people who are just out to make money are soulless vampires hellbent on ravaging the general population. We learned that in college. But that doesn't account for the fact that a dairy farmer can't make money if all of his customers are sick or dead. Even if a small percentage of people get violently ill from his products, people will hear about it, and then he's in big trouble. It's in the farmer's best interest to put out the best product he can, and for the best price he can afford. If slick marketing gets him a better price, good for him. So where does federal regulation need to come in? At what point do we need federal agents enforcing price controls? If one farmer can sell milk for $1 a gallon, fine. If we're so stupid that we pay $10 a gallon for a different brand, that's our problem. I don't see how it's the federales business what goes on with milk.

How about the aforementioned energy production? Would energy companies wantonly dump waste into rivers if not for government saving the day? Again, it doesn't make sense for a company that needs to make money to kill or harm those who will give it money. Only when government comes in and sets guidelines (and who can doubt that federal regulators are always experts in their fields and have only the best interest of the people in mind?) for who can do what and when that the minimum guidelines are met, absolving companies of any liability beyond that. Apply this to the banking industry, clothing, cars, computers, books, TV, all manner of agriculture, medicine, pharmaceuticals, money, etc, and you might begin to see that the federal government has it's boundless nose where it doesn't belong in every situation.

Economically, the situation is simple. If Uncle Sam has to rob—I mean tax—Peter to pay Paul, that seems simple enough. But when he goes to pay Paul, there isn't enough. Uncle Sam had to take his cut, so now Paul is short. But look! There's James, rob—I mean tax—him too! It becomes an untenable situation because more than one person has to be robbed—I mean taxed—to pay just one person. Soon Uncle Sam will run out of persons to rob—I mean tax—with no shortage of people to pay. The numbers don't add up. The moral of this story is that whenever government invests in something, it isn't really an investment. Opportunity cost kicks in, and whatever opportunity Peter had to invest his money is now lost. Maybe he would have invested in Paul's enterprise, or helped James buy a new fishing boat in return for a percentage of the profit. But now he can't, because his capital is gone. He ended up "investing" involuntarily in Uncle Sam, who will use his cut to buy himself better guns with which to rob everyone else and fortify his position as the baddest bandit in the land. So every time something is heavily controlled and regulated (a redundancy, sure, but some people might be slow on the uptake) by the government, we can be sure that there were many more opportunities lost than there were created. I know what you're asking now, so I'll get to that.

"What about things that are just so important that the government has to do them?" you may be asking. "All of those national labs are working on such important stuff, we can't just leave it to chance." If these projects were so important, wouldn't they be undertaken by someone anyway? If there is an opportunity to profit from innovation, wouldn't someone take it on? If profit were the goal, wouldn't these projects be done on a budget and in as short of period of time as possible? History says yes. No one forced Rockefeller to revolutionize the petroleum industry. No one had to regulate Henry Ford into developing a faster way to build a cheaper car. No one legislated the light bulb into existence. And if there is no use for these government mandated projects, perhaps the harsh truth is that they aren't needed at all.

If you find yourself thinking that the most important things should be done under the direction of the most corrupt and inefficient entity known to human kind, then maybe you should think about it a little longer. And if you find yourself thinking that the most important aspects of modern life can only be saved by government, maybe you should examine who and what you put your faith in, and who you look to for salvation when it really matters.

*Just for clarity, government means that entity which claims control over the population of a certain geographical area. I've dispensed with the notion that "the people" are the government, because that doesn't really seem to be the case, with ample evidence available on the web. It's a whole different topic, so just go with it.

**To make it easy, I'm not going into how tenaciously the federal parasites would hang on to their hosts, and what means they would use to keep their power.

In order to credit where credit is due, I should note that Do the Collapse is the name of an album by Guided By Voices.

The Emporer's New Clothes

2010-05-10T00:46:00.000-07:00

I heard an astonished fake-news reporter on the radio the other day—this was the day the stock market was losing a billion points or something (suckers!) and cops in Greece were whacking people with sticks (perhaps they had just returned from a training session in the US)—commenting that the dirty little secret in the whole mess was that "the world has no money, and the emperor has no clothes." Take heart and join the club, Court Stenographer, we already knew that.

So as I was laughing at this poor sap who had lived his whole life without realizing that Wall Street and it's companion wretched hive of scum and villainy, Washington, DC, were absolutely not real and also totally fake, I started to think about this whole naked emperor scenario. Of course everyone knows the story (if you don't, please immediately chastise your parents—if you know at least one—for not caring about you and depriving you of useful fables during your obviously intellectually and culturally impoverished childhood). The emperor is afraid of looking foolish and low class, and the high class people of the court are afraid of falling out of favor with the emperor. The regular folks are somehow intimidated into pretending to see what the high class types saw, probably due to the effects of some variation of the corporatist system of bribery, extortion, and general corruption which was no doubt ravaging the economy of this allegorical empire, and which is also now extant in every corner of the actual world we live in. But anyway, in a high school English class way, who is supposed to be what? Is it generally assumed that the emperor is a stand in for real world royal types, and the peasantry is supposed to be us, the everyday people who can recognize the nonsense of the royalty* but don't? Is the little boy who has the courage (or total lack of awareness of appropriate public behavior) supposed to be those who are willing to "speak truth to power?" (as the smart folks are saying these days.)

Maybe. When this yahoo started practically sobbing about the stock market drop—which I assume he was worried about because his stupid pension and/or 401(k) is wrapped up in it—I started thinking that the emperor was us. We're the ones using phony fiat dollars everyday, pretending they're so valuable. We're the ones who have been duped by the cunning weavers into this whole program of trading valuable capital (labor, time, ingenuity, etc) for Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs). The weavers, by the way, would be the Federal Reserve System and the nefarious banks behind it, whichever those might be, and good luck finding out. We are also the ones who insist that the peasantry recognize our fine fabric as something other than the auto-delusional farce that it is (see how that works out? Because FRNs are made of a fabric/paper material. See?). Remember that one time when Iran said they wanted to stop using FRNs as the default currency for trading oil? And remember when the US started threatening Iran right after that? "See my fine clothes, wretched villain! Glory in the majesty of my extravagant finery!" We're the emperor, because he was so easily duped in his pride, arrogance, and ignorance, and because we persist in forcing our non-existent non-money on the world. True, they wanted it while the illusion held, but now that the intrinsic value of the dollar is being noticed, the masters of the system are reluctant to let go. Don't you hate being the emperor? I hate being the emperor. I think the emperor should have executed the weavers and tossed their bodies into the ocean for the crabs to eat, or at least shooed them away with a stern look. That seems to be the only sensible thing to do.

By the way, Ron Paul is the young boy in the crowd who dared to proclaim the nakedness of the emperor. Who else?

*I'm including elected officials here because let's face it, they really are. Don't try to argue against this.

Not Funny, Pennsylvania. Not Funny.

2010-05-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

Trusting the Government

2010-04-01T18:47:00.000-07:00

Name one thing the government* doesn't lie about.

*Government meaning elected and non-elected officials and the various bureaucratic appendages thereof, not "The People" so often spoken of but so seldom seen.

Eastern Washington

2010-03-10T23:37:00.000-08:00

So Washington has a budget deficit. This is not my fault. I don't imagine it's your fault either. The state legislature, because they don't have the, uh, ability to print currency like the feds do, have to resort to something other than printing monopoly money to pay for their re-election schemes. So they recently repealed (I mean temporarily suspended. It's just a temporary measure, of course) the requirement for a two-thirds vote in order to raise taxes or create new ones, and straightaway started the process of instituting an income tax. While I could go on about the ridiculousness of taxes, which are only theft under a different name, I won't. Secession is a much better topic.

Usually talk of secession conjures images of rabid antebellum slave owners and off-kilter Texans, but this is a bit different. What if, instead of Washington seceding from the United State [sic], the eastern half of Washington formed it's own state? Let Olympia build as many stupid light rails as they want, let them restore their own rivers to a pristine and dam-free natural state, let them legislate their way to clean air, and let us live how we want to live without interference from the west side. It's something I've been thinking of for a few years now, but it seems like this might be a good time to get serious about it.

People have a right to be governed in the way they want to be governed. This is not a right bestowed by the state (because that wouldn't make much sense, would it?). Jefferson wrote it in the declaration of independence—governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. So it stands to reason that when the consent of the governed is withdrawn, the power is also gone.

What do the two halves have in common? Geography? No. Look at a map and you'll see a pretty distinct dividing line between green and brown. This geographic and climate difference necessarily leads to a cultural difference. I hardly need to spell this out. How many times has the utopia envisioned by west siders been scuttled by uncouth rednecks from the east side? How many times have the earth savers from the west side tried to save fish, dismantle dams, restrict water use, and otherwise save the ignorant farmers from themselves? Why do they bother trying to control a population they have a general disdain for, and nothing in common with? Why is Olympia our capitol? It has nothing to do with us.

The great part about this idea is that if enough people latch on to it, and if enough counties get together and decide to exert their sovereignty, there isn't anything anyone can do to stop it. If Olympia doesn't like it what will they do, punish us with more taxes? Guess what, we don't have to pay them, we're our own state! Will they refuse to maintain our roads? Big deal, we're our own state! Maybe they won't let us on their new billion dollar light rail. Watch us cry, we're our own state! They might have tech companies and billionaires, but we have agriculture, we have hydro and nuclear power, and we also have way more guns than they do. I'm just sayin'.

So seriously, this needs to happen. I'll post more info as I get it, but for now I have to work on some bumper stickers.

View Larger Map

______ Control

2010-03-04T23:01:00.000-08:00

The hubbub over Starbucks refusing to ban guns in their stores has got me thinking. Some people are upset by the fact that any old gun owner can wander in to Starbucks with their piece (that's macho lingo for a handgun), thereby disturbing the serene and tranquil paradise of nonviolence and slightly pretentious sophistication. But the gun issue is not my focus. There are other dangerous things out in the world. I recently learned about one. Let me tell you about it.

This particular dangerous item is a versatile explosive. In the standard liquid form it can cover a surface before it's ignited, or it can be poured under a door, which obviously causes problems when running away from bad guys. It can be added to other materials in a container and then ignited under pressure, which increases it's deadly capabilities. It can be easily transported in any type of container to avoid detection. Dangerous stuff, huh? But here's the crazy part: this stuff is readily available, no license or permit required. No background check or waiting period, no training certificate needed. All you need to have is the money to buy it. To buy a gun you have to have a background check (and that costs money, which increases the price of guns) and then wait five days, unless you have a concealed carry permit (which costs money and depends on the whims of the authorities), and then you only get to waive the waiting period—you still have to go through an up to date background check. We even have to be licensed to drive a car, but there isn't a restriction on buying this dangerous explosive? How did this slip through the legislative and regulatory cracks? How much danger are we in? Any random person can buy this explosive at any time. Readily available to the general public. Terrorists can buy this stuff. Seditious white supremacist groups can buy it. Tenth amendment sympathizers can buy it, and then they'll probably secede after they explode the entire country. Even Democrats can get it. This is totally insane.

So some of you may be wondering where you can get a hold of some of this stuff we should call "The Terrorist's Dream Come True." Well, even though it might expose me to some sort of liability or lawsuit or whatever, I'll tell you. You get it at the gas station. It's gas. Gasoline, petrol, aliphatic hydrocarbons. Every time you fill up you're putting the equivalent of three sticks of dynamite in your car, which, by the way, can also be a dangerous weapon in the hands of a raging terrorist. Terrorists!

So I'm calling for a crackdown on this threat to liberty. A strict permitting process must be established, and licensing instituted, with guidelines and requirements scrupulously adhered to. Maybe a dedicated agency set up to watch over things, and probably a hefty tax to prevent just any unserious or dangerous person from getting a hold of it. The survival of this nation could depend on it. If we don't control this threat, the terrorists win. We have to destroy our gasoline supply in order to save it. You're either with gasoline or against it. The government has got to do something, because only the government is big enough to handle this problem. If any country is harboring gasoline reserves, it is harboring the equivalent number of dynamite sticks as the number of gallons they are harboring, divided by five. This is terrorism, clearly. There should be a law.

On Food Storage

2010-03-02T22:32:00.000-08:00

I recommend this blog post from Alan Rock Waterman. I really enjoyed it, and it never hurts to get a reminder about what your priorities are and what they should be. I am now officially convinced that I should focus less on guns and ammo and more on food and water, although I still think about getting a slew of Mosin-Nagants at least once a day. But doesn't everyone?

Where I'm Coming From

2010-02-24T00:20:00.000-08:00

[A continuation of a discussion on government, war, &c]

I think the main problem here is that it's difficult to communicate through the barrier of such vastly different premises. Your premise, apparently, is trust in "leaders" or "the authorities" or some such thing, and my premise is that they're lying so the truth must be something other than whatever it is they've said. That difference is simple enough to understand. Truth is not subjective, and morals are not situational. So where do we get truth and morals? Some people get the truth from Fox News (they report, we decide, because they're fair and balanced), some from CNN, some from the Pope, some from a psychic, etc. Some people get their morals from national pride or from whatever they think their best interest is. Some people get their morals from religion. I decided to base my opinions on actual truth, from sources that have proven to be worthy, so when, just for example, D&C says—as I quoted above—that we shouldn't go to war unless directed by the Lord, and then we should follow specific steps to ensure the validity of our cause, I take that very literally. That's really what I believe, so why shouldn't I follow it? At that point I don't care what Ahmadinawhat says, or Limbaugh, or Beck, or Bush, Cheney, Obama, or whoever. I'm looking for the one trustable source to give the say-so.

On that note, the same source of truth tells me that the constitution was established for our benefit, and so no matter what the circumstance—the expediency of instantaneous bombings sans legitimate declaration of war, capturing terrible terrorists and giving them the whatfor, fast highways, "safe" food—I look for government to follow what I believe is the established and proper law. And even though the Rockwell anarcho-capitalists have extremely convincing arguments, I can't give in to that argument either, because the ultimate trump card is right there in the scriptures. The truth. When government doesn't follow that established law, I see it as a rejection not only of individual liberty but of the Lord's will as well. Because it is, isn't it? No argument from the previously stated list of pundits and charlatans can convince me otherwise, because their arguments can't compete with the truth. Why would I give up my agency—the use of which is the very purpose of mortal life—to follow a government that is clearly violating every tenet in what should be the established law? There is no logic in doing that.

Another big piece of the puzzle also comes from the scriptures (I remind you that this is an explanation of how and why I think what I think about things—the basis of my opinions). We are warned many times of secret combinations. In fact, the entire Book of Mormon was meant as a warning to those who read it. You can look that one up, it's in the front. Moroni tells us that secret combinations destroy societies when the people tolerate and eventually support and embrace them. Uphold is the word Moroni uses. And what are these secret combinations? "That I may murder and get gain," Cain said. It's a very simple formula. When you see the exchange of life for property, that's a big clue that something has gone wrong. One of the most important things a person can realize is that their government is conspiratorial. There is a conspiracy against freedom. If you don't believe that then you don't believe the correctness of the Book of Mormon (the reference is Ether 8:25 if you want to check). Do politicians not conspire to legislate themselves and their benefactors the property of the rest of us? When a priesthood holder attempts to exercise unrighteous dominion, his priesthood is lost until he repents. When a government violates every principle of it's founding does it not also lose legitimacy? Any more or less than the constitution comes from evil. Evil can't be good. We shouldn't follow evil.

For a lengthy exposition on the exchange of life and liberty for property and power, read this article, not from Lew Rockwell. Start at the subheading "Empire and Economics" if you want to skip ahead.

As far as Bush meaning well, so what? The guy in the Old Testament who tried to right the ark also meant well, but he still died. Don't touch the ark. He touched the ark. He died. Intentions don't matter, right and wrong matter. I don't think they had good intentions, but my opinion doesn't matter. They were horribly wrong at the expense of millions of lives. Intentions don't matter. If you read that article, you'll see what I mean. The Federal Reserve controls the interest rate and supply of the default world currency, and has extreme influence on world economies. The IMF/World Bank come to a country to help save it by loaning it billions of dollars (yours, by the way) for infrastructure improvements, but the contracts go to companies like Bechtel and CH2M-Hill. The money flows out of the country, but the country is left to repay the loan. When the loan comes due and it can't be paid, favors are demanded. Who controls the IMF and World Bank? They're both headquartered in DC. The president of the World Bank is appointed by the president of the United States. Lives are destroyed, resources exploited, money is made, and power is retained. It's a great system if you're in the loop.

So now you know where I'm coming from. Ayn Rand said in one of her books, "Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." You should try it sometime.

A Conversation Stemming From Gold and Freedom

2009-11-03T00:19:00.000-08:00

I recommended this article about the relationship between gold and freedom to my in-laws in general. The good sister-in-law responded. "This was an excellent article, easy to understand and informative. So is there any of the "gold standard" left in our country to any degree today? and if not, why is it important to buy gold for saving if it doesn't have any set money value, or does it? Why not stock up on food or other precious commodities instead? And the most important question, when and how fast do you think that inflation is going to start rising again?" My way-too-long answer:

Short answer at the bottom.

Nixon officially ended any link to gold in 1971. Foreign countries were allowed to redeem US dollars for gold although American citizens (or individuals of any nationality) weren't. To keep the dollar from falling straight to zero (which it did for a few weeks anyway) he and whoever was actually in charge made a deal with oil producing countries that oil would trade exclusively in dollars, making dollars unofficially backed by oil. This has been the case until the last few years, when some countries decided not to accept dollars for their oil. The list of countries that have made their intentions public might be of interest. Iraq was one of the first, probably because Saddam Hussein was so belligerent and thought he was untouchable. Everyone knows what happened there. Iran is one of the most vocal about ditching the dollar. I don't recall much concern for the rights and freedoms of the terribly oppressed Iranian people until the matter of dollars and oil came up. Venezuela is also on the list, and the US happens to be building seven military bases in Columbia right now. Columbia is next to Venezuela. I probably don't need to fill in many blanks. A short and informative article about the whole mess.

As far as buying gold, I have no idea. It would have been nice to have bought some ten years ago. It doesn't have a set dollar value because the dollar doesn't have a set value. As soon as the oil countries stop using the dollar it will go straight down to zero. It has no actual, inherent value, except the value a piece of paper that size generally has. You can ponder what that value is next time you visit the restroom or need to light a fire. And hopefully those two things aren't going on at the same time. So, if all of your savings are in dollars, someday you will have literally no money. I don't know when that day is. Gary North (I like Gary North) doesn't know either, but he does have some indicators and potential scenarios.

We've been told it's a good idea to have a lot of food stored. We haven't been instructed to buy as much gold as possible. Food and other useful commodities are better than gold in a Mad Max situation, but if there is some remnant of normal economic activity then garbage cans full of wheat are extremely inconvenient to use if you want to buy gas or shoe laces. 9mm or .45 rounds are better, but gold and silver are even better than that, and the market will determine prices and values in the absence of a functioning dollar. I guess it just depends on what you expect to happen. In the short term, if everything chugs along like it has, then at the very least you can beat inflation with gold. Gold has increased almost 50% in the last year, and over 250% over the last ten years. Beat that with the stock market Dave Ramsey! Silver is up 60% from a year ago, and just under 250% over the last ten.

The Fed has been quietly monetizing chunks of debt since the first bailouts. That just means they're printing more money (or just creating it on computers), which means more dollars chasing goods, which means prices go up. Inflation! How fast inflation rises depends on how much they print and how long it takes people to catch on. They'll have to print at least several tens of trillions over the next few years to pay off Congress' handouts because China, Japan, and Russia are not buying our debt anymore. They figured out we have too much of it and we don't make anything to sell to pay off our debt. All we can do is start a war with them to try to force them to use our (non)money. That is not very near the top of my list of good reasons to start a war. You can probably guess the likelihood of me encouraging any of my six sons to sign up for killing Chinese, Japanese, or Russian people (or Iranians. I didn't forget you Iranians!) in order to force them to use worthless dollars. No fighting for The Fed at my house.

Short answer: The dollar is absolutely unbacked by anything other than the good faith and credit of the United States, which is the same thing as nothing. I don't know when and how fast inflation takes off. Sooner than anyone is ready for, and faster than we think.

Letters to the Whitehouse

2009-08-30T00:21:00.000-07:00

When a white house flunky requested we citizen-soldiers report any "fishy misinformation" we heard about health care reform, I couldn't help but do my patriotic duty. I hope I made an impact and was of some help in getting people straightened out about this whole thing. Unfortunately, so many patriots reported things that the mini-program had to be discontinued. Here are my reports.

Aug 5
Hey Macon Phillips,
I found some fishy stuff. http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/31690.html This guy over at lewrockwell.com seems to think that the health care plan is an evil plot covered up by some sort of Soviet-style Stalinist propaganda. Ha! We all know that the propaganda leans to the Maoist style. Anyway, you might want to check it out. Also, I've been hearing some fishy misinformation on AM radio. You know the guys, I'm sure. Anyway, good luck correcting all of this fishy misinformation.

Isaac

Aug 5
Are you a czar? That would be cool if you were a czar. Which spelling do you prefer, czar or tsar?

Thanks,
Isaac

Aug 6
Did you see that video of everyone yelling at Arlen Specter? You should be able to identify at least some of them and track them down, then you could give them a good talking to about the real health care truth. Give that a shot and let me know how it goes.

Isaac

Aug 7
You know who's been saying fishy stuff lately? My wife. It is so fishy what she says. Things like, "They already regulate the medical field almost to death anyway, why do they need to completely take it over?" Please! As if the federal government (or do you guys prefer "national" now? Federal has such a 10th amendment ring to it) regulating something would be motivated by anything but altruism. Ha! We know you're just trying to help, especially children. But you know, my wife just isn't getting it. She thinks rich doctors will be able to figure out what patients need and not be driven by sheer greed and lust for money. Without the government involved, rich doctors and insurance companies would be running this country like warlords by now. Maybe you can talk some sense into her. She lives at **** Butternut in Richland, Washington (not DC). But you probably already know that since the census people have been getting GPS coordinates and stuff. She can be reached at 509-***-**** if you don't have time to make a personal visit.

Isaac

Aug 7
Hey,
I know I already wrote today, but I figure the more the merrier, right? Am I right? So I found another fishy naysayer. Tom DiLorenzo, another guy who writes for lewrockwell.com. He has the audacity to compare health care reform to food rationing. Does he think he's some kind of genius economist or something? The problem with people like this is that they're too educated. Or at least they think they're educated. Maybe you could suggest to the president, or some other person in charge, a new program that would help people become educated about important things. You could even call it the Re-Learning program. It could be like rehab where people go to a special resort or camp and relearn important facts about government and government programs like health care reform. Re-Learning isn't a very catchy name, I know. There's probably a better name for it, but I know you guys can come up with something. But doesn't a Re-Learning camp sound like fun?

Til next time,
Isaac

Aug10
Hey Macon,
Long time no email! I went camping this weekend, which I think is a Green activity, but on the way up there I hit a deer, which I'm guessing is not Green at all. But one thing I did do was pick up a bunch of junk from the stream near the camp site, like cups and cans and things like that. Even though it is good to pick up litter, I regret that I didn't do it under the direction of a government sponsored program like Americorps or whatever else you have like that. It would have been way better if an official group was down at the stream officially picking up trash and creating jobs for Americans! Like House Speaker Pelosi said recently, Green bills like the cap and trade bill are all about jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs! Green = jobs. Yes.

Speaking of House Speaker Pelosi, did you catch what Ron Paul is doing right in Congress? He's trying to get some bills going that will hinder health care reform as envisioned by President Obama and others. For instance, HR 3394, The Health Information Protection Act, inhibits the FTC from acting against any entity for communicating the health benefits of its products unless the FTC presents "clear and convincing" evidence that those statements are false. Talk about fishy, right? So if the FTC can't protect people from misleading information, they might take a bunch of non-FDA approved stuff, and then when they got sick they would cost the health care system billions or trillions of dollars. Ron Paul is costing the government trillions of dollars! This is fishy misinformation! Someone get a handle on this guy before people start listening to him. That's the idea, right? Am I right?

Can't wait to hear from you,
Isaac

Aug 12
Macon,
Did you catch Laura Ingraham's show yesterday? Whoa. Super fishy. She even got angry at her guest and started almost yelling. As we have seen, those kinds of words and that kind of behavior can be a stepping stone to maybe possibly starting to think about pondering some violent actions, or inciting others to possibly start pondering them. This has gone too far, do you not think so? Anyway, she asked the expert guest if the democratically-minded health care reform bill would allow you to keep your own plan or your own doctor under various circumstances. He said that yes, of course, as long as it was government approved, and then she flew off the handle. As if we don't need the federal (or is it national? You haven't answered that one yet) government to help us sift bad plans from good ones. The guest even compared it to the auto industry—and you guys know a thing or two about that now, don't you? Am I right?—by saying that the government wouldn't allow people to buy cars that were dangerous, so obviously dangerous insurance plans were out of the question also. I think that was a good point. I mean, if no federal regulation existed, I would almost for sure be dead from driving a car with no windshield, no brakes, and an inefficient NASA surplus rocket engine. I would not be able to tell the difference between safe and dangerous. Air bags are another good example. People are safer now, lives have been saved because of the air bag requirement. Except those kids who were sitting in the front seat and were killed from the airbag deployment. An insincere person could argue that a case could be made that government policy and regulation actually caused those deaths, and that if car buyers had an opportunity to choose whether or not their car had an airbag then some children would still be alive. What they aren't taking into account is collective safety. Collectively, we are safer now because of mandatory airbags, and that's really what matters, right? The collective.

So you might want to put Laura Ingraham on the list. I mean, I know there is no list, but you know what I mean. Maybe you could also sign her up for one of the re-learning camps when you get those going.

Talk to you later,
Isaac

PS Write back soon!

Butler Shaffer on Monopoly

2009-06-29T06:46:00.000-07:00

"Police officers killing innocent persons with impunity (and immunity) is essential to the nature of the state. Given that the state is an institution with a monopoly on the use of violence, to make functionaries of the state responsible for their wrongs is to erode that monopoly; to impose upon the state some standard higher than its own will. Such behavior is but an extension of the logic that underlies every state system, a truth the founders understood quite well when they created the Second Amendment as a partial check on that monopoly."

Butler Shaffer

Three Related Essays

2009-06-26T01:18:00.000-07:00

Pep Rallies and Public Schools: How the State Programs Us for War
Why Do They Just Giggle?
Question Authority: Always and Forever Hereafter

There is a common thread running through these essays. If you find it, you get a prize. The prize is a free trip to an undisclosed detention camp for an indeterminate period of time, or one .22LR bullet. Your choice.

Ultrasound

2009-06-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 4

2009-05-03T17:05:00.000-07:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 4, part 3

In further attempts to destroy resistance and prevent the "overthrow of government," the county/city contingent threatened to cut the strikers off from government services. Fred Sargent, chairman of the Committee on Public Expenditures, proposed strategic elimination of water, police protection (how that would be accomplished I don't know), and even legal standing in court. Sargent insisted the strikers should pay their taxes "if they are to claim the rights of American citizenship," which is an interesting concept, but one that doesn't have much backing. A quick perusal of the Declaration of Independence reveals that all men are created equal (which is a self-evident truth), and are endowed by their creator with certain* unalienable rights. So was Fred Sargent claiming the government of the city of Chicago to be the creator of the people who lived there? Or was he claiming that paying taxes gave these people life? Maybe he was stating his belief that the ambiguous and officious entity of bureaucratic government in general provided the validation people needed for existing. I can't say for sure what he was thinking (if he was at all, but I think he and his ilk were just getting desperate), but I do know that any one or any thing that claims to be the source of freedom has appointed themselves in the place of God. A government that claims to provide people with rights that come from God is committing blasphemy.

So after a few measly and cowardly attempts at making an example of high profile ARET members by revoking their government-provided privileges, the executive arm of government turned to the judicial arm for support. Judge Edmund Jarecki dismissed ARET's objections and entered a judgment for the sale of the tax strikers' properties. In a moment of graciousness and charity, he "announced a tempting 50 percent reduction in accumulated penalties for all taxpayers who came into court (bowed before the throne), received judgment (threw themselves at the mercy of the agent of the omnipotent state), and made partial payments (repented of their grievous sins)." I added the parenthetical statements, but is it really that much of a stretch? Is it really so ridiculous to say that government has appropriated God's right to bestow and revoke liberty? Government also attempts to make itself the granter of life, allowing and disallowing as it's mediums see fit, so how far does it have to go before we recognize it as blasphemy?

"And that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me. Therefore, I, the Lord, justify you, and your brethren of my church, in befriending that law which is the constitutional law of the land; And as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil." "Wherefore, honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil."

*in this context, does the word "certain" mean a few specific rights, or does it mean rights that are certain, as in secured and unassailable?

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 4

2009-04-29T09:30:00.000-07:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 4, part 2

The All-City Publicity Committee (ACPC) and their summer jam plan "gave teachers a golden opportunity to turn their publicity for tax collection into an all-pervasive operation." A dream come true, all-pervasiveness! Every government school's fondest wish. Mary Leitch (what an unfortunate but oh-so-appropriate name), the chair of the committee (can we call her a commissar?) pledged 10,000 teachers to volunteer as special collectors. To show what a special lady she was, here's what she said about collecting taxes: "It's a selling job—this collection of taxes. You must make it easy for the customer to buy. You must break down the sales resistance, and there is resistance to paying taxes. There is a mental complex that we must look for." How convenient that the victim can become the customer at the convenience of the state.

So an army of unimind slave trainers was slated to go house to house and convince families to hand over the dough by studying the "mental complex" and breaking down resistance. I've never been to a re-education camp (not including my government school years), but that sounds ominously similar to what might happen at one. This is proof that teachers are underpaid!

Hilariously, the attempt to buoy up a massive parasitic bureaucracy was stifled by bureaucracy—"Swearing in the teachers to serve as deputy collectors presented difficulties because of the prohibitive expense of bonding requirements." In addition, there was a threat of "racketeers posing as teachers to collect money for themselves." (That would be horrible. It's much better for racketeers to pose as tax collectors to collect money for the state beast. As always, don't steal—the government hates competition.) Due to this unfortunate turn of events, it was decided that the teachers would still visit homes to break the will of the tax dodgers, but wouldn't actually collect the money. They would escort the broken mental complex to an official and authorized collector. Somehow that seems even more insidious.

Alas, the whole despicable plan was sunk due to Ms Leitch's lust for power. She was "adamant that teachers be authorized to collect money." Although it would be interesting—but not extremely difficult—to dissect and examine the reasoning behind such a demand, there is no need. The Leitch said it herself. "We want to capitalize on sociological effects of asking for taxes. If we are not deputies our work will be futile." Not only did she want control of the minds of all children, she also wanted teachers to become gendarmes.

And thus we see that government schools are inevitably and inextricably linked to state power, so much so that there is no visible link—they are the same body. One in purpose, you might say. Like the court system, it can't be reasonably expected that there would ever be a significant opinion or practice from the government school system that would result in the promotion of individualist ideas or behavior. Some people refer to this as "socialization," as in "It's important for kids to go to school to become socialized." Indeed, but important for who? Or is it whom? I didn't pay attention in school.

But the teachers could not be discouraged from their righteous cause. A mass meeting of teachers was held in July "to consider what steps to take against those taxpayers who ignored appeals to civic pride and patriotism." Interesting that they thought it was their right to decide what to do about it, but not surprising, since they had already fancied themselves as an elite constabulary. "Among other demands, the gathering endorsed prosecution of tax strikers for criminal conspiracy." Again, the government and all it's tentacles obviously hate competition. Hayden Bell, State's Attorney for Cook County, supported the teachers in their demands because an organized strike is "always immoral, always criminal, as it brings loss and suffering to public workers, and tends directly to the embarrassment and overthrow of government." Nothing is worse than something that exposes the uselessness of government, eh Hayden? Without the complex and criminal apparatus of government you might actually have to work for a living, and that would be a terrible tragedy. Once again, irony is displayed in full view, but goes unperceived by the glorious instructors of youth. Tax strikers are a criminal conspiracy because they conspired to avoid monetary deprivation by an even larger criminal conspiracy which has the resources to extract the property of others by force*. I see. Turns out might does make right.

Next, tools of the state claim the throne of God.

*A more thorough examination of this idea can be found here.

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 4

2009-04-27T07:51:00.000-07:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 4, part 1

For the past eight years we've heard about "tax cuts for the rich" and other such nonsense. That aspersion has been around for much longer though. Available records of ARET membership show that the tax protesters were, for the most part, far from the stereotypical real estate tycoons just trying to keep more of the people's money. Many of the members were businessmen (The Rich!), but "were mostly small shopkeepers and other petty proprietors." "Skilled blue-collar workers constituted the biggest single group of members." Does that sound like a revolt against The Righteous Workers of the Proletariat? Sounds like the actual proletariat to me. Will Grigg is succinct in his summation of the process: "Each of us invests a portion of our most perishable possession – time – to earn money. Thus every forcible imposition on our earnings, through direct taxation, or its more subtle surrogate, inflation, represents an increment of life stolen by the state." People were trying to survive in a harsh economic climate (one created by government intervention), only to be villified by government for daring to make the attempt without the munificent hand and gracious help of the variety of government appartuses supplied at public (tax victim) expense.

As is always the case when a group challenges the power of government, Cook County and Chicago fought back harder than ever. Anton Cermak—the mayor of Chicago and thereby King of Cook County—"made clear his readiness to go to almost any lengths to destroy ARET." Amusingly, when they actually had to get down and do something about ARET, "he and the rest of the city administration betrayed their buffudlement." Amusing, but when are elected officials anything other than befuddled? Just as with the threats to close schools, another campaign of scare tactics was launched. The All-City Publicity Committee (committees are so Soviet) went as far as to commission a song with the catchy title Be Fair to Chicago's Boys and Girls! Pay Your Taxes Now. Sounds like a number one summer jam to me. The goal, of course, was to bamboozle, hoodwink, and guilt the people in such a way that "the various opposed interests will not dare to attack further that foundation of all democracy—free and full education for the child." The committee apparently forgot "compulsory" in their description of the foundation of Soviet-style mind-bending.*

Next, teachers become storm troopers.

*See Article 26 of the UN Declaration of Human Right s, (a document full of double speak if there ever was one), and item number 10 on the Communist Manifesto's list of requirements.

Holdover

2009-04-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

Until I get it together, read a great essay by one person whose bad list I would not want to be on—the inimitable William Grigg.

Still on pause

2009-04-08T02:07:00.000-07:00

I'm close to finishing Taxpayers in Revolt. For those of you on pins and needles waiting (I guess that's just me), I'll try to get some done tomorrow. For now, enjoy this lovely image.

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 3

2009-03-24T22:17:00.000-07:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 3, part 3

When the Wave Motion Gun tactic didn't work, Cermak and his cronies (or was he their crony?) went to DC to beg for a bailout (we are truly living on a perverse Möbius Strip). No small-time hack, he swung for the fences by demanding "money now or militia later." The main difference between than and now is that he went home empty handed. Our empathetic modern congressweasels would have sent him back with promises of billions, and the means with which to subdue any further dissent. Hopefully the real militia would be ready to meet them.

Soon after that, the Illionis Supreme Court overruled an important case on the tax issue, which took ARET's trump card away. Beito says, "The ruling underscored a problem that dogged ARET to no end. When forced to choose between literal enforcement of the uniformity article or protecting the power of government, the courts invariably opted for the power of government." But how can we expect anything more of the courts, which are just another tentacle of the state?

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 3

2009-03-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 3, part 2

In the face of increasing tax delinquency, politicians (and their minions and masters, the newspapers and banks) predictably groveled, begged, and threatened the public to pay their taxes. One particular ARET pamphlet urging non-payment asked, "Shall I pay a tax which by general admission is unfair and illegal and which by court order is fraudulent and void and which is more than double the amount that would result from a fair, reasonable, legal assessment of the taxable wealth of Cook County?" The answer to that seems obvious. It was obvious to the residents of Cook County as well—a group with a membership of 35 at the beginning of 1931 grew to 8,000 by October, and by June 1932 passed 20,000. Those numbers must have struck a glorious fear in the hearts of the elected pillagers.

But the pillagers still had the newspapers to rely on. While denying ad space (paid ad space) to ARET, the papers regularly donated full page ads to the city government's "Pay Your Taxes" campaign. Donald Duck was on board at the national level.

In their desperation for tax money, some of the propaganda posters asked people to "Pay What You Think Is A Fair Tax." This capitulatory request was met with scorn by Mauritz Hallgren of the Nation magazine. "He sensed in this slogan dangerous evidence of civic impotence, or worse, anarchy." Oh no, the peasants might catch on! Hallgren continued: "This is not only a tax strike, it is open revolt against government. One must consider the present state of affairs little short of anarchy when civic societies feel impelled to flood the town with posters calling upon the residents to 'Pay What You Think Is A Fair Tax! Pay Now! Keep You Schools Open!'" A little short of anarchy actually sounds good to me. The alternative is made quite clear by Hallgren, although maybe not purposely. The opposite of paying a voluntary amount to the city government is paying the amount they say, when they say to pay it, and there had better not be any grumbling or else! At least the mafia works for their extorted income.

So tax protesters are anarchists. What other slanderous label can be applied to them? Irvin Wilson of the Chicago Principals' Club (a club? Were girls allowed? Did they have a secret password?) predicted a Bush tactic when he said the tax strike was the "most dangerous form of terrorism and public disorder." Terrorists! You're either with us or against us, and if you're against us, you're with the terrorists, but if you're not actually with the terrorists, but you're against us, then you're really with the terrorists, so pay your taxes. Why doesn't it surprise me that Dubya didn't come up with the terrorists slam on his own?

So with tax money trickling in and credit with the banks drying up, what could possibly be done? Members of ARTE's board had an idea. Cut spending! Novel. One of the board saw the tax strike as "the best way to guarantee a reduction in costs and force politicians to 'relinquish the powers they have built up through governmental machinery and the allotment of jobs… which have no natural part of government. The only time the politician understands the people mean business is when the money is shut off. So shut the money off!'" I don't think it could be any clearer.

Up against unassailable reasoning like that, and losing ground, the city and it's various appendages decided to pull out the big guns—The Children. You can never argue with The Children. The city began to indirectly threaten to close the schools as a cost-cutting measure, but only as a means to strike a blow to ARET and similar groups, not as a way of actually cutting costs. That would be a little too much to ask. "Prominent educator" George Strayer authored a study that recommended closing schools "as a device to shock the public into realizing they could no longer "emasculate" the school system." I think public education is good enough at emasculation without any help from tax payers or non-taxpayers.

It would have been historical if they had done it though. What would public school be like today if a major city like Chicago had a debilitated—or even extinct—school system? The emperor would have no clothes. Alas, they were smart enough to realize that closing the public schools would have accentuated the fact that there was competition. Some teachers feared that "closure might result in a massive and permanent switch of allegiance away from the public schools." Oh dear, our propaganda mills and brain washing centers are empty! What shall we do? One teacher observed, "There are plenty of other schools in the city for all the children to go to if we do [close the schools] and they will go. There are private schools, there are Lutheran parochial schools and there are Catholic parochial schools." Nicely said Teacher, but observing and verbalizing your own obsolescence and desuetude must have been painful.

ARET called the School Closing Crisis bluff. Peter Foote, head of an ARET branch office, welcomed the money-saving idea of school closure. "Let them learn to sew on buttons and other sensible things for a while." And he was no bystander—he had ten kids (although I would be curious to know what his wife thought of the idea). Others were of a similar opinion. Another Chicago parent said, "If closing the schools for six months or a year is the price we have to pay for the abolition of corrupt, incompetent and extravagant government, I should say without hesitation, let us close the schools." So you get rid of corrupt and incompetent government, and as a bonus your kids don't get the collectivist mind-meld for six hours every day? Sign me up! (You may or may not be interested to know what my wife has to say on that matter.)

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 3

2009-03-12T22:14:00.000-07:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 3, part 1

From Portrait of a Tax Racket to Taxpayers on Strike in Chicago. Interesting stuff right off the bat. The crash of 1929 sparked the nation's interest in tax rebellion, but Chicago's revolt had been brewing for years already. According to Beito, the "breakdown of the tax-appeals system provided the immediate spark." So many people were appealing their assessments that the aforementioned insufficient appeals system required an alternative. "In one day alone, 29 November 1930, 4,000 taxpayers jammed into the board's offices to file protest. When the board's members turned a deaf ear to the mountain of pending appeals, aggrieved taxpayers resorted to the only avenues of protest left open to them. In Chicago, this meant court litigation and/or nonpayment of taxes." Avenues of protest—what an important concept, eh? What an important reality too. Do we have any? Before you get all Glenn Beck-y and start talking about changing the system by working in the system, let me ask you if you really think the system would agree to change itself. OK, here goes: do you think the system would agree to change itslef? Well, we have the court system, right? But who appoints judges? Sure, some are elected, but those ones are just peons. The big guns what have the final word are appointed. What is the source of funding for the court system? Taxes. Elected officials who have the power to tax have the ability to fund or defund the court system. How do you think the court will find? For their employers or against? You don't have to raise your hand, just answer it in your mind.

Chicago and Cook county had suspended real estate tax collections for two years following a court battle over assessment issues. Some favored renewed collection ASAP. "Many defenders of renewed collections feared permanent damage to the psychology of orderly taxpaying." Orderly taxpaying! Images of orderly Jews shuffling into trains and showers and ovens comes immediately to mind. I suppose Spartacus drowning a cook in the soup damaged the psychology of orderly slaves, right?

The new mayor, Anton Cermak (if he saw the road named after him he'd be embarassed), got elected on a "limited government" platform (we've heard that before, haven't we? Ahem, Reagan, Bush, etc) but proceeded to demonize proponents of lower taxes. What a surprise. Cermak was supported in his falsities by the press, of course. Beito says, "All five of Chicago's daily newspapers closed ranks against the strike." Taxpayer groups and the like were called undesirable citizens, racketeers, and who knows what else. I guess things haven't changed all that much. The media (or at least media outlets with large audiences) were shills for state (or city) power then, and they are now. I think that may be a little generous. Maybe I should say the (collective) mainstream media is a tentacle of the state. Or city.

And speaking of tentacles, I'll go ahead and say the state is a tentacle as well. I know, you're on the edge of your seat wondering who or what this tentacle is attached to. Well, the big rush to resume taxing everyone everywhere was due to the "need" for the city and county to maintain lines of credit. The banks were becoming impatient. They had bonds and notes from the city that were contingent on future tax receipts, and they wanted the dough. But some reforms (or deforms, more appropriately, supported by "leading bankers") were in order. Instead of an elected board of assessors, they wanted to "substitute a single appointed assessor." And who, pray tell, do you think would be appointed? And who do you think would do the appointing? So the tentacles are all attached to banks. That's the big, fat, disgusting, slimy body. And it smells like Little Timmy Geithner. So the banks pay for their man to get elected, their man regurgitates the required instructions to the media (owned by guess who), and the media get everyone behind policy that supports, of course, the banks. Or maybe I'm mistaken. Or maybe I'm not.

Remember the Socialidiot mayor of Milwaukee and his fear of the lack of government programs? The specter of tax resistance caused the newspapers' knees to quiver. While the papers were running front page editorials (front page!) urging passage of bankster bills and reforms proposed by the banks, the Chicago Daily News was warning that "the danger of violence, fire and disease is so imminent as to warrant immediate preparation of possible invocation of martial law, under which civil rights in a normal community are automatically suspended." (How can you tell that fire is imminent? Shouldn't that person be working for the fire department?) The Chicago Evening Post claimed that "refusal to pay taxes strikes at the very root of government as effectively as an armed revolt." Yes, but that's a good thing. I seem to recall some of our Congressweasels being threatened with the ol' martial law ploy during the recent hand-over-trillions-of-dollars-or-else debacle. My, how things don't change. Lucky for them people don't change much either. "Oh please mastah gubmint, save us from the horrible things like unemployment, recession, global climate in crisis, sickness, death, killer asteroids, black holes, spiders, cold wind, British comedy, and the Oort cloud." Look to God and live. Look to government and die.

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 2

2009-03-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 2, part 3

Finishing up chapter two, one statement struck me as odd. "ARET's [Association of Real Estate Taxpayers, a Chicago group formed to support real estate owners, obviously] leaders resorted to something resembling a benefit theory of government as their theoretical starting point. The benefit theory, in contrast to the ability-to-pay theory, held that taxes should be levied in proportion to the services that an individual received from government."

The logical question to ask (according to my own personal logic, which may be different from yours) is why do taxes need to be levied just to get the money back? If you get back the same proportion you paid, why pay at all? I say if you're going to redistribute wealth, at least be straightforward about it and say that's what you're going to do. If tax money were distributed "fairly," it would only serve to reveal the nonsensical nature of the tax in the first place. So then the logical conclusion has to be that taxes must be redistributed unfairly to keep the tax—and by extension, and perhaps more importantly, those who levy and collect the tax—from revealing itself as obsolete.

Semi-related writing from Lew Rockwell.

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 2

2009-03-06T20:55:00.000-08:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 2, part 2

So the Chicago Tax Racket continues. Operating costs for real estate owners (remember, they "provided" 80% of the tax revenue) increased, about 2% between 1927 and 1932. Not bad, but income fell 70% for the same time period. That's a problem, in case you didn't go to business school.

With that dilemma in mind, here's a shocking revelation from the book. A 1933 study of apartment buildings in Chicago found that "taxes made up the single largest portion of all operating expenses, including heat, repairs, water, light, and management." Think about that for a minute. What would happen if taxes were taken out of the equation? Either the greedy capitalist landlord would raise the rent in order to make even more profit, or he would leave it as is and have more money to spend on other budget items (better paint, nicer carpet, energy efficient windows?), or he could decrease rent to compete with other building owners who decreased their rent due to their lower costs. So who loses? Gubmint. Who wins? Everyone else.

I think a tax that constitutes the largest portion of a budget could be labeled as grievous. Hey Mormons, remember King Noah? The big gripe against him was his wickedness, and in order to support that wickedness he set up a tax (part of which his henchmen/priests got to keep, kind of like a bribe) that was so grievous that the people had to "labor exceedingly to support iniquity." What would we describe as a grievous tax today? I mean, besides people like me who think any is too much. I'm talking about reasonable people, like Bill O'Reilly (sarcasm alert). Remember his big interview when he made friends with Obama (go to about 6:30)? They dickered about the capital gains tax for a minute and came up with 20% as an OK number. Taxes are neighborly! Huzzah! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! How much did Noah tax the people to the point that they had to "labor exceedingly?" Verse 3 says "he laid a tax of one fifth part of all they possessed, a fifth part of their gold and of their silver, and a fifth part of their ziff, and of their copper, and of their brass and their iron; and a fifth part of their fatlings; and also a fifth part of all their grain." Again, non-business school people should be aware that a fifth is the same as 20%. So if 20% was so terrible then, where are we at now?

This might be a good time to break out That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen. What would you do with the money that gets taken from you? The list is as endless and varied as the people who make the list, which gets at the reason to keep what is yours—you know what you would like done with it. What if your employer didn't have to pay half of your Social Insecurity taxes, or payroll taxes, or whatever-else-there-is-in-the-world taxes? Would "rich" people buy more stuff if they kept more of their money? Keep thinking about how that moves down the line, and where you fit in, because I'm going to sleep. But here's one last thought: would you rather have your money confiscated to buy things you didn't choose to buy (big guns, new helicopters, salaries for Congress-weasels, abortions for Africa, new buildings for bureacrats, fuel to make corn into fuel, a nose job for Joan Rivers, etc etc ad infinitum), or would you rather keep it and spend it (or not) how you decide?

Read This

2009-03-06T08:11:00.001-08:00

I like Bill Buppert.

More of Less

2009-03-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

Still no blog for the rest of chapter two. I had to take some time off to win the chili contest thing. In the meantime, if you're looking for something to read that will make you want to punch someone, try this article on the Law of the Sea treaty, brought to us by our good friends at the UN and promoted by the fabulous and darling CFR.

I am greatly embarrassed by our senators from Washington. Seriously, which state has a more shameful duo? Maine's have been acting up lately, and there's always California and Massachusetts near the top of this list. So we have to be in the top five, right? I just know those two insensate bunglers would vote for this in a heartbeat. I wish they would come around here and give speeches or something so I could make a big sign with a picture of a pitchfork on it. That would show 'em.

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 2

2009-02-26T23:57:00.000-08:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 2, part 1

I'm not imagining I have a multitude of readers, but for those that may exist, I won't be posting a lot tonight. I've been missing some sleep this week due to the RPM challenge. There just aren't enough days in February.

Chapter two focuses on the Chicago tax racket and it's role in tax resistance. Has Chicago been corrupt since the very beginning? Is there something in the water? (Wait, I know there is something in the water. Lots of things, and not good things. Once I crossed the Adams St bridge and saw a bloated raccoon floating gently down stream. And I never swam in the lake for a reason.) My need for sleep requires relative brevity, so here it is. What chapter two has shown so far, simply by the factual description of government corruption (or do I repeat myself?), is that government "leaders" will always violate rights they don't have the authority to violate. Here's a good quote to ponder: "The tax system has become the mere adjunct of whatever political organization is in power." Can you give me an example of when that has not been true? Get back to me on it. How about this one: Two houses adjacent to each other, similar in style, etc (have you seen the endless rows of bungalows? You know what I mean if you have.) were assessed for taxes. "One of them, owned by Chief of Police Detectives Michael Grady, had an assessed value of $500 while his neighbor's house showed an assessed value of $2,450." Cronyism!

The fact that you aren't surprised should prove that the very nature of the power of taxation is corrupt. It doesn't foster corruption, it doesn't allow it, encourage it, cultivate it, or even tolerate it—it is it. Stories of malfeasance are as old as taxation itself. Of course, you can always leave a comment and tell me the great positive tax stories you've been collecting over the years. I'll wait here while you type them up.

See? I just waited through an entire John Frusciante guitar solo and I'm still waiting. Good night!

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 1

2009-02-25T00:17:00.000-08:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 1, part 2

Of the explosion of taxpayers' leagues, Dan Hoan, mayor of Milwaukee, said that taxpayers' groups "who are always damning their government because they have to pay taxes are doing more to undermine faith in government than all the communists in the world." Hoan's party was the Socialist Party, so no big surprise that he was opposed to taxpayers' organizations, but he reveals something in his statement that every honest socialist (or Socialist, or any other statist sympathizer) will admit is true—the State is their god. Christians should shudder at the thought of having "faith in government," and so should Jews, Muslims, and any other religion that worships a supreme being. Exodus states clearly that "thou shalt have no other gods before me." Jesus Himself said, "Have faith in God." Paul defines faith as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." This is why Socialism demands the watering down and eventual destruction of religion—because their one true religion is the State. It obviously follows that no truly religious person can be a socialist without being a hypocrite and/or blasphemer (and I'm looking at you Sojourners). Anyway, enough lecturing on faith.

Later on in the chapter the Wisconsin Taxpayers' Alliance is quoted on a related topic, but not quite so doctrinal in nature. Beito uses the quotation as an example of how these groups "frequently linked their efforts to a general hostility toward governmental paternalism." From the WTA: "Instead of simply protecting the citizen in the enjoyment of the natural right to live and to follow his vocation unhindered, government is now telling him how he must live, and is, regardless of his wishes, charting the path which he must follow." Once every god is replaced by the State this is how it goes. There are no more natural rights, only rights given by the State. No more choosing your own path, or following a religion. The State chooses for you. Think about the Soviet Union for a minute if you don't believe me.

Unfortunately, people rarely learn from the past. Even more unfortunately, politicians (and their various instruments) learn from the past very well (notice I don't include politicians in the same group with people). In 1932 the Milwaukee Leader, a Socialist daily paper, warned of the dire consequences resulting from the various "tax dodging" groups. "If the taxpayer should go on strike, all services would have to stop…. Epidemics of disease would sweep the city. Burglars would ply their trade unhindered. Fires would rage unabated, burning up the homes of the taxpayers." Oh, the humanity! Such tragedy and ruin resulting from the refusal of an ignorant few to pay tribute to their mighty masters! The Milwaukee Leader apparently assumed the average citizen would be incapable of preventing disease (should I wash my hands? Should I not wash my hands? Whatever shall I do?), defending themselves and their homes (Oh no, a burglar! Everyone stand still, and whatever you do, don't point a gun at him!), or even using common sense. Destruction and utter desolation result when taxes aren't paid, don't you see? Last year I filed my taxes late* and three houses on the next block burst into flames. In reality, taxpayers are supporting much more than government "services," they are supporting the growth of government. It's a vicious cycle of programs and taxes, one feeds on the other, until nothing can be done without the permission and funding of the largest available government agency. No houses can be bought, no trash can be cleaned up, no dogs can be walked, no hurricanes can be fled from, no television can be broadcast without interference from government. What a pitiful existence.

There may be hope. Beito asks about the motivation of once complacent taxpayers to suddenly get cranky about paying. He says they didn't just suddenly become anti-big-government when the depression hit, but that "the depression forced taxpayers to think for the first time about the burden and perforce the purposes of high taxes." They became "tax conscious." Conscious of not only how much is taken from you, but what is done with it. Have you ever thought about what happens to your money after it gets passed through so many grubby bureaucratic hands? Probably nothing that you would voluntarily do with it if you were allowed to keep it. Kinda stinks, huh? The biggest danger to the statist staus quo is thinking. A thinking person is a dangerous person to manipulators and finaglers, and thinking is exactly what the state doesn't want us to do. I'll hold up public school and American Idol as irrefutable proof for my argument.

*Not really

Taxpayers in Revolt, Chapter 1

2009-02-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Chapter 1, part 1

The first chapter starts out with a whole lot of numbers, I suppose to provide some historical perspective on the tax resistance movements. I was surprised to learn that state and local governments increased taxes more than the federal government did.

One stat that really caught my attention was real estate related: the value of new residential building fell 92% from 1929 to 1933. This is significant not only because it resonates with what is going on now, and not only because that meant a lot of people in related industries were out of work, but because the real estate tax was the major revenue source at that time. Journalist Anne O'Hare McCormick wrote in 1932 about tax protest meetings, "For the first time in a generation taxpayers are wrought up to the point of willingness to give up public services." Uh-oh. An editorial in The New Republic from November 1932 stated, "Farmers are in fact revolting against this burden in many parts of the country. They are doing so by direct action—they are not paying their taxes. The authorities are, in many of these cases, not trying to collect. That is why armed resistance has not followed." While some viewed this as an opportunity for Marxist thought to take root with the farmers (have these Marxist idiots always been around, and will they never go away?), it was observed by the one observant leftist that the farmers were revolting in order to save private property, not abolish it. Still, it was revolutionary in one respect. Beito writes, "…from the perspective of local and state governments, the rural tax protest may have merited greater animus because, unlike a challenge to capitalism, it posed a direct danger to the state apparatus."

Sounds good to me. I mean, who doesn't want to pose a direct danger to the state apparatus? I know I do. For those of you who may be wondering, that was not a sarcastic statement. But more on that later.

Taxpayers in Revolt, Introduction

2009-02-21T21:24:00.000-08:00

Taxpayers in Revolt, David T Beito
Blog: Introduction

Sometimes I skip reading the introduction to a book, sometimes because whoever wrote the intro has a boring name, sometimes because I just want to get to the important stuff—the book. I read this intro, and a darn good thing too. If I hadn't read it I would have missed this gem: "The state's claim to power over a society would be a toothless pretension were it not backed up by a capable system of extracting money from the population." I just might memorize that and recite it every time I get into a discussion about the gubmint and all the related foofaraw. It doesn't get much more concise than that (not much more*), but it still has great words like toothless, pretension, and extracting.

I was talking to Becky about some political something-or-other a few days ago and she mentioned that the most important step to ending the whole Federal Reserve/inflation/wild corruption debacle we have going on (and has been going for a very long time) is to do away with the income tax. Even though the Fed could still continue to print fake money and endlessly inflate, people would suddenly realize what a horrible game the Fed was playing ("Wait a minute, they're not taking my money anymore and they can still spend trillions of dollars?"), and the jig would be up. Poof.

Important questions were raised in the intro as well, which I trust will be covered elsewhere in the book. One question I fear we will have answered for us all too soon is how do governments maintain authority and legitimacy when their source of money is challenged? Here's a hint—our friend FedGov will not be asking nicely. Hope you picked something up at that shotgun sale last week. Anyway…

Judging by the introduction alone—not to mention the title—I'm pretty sure I'm going to enjoy this book.

*Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
—George Washington

This is not about punching

2009-02-18T23:46:00.000-08:00

I got two books in the mail Tuesday, both of which I have agreed to "live-blog." Blogging in general is not my first choice for recreation, but this might actually turn out to be interesting, if not for you then at least for me. And that's what really matters, right?

The first book, which I hope to start tomorrow (probably Friday since I have stuff going on from the time I get home from work to late that night), is Taxpayers in Revolt. For all of you Twilight fans, this is what we call a non-fiction book, which means it has words about actual real things that actually happened, and there is probably no romantic nonsense, and there isn't a "plot" to follow, but a whole bunch of facts and ideas related to the given topic. The given topic in this case is most likely to be the history of taxpayer rebellion during the 1930s depression. Hopefully there will also be some rationale as to why we should emulate our courageous ancestors. I know you can feel the excitement.

You should get on board this blog thing before I explode into the big time, otherwise you'll look like some kind of lame bandwagon hopper.

Snow

2009-01-10T19:44:00.000-08:00

Snow makes me want to punch people, so everyone should feel lucky that it's gone now.

The truthfulness of punching

2009-01-10T09:00:00.001-08:00

Staples

2009-01-04T23:51:00.001-08:00

Sledding, tons of blood, staples in the head. Sounds like a recipe for a great time.

Chancho does it again

2008-12-17T08:37:00.001-08:00

If you listen closely you can hear him try to convince me—and himself—that he actually likes what he is eating by saying "mmm hmm."

The Iraqi Shoe Conspiracy

2008-12-15T14:21:00.000-08:00

Watching this video in slow motion, I realized that the Iraqi prime minister must have had prior knowledge of this shoe attack. Look at his face—he barely flinches. He knew nothing would hit him, because he was in on the whole thing. I'm demanding a congressional investigation, and not just because that would divert congress from confiscating anything that doesn't happen to be nailed down. It's because the truth has to be told.

Congressional fisticuffs

2008-12-15T14:11:00.000-08:00

You know who deserves a punch in the face? Congress. So I guess that would be a punch in the collective face, which is entirely appropriate since they seem to be a marauding band of collectivists anyway. Who's with me? If we start punching congresspersons at every available opportunity they might start to get the hint.

Mobile Tax Collectors

2008-12-15T14:05:00.000-08:00

I got pulled over by a Mobile Tax Collector on the first day of December. I forgot to pay my yearly tribute to The State for their magnanimity, allowing me to own and operate a vehicle. No ticket though, just a friendly reminder to hurry up and fork it over.

Disowned

2008-11-29T23:21:00.001-08:00

Becky might try to tell you she has nothing to do with this here blog. She is lying. She loves it. She loves music that makes you punch people.

Coolness

2008-11-29T21:59:00.000-08:00

I think this blog just might push us over the edge into coolness territory.