Monthly Archives: August 2012

Who shall steer us then?

This week the Republican Party will be carrying out their well-scripted coronation of Mitt Romney as the party’s presidential nominee. Sadly, those in control of the party are either moles for the Obama campaign or are criminally inept. They have done everything in their power to suppress any possibility of Ron Paul’s name going into the nomination ring at the convention (in case you’re not aware, he never officially dropped out of the race and technically can be nominated were it not for recent RNC shenanigans).

What is the result? The nomination of a candidate who is more like Obama than unlike him. Yes, their rhetoric may be different, but both are in stark agreement on many issues: the war on drugs, the war on terror, bailouts for big banks (TARP), increasing government spending, and government managed socialized healthcare (Obamacare v Romneycare) to name just a few. So while the American people watch the cleverly orchestrated marionette show between Mitt and Barry, little do they realize there is only one manipulator controlling the strings: the elite party bosses of the centralized state (D’s and R’s are two sides of the same coin). In that respect I suppose it should not be surprising that Ron Paul was ignored and shut out of the process at every turn. He represented an opportunity for a meaningful choice between the two major parties. Why would the party push a candidate who is nearly identical to the opposition rather than a candidate that can offer a real alternative in the market place of ideas? If I’m trying to sell a product I don’t do it by copying my competition and then claiming the product is different because mine comes in a red box and theirs comes in a blue box.

Libertarians don’t want to pilot the ship, they want to dock it so people are free to come and go as they please.

Of course one could make the same argument against the Democrats. Their candidate claimed to stand in stark contrast to the policies of Bush yet he furthers Bush-era policies: bank bailouts, DEA raids of state-legal marijuana dispensaries, Guantanamo, and strong support of the PATRIOT Act and the NDAA. The Democrats are becoming war hawks and pawns of the military industrial complex (NDAA support) while the Republicans are becoming socialists (Romneycare, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind). Both parties are merging into the single Bureaucratic State Party. This “BS” Party is a monopoly that suppresses all outside dissent and rigs the rules to prevent you, the voter, from even hearing about other options. For example, the Commission on Presidential Debates (a non-profit organization literally controlled by the Democratic and Republican parties) has a “15% rule” that prevents Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gov. Gary Johnson from being on the debate stage with Romney and Obama this fall. The media, rather than acting in its regulatory role as part of the Fourth Estate, is willingly involved in the suppression of dissenting opinions by not even placing Gov. Johnson (or any other party’s candidates) in any polls used as the metric for the magical 15% threshold.

So again I ask, why would both parties be so aligned across so many issues while feigning the appearance of difference in order to give the populace the illusion of choice? Because the goal of both parties is power. Their policy alignments all have one thing in common: expansion or maintenance of government power. The bureaucrats write rules that validate the existence of more bureaucrats. The parties may fight over who is steering the ship, but what they both agree on is that the people must never ever leave the ship. If the people find out they can live on land and take care of themselves, then there won’t be much need for a ship and her crew, will there? Libertarians don’t want to pilot the ship, they want to dock it so people are free to come and go as they please. It’s all about choice. You may not agree with Gov. Gary Johnson, but fairness in the political process is a very basic American principal. There is no legitimate reason to establish rules that suppress ideas that fall outside of the 3×5 card of approved political opinion. Let the voters hear all sides and make up their own minds.

Breaking Bad

I’m old enough that I now find most entertainment to be fairly derivative and predictable. However the TV series “Breaking Bad” is a welcome exception. If you are not familiar with it but enjoy solidly unpredictable drama you owe it to yourself to look into it. The August 12 episode’s ending left the audience in a state of numbed denial [spoiler alert: stop here if you have not seen the episode yet]. The main characters have just clandestinely robbed a train of a key chemical needed to prepare crystal meth when a young boy on a motorbike happens them upon. Without a word one of them pulls out a gun and simply dispatches the boy as blithely as one would a troublesome fly. Why? Because the boy might say something which could lead to their arrest.

After the shock of witnessing the senseless onscreen (albeit fictional) death of a young innocent wore off I came to realize why this scene was so disturbing: this type of violence occurs routinely. The boy’s death is iconic of the reprehensible loss of civilian life in wars. In “traditional” wars civilians usually know where the front line is and can avoid it. Today that is impossible. The wars on “terror” and drugs occur on a global battlefield from which there is no escape. Innocence is no defense: you are just one street address typo away from no-knock raid carried out by machine gun festooned goons.

Apropos to the “preventive” murder depicted, the US repeatedly goes to war upon the same principal of “potential threat neutralization” (Spain-1898, Korea-1950, Vietnam-1965, Iraq-2003). Unsurprisingly the neocons and chicken hawks are now rattling their swords to do the same to other countries (Iran, Syria). We as a nation are engaging in the same onscreen behavior as the thieves in “Breaking Bad”: shooting first for fear of what might happen. This behavior is reprehensible at the individual level and at the national level. The moral validity of actions does not change based on the numbers that simultaneously engage in those actions.

The moral validity of actions does not change based on the numbers that simultaneously engage in those actions.

For parents there is no greater fear than contemplating the untimely death of your child. So consider what kind of a country would inflict on foreign parents our most horrid nightmare. The US has killed both directly (drone strikes) and indirectly (sanctions) hundreds of thousands of children through the cold indifference of our leaders. Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright in a 1996 interview with 60 Minutes stated that “we think the price is worth it” when asked if the confirmed deaths of half a million Iraqi children due to UN sanctions was “worth it” in relation to the goals of those sanctions. The Bush administration fares no better: he (and Congress) restarted the Iraq war (of which even low estimates are 100,000 Iraqi civilian casualties and authorized the use of torture. Likewise Obama has failed to live up to his 2009 Nobel Peace Price. He acts as a remote executioner via the deployment of the “judge, jury, and executioner” drone strikes that have killed countless civilians who are written off as “collateral damage.” Ah, yes, the ends always justify the means. Wake up America. We have “broken bad” and are now the “bad guys.” Would we tolerate Chinese drone strikes of Americans because China deemed them to be a potential “threat” ?

In terms of this country’s meddling, interventionist, blow-back prone foreign policy it doesn’t matter whether Obama or Romney wins; they will both continue our current wars and will have no qualms about starting new ones. If you are tired of the endless wars (drug and terror) and have no more desire for the blood of innocents to be on your hands by way of voting for the “lesser of two evils” (“hmmm… who should I vote for, Hitler or Stalin…”) then consider the alternative that the media is so afraid you might hear about they won’t even include him in national polls: Libertarian Party candidate for president Gary Johnson. 

Who counts the votes?

“Voting is every citizen’s constitutional right.” The operative word in this uncontroversial statement is “citizen.” In order to validate one’s right to vote one must verify that one is an eligible* citizen (*over 18 and not a felon). To claim verification is an undue barrier to this right would be to likewise claim that a member of a health club should not have to substantiate that they are in fact, you know, members of such club. If you walk into a club and try to use the facilities would you not expect to be challenged with a request to prove that you are entitled to use such facilities? Then why is the idea of demanding that voters demonstrate their eligibility to vote seen as an outrageous request? The typical response is to trot out some sob story about how some poor person can’t afford the bus fair across town to pick up their free ID. Please, there is always some pathetic excuse that betrays the complainer to be someone that can’t be bothered to expend even the slightest effort in securing this supposedly sacrosanct right.

The next complaint is that voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem, citing various studies that show extremely limited cases of fraud. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Uncovering voter fraud is like finding a cockroach… for every one you see there are a million more you don’t see. In person voter fraud by its very nature is all but impossible to determine objectively after the fact. It would be like determining the crime rate in a city by asking people if they have broken the law. Unsurprisingly crime rates would be much lower if measured that way. Voter ID is a simple precaution to prevent possible fraud. Car theft is pretty rare, but I’ll bet you still lock your car in public? Why? Because it is a trivial preventive step in the same way voter ID is a trivial preventative.

Could the process be easier and more streamlined? Yes, of course. For example, why do we register to vote in one process and then provide an unrelated ID to vote? We should be able to present the voter registration card (a card that every voter currently gets when they register) as proof of eligibility. Problem solved.

Unfortunately voter fraud is all too common in American elections. Jimmy Carter was the victim of such a severe case of fraud in 1962 (that by some miracle of persistence he was able to prove and eventually had the results reversed in his favor) that it is believed this is the primary reason his Carter Center now takes a keen interest in worldwide election monitoring. If someone wants to steal an election it is much easier to manipulate the vote count rather than the vote itself. That doesn’t mean we should leave the door open and make it easy for in person fraud to occur, but it does inform us as to where we can most effectively allocate resources to prevent fraud. The weak link in the chain is the human link. Sure the vote is 40 to 60, but if that information is relayed by me calling Bob on the phone or sending him an email, then I can tell him any number I want. Don’t think it goes on today? Think again.  I personally witnessed this type of fraud (vote total relay) myself this past spring (a recount was done which negated the attempted fraud). To paraphrase Joseph Stalin, “It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.”

Hey man, you owe me!

President Obama’s now infamous “You didn’t build that” speech offered up two worldviews that betray his social-collectivist tendencies. The President engaged in a non-sequitur fallacy in his effort to establish the validity of two falsehoods by invoking a truism that is best embodied in the quote of Isaac Newton, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” That is to say, we owe our entire standard of living to the countless billions that came before us. Each new innovation relies on the tools and knowledge of prior generations. No one builds anything in a vacuum. The President falsely presumes that societal advancement is necessarily impossible without government involvement (e.g. building roads and schools). This presumption rests on the notion that absent government it would simply never occur to the simpletons in society to build a road, a bridge, a school, or to pursue research. We are but helpless babes that require the gentle guidance of our wise overlords.

Upon the (false) precept that government must play an integral role in society he now presumes this establishes a basis to conclude that society (the people) are morally obligated to pay government whenever, however and in whatever arbitrary amount deemed appropriate by government. More abstractly he is saying that because party A did something for party B then it is permissible for party A to unilaterally impose an open ended arbitrary obligation onto party B in perpetuity. This is little different than a drug dealer who showers gifts on a kid for a few years and then expects that kid to return the favors by doing anything that is asked: “Hey man, you owe me!”

The President’s fatal conceit is in believing that because government plays a tangential role in producing some societal goods it must then follow that government has the right to erect a barrier to the collective goods of society that may only be breached by accepting the necessity of an arbitrary debt obligation (taxes) to that gatekeeper (government). We do not owe any particular group or individual in society anything as a consequence of something they did or are doing. If that were so then perhaps we should pay taxes to GE as well for all the things they have produced that benefit society.

The only barrier to society’s goods is a natural one: our ability to produce goods or services that society values. If we desire to take something out of society’s pot of goods, we must first deposit something equivalent to the value that we wish to withdraw. Money is merely a claim ticket to the value put in the pot; it gives us the right to withdraw that value later (which is why counterfeiters and thieves are reviled, they withdraw without putting anything in). Conspicuous consumption must be preceded by conspicuous production. Taxes represent confiscation of our withdrawal rights that are diverted to government favored industries or classes of individuals. Government puts nothing in the pot; it simply forces us to pay for things we don’t want or to overpay for things we might want. Government’s limited role in society cannot justify arbitrary taxation with specious appeals to “fair share” (an objective definition for which you will have as much success in extracting from a progressive as you will in nailing Jello to a wall.)