Reinke Faces Life

http://www.jpfo.org/alert20060502.htm

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 – Taxes sap away as much as 40% of our income, a small portion of which can be relieved if you agree to _register your children_ with the federal government.

– You can be fined, jailed, or held indefinitely without trial for _thousands_ of administrative "infractions" as decreed by any of a number of unelected federal agencies (our "Boot the BATFE" campaign (www.jpfo.org/bootbatfe.htm) shows just how arbitrary those "infractions" can be!).

– We endure checkpoints, random searches, and demands for our "papers" on a regular basis ( http://www.papersplease.org/cases.html ).

– And just around the corner is the National Animal Identification System, which will require you to register your name, property and any livestock you may own, and you get to pay a fee for the privilege.

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The JPFO regards our Second Amendment as what went wrong in Nazi Germany. Just look what a few guns did in the Warsaw ghetto. There is a striking similarty between the Nazi gun laws and the United States gun laws. In order for a governement to kill its citizens, or the residents of its country, or the occupants of another country, it's necessary that they be unarmed. Visualize the brown shirts or the Gestapo breaking into a Jewish home to drag them off to the camps. Add one crummy revolver. Let's say that the head of household only gets the first one of the intruders. Pretty soon the you run out of intruders when losing one intruder per apartment. Look at the Liberator pistol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberator_Pistol (aka the only weapon that took longer to load, or reload, then it did to make). If you couldn't spit on it, you probably couldn't hit it. Imagine the Genocide in Rawanda or Dafur. Bad guy with machette meets poor slob with a Liberator. Result = sudden shortage of bad guys.

The question is what will it take for us to recognize a police state here in the US. And what will you do about it?

http://freetalklive.com

I was listening to the Podcast of FTL when I heard them chatting with a caller about Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) and "Starship Troopers". RAH was the fellow who turned me to Libertarianism. I read his stuff over and over again. The hosts at FTL have "Starship Troopers" all wrong. It is about personal liberty! The book celebrates democracy, individuality, diversity, and free choice, in peacetime first; then wartime. The clueless high school senior evolves as a result of his choices and events to an adult, ultimately earning his father's respect. The book is a easy "hard read". Just from memory, let me hit a few high points.

(1) RAH in ST first made me question suffrage. In his alternate world, you are allowed to vote only if you have done something positive for society. Seems reasonable. Just being born, doesn't confer "wisdom" upon you. But, if you have to "pay" a stiff price for a "privilege" of voting, then you will think long and hard about the choices you make. RAH made the "privilege" universally available, everyone would be assigned something dirty, dangerous, and hard. You had to pay a high price in RAH's world to be allowed to steer the ship of state. An excellent concept.

(2) RAH in ST made me think about democracy and the popular majority. People cannot vote themselves into prosperity. They certainly shouldn't be allowed to vote away my past, preset, and future. It makes you think about fundamental assumptions that you have never brought up before. He brought up interesting insights in the "History & Moral Philosophy" class. I especially liked the dialogue, "My mother always told me that violence doesn't solve anything. Really? I wonder what the city founders of Hiroshima would have to say about that." It completely destroyed my thinking about peace and aggression. That led me to Ann Rand and the Zero Aggression Principle. Capital punishment, juvenile delinquency, civic virtue all got skewered in his world. He pointed out that there were millions of people already in America before the Europeans came and ruthlessly slaughtered these 'subhumans' on their new property. That made me think differnetly about such diverse topics as Columbus, the Spanish "missionaries", religion, and the Japanese Internment.

(3) RAH in ST introduced me to the concept of wolves and sheep. Only warriors should vote because they "know" the true cost of freedom. Very powerful concept. If you aren't willing to die for your country, then why should you be allowed to lead it. Today's politicians put our boys and girls at risk without that visceral understanding of what it means. With the backdrop of American's dying in VietNam, it hit home. I'm no John F. Kennedy fan, because he had the morals of an alley cat, but he did steer the US thru a dangerous time with Cuba and VietNam. If was LBJ who escalated the war there. And, while I'm no John McCain fan, I bet he would be more circumspect about using the military. Heinlein backs up wolves with the logic that "revolt is impossible". I always looked after that if I was being lead by a real "leader" with experience, or one with paper credentials.

(4) RAH made his military 100% voluntary. A unique concept. If a trooper didn't want to drop, he didn't have to. Far cry from today's all "volunteer" force.

He used the juvenile fiction novel genre to "sneak into" our heads with personal responsibility, non-aggression as opposed to pacifism, and objectivity.

Heinlein is pure American and IMHO his ideas are almost Jeffersonian.

"Correct morals arise from knowing what man is; not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be."

The book was a treasure. The movie was a joke. I beleive the hosts confused the two together. The book had a provocative depth. I learned and taught myself a lot as a result of it. Perhaps because RAH was an engineer, he new how to connect to a future engineer.

Stealing a line from the movie "Would you like to know more?"!!!!

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers

http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPolitics.asp?Page=/Politics/archive/200605/POL20060501a.html

Advocacy Group Launches Campaign Against Marriage Amendment

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(CNSNews.com) – A homosexual advocacy group has launched a postcard campaign urging senators to vote no on the Federal Marriage Amendment, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

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Would NOT a better question be: "Why is the Gummamint (Federal Government) involved in Marriage?"

One should question why any level of government has any business in the institution of marriage. Isn't that the province of the people and possibly the Church?

Why does one need the permission of one's government to marry? That's what a license is. Oh please, Mommy Government and Father State, may I have your permission to do this? It couldn't be rooted in the desire to keep the black men from marrying the white women? Remember we can trace most of the bad and restrictive laws to racial discrimination and fear of immigrants. The Saturday Night Special and Gun Control laws were designed to keep guns out of the hands of minorities and immigrants. In the days when immigrants referred to the Irish and the Italians!

No, the State should mind its own business. Was force or fraud used? If it was, then it has a duty to protect and serve regardless of what the Supreme Court says. (Remember the Dred Scott decision?) If not, so be it.

Butt out! The answer to the title question is "None whatsoever".

http://www.newsobserver.com/102/story/434527.html

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Evan Bayh: Making a stand on stewardship
U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana
Rob Christensen, Staff Writer

Editor's note: Even though the presidential election is not until 2008, potential candidates to succeed President Bush are already making their way around the country. When they visit the Triangle, The News & Observer will try to ask them a few questions.

Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh was in Raleigh over the weekend to speak at the Democrats' annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner when reporter Rob Christensen caught up with him. Bayh was twice elected governor in Republican-leaning Indiana before being elected to the Senate in 1998. He is looking at running for president in 2008.

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Q: Why do you think we should abolish the Electoral College?

A: "I think our president should be chosen by the majority of the American people. That is ordinarily the case. But in 2000, as we all recall, we elected this president with fewer votes than the other candidate got. I just don't think in the modern era that is appropriate."

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What a bone head!

Obviously, this Presidential candidate has never read the Federalist Papers, thought about the implications of the Electoral College, or taken a course in Engineering Measurements with Brother Austin Barry. The reporter and writer must have missed those experiences as well.

The electoral college is part of compromises made at the convention to satisfy the small states. Under the system of the Electoral College each state had the same number of electoral votes as they have representatives in Congress, thus no state could have less then 3. This ensures a republic; not a democracy. remember that the dead old white guys view democracy as mob rule and rightly so.

Thinking about the implications would expose a few hidden benefits. (a) The Electoral College presents the image of a plurality when the nation is closely divided. Thus, in 2000, 271 to 266 Electoral College vote disguises the razor thin popular vote. (b) It insulates the process from fraud. Stuff the ballot box in a red or blue state all you want, you'll only get that state's electoral vote.  In a popular vote, that's a problem. (c) What happens if a candidate dies before inauguration? The Electoral College will solve the problem. The peaceful transition of power is the hallmark of the republic. (d) The States are sovereign entities. They make the rules for their own state. They could decide to pick them at random like jurors. (e) It ensures that the President MUST campaign in the small states. Popular vote could be decided in the big cities, even without fraud. The current system ensures that candidates know where New Hampshire and Iowa are. Remember if Gore had carried his "home" state of Tennessee, he'd be president. Kerry lost West Virginia. Ignore the small states at your own peril. (f) A state or local issue could bring a big turnout for someone in one state at the expense of another state. Turnout rates don't matter ACROSS state boundaries. (g) [My personal favorite] A third party elector could influence the election in ways that have not yet been seen. The Repubocrats and the Democans split the Electoral vote 267 each and NH elects 3 Libertarians. Those three guys extract promises to increase freedom, lower taxes, and curtail the growth of government from one side or the other. Probably the side that would lose by throwing the election to the House of Representatives. And the Libertarians could care less after that. Imagine the howls of "we wuz robbed" from the losers. And, the "winners" wouldn't be that happy either! Love it.

Finally, as Brother Austin Barry could have instructed the candidate, every measurement has blunders and errors. We don't worry about blunders, but we do worry about errors in measurement. Every measurement process has errors. Count a deck of cards ten times and you won't get the answer 52 every time. And we know the answer we are supposed to get. Unless the good Brother, took out a card or two OR stuck in a joker. Different people can measure the same thing and come up with different "correct" answers. Counting votes is no different (e.g., Florida recounts). The electoral system does not mandate that the vote tally be exactly right. Therefore it makes no difference if you win a state by 50.1% or by 80% of the vote you receive the same number of electoral votes. This confers the benefit that we don't need an exact nose count. "Close enough" is good enough. Some places don't bother counting absentee ballots when the plurality is larger than the number of absentees.

So the dead old white guy continue to earn my undying admiration for their political construction.

And, before anyone glibly says "amend the Constitution", remember all the bone headed results form messing with success. Prohibition gave us organized crime. Direct Election of Senators gave the States unfunded mandates. Presidential term limits gave us lame duck two term presidents.

Don't mess with what you don't understand!

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