LIBERTARIAN: My little L libertarian “Litmus Tests”

Saturday, April 11, 2015

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/04/laurence-m-vance/gop-prevaricators/

The Drug War Litmus Test
By Laurence M. Vance
April 7, 2015

*** begin quote ***

The libertarian view on the drug war is simple and consistent: Since it is not the business of government at any level to prohibit, regulate, restrict, license, criminalize, limit, or otherwise control what someone wants to smoke, snort, sniff, inject, or swallow, then there should be no laws whatsoever regarding the buying, selling, possessing, trafficking, using, growing, cultivating, processing, or manufacturing of any drug for any reason.

Therefore, on both the federal and the state level, all drugs should be legalized, all drug laws and regulations should be repealed, all DEAs should be eliminated, all incarcerated drug offenders should be pardoned and released from jail or prison, and every facet of the drug war should be ended. And because the drug war is such a great injustice, this should all be done immediately.

The drug war is a great libertarian litmus test. No one who supports government at any level having any kind of a war on drugs is even remotely a libertarian. It doesn’t matter what else he believes about foreign policy, the welfare state, the warfare state, or the surveillance state. No one can “lean libertarian” and support such a gross violation of individual liberty, personal freedom, property rights, a free market, and a free society as the war on drugs.

*** end quote ***

Of course, the “(pseudo) War on (some) Drugs” is an easy one.

Shut down the DEA and the FDA. Clear out the prisons of non-violent drug offenders. 

But moving on from that, I’d propose some other “litmus tests”.

(1) The “Crony Capitalist” test to rule out: subsidies, price supports, parity payments, price floors, and any other form of translation of privilege into “campaign contributions”.

(2) The “Welfare” test to rule out: Gooferment handouts of any type that trap people into a cycle of poverty and despair. 

(3) The “Warfare” test to rule out: Gooferment propping up it’s military – industrial complex by failing to MYOB overseas. (Bring all the girls and boys home NOW!)

(4) The “gun” test to rule out opponents of Constitution Carry. Roll back the thousands of laws that only the lawful gun owner obeys anyway. 

This will be my rating system for the next Presidential election — if there is one!

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POLITICAL: No subsidies for sports

Friday, April 10, 2015

http://gameto100.com/

Wild words on public subsidies for sports arenas
Posted on April 6, 2015 by Paul Clegg

*** begin quote ***

Far out, man!

That’s my throwback reaction to this morning’s editorial in the Sacramento Bee bearing this headline: “Ditch tax break for pro arenas/ Obama’s budget would end subsidy.”

The headline is so preposterous coming from the Bee that I thought it might be a late April Fools’ joke. This is the same newspaper that led the cheerleading for a huge public subsidy to help build a downtown arena for the Kings and their wealthy owners.

*** and ***

The Bee comes to several astounding realizations about public subsidies for sports arenas and stadiums: they reflect a transfer of money from the nation’s poorest citizens to some of the wealthiest, and they undermine the concept of a level-playing field because the benefits go to a few well-organized and well-funded interests that wield outsized influence with the decision-makers.

*** end quote ***

How did “We, The Sheeple” allow the Gooferment to subsidize “circuses”. 

Argh!

The Gooferment is immoral, ineffective, and inefficient!

This just demonstrates that the immoral cycle. Tax breaks recycle into “campaign contributions” or graft.

Argh!

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RANT: Pro life and anti-death penalty

Thursday, April 9, 2015

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0403/Alabama-man-released-after-decades-on-death-row-Sign-of-a-flawed-system-video

USA USA UPDATE
Alabama man released after decades on death row: Sign of a flawed system? (+video)
As the number of death-row exonerees continues to grow, fundamental questions are being raised about potential flaws in the system.
By Cristina Maza, Staff writer APRIL 3, 2015

*** begin quote ***

Hinton is the third death-row inmate freed in the United States in less than a month. Since 1973, 151 people besides Hinton have been released from death row. And as the number of exonerees continues to grow, fundamental questions are being raised about potential flaws in the system.

“The fact that there’s innocent people in prison or death row has transformed people’s understanding of the death penalty,” University of North Carolina political scientist Frank Baumgartner, author of “The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence,” told Monitor reporter Patrik Jonsson.

“Your opinion about the death penalty in the abstract is one thing, but meeting exonerees changes the death penalty from an abstract principle to a very practical issue of: Can the government do it right every single time?

*** end quote ***

And, we don’t know exactly the extent of the “error rate”.

Now isn’t the saying better that 100 guilty go free than 1 innocent goes to jail?

No erasers on the “pencils” of the death penalty!

Given that a trial costs 4 times the cost of life in prison (read that somewhere; good enough for a swag!) seems like we should just eliminate it for the most part. (Maybe it’s retained for those felons convicted of killing a correction officer?)

Sorry, but being pro-life means being anti-death penalty.

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POLITICAL: Kerik Predicts a Criminal Justice ‘Implosion’

Wednesday, April 8, 2015

https://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/bernie-kerik-jailer-to-jailed-criminal-justice-prison/2015/03/31/id/635536/

Former Top Cop Kerik Predicts a Criminal Justice ‘Implosion’
Tuesday, 31 Mar 2015 12:31 PM
By David A. Patten

*** begin quote ***

Give us an example of an absurd law that should be taken off the books.

You have people who kill the wrong animal while hunting, use the wrong weapon, or kill some animal on the wrong day — there are a thousand of these things. Catch too many fish, catch the wrong type of fish, catch too big of a fish. They make these people felons. With some 2.3 million U.S. prisoners, what will happen in your view without serious criminal justice reform?

It is an economic catastrophe for this country. It’s unsustainable, and over time, the system will implode. … The states have budgets they have to adhere to. But the federal government just keeps printing money and throwing it into the system.

*** end quote ***

As a little L libertarian, I rant about the Gooferment being immoral, ineffective, and inefficient!

Here’s yet another convert to the “church” of anti-Gooferment!

There are just too many attempts to legislate the unlegislatable.

No one can follow all the rules, diktat, “laws”, and regulations.

Unless you’re a member of the political class (i.e., Bill and Hillary), then it doesn’t matter.

Argh!

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TINFOILHAT: The Pearl Harbor Myth and FDR’s role

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

2015-Apr-02

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/03/bionic-mosquito/the-pearl-harbor-myth/

The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable
By Bionic Mosquito
March 7, 2015

*** begin quote ***

To most Americans, manipulating one’s nation into war is something done by foreign tyrants – not our own leaders. Since 1942 U.S. history has been distorted by the idea that presidents simply do not do what Roosevelt’s enemies said he did.

*** end quote ***

I remember my Uncles always maintaining that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor. 

I don’t know what evidence they had for those beleifs but I just assumed everyone knew that.

Until I got to Skrule — and it wasn’t even a Gooferment Skrule — the good Nuns and some of the Brothers taught what was in the text book. Some of the good Brothers said that not everything in print was correct. 

Interesting.

If the Victors write the history and the politicians and bureaucrats pay for the textbooks, what do you think gets written?

Certainly not the truth!

Argh!

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POLITICAL: See “work requirements” shrink the welfare rolls

Monday, April 6, 2015

http://www.cato.org/blog/maines-recommitment-work-requirements

APRIL 1, 2015 12:52PM
Maine’s Recommitment to Work Requirements
By Charles Hughes

*** begin quote ***

Last week, the Associated Press reported that more than 9,000 food stamp recipients in Maine have been removed from the program because they failed to comply with the program’s work requirements. These requirements themselves are largely nothing new, but in the years since the recession, almost every state received a waiver exempting them from these provisions. By allowing the waiver to lapse, Maine will again enforce the requirement that able-bodied adults without dependents participate in some form of work activity. These rules only apply to a small fraction of beneficiaries, just 10 percent of Maine’s beneficiaries in 2013. A spokesman for the Maine Department of Health and Human Services revealed that the number of SNAP beneficiaries subject to the reinstated requirements has fallen from roughly 12,000 to 2,680. This is a steep reduction, but relatively small compared to the 250,000 people in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) when the rule change went into effect.

*** and ***

Part of the motivation for this renewed enforcement is to provide a better path for beneficiaries to transition off  the program and back into the mainstream economy. Many beneficiaries are on the program for extended periods of time, and for too many, next to nothing is being done to help them improve their employment prospects during this time. A recent national study found that, over a 56 month period, a full quarter of beneficiaries participated for more than four years. Some of these people are exempt due to disability status or age, but those with the capacity for work are not really helped by a program that leads them to languish for years on the welfare rolls.

*** end quote ***

The Gooferment is immoral, ineffective, and inefficient!

This just proves is. 

IT likes a “plantation of victims” that requires Gooferment bureaucrats to “care for them”.

I remember when Rudy required “welfare takers” to show up for their check. And, how many “ghosts” did that make disappear. The “work requirement” eliminated those working in either the underground or “above ground” economy.

While I think all charity should be private, if for no other reason that they Gooferment shouldn’t be doing it OR they do it so badly, I can “tolerate” if the takers are really not “moochers”.

It’s NOT so hard to tell the difference?

argh!

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GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Ulbricht’s trials fatally flawed

Sunday, April 5, 2015

http://www.targetliberty.com/2015/03/ross-ulbrichts-lawyer-blows-up.html

Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Ross Ulbricht’s Lawyer Blows Up Following News of the Charges Against Government Agents That “Investigated” Ulbricht

*** begin quote ***

In addition, the government failed to disclose previously much of what is in the Complaint, including that two federal law enforcement agents involved in the Silk Road investigation were corrupt. It is clear from this Complaint that fundamentally the government’s investigation of Mr. Ulbricht lacked any integrity, and was wholly and fatally compromised from the inside.

Also, it is clear that Mr. Force and others within the government obtained access to the administrative platforms of the Silk Road site, where they were able to commandeer accounts and had the capacity to change PIN numbers and other aspects of the site – all without the government’s knowledge of what precisely they did with that access.

*** end quote ***

More evidence no justice in Gooferment courts!

More misconduct by the Gooferment politicians and bureaucrats!

Argh!

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RANT: Taxpayer Funds Ted Kennedy Shrine

Saturday, April 4, 2015

https://www.newsmax.com/US/kennedy-jfk-museum/2015/03/30/id/635196/

Taxpayer Funds Flow Into Ted Kennedy Shrine
Monday, 30 Mar 2015 07:16 AM
By John Fund
   
*** begin quote ***

The titans of American liberalism will gather in Boston today to dedicate a shrine to the late Ted Kennedy, who died in 2009. 

President Obama, Vice President Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Sen. Elizabeth Warren will all gather to praise the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate. Much will be said about Kennedy’s 46-year record in the U.S. Senate, nothing about various scandals that ranged from Chappaquiddick to his attempts to have the Soviets intervene in the 1984 presidential election against Ronald Reagan. 

Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr points out that the Insititute “was supposed to be paid for exclusively with private donations.” But it should come as no surprise that the gorgeous 40,000-square-foot building that will house Kennedy’s papers and memorabilia as well as a recreation of his personal office and the Senate chamber was financed with a generous $38 million congressional earmark. The state of Massachusetts chipped in with another $5 million for education “infrastructure.”

*** end quote ***

Argh! 

And, what, if as a taxpayer, I don’t think that Ted Kennedy is “en-shrinable”?

Why do I have to pay for it?

It’s immoral, ineffective, and inefficient to rob me a penny to pay for stuff that is anathema to my beliefs.

Argh!

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TINFOILHAT: Preparing American civilians for death camps?

Friday, April 3, 2015

http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/20540-military-drill-identifying-hostile-u-s-states-sparks-alarm

Friday, 27 March 2015
Military Drill Identifying “Hostile” U.S. States Sparks Alarm
Written by Alex Newman

*** begin quote ***

Citing other recently leaked U.S. military documents such as “FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations” about interning American civilians in camps, using “psyops” (psychological operations) on those detainees to affect their views, and more, David Hodges with the Common Sense Show said the drill is “undoubtedly the most frightening thing to occur on American soil since the Civil War.” In a widely re-published article about the training program, he said it could be “conclusively stated” that the drill was really about “preparing for a Red, White and Blue invasion.” “This is a massive rehearsal for martial law implementation as well as implementing the proverbial and much rumored Red and Blue List and the ‘snatch and grab’ extractions of key resistance figures from the Independent Media as well as uncooperative political figures,” Hodges added. “The various provisions of Jade Helm make it clear just how dangerous this drill truly is.”

Responding to widely expressed concerns that the scheme is “preparation for imposing martial law or subduing right-leaning groups and individuals,” as the military publication Stars and Stripes put it, U.S. Army Special Operations Command denied the accusation. “That notion was proposed by a few individuals who are unfamiliar with how and why USASOC conducts training exercises,” USASOC spokesman Army Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria was quoted as saying. “This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.” He re-iterated those comments in other interviews as well. Despite being referred to as “routine,” it was not clear whether any similar drill identifying U.S. states as “hostile” had ever taken place — except perhaps amid the Civil War.

In comments quoted by the Houston Chronicle, which made its bias obvious in the first sentence by claiming that the drills had “stirred some ultra-right-wing fears of a government takeover in the Lone Star State,” local law enforcement officials also shed some light on what to expect. “They’re going to set up cells of people and test how well they’re able to move around without getting too noticed in the community,” Chief Deputy Roy Boyd with the Victoria County Sheriff’s Office was quoted as saying by the paper. “They’re testing their abilities to basically blend in with the local environment and not stand out and blow their cover.” A former Army Intelligence officer was also quoted downplaying fears about the drill and suggesting that it was largely routine training.

*** end quote ***

Clearly, this is the Leviathan flexing its use of force against its “citizens”.

If they are trying to provoke a militia or TEOTWAWKI (The End Of The World As We Know It) believers’ response, then they could not have done better.

I bet there are weapons caches being created all over the American Redoubt. Drug gangs — the closest thing we have to the Founding Fathers’ militia — aka “light infantry” — will be a serious resistance force. Throw in all the hunters, RKBA-er’s, and other serious thinkers and you’ll have a real mess.

“You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” — apocryphal unsourced quote attributed to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

This applies to the American Gooferment as well.

Argh!

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POLITICAL: Obamacare death spiral?

Thursday, April 2, 2015

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/26/susan-parnell-the-obamacare-death-spiral-may-have-/

*** begin quote ***

According to the Manhattan Institute, premiums climbed by 41 percent on average from 2013 to 2014, and premiums are likely to rise sharply again after two insurance company bailout programs included in Obamacare expire in 2017.
 
The other sign health insurance markets are in the early stages of a death spiral is the age mix of those buying policies through Obamacare. Originally it was estimated that around 40 percent of enrollees had to be in the relatively healthy 18 to 34-year-old age segment, so their premiums could be used to pay for the health expenses of older, less-healthy enrollees. So far it appears only some 28 percent of enrollees are in that coveted age group, which also comprises around half of the uninsured.
All of this means insurers are getting a risk pool that is less healthy than expected, and more premium hikes are around the corner. While subsidies hide some from the full impact, others in the middle class will not be shielded.
 
It will undoubtedly take a few years to know for sure, but for anybody concerned about setting off a death spiral or thinking Congress surely didn’t intend to do so, don’t worry. It looks like it’s already here, whether Congress intended it or not. 
 
*** end quote ***
 
Like Social Security, it’s fiscally unsound — in addition to being immoral, ineffective, and inefficient.
 
Why Statists — on both the left and right — think that they can ignore the “Laws of Economics” is a mystery to me. Like the time the Louisiana Legislature voted to repeal the “Law of Gravity”! Just because the “laws” of Economics are a little more subtle, doesn’t mean they exist. 
 
In this case, the invisible hand of the free market is going to slap the politicians and bureaucrats upside the head and say “fools”!
 
Where insurance is virtually unregulated — life insurance for example — it’s cheap, easy to get, and simple. (You die; you get paid!) Across the spectrum of “insurance”, the more regulation, the more expensive. Until you get to “health”, “health care”, “health care insurance”, or something else whatever this is. Most regulated; impossible.
 
And, this fluff about “pre-existing” conditions, is like being able to buy “fire insurance” after the fire!
 
Also, the routine heath care tests? That’s like “insuring” your cars oil changes. Makes no sense. Go to Jiffy lube for 30$ (but don’t buy the air filters); “insure” it and the paperwork alone will make it $100 at least.
 
Argh!
 
So, because there were some without “insurance”, the liberals decided to fool us into a USSR style system. Argh! 
 
Anyone figure out if “we” just took all the money spent on Obamacare, we could have give every uninsured a Congressional style plan.
 
But, then they wouldn’t have their power over a seventh of the economy.
 
Anyone think this is going to work out well?
 
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