GOVEROTRAGEOUS: You can’t record Maryland cops; even if they are abusing you

Saturday, May 29, 2010

http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/29/maryland-cops-say-its-illegal

In Spite of State Law, Maryland Law Enforcement Officials Still Arresting, Charging People for Recording Cops
Radley Balko | May 29, 2010

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Graber’s case is starting to spur some local and national media discussion of the state’s wiretapping law. As I mentioned in my column last month, his arrest came at about the same time the Jack McKenna case broke nationally. McKenna, a student at the University of Maryland, was given an unprovoked beating by police during student celebrations after a basketball game last February. McKenna would probably still be facing criminal charges and the cops who beat him would likely still be on the beat were it not for several cell phone videos that captured his beating. According to Cassily’s interpretation of the law, if any of those cell phones were close enough to record audio of the beating, the people who shot the videos are felons.

*** and ***

Whatever their motivation, their legal justification is dubious. The McKenna case is a strong argument in favor of more citizen monitoring of on-duty police. The police not only beat the kid, they then lied about it in police reports. The security camera footage of McKenna’s beating, which is controlled by University of Maryland Campus Police, mysteriously disappeared. The officer in charge of the camera system is married to one of the officers involved in the beating. Does anyone really think the charges against McKenna would have been dropped—and the officers who beat him suspended—if it weren’t for the cell phone videos?

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Video recording police abuse should be applauded; not prosecuted.

It would appear that “wiretap” laws need a Federal preemption that: (1) Permits recording any interaction with a gooferment official performing their duties. (2) Permits recording any situation where there is no expectation of privacy. (3) Guarantees any citizen being taped must have suitable controls to prevent it’s “accidental” deletion when the cops don’t like what it shows.

The cops have dash cams; why not the citizens?

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RANT: Libertarians are misunderstood

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

http://channel-surfing.blogspot.com/2010/05/about-that-progressive-agenda.html

Saturday, May 22, 2010

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>Libertarians are supposedly anti the Democrats and the Republicans

“Anti” is such a strong word. As a little L libertarian, I bear them no ill will. Unfortunately, they keep trying to impose their will, their vision of Plato’s “the good”, on all the rest of us by force. When they do, we’re a little more forceful than the Amish voicing our displeasure.

>they say a pox on the Ds and Rs.

I’d never wish ill on anyone. Like the Buddhist, we know that ill will comes back to haunt you. THe D’s and R’s are like children, who JUST don’t understand that bad things result form their initiation of force on other human beings. So us little L libertarians have to just patiently just have to keep explaining it. Over and over. Eventually they will get it. It’s human destiny to be free. Tyrants and dictators can’t bottle up the human spirit to be free.

>But their libertarian heroes are Ayn Rand Paul and Ron Paul, GOPers.

Us little L libertarians have very few “heroes”. Lysander Spooner, Thomas Paine, Gandhi, MLK, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and such come to mine. But no one is perfect.

>When it comes down to crunch time, libertarians (the 2 Pauls) choose to associate themselves with the evil Gopers.

In the rigged game that is the American political system, it’s impossible to mount an effective challenge. The two parties conspire to keep it just that way. Think a game of old maid where only two players can play because they set the entry rules impossibly high. When Ross Perot, who was in just to take votes from Bush, came surprisingly close, the duopoly quickly revise all sorts of rules to make it harder. SO you have to worm your way in and like a vampire or parasite, take one over. For example, Libertarian members of the Free State Project are infiltrating the D’s and running.

>Isn’t that precious.

It’s expediency!

>Libertarians are supposedly for freedom

Not supposedly. We forsake the initiation of force. That’s the platinum standard. Libertarians come in a vast number of flavors, but all adhere to that Zero Aggression Principle.

>they always end up being against unions and for the giant corporations

Sigh! Most libertarians have absolutely no problem with unions except in two cases: (1) they initiate force against others; or (2) if they are gooferment captives (e.g., the Post Office workers union; the teachers’ union). When the unions use force to prevent “scabs” from working, that’s immoral. When the teachers’ union, for example, exerts political power or uses children as hostages, that’s immoral.

>like BP, which killed 11 workers and Massey Energy which killed 29 miners.

In the examples cited, where was OSHA? Where was the Gooferment law enforcement? If the workers of BP took out an ad saying “don’t buy BP they endanger workers”, then who would buy from them? If they are so dangerous, why are people working there? Does BP chain their legs like a slave ship? No only the gooferment can do that; like in the military.

>In libertarian world, unions are evil blood suckers and >workers are a nuisance to be barely tolerated.

No, if you ever saw a libertarian world, then you’d see no need for unions. People could vote where they would work by the feet. Bad conditions or low wages, I’m outa here. No, the gooferment conspires with big biz and big labor to lock people in. With pensions and “benefits” and laws that supposedly protect them from bad treatment. Argh! Business doesn’t necessarily equate to a “limited liability corporation. That LLC is a gooferment creation to protect the monied interests.

>Those damn unions want good wages, good benefits, safe work >conditions and a voice in their employment conditions.

Please don’t make me laff and insult everyone’s iq. The unions have long since stopped representing the workers and are all about “the union”. Dues and handouts from the gooferment. Workers have to vote the right way. It’s not about good anything.

>serfs who lose their first amendment rights

“First amendment” ONLY applies to restrict the gooferment.

>Libertarians always end up being for the rich and powerful

NAH, WHERE DID YOU EVER GET THAT IDEA.

>private property more than they value human rights.

“Private property” is the essential human right. Your property is your past. It’s the sum of your past efforts. What gives you, any collection of “yous”, or the gooferment to steal it?

I’d suggest that you watch a little video about Liberty at https://youtu.be/muHg86Mys7I?si=ts0EsFVSkUFICnnv and tell us what you think. Essentially it says “we all own ourselves” and everything flows from that. It’s pretty good. And simple enough for even a D or an R to understand.

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POLITICAL: I’ll defend the country; not the regime, administration, or the gooferment

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/56783.html

April 29, 2010
The Quintessential Defender of the Military
Posted by Laurence Vance on April 29, 2010 07:40 PM

*** begin quote ***

<<Quoting a student who was upset with his blog post>>

“It comes down to patriotism and the saying the [sic] many people live by is Love It, Or Leave It. If you don’t love the country or those who defend it then there is no room for you here. The people who put their lives on the line everyday no matter what the politics are in a conflict, they are Hero’s. [sic] If you enjoyed the freedom of typing out this article, than you can thank the military. People join the military to do their duty to protect our freedoms for not only us but our future generations.”

*** end quote ***

My “humble” observations:

  1. “Luv it or leave it” — Why? I paid my dues. Taxes were stolen from me. Loving the country is not necessarily “loving” the regime, government, or its military.
  2. “Defend it” — As soon as the “enemy” comes across the border or lands on the beaches, I’ll be on the line. And, I’ll even bring my own gun.
  3. “Lives on the line every day” — If the government was observing its own Constitution, then we would not have several undeclared wars going on while having troops in about (I’m told) 170 countries. (When did WW2 end? “We” still have troops in Germany!)
  4. “Hero’s” — No, they are mercenaries. And, the word implies a value judgement. Values we clearly don’t share.
      
  5. “Enjoy freedom” — The Dead Old White Guys told me in their writings that my “rights” come from my Creator. And, that Gooferments were instituted among Men to secure these rights. Were they wrong?
  6. “Thank the military” — If they were defending the borders within their Constitutional bounds, maybe I’d agree. remember the Constitution only authorize the Army to be called up for two years. What ever did happen to that restriction?
  7. “Join the military” — Sorry, folks join the military for numerous reasons that has nothing to do with posterity’s freedom. Tuition, pay the bills, and shoot big guns leaps to mind.

I think we need patriots who will stay out of the military and fight the expansion of the gooferment. That’s heroic. And dangerous.

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POLITICAL: Fixing Arizona using power point?

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

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MONEY: WW2 Wage and Price control were disasterous and carry through today

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

On Apr 24, 2010, at 5:58 PM, LUDDITE wrote:

http://finance.yahoo.com/focus-retirement/article/107923/8-great-companies-to-retire-from.html?mod=fidelity-changingjobs

At a time when some firms have cut back on benefits, these employers offer notably generous plans. Fortune picks some of the best.

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Good for you. But bad for us as a society. Pensions and benefits are a result of the WW2 wage and price controls. Big companies bent the salary cap rules by giving these inducements to get good workers. This was a gooferment distortion of the employment marketplace which as usual has had disastrous side effects. I’m not a economist; nor a social scientist, but let see if I can enumerate the ones I know about.

(1) Medical insurance tied to employment had several bad effects. It locked up workers who couldn’t or wouldn’t change jobs due to losing their benefits or the “pre-existing conditions of going to a different insurer. Lose your job due to poor performance, bad economy (i.e., recession), or structural changes in the economy (i.e., rust belt) lose your benefits. It disconnected the link between the expense and the pain of paying thus inducing folks not shop around, negotiate, or even look at the bills.

(2) Pensions are in effect deferred compensation. It locks up capital in the company pension plan — with its risk in bankruptcy — from the individual. So, for example, an employee, if they had that money, could have used it as they saw fit to provide for their own retirement. In my own case, I could have had an extra X$/month to pay down my mortgage sooner and had that capital asset for my retirement. It’s about Freedom and liberty. I was FORCED to trade X$ per month at that time for a future cash flow at age 65 assuming I lived so long. If I didn’t, it was lost. Like “Social Security”!

(3) Pensions were such an expense that the Aircraft companies were firing “old” injineers just before their pensions vested to hire new graduates cheaper. (The fact that much of their work was for the military and the gooferment made it hurt even more.) Hence, having created the problem, the Gooferment gave us the solution — more gooferment — the ERISA laws. (Argh!)

(4) Pensions and benefits, due to it hidden sunken costs, makes the workforce less flexible and nimble. You had to have a much bigger opportunity in a new job in order to justify leaving the security, pension, and benefits in an old employer.

(5) Increased regulation of the workplace, such as OSHA, FALSA, and NLRB, all sprung out of that New Deal thinking. And, was as taxation and regulation, a drag on our economy.

So that’s why this is bad for us as a nation.

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INSPIRATIONAL: Liberty needs a leader

Sunday, April 25, 2010

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/04/25/
despite_forecasts_freedom_takes_more_than_technology

Despite forecasts, freedom takes more than technology
Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe

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It is always inspiring to encounter individuals who jeopardize their safety and freedom to speak truth to power, and the dissidents gathered on the campus of Southern Methodist University were no exception. Ahed al-Hendi, a young antigovernment activist seized by the Syrian mukhabarat — the secret police — as he was blogging in a Damascus Internet café, spent 34 days in a 2-by-3-foot jail cell. The Russian dissident Oleg Kozlovsky (who was grounded in Europe and joined the conference via Skype) has been repeatedly arrested and was even drafted by the Russian army in 2007 in order to thwart his prodemocracy activities. As former President Bush put it in opening the conference, these “are people who refuse to take the lack of freedom for granted.’’

*** end quote ***

Sorry, but I don’t see the MLK who will change this country.

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LIBERTY: EFF protecting our liberties

Monday, April 19, 2010

http://www.eff.org/

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INTERESTING: Goldman sachs AKA the “New York Generals”

Sunday, April 18, 2010

http://reason.com/blog/2010/04/18/first-they-came-for-the-crimin

First They Came for the Criminal Investment Bankers…
Tim Cavanaugh | April 18, 2010

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The Securities and Exchange Commission’s civil action against Goldman Sachs is a certified crowd-pleaser, and based on two iron principles — that you never argue with the audience’s taste and that everybody who has ever worked for Goldman Sachs needs to be executed without trial — it’s probably not something we should be disputing too heavily.

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Why do I feel this is kabuki?

Is Goldman Sachs now playing the role of the New York Generals? Or the Boston Shamrocks, New Jersey Reds, Baltimore Rockets, or Atlantic City Seagulls. Or any one of another patsies? Playing to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Harlem Globetrotters!

We KNOW that Goldman Sachs is wired to the administration through little tax-cheat Timmy G.

We KNOW that Goldman Sachs has been “fronting” for the FED to allow them to appear to sell Treasury securities while buying them back the next day. Thus they are monetizing the debt. This is exactly what the Chinese fear. It’s hiding inflation.

We KNOW that Goldman Sachs has been manipulating the commodities markets. Specifically, the gold and silver markets. This could only happen with the CFTC and European participation.

So now you want me to believe that the SEC is going to take Goldman Sachs to the woodshed on trading losers to others knowing that the residential market was going to fall out of bed.

Please don’t make me laff!

Argh!

Corruption abounds.

Sorry, but I think this is “regulatory theater”! “Made-off” gave the SEC a black eye. And, Dodd’s “reregulation bill” is being laughed at. So some kabuki is in order to fool the Sheeple into believing in big gooferment again. So let’s trot out our captive resident Freddie Kruger and have the valiant SEC bureaucrats do battle to slay this dragon.

Goldman Sachs will probably plead out and be fined. And, the SEC will probably allow them to pay the fine with Confederate States of America Banknotes.

Argh!

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POLITICAL: Politics in two dimensions

Monday, April 5, 2010

http://www.caivn.org/article/2010/03/27/recreational-marijuana-use-likely-become-legal-california

Saw an interesting “vote” on a Web site. Unfortunately, it reinforces the right – left duopoly.

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As we learn from the Nolan chart it’s not a one dimensional problem.

http://www.nolanchart.com/article7443.html

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ibertarian: supports the smallest possible government, supports individual liberty in all ways, prefers to only defend our borders and not interfere in other countries’ affairs.

conservative: tends to give a nod and a wink to liberty while placing emphasis on government control of “family” issues (gay marriage, abortion, borders, etc.) while pushing for major military involvement worldwide by America, in the hopes of creating a faith-based, “conservative” world.

liberal: tends to give a nod and a wink to liberty while placing emphasis on government control of “social issues” (social safety net, minority rights, etc.) while pushing for major diplomatic involvement worldwide by America backed by somewhat lesser military involvement, in the hopes of creating an inclusive, “liberal” world.

statist: the marriage of liberal and conservative aspects of big government. Supports both the conservative “family” agenda and the liberal “social” agenda. Supports both major diplomatic and military involvement abroad.

centrist: somewhere in the middle of all of the above.

*** end quote ***

So to be meaningful, the dimensions are socially and fiscally with individual liberty and government control.

The website SHOULD have “control” between to polar opposites “The Individual” and “The State”!

Liberal and Conservative are meaningless.

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POLITICAL: Wasn’t the Census used in the round up of the Japanese Americans for “internment” in WW2?

Thursday, March 11, 2010

http://www.lewrockwell.com/barnett/barnett18.1.html

The Census and History: It Is Not a Pretty Picture!
by Gary D. Barnett
…  is president of Barnett Financial Services, Inc., in Lewistown, Montana.

*** begin quote ***

I have been discussing the unconstitutional nature and danger of modern census taking for several years. By attempting to expose through my writing the very invasive practice of the “census,” and by educating others about the false reasoning for these government intrusions, my hope is that more and more people will contradict the accepted system by not complying with the census process. One can do this and still remain within constitutional bounds simply by refusing to give any information other than the number of people living in a particular home. This seems simple enough, but due to threats of fine or worse, and threats by the federal government to withhold tax redistributions from state, county and local communities, the populace at large continues to acquiesce to “State” pressure.

*** and ***

The point I want to make is that data-collection by government about the citizenry is always dangerous. Future uses of this private information can never be known. Besides the fact that it is anti-liberty, it allows the state to monitor its citizens, and also sets the stage for an easier path for government to control the people. While the U.S. Census may seem harmless enough to the masses, it could eventually lead to disastrous results. Today we are not only being counted by government, but are having our private information gathered and data-based as well. Our phones are tapped, our emails are captured, our movements are watched, our financial records are monitored and warrantless search and seizure is common.

*** end quote ***

Don’t forget the role of the US Census in the Japanese Internment!

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From: reinke, ferdinand
Sent: Wednesday, March 10, 2010 9:50 AM
To: gbarnett
Subject: with respect to the Census

Wasn’t the Census used in the round up of the Japanese Americans for “internment” in WW2?

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From: “Gary Barnett”
Date: March 10, 2010 12:02:19 PM EST
To: “‘reinke, ferdinand
Subject: RE: with respect to the Census

Yes it was, and I should have mentioned it in my article.

All best … Gary

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NOT bad for a fat old white guy injineer.

When it comes to ANY gooferment program, remember: ineffective, inefficient, and can be pervert to an evil purpose.

How do you tell when a politician, a bureaucrat, or “The Gooferment” is lying? Yup, when their lips move.

“The Census will never be misused.” Tell that to the approximately 110,000 Nisei Japanese Americans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment who were forcibly “interned”.

(Much fewer in Hawaii. Why? No Germans on the East Coast. Why?)

(My Grandmothers, on both my Father’s and Mother’s sides, living on opposite coasts, spoke fluent German at home as their primary language. As did their brothers and sisters. They stopped after Pearl Harbor for fear of internment. How’s that for chilling? I could have been born in an internment camp. If this silliness got out of hand.)

Argh!

The Gooferment is evil.

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