Tuesday, February 20

The Fraudulent Ideology of Voting

"And yet, should Enron have made the mistake of killing over 600,000 Iraqis among other numerous crimes, we would have bounties on the heads of the men and women who ordered such aggression and would consider them outlaws and murderers. They could not possibly claim that they are essential to our well being, and that for our own good we will be under threat of violence and imprisonment if we decide we don’t want their services of protection, which seem to only invite more and more aggression."  Column by Angelo Mike.

The Liberation of Leanne

"When we become completely responsible for ourselves, everything changes.  We can no longer identify with other “victims” of life who want to be taken care of with the guns of government pointed at our neighbors.  We begin to identify with mature people who take complete responsibility for their experience of life and realize that those guns are being pointed at us too."  Column by Retta Fontana.

Strong Atheism: The Case for Evacuating the Middle Ground

"In the world of philosophy, those who make the active claim that God does not exist are often viewed as extremists. Taking a positive stand about the nonexistence of God is considered akin to claiming that all forms of matter, energy and consciousness have already been discovered, and that there is nothing new to be learned from the universe."  Column by Stefan Molyneux.

'One Nation' Market Anarchy

"A wealthy person is freer to live his life in accordance with his own values and wishes, over somebody who always worries where the next meal is coming from.  In my opinion, libertarians in general should place more thought into how the poorer sections of society can be aided within 'libertopia'."  Column by Christopher Awuku.

How Much Influence Should Religious Leaders Have on Political Issues?

"In sum, the US Catholic Bishops' support for the minimum wage is not a matter magisterial teaching on faith or morals to which Catholics are obliged to assent. Instead, unlike abortion or euthanasia, raising the minimum wage is a prudential matter as to which faithful Catholics are free to exercise their own judgment." Indeed they are. We all are.

Bosses to the Workforce: Get Healthy—Or Else!

"In August, Joe Pellegrini got yet another nagging phone call. It was his health coach, a woman working on behalf of his employer, the $2.7 billion lawn-care company, Scotts Miracle-Gro Inc. The 48-year-old executive knew the spiel by heart. ‘Have you been to your doctor yet? When are you going?’ Then the prescription: ‘You need to lose weight and you really, really need to lower your cholesterol'." (Businessweek) Starting October 1st smokers will be denied coverage entirely. Wage slavery is real; they really do own you, folks. 

Max Boot on War

"So, according to Boot, everything must change at an ever-increasing pace and on an ever-expanding scale. He does not say how that is feasible; nor does he ask whether American or any other human society can conceivably sustain such a continuous proliferation of military enterprise and expenditure. Limits surely exist. No government can continue for very long to spend far more than it takes in while relying on foreigners to finance such extravagance by buying its bonds. Yet that is what the US is doing today. Moreover, aggressive wars like those Americans have been fighting on and off ever since 1955 in Vietnam , Afghanistan , and Iraq inflame opposition both at home and abroad. Surely, if changes of policy fail to diminish such fighting and to check the US government's increasingly strenuous preparation for future wars, a general economic and social collapse like that which overtook the USSR is more likely than the indefinite expansion of our military establishment that Boot foresees." (NY Review of Books) Why is it that neo-con chickenhawks love war so much, yet they never enlist themselves?

Is Health Insurance a Social Fetish?

"If you ask me what kind of health insurance I would like for my family, my instinct is to answer, ‘None.’ The only reason we have health insurance now is to avoid the stigma of being called 'uninsured.' Somehow, health insurance has become a social fetish. I could travel to the far reaches of the globe, and almost everywhere I would find merchants where my credit is good and my dollars are welcome. But here at home, trying to enter a local hospital with nothing but a wad of cash and a credit card would be like urinating on the sidewalk." I believe, (but can’t empirically prove, of course), that the market for health insurance would adapt and provide affordable coverage options if the government and employers didn’t run the show.

German Police May Not Break into a Suspect's PC

"A German court on Monday ruled that police cannot remotely search criminal suspects' computer hard drives over the Internet without their knowledge. The decision of the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe bars police from using the online ‘Trojan horse’ method, which involves using a computer program to search through remote hard drives over an Internet connection, unless parliament passes a law explicitly allowing it." I wish American courts were this brave. See below.

Court Rules Warrantless GPS Tracking Legal for Law Officers

"...it seems that a well-placed hunch is all they [police] need for lawful placement [of a GPS tracking bug]. Interestingly, the government argues that no warrant was needed since ‘there was no search or seizure within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment,’ but did add that ‘wholesale surveillance of the entire population’ was to be viewed differently." While not a legal scholar myself, that strikes me as distinction without a difference.

Communitarian Anarchism as a Neglected Discourse in Histories of Economic Thought

"The primary aim of this paper is to demonstrate the existence of a positive discourse of communitarian anarchist economic thought. A secondary aim is to show that there is intellectual space within the genre of ‘histories of economic thought’ that permits a claim for communitarian anarchism to stand alongside all other discourses of economic thought that compete with the hegemonic neo-classical paradigm. Throughout the twentieth century, histories of economic thought have ignored the positive dimensions of all socialist or anarchist discourses. Only the critiques of capitalism or proposals for the civilizing of capitalism have been considered to be worthy of entry into the ‘voyager’s log’ of the course to the ‘Promised Land’. Most histories of economic thought selectively engage ‘socialism’ only through Marxism."

Pentagon to Create New Military Command for Africa

"The U.S. military assigns responsibility for specific parts of the world to regional commands, such as Central Command, which handles the Middle East , Central Asia and Horn of Africa. Responsibility for Africa is now divided among three commands -- European Command, Central Command and Pacific Command." ( Washington Post) Further proof of America ’s transmogrification into an empire, methinks. I wonder how we’d all feel if the Chinese or North Koreans set up new military command hierarchies for, say, California, Alaska or Hawaii?  The Mexican government already has one for Texas and Arizona .

The Gospel of Free Trade

"This ‘conventional economic wisdom’ consigns many developing countries to ‘specialize’ in agricultural goods. Once that happens, they get locked into the export of goods that face deteriorating terms of trade (with respect to the manufactured goods they are then forced to import.) At the same time, agricultural subsidies in developing countries undermine their ability to compete. This is an unfortunate inversion of the gospel that Free Trade adherents fail to explain or even acknowledge." Neo-con economics explained.

Chinese Hack Attacks on DoD Networks Coordinated

"The Naval Network Warfare Command says that Chinese hackers are relentlessly targeting Defense Department networks with cyber attacks. The 'volume, proficiency and sophistication' of the attacks supports the theory that the attacks are government supported. The motives of the attacks emanating from China include technology theft, intelligence gathering, exfiltration, research on DOD operations and the creation of dormant presences in DOD network for future action. Onlookers warn that current US defenses against these attacks are 'dysfunctional', and that more aggressive measures should be taken to ensure government network safety."

Will China Choke on US Dollars?

"Chinese Premier] Wen appears to be saying that the day may not be so far off when China is going to slow down giving American consumers credit for merchandise purchases. Another way of looking at this would be that China may be losing its taste for lending the United States money that indirectly helps America to fight its ever-lengthening series of Middle Eastern wars. Every year America goes a couple of hundred billion bucks deeper into hock to the dragon." Uh oh.

The Conservative Tide May Be Ebbing

"The backlash has developed its base of support over the last few decades through a right-wing version of populism that Frank argues pitted ‘hard-working’ Americans, (whether they are workers making $20,000 a year or bosses making millions) against the ‘parasites’–liberal intellectuals, college professors, and, at the bottom of the totem pole, ‘welfare cheats.’  The stars of the right-wing ‘noise machine,’ from Rush Limbaugh to Anne Coulter, play on variations of this theme, always presenting the Right as a movement of ordinary Americans, pressed on all sides, an embattled, forgotten majority, fighting it out with the ‘liberal elite'." An uglier aspect of this phenomenon is given below.

Ku Klux Klan Rebounds With New Focus on Immigration

"The Ku Klux Klan, which just a few years ago seemed static or even moribund compared to other white supremacist movements such as neo-Nazis, experienced 'a surprising and troubling resurgence' during the past year due to the successful exploitation of hot-button issues including immigration, gay marriage and fear of urban crime."

Army Made Video Warning About Dangers of DU Munitions But Never Showed It to the Troops

"A special investigation on the effects of depleted uranium reveals the Army made a tape warning of the effects of depleted uranium which was never shown to troops despite the fact the Pentagon knew the agent to be potentially deadly, CNN reports Tuesday. Depleted uranium -- or DU -- was used in the Gulf War as a projectile that could penetrate tank armor. A group of soldiers are suing the US government because they are sick from exposure; despite the unshown video, the Army denies that depleted uranium represents a serious health risk." The truth may come out in court, but I doubt it; the plaintiff’s will be cast as cranks, malcontents, hypochondriacs, stooges for greedy trial lawyers, and worse, and then the whole thing will blow over as soon as the next Florida hurricane or celebrity upskirt pictures come across the airwaves.

Data Retention Bill Officially Surfaces in Congress

"Well, it took a few years, but it finally happened. A data retention bill was introduced today, courtesy of those freedom-loving House Republicans and their 'law and order agenda.' But it's actually a Democrat (Rep. Diana DeGette) who's the most enthusiastic proponent of this scheme, so you can bet that whatever happens will be bipartisan in the end.”

Hugo Chavez-Style Totalitarian Populism on the Rise in France

"Ségolène Royal, the presidential candidate of the [French] Socialist Party, unveiled a long-awaited platform on Sunday, veering sharply to the left on economic policy while also stressing discipline and ‘traditional values.’ Ten weeks before the election, Royal is hoping to reverse a slide in popularity that has seen her lose ground to her main challenger, Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy. In a two-hour speech to about 10,000 supporters north of Paris, she laid out a 100-proposal platform, pledging to raise pensions, to increase the minimum wage to €1,500, or about $2,000, a month and to guarantee a job or further training for every youth within six months of graduating from university. She also said that randomly selected citizens' juries would watch over government policy and that juvenile delinquents could be placed in educational camps run by the military. As if to preempt her opponents on the right, she stressed throughout her speech that her ideas had been nourished in 6,000 debates with citizens throughout France , a method she has called ‘participative democracy'."  Frederic Bastiat must be spinning in his grave; Hilary Clinton is probably taking notes.

Some Thoughts on the Faltering Conservative-Libertarian Alliance

"The typical libertarian shorthand is that we are with the Democrats on social issues and with the Republicans on economic issues. In recent years, the Republicans betrayed us on economic issues. However, my sense is that many in the conservative movement are anxious to repent. On foreign policy, I think that we can gradually persuade more of them to come to their senses on the challenges of the Natural State. Meanwhile, the Democrats seem to be completely dug in to hard-left positions on economics. They lack any vision for foreign policy. I think we should stick with our marriage to conservatives, and try to make it work." [link in original] Murray Rothbard tried this kind of fusionism in the 1960’s without much success, so I have to wonder what Kling and others expect to accomplish here?

The Humorless Condition of American Political Cultural Is Itself Funny                      

"The forces of Organized Touchiness never rest. That includes the Joke Police. The only safety lies in bland solemnity. America is littered with the casualties of the bigotry wars - people who have asserted, suggested, or said things that might possibly be construed to imply anything that Al Sharpton or Abe Foxman finds prejudicial. Never say anything that reminds these people of slavery or the Holocaust, unless you are prepared to do a lot of groveling."  Oh the irony!

Talking Urinal Cakes Offer Drinking and Driving Advice

"The state [of New Mexico] has ordered 500 talking urinal cakes that will deliver a recorded anti-DWI message to bar and restaurant patrons who make one last pit stop before getting behind the wheel. The top of the devices feature the state DWI slogan – ‘You drink, you drive, you lose'." No word yet on what sort of warning system they plan for the ladies room.

Don't Go Bust

A turncoat narc offers tips on how to move your weed.  (Pick by Mike Powers)

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