Mark Davis's blog

The video camera has pulled the curtain back to allow more people to see how those who swore to protect and serve the people who pay their salaries (cough, cough) truly act.  After the cop last week shot a man in the back, 8 times, and then the cop planted his Taser next to the body of the man he murdered in cold blood to support his bald faced lie that he "feared for his life", it was a passerby taking a video that revealed the truth.  As cowardly as shooting a man in the back for no reason is, how about beating up a pregnant women?  A team of uniformed thugs invaded a pregnant woman's home in Texas with the purpose of kidnapping her 18 month old child.  When she had the courage to ask for a warrant, the response was "We don't need no stinking warrant!" as they forced their way in and beat her for her trouble before arresting her and taking her child.  Luckily, for the truth, a home surveillance video captured it.  Be warned, watching this video may make you sick:
 
http://rt.com/usa/248125-texas-woman-punched-police/

In spite of the tendency of politicians to cling hard to the status quo, especially when a policy expands their power and control like the drug war does, here is an example of how eliminating laws that make matters worse can help society recover and get better.  Now, if only the lawmakers in the USA can learn from the Portuguese experience, as well as the states that have legalized marijuana, and totally end the war on drugs not sold by Big Pharma.  Then take this principle and apply it to every other area where government intervention has wreaked havoc in our lives. 
 
 
http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-al...
 

The more Socialist an economy becomes, the more shortages of basic goods and services there will be.  It always sounds good to the masses when state central planners promise cheap toilet paper and soap, but when they run out of these items (because the price does not provide enough incentive to manufacture and distribute them) I find it amusing how instead of blaming the real culprits that undermined the economy, the hard core socialist will blame the "black-market".  The "black-market" that only exists because of the state imposed burdens on other-wise free exchange.  It's hard not to laugh at this madness.
 
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-04/venezuela-still-out-toilet-pape...
 
 

The Labor Department that "releases" figures labeled unemployment rates for media hacks and bought and paid for institutional cheerleaders in academia pronounce that the current unemployment rate is 5.5%.  There has been much rejoicing at propaganda outlets, primarily to tout the success of official policies.   If you use the official numbers, which are certainly suspect, the number of people considered in the labor force (156,906,000) represent only 62.7% of the people who could work (250,080,000), which means that 37.3% of the people who could work (the non-institutionalized population between 16 and 54), don't work.  A note: if you are 55 and over and do work then they count you as part of the employable population, but if you don't work, then you are not counted as seeking a job.  I and a lot of other people in that category certainly consider themselves wanting and/or needing a job; so this figure is likely low.  The number of able people not working has now reached levels equal to those when most women stayed in the home in the 1970s. 
 
So, 57.2% of the working population has a job, 5.5% want to work and are actively seeking a job and 37.3% either have given up looking for a job, are rich enough that they don't need a job or just don't give a shit.  As the total working population of people not working increases, it will be telling which of these categories increases the fastest; and their ain't a whole lot of new rich people these days.
  
 
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/americans-not-labor-force-exce...

The Arizona brouhaha over serving gays is just silly.  I always find it odd that people "demand" service from people who do not wish to serve them.  If I were to do this, I would expect poor service; so isn't it better to seek this service elsewhere?  Are laws against providing poor service to follow?  How do you draw the line on that one?  What if a bakery provided the cake for a gay wedding and included a Bible verse on it?  Or mixed in some cayenne pepper or too much salt or dog crap?  There are an infinite number of ways to provide poor service and make it clear that being forced into defacto slavery will result in poor service.  This will likely result in a bad reputation in the gay community for said bakers, but isn't that the point?  When will people learn that laws don't instill what lawmakers believe to be virtues (whether they are or not)?

Sometimes the good guys do win.  This is a wonderful story on so many levels.  Parent’s rights, patients rights, natural cures for cancer, the evil of the corporate/state medical-industry and the Amish.
Amish Girl Being Forced into Experimental Chemotherapy Taken Out of US and Recovers With Natural Treatment
 

The Mozilla Lightbeam Tool is suppose to expose who is looking over your shoulder on the web, but it only covers “commercial” snoops.  What about exposing non-commercial, that is state surveillance, snoops?  Since advertisers don’t send out drones to kill people, I’d prefer the latter.
 

Property rights are eroding daily, from control over our bodies through the takeover of healthcare systems to the puddles in our yards.  Mission Creep is a profound understatement for this phenomenon.

I like watching old westerns on Youtube like Have Gun Will Travel episodes, Rawhide, Wagon Train, Death Valley Days, et al and recently I’ve been on running through Gunsmoke.  I spent much of my youth with my grandfather who liked to watch them and I have fond memories of watching with him.  I loved HGWT the best, because it shows people handling their differences privately without “the law” using natural law, negotiation, reason and a hired facilitator.  Gunsmoke is the exact opposite, every conflict must be settled by “The Law” or, as the story goes, we’d all kill each other.  This episode in Season 6 “Love Thy Neighbor” is a classic representation of the underlying propaganda that runs through most episodes with authoritarian “justice” being the precursor to civil society. 
 
With many of the 1950s and 1960s western icons (Jack Elam, Warren Oates, Dean Stanton, et al) guest-starring in this episode, these poor, ignorant characters could have all been saved if only they had let Marshall Dillon take care of them.  When the Marshall kills somebody, he “had to do it”, but when others use the same methods as he, then they are criminals because they don’t have a tin star on their chest.  As a side note, it’s funny how Marshall Dillon is a stickler for the law with most people, but when he feels “The Law” needs to be ignored for his friends and those he sympathizes with, then it’s the right thing to do to “stretch the law” arbitrarily.  Looking back at how I watched these shows as a kid and how easily I was brainwashed into accepting authoritarianism as the righteous alternative to liberty, I must laugh at myself while realizing how most people never even question how they became authoritarians.
 

Adults who live in the "greatest country in the world" don't even have average literacy skills: http://nypost.com/2013/10/08/us-adults-are-dumber-than-the-average-human/
The trend is also obvious.  Aren't government schools just great?