Strike The Root Blog

“The biggest impediment to urban farming of course, is the City, which sat idly by as land fell into disrepair, neglect, disuse, etc.”

The City of Detroit did far more than sit idly by. Decades ago it implemented ordinances that prevented any home from being sold without being inspected and approved by the City. Every single defect, no matter how minor, had to be repaired to the satisfaction of the inspector before a home could be sold. When people cannot afford to stay in their homes, they surely cannot afford to improve or repair them. They simply walked away in droves and the problem only gets worse as the economy worsens. These city ordinances were a major contribution to the sea of abandoned homes in Detroit. It created countless hiding places for rapists and child molesters to lie in wait for their next victims. Today the abandoned homes are a blight on the landscape.

To think that the City should be in any way compensated for these abandoned properties is atrocious. The City of Detroit should be paying damages to the previous owners to compensate for the loss of previous value, no matter how minor it may have been as well as the pain and suffering that always comes in the wake of government interference in private actions.

http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2009/03/mon_holy_smokes_taxes_on_rolli.html

From $1.09 to $24.78, that’s an impressive jump.

I hate smoking about as much as the next guy. But wise up, fellow US slaves. Your vice is next.

Campaign For Liberty — HR 875 The food police, criminalizing organic farming and the backyard gardener, and violation of the 10th amendment

FDR eat your heart out.  This fascist bill will eliminate any competition to Monsanto, ADM, Tyson and a few other agricultural cartel members (Big Ag).  The bill was introdiced by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro whose husband works for Monsanto (Stanley Greenburg); no conflict of interest there folks, move along, move along now.  It amazes me how many people still believe that we live in a “free country” and can change this trend in the next election, or the one after that, blah, blah, blah.  Voting is for suckers.

Most people would agree that the government giving gifts to a small number of corporations is wrong. It falls outside the powers and thus the rights of the US federal government, and thus it is also unconstitutional, for those who think there’s any value left in that document.

The problem with doing something wrong is that it often generates even more wrongs. Now that my money has been stolen to reward AIG’s failure, the US house of representatives has felt the need to selectively punish the same corporation it wrongly gifted. In passing the bill that taxes select AIG bonus recipients at a confiscatory 90% rate, 328 ignorant congressmen violated Article I of the constitution twice.

Most people need to be reminded what section 9 of article 1 says: “No bill of attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” A bill of attainder is, per Wikipedia, “an act of legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without benefit of a trial.” An ex post facto law is a law that “retroactively changes the legal consequences of acts committed or the legal status of facts and relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law” (per the same source).

Ex post facto, really? Yes, the bill would make the 90% tax on AIG retroactive to December 31, 2008.

This is a solution that pleases a very angry and very dangerous president. For those willing to defend Obama’s actions, imagine the havoc for which this precedent paves the way. Think about a Bush-like predecessor, perhaps. Do you want this person arbitrarily gifting favorite companies, or arbitrarily punishing companies that have fallen out of political favor?

There is no justifying either the bailout or the punishment. “But, we had to bail out AIG and these companies…” Well, no. By allowing AIG to succeed, we reward failure, and instill a system that will create larger and larger corporations. That should be frightening to even the socialist left who likes the idea of government control over corporations.

Instead, AIG and ilk should have been allowed to fail, or better, do whatever it had to in order to figure out how to survive. The outcome? Lots of people would probably have suffered. Better “lots” than “all.” But what positive might have come out of this? Perhaps ingenuity from some of the bailed out companies, cleverness that would have enabled their survival and advanced our survival skills in the face of severe economic problems. Perhaps the failures might even have signalled the end of monstrous corporations like AIG, begat by a widespread lack of trust in them; this failure might have led to the rebirth of small, competitive financial firms with little political power. I know who would be happy with that!

The cynical, conspiracy-theory side in me says that all of these events are scripted. From failure (long predicted by sensible economists) to bailout to revenge, it’s all about granting the monstrously bloated US federal government even more power over you.
Too bad for all of us that a petulant Obama will likely get his way for a while.

Pennsylvania’s liquor board will be sending their employees to training in order to teach them how to be friendlier and more well-mannered. This will come at a cost of $173,000. I like to think in terms of how many tax slaves that a given stupidity like this one requires. A bit of searching reveals that the average Pennsylvanian pays $4,463 per year in state and local taxes. Doing the math, then, there are 38 people whose full tax burdens are taken by the state of Pennsylvania in order to ensure that government workers learn how not to be rude, i.e. so that they learn what it takes to run a real business instead of a true, pure monopoly that succeeds only by force.

Well, it’s probably not that they’re too stupid, but rather that they just don’t care. Absent competition, “civil” servants are allowed to be anything but. It’s not like they’ll ever be put out of a job.

Government has no business running liquor stores. End of story. If you live in a state (like Pennsylvania or Virginia) stupid enough to insist that only the government can sell you liquor, demand better, or just move.

Mises.org recently published a transcript of the late Austrian economist F.A. Hayek’s appearance on NBC-TV’s Meet the Press back in 1975.

Then, as now, there was a great deal of economic turmoil facing the U.S. and much of the rest of the world. Hayek contended then that the turbulence was mainly caused by the central bank’s inflation of the money supply in order to finance unsustainable central planning, a criticism that equally applies today. Hayek suggested that the answer then was for the Federal Reserve System to simply stop inflating and allow resources to be reallocated according to consumer demand, however painful that adjustment may be in the short term. That’s a suggestion that equally applies to today’s turbulence, but one that Republicans and Democrats alike have shunned in favor of bail-out capitalism and pie-in-the-sky “stimulus” spending and all the massive debt and inflation that goes along with it.

The interview is interesting enough to read for all of the parallels to recent events, but there was one answer from Hayek that I found particularly striking.

One of the interviewers suggested that to simply cease inflation and allow for new economic adjustments to take place would most likely lead to more unemployment, and for that to happen in the already troubled inner cities would most likely lead to anger, frustration and violence amongst those populations, which would then most surely be followed by governmental crack-downs. The interviewer asked Hayek what he would do to ameliorate any ill social effects deriving from further unemployment among urban populations during any post-inflationary adjustment period.

Here’s Hayek’s answer:

“Well, I don’t think there is anything I can do about it. We’ll have to tide over the storm which may be threatening.”

Wow, how refreshing it is to hear such an intellectually honest answer from a public intellectual! How incredibly rare that is. Your typically neo-Keynsian/neoliberal court intellectual–blindly assuming the interviewer’s implied assumption that predominantly black and hispanic populations in inner cities are simply incapable of pulling themselves up by the bootstraps to be gospel truth–would have heard his cue and trotted out all sorts of half-baked ideas for wasteful government welfare programs. Hayek, however, did not so arrogantly assume that he knew what was better for people he knew nothing about.

“I don’t think there is anything I can do about it.” To hear any of your court intellectuals and assorted think tank “experts” make such an admission today would probably cause a complete tear in the space-time continuum, simultaneously catapulting all of us into an alternate reality.

Just as voluntary cooperation is natural amongst people, so is envy. The implication, for me, is that the battle for political anarchy is a path, not a destination. 

The thought struck me from this bit of honesty in a Ted Rall commentary:

“In Soviet times,” a man in present-day Tajikistan told me, “we lived worse than we do today. But we were all the same. Now we live a bit better, but we have to watch rich assholes pass us in their Benzes.” Which would he choose? No hesitation: “Soviet times.”

And even if some individuals can conquer coveting the property of their brothers, “replacements” are being born and trained all the time.

So said Eric Holder, who is somewhat ironically referred to by the mass media as “the first black attorney general.” He was talking about our reluctance to honestly discuss race issues.

We are indeed cowards for that and many other reasons–cowards for not having bucked the politically correct agenda forced down our throats for the past 30 years. Cowards for not speaking up against the censure of those who dared speak up in attempts to discuss race. Cowards for letting politicians run our lives. Cowards for electing politicians who brazenly express disdain for the very same people who voted for them. Cowards for helping chip away at freedoms in the name of personal greed and disdain for the way others live. Cowards for electing politicians who granted even more power to themselves and the corporations who controlled them.

Still, I don’t need to hear it from a hypocrite like Holder standing behind a bully pulpit. I think it’s a good harbinger of what to expect the next four years–browbeating easy targets who have been chastised into keeping their mouths shut. We’ve already heard Obama’s disdain for the average schmuck working-class American who clings to guns or religion. The attorney general echoes more of the same, no doubt smirking after he leaves his throne, knowing full well that most of us rednecks know better than to even mention race.

Next up, I fully expect the target to be the upper middle class as the handouts grow. A much larger number of Americans than before will owe nothing to the government, while a small percentage of us who are willingly struggling to achieve and attempt to improve our lot in life will pay the burden of the cost. We will be made to feel criminally guilty and will be painted as part of the problem, and our already higher percentage of money thieved will be deemed as not enough.

Obama’s administration will be as good at scapegoating people as was the Bush administration. Segments of us, the cowards, will become the axis of evil, no matter the battle. Mr Holder: You are a coward and a bully, but you’re welcome to come spout your bile face to face any time, to demonstrate otherwise.

Nadya Suleman is getting hate mail and death threats for having brought eight more babies into an environment where she cannot afford to raise them without outside help. I’m not at all surprised at the hate, but I’m very disturbed by it. When people are forced to pay for other people’s poor choices, they start to feel as if they have the right to control them.

This will only grow. Once Obama shoves through his massive (unconstitutional, as if that mattered) increases in government control of the health care system, we will start to see even more threats and attempts to control. Today, the food fascists use the force of law to ban specific food substances they deem unhealthy. Tomorrow, more of the same. We stand to have far fewer choices and freedom in all areas: recreation, dining, family planning, speech, self defense, and so on. The war against you and your freedoms continues as the government grows unchecked. Your neighbor already checks your trash can for recycling violations; tomorrow he will look for discarded Frito bags and then blow the whistle.
Freedom includes the right to make poor choices and also to suffer as a result. I note that Suleman received compassion from many of her fellow human beings, and I’m sure even those giving her compassion have offered sage advice. That’s how things are really supposed to work, but the pro-government-growth forces don’t believe in it.

I was at the gym, walking to warm up for running on the treadmill. The television was tuned to Fox (and I can hear all the shrill screams from readers), and it would have been clear to anyone that I was paying attention, as my treadmill was immediately in front of the screen. An older woman, perhaps 55, walked up to the treadmill to my left, looked at the screen, walked back to the towel ledge, grabbed a remote, walked back, and changed the channel before I knew what was happening. Not to her daily soaps, but to one of the other politically-biased news outlets (it might have been MSNBC).

Weird. This woman was obviously a Fox-hater. It doesn’t really matter to me which broadcast outlet I get my lies from, but I said to her anyway, “You don’t think that’s rude?” She had her headphones on and just gave me a strange look. I didn’t feel like causing a scene, so I moved treadmills to another TV and watched Martha Stewart (apparently there is a dearth of watchable stuff on TV nowadays).

The left fascists look to control you in different ways from the right fascists, most notably by suppression of belief systems they don’t like. They love the idea of larger government, because it grants them a larger sphere that they can influence.

Don’t like religion? Great, all we have to do is claim something to be under control of the government, and then the religious nuts can’t speak freely. Don’t like conservative radio? Great, let’s re-institute the ignominiously named “Fairness Doctrine” to try and force your viewpoints. (I wonder, will the Fairness Doctrine apply to the heavily left narrowcasting of NPR?) Or great, let’s institute “hate speech” laws and collegiate speech codes. Don’t like groups of people lobbying the government? Great, let’s push the right fascists and left fascists to get together to establish “campaign finance reform.” So much for the first amendment.

The [censored] who changed the channel without asking is representative of what we are in for under the thumb of left socialists. Don’t like what other people say or want to hear? Use force to shut them up or to shut off their source of information.