Thursday, June 21, 2012

The Supreme Court Gets It Right, For the Wrong Reasons. Again.

Looks like the Supreme Court makes the right decision, for the wrong reasons yet again:

The Supreme Court has thrown out fines and sanctions against broadcasters who violated the Federal Communications Commission policy regulating curse words and nudity on broadcast television.

The justices declined on Thursday to issue a broad ruling on the constitutionality of the FCC indecency policy. Instead, the court concluded only that broadcasters could not have known in advance that obscenities uttered during awards show programs and a brief display of nudity on an episode of ABC's NYPD Blue could give rise to sanctions.

The justices said the FCC is free to revise its indecency policy.

This issue was not a freedom of speech issue, but a property rights one.  The Federal government owns, or presumes to own, the broadcast airwaves with the FCC being the agency in charge of managing those airwaves.  Since the Federal government owns the “public” airwaves, that means they are free to regulate them however they see fit.  The Supreme Court confirmed as much in their ruling.

Until the private owners of these stations are given full ownership of the actual frequency they broadcast on, the Federal government will always be there to regulate their “speech” and they are right to do so.  I say, allow the various radio and television broadcast frequencies to be owned by the providers themselves and get rid of the FCC licensing fees.

Then you can have true freedom of speech.

Thursday, June 14, 2012

Rand's Romney Strategy

Irish Smell

I bought the new Irish Spring deodorant and used it this morning. It's like I'm taking a shower right now and have a bar of soap in my face!

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The United States Government is Illegitimate

As a sovereign individual, I feel it is my responsibility and duty to state that I reject the United States Federal government as the legitimate power over the United States of America.  I do so, not because the right guy is not in office right or because I am some crazy religious fanatic who does not believe in government, but because they have broken their contract with the States of of this country and with the individuals represented by those States.

This contract, the United States Constitution, was established to clearly define the powers and responsibilities of the United States Federal government, a central government designed to ensure that the several States would remain stronger together rather than suffer schism and conflict such as the European nations had faced.  Whether or not the fears were unfounded, the several States agreed to the contract on the premise that Federal government would limit its powers and allow the several States to govern themselves as they saw fit, provided a few guidelines in the Constitution were followed.

The idea was simple really.  Keep the central government’s powers and responsibilities minimal and allow the State governments, where the people had much more direct access to the overseers of the affairs of the State.  The entire central government’s system was set up to ensure that the best representation was available to the people and the State governments as well.  This coupled with the fact that the chief executive would be chosen by a group of individuals who did not have any association with any government organization or institution would ensure that everyone had a say and that both oligarchical and collective tyrannies were put in check.

Ever since its passage, ratification, and execution, the Federal government has been encroaching in and crossing the self-imposed limitations they have agreed to.  This encroachment has been exponential as the central government has, over time, made great progress in its goal of eradicating the identity of even the state government and their respective citizens.  And while much can be said for the battles won against them, they are winning the war.

During the run of John Adams, the second US President, the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed.  These acts were a direct violation of the First Amendment, as it was a law passed to prohibit certain forms of speech.  There was no question that this law was unconstitutional, yet many states and members of Congress supported it for whatever reason.   Already the central government was trying to breach the contract and defraud their citizens because of one man’s sensitivity about his own weight (literally John Adams had this law passed because a reporter call him “His Roundness”).

The problem was not the system set up by the contract but the people who were left to enforce and maintain it.  When you allow or give a person the authority to use force on you and your neighbor, the temptation to use it for evil such as vanity, greed, or envy, becomes too great.  There are men (and to a lessor extent women) who can resist such temptations, but they are few and far between.  Often enough, they lack ambition to obtain power over others, so they will not run for public office because they have no desire to do so.

In any case, a few States resisted this initial encroachment by nullifying the law.  Basically, nullification is where a State government refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of a law passed by the Federal government that it believes to be unconstitutional.  While not a specific privilege granted by the contract, it is a natural consequence of basic contract law.  If you agree to sell another man your sofa and that he is to come over in the morning and pick it up but he comes at midnight, bangs on your door demanding your sofa now, then he has broken his contract with you and you are under no obligation hand over your sofa.  This is the same principle as with nullification.

While the encroachments were minor and there were very few incidents of the central government doing far more than it was authorized to do for a long time, this all changed after the aptly named “Civil War”.  I do not like to refer to that war as a civil war because the southern states expressed no desire to overthrow the existing government, just to create their own one.  Instead I refer to this war as the War of Southern Secession, which is a more accurate description.

Secession is where a State leaves the union, for whatever reason, and starts its own country.  While this action, like nullification, was not specifically granted to the States, it was a natural right found in contract law.  Citing the example I provided earlier, let’s now say that the individual in question decided to break into your home and take your sofa.  Now you are under no obligation to fulfill your end of the bargain because he has breached his own end of the bargain.  So long as you do not take anything that he promised in exchange for the sofa, you are free to tell him to go suck eggs (hopefully behind bars as I assume you have called the police).

In any case, President Lincoln, the first Republican president, believed that even though the contract did not address this, the States had no right to secede from the union and absolve themselves of the contract.  I suppose there was some ego involved as being the first Republican president to oversee the “destruction” of the United States.  The fact is, however, the southern States were well within their rights to tell the Northern ones to suck eggs, regardless of whether or not we agreed with their reasons for doing so.

In the post-war era and before the rise of the twentieth century progressive movement, the central government began to slowly but surely expand and grow.  During the rise of the industrial United States, crony capitalism, aka corporatism, also came about.  It started with the railroad systems, but increasingly expanded into other industries.  By the late 1800s, the Sherman Act was passed, a vague act that allowed the government to determine what company was operating as a monopoly and gave them the power to break it up.  Now we had probably the first significant legislation at a national level that interfered with private contracts between private individuals.  I daresay this act was responsible for the rise of the lobbyists and special interest groups as it was this act that established the central government as the de facto decider of the winners and losers in the modern industrial economy.

The next thing to come down the pike was the rise of the progressive movement.  They were a large group of Utopians who believe that a strong central government was the means to a perfect society.  From them came many new policies with regards to even minor aspects of everyday life such as what you eat and what you drink.  Alcohol prohibition, for example, was largely a progressive idea.  They also believed in pure representative democracy, that is, all public officials would be voted on.  To this end, they passed the Seventeenth Amendment, which called for direct election of Senators.  This amendment opened a whole chamber of Congress up to the influence of special interests and they were now no longer tied down to the influence of the State legislatures.  Likewise, they created a central bank (however, they were duped by the elite bankers), created an income tax, and limited the size of the House of Representatives, which ensured that your vote would be diluted.

Once the progressives took power, not just as elected officials but also as eager bureaucrats ready to do the will of their philosopher kings, the encroachments have become overwhelming.  Today, there is almost no aspect of your daily life that has not been touched by the dirty hands of the Federal government bureaucrat in some way, shape, or form.  From the food that you eat to the cars you drive to the communications you make with others, there is more than likely some bureaucrat who has determined what choices you have and monitors what you are doing with those choices.  This is not freedom but slavery.  Heck, the money you earn and use is backed by the full force of the United States government and if you try to create your own form of money, you are labeled a “financial terrorist” and sent to prison for the rest of your life.

Why did I go over all of this?  Because, quite simply, the United State Federal government is in breach on contract.  It has been for over a century now and it is very near a total breach of contract.  Not only has it breached its agreements with the several states, but with the individual citizen as well.  As such, I consider every existing regulation and law to be in violation of the Constitution because of this and every new law and regulation to be illegitimate as well.

Unfortunately, as I am only one individual, this means nothing to the government beast I openly despise.  They have more guns, manpower, and drive than I do and as such, they will force me to follow their rules and regulations with the threat of lethal force in retaliation.  Every act of defiance will ultimately lead to my death or indefinite detention so I am forced to comply with them or risk losing all that I hold dear.  My best case is to simply live off their radar as much as I can and hope that some bored bureaucrat does not take a specific interest in me.  And yes, I realize that by writing this and publishing it on a public blog will only serve to increase that risk but I must speak out because I believe in something better than a nanny-welfare-warfare state that presumes to know better than me, despite the top employees having obtained their degrees on the low end of the grade pool.

I do not call for open revolt or violent revolution because historically all such actions have resulted in something worse, not better, than what was before said uprising.  At best, we can create alternatives to existing government monopolies and hope we are not stamped out in the process.  That too may be a fruitless effort because once they notice something gaining traction, they attack (see what happened to the Liberty Dollar or MegaUpload as an example).  I think the best case scenario to play would be it collapsing on its own glut and hubris, but the outcome can be just as bad as open revolt.

I have no political doctrine or any real political beliefs anymore.  I have a series of ideas, but they probably could not be considered a political ideology, largely because the ideas I have are not based on politics, but my own outlook on morality and ethics which apply to all situations, not just political ones.  I do not think that any ideology will fix anything because, as history has shown, people will eventually screw things up royally.

I do believe that individual is sovereign and that everyone is entitled to live as he pleases so long as it is honest and peaceful.  Unfortunately, such sentiments are not shared by the vast majority of the people who live with me in this oligarchical police state because they have given into fear in one form or another.   Thus, I must try and limit my interaction with them and try and get through life, hopefully avoiding any unnecessary attention from bored people.  Still, though, I refuse to acknowledge or pledge allegiance to this government because it is illegitimate.

U.S. Government Cyber Terrorism

Anyone who has spent longer than a day on a computer knows how dangerous to your hard drive malware and other malicious code can be. Most of us have fallen victim to one or the other and have cursed the day the hacker who developed it was born.

Now, according to reports, some of the most sophisticated malicious code ever developed is a product of the United States government, leaving more than a few tech experts and analysts concerned that maybe now, Washington has become a bigger info-terrorist than some of the country's worst enemies.

If you've been following the so-called "shadow war" the U.S. and Israel have been waging against Iran (you didn't know about that?) then you are aware of a malicious code called Stuxnet, a computer worm reportedly developed jointly by Tel Aviv and Washington and dissected in 2009 and 2010, that created havoc among the computer systems managing Iran's nuclear facilities.

Now, analysts believe some of the same code used in Stuxnet was also used in Flame, the latter of which was just identified recently, to form two of the foremost cyber-weapons ever developed.

Learn more: Flame virus, most sophisticated malicious code ever seen, was developed by U.S. government

Monday, June 11, 2012

Total Power or Extinction

Various statistics get thrown around and it’s hard to tell which are the most accurate, but roughly 98% of criminal prosecutions in the United States end in either convictions (6%) or guilty pleas pursuant to prosecutorial “bargains” (92%).


Now, if you really believe that only one in 50 Americans accused of a crime is innocent, there’s something wrong with you, but that’s not really the point of this column. The point is that America’s prosecutors are apparently so frustrated by the 2% that “get away” that they recently went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States for more power, and got it … not just contrary to common sense, but in direct violation of the US Constitution’s prohibition of “double jeopardy.”

Here’s the relevant constitutional language: “[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”

It’s a pretty simple concept. If you’re charged with a crime, and you get a fair trial, and if you’re acquitted by a jury of your peers, it’s over. You’re done. You’re free. The prosecutor can’t keep charging you and trying you over and over again until it gets the verdict he wants.

Alex Blueford was arrested in Arkansas and charged with a panoply of offenses relating to the death of his girlfriend’s infant daughter — murder, manslaughter, negligent homicide, etc. The purpose of the multiple charges for the same act was to give the jury options. If they didn’t think it was murder, they could convict on manslaughter. If they didn’t think it rose to the level of manslaughter, they could convict on negligent homicide. And so on, and so forth.

The jury found Blueford not guilty of murder, but deadlocked on the next step down (manslaughter). At that point, per the US Constitution, Blueford was free and clear of the murder charge, although he could be re-tried on the charges which the jury had “hung” on.

But the Constitution doesn’t matter — when the issue reached the Supreme Court, a majority ruled that, on technical detail (the “not guilty” verdict on murder was not read in court; the judge just declared a mistrial), Blueford could once again be put in jeopardy of life and limb for murder.

It seems like such a small thing, doesn’t it? After all, Blueford’s just one in 50 who doesn’t take a plea bargain, get convicted, or find himself charged with something different (a favorite government trick since the Rodney King case has been to charge those acquitted of a crime in state courts with “violating the civil rights” of their alleged victim in federal courts; same offense, just a different angle). Surely the prosecutor could have written off that murder charge and moved on to other things.

But no — the United States has long since passed beyond the point in its political evolution where the government will ever allow itself to be denied what it seeks. And if the rules threaten to so deprive it on any point, however minor or inconsequential, politicians in suits or politicians in black dresses will step in to correct the matter.

This latest outrage is not an anomaly. It’s an inevitable outcome of placing rulemaking authority in the hands of political government. The possible outcomes of state rule are total power or extinction. One of those is better for the state. The other is better for the rest of us.

-by Thomas L. Knapp at Center for a Stateless Society
under Creative Commons

Friday, June 8, 2012

In Which I Agree With A Cop Ticketing People

This may come as a surprise, but I actually support the police officer in this case:

So the police officer was suspended for doing his job?  Nowhere in the report does the it indicate that the people he ticketed were ticketed unfairly.  By all indications, this officer was just a hard worker and was trying to make money for himself.  There is nothing wrong with that.

Also, note too that at no time do the local leaders or news reporter indicate that perhaps there are too many laws and that instead of suspending the officer, maybe they should have done away with the onerous laws on the books that allowed the officer to “abuse” the system he worked in.

The fact of the matter is, this country’s legislatures have gone stir-crazy when it comes to the passage of laws.  Every law they pass means one more crime that you can break.  The Federal government alone has more than 10,000 laws on the books.  I’ve said before that this presents a serious problem in our nation as these laws are often treated as some moral good, no matter how stupid or ridiculous the law actually.  If it was illegal to for a Chimpanzee to smoke a cigarette, for example (and yes that has happened in the past), then most people would just laugh at the absurdity of it but not get outraged over the sheer idiocy of their duly elected representatives.  And then they go and re-elect these buffoons.

I want more police officers such as these out on the streets doing everything they can to choke the general public with tickets, fines, citations, and other various shakedowns and crackdowns.  That way, maybe people will actually start to look at size and scope of the government’s presumed purview and start to roll things back.

Of course, the fact that this officer was suspended for his due diligence means that people want the laws, but don’t want to be targets of them.  In other words, they want the State to rule over us, but only want the iron fist in the face of other people who they don’t like.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Jonah Goldberg is so Friggin’ Stupid

So I watched this disgusting video from the Daily Caller:

Basically, here we have a man who is afraid of the youth rallying around Ron Paul or the extreme Left-wing.  Put simply, his neoconservative brand has been proven to be a failure, given the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan, the failures of the neoconservative economic policy (which comes courtesy of long dead economists and homosexual hedonist Lord John Maynard Keynes), and the outright failures of the neoconservatives to avert the financial crisis, both past, present, and yet to come in the near future, of which their compatriots in the Republican party take much blame alongside the Democrats.

Let me deconstruct some of his arguments here bit by bit:

“Personally I think the voting age should be higher, not lower.  I think it was a mistake to lower the voting age to 18 to be brutally honest.”

That’s fair.  But I want to challenge Jonah Goldberg with something: where in the Constitution does it say that you had to be 21 or older to vote?  In other words, when the amendment was passed to lower the voting age, it did not overwrite any existing articles or amendments to the United States Constitution.  Secondly, this was done back when we had a draft and warmongers like Mr. Goldberg were sending 18-year-olds overseas, especially poor minorities, to die without having at least a minor say in their policies.

It is true that young people are largely apathetic when it comes to the political process.  They do not care much for voting for some pompous old guy who reminds them of their father.  However, like so many other older Americans, they do enjoy their share of free handouts and have no problem mooching off of others.  I can say that I am certain that many young people, especially those closer to my age, harbor resentment toward authority figures who have told them to go to college and get a worthless degree and not to worry about the debt they have acquired as a result.  Meanwhile, they are having trouble finding jobs related to career fields such as Anthropology, Business Administration, and Communications, not to mention the utterly worthless degrees like basket weaving and <insert supposed victim minority here> studies.  So they are saddled with mounds of debt before they even have a job to pay it off and then come to find that the high-powered salary position they should have gotten upon graduation is really waiting tables for other successful people.  And we wonder why the Occupy Movement gained so much traction?

Another thing that annoys me about this statement is that even though joining the US military is completely optional, he basically said he wants to nullify their votes and allow politically motivated men to direct the affairs of the military, effectively using our troops as pawns and cannon fodder for personal gain.

“If they’re going to run the country one day, then we should probably explain to them why they are so friggin’ stupid about things and it is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth.”

So tell me, Mr. Goldberg, how does one measure stupidity?  There must be a way since science requires, first and foremost, some tangible unit of measurement in order to facilitate experimentation.  At least the hard sciences do, but I don’t consider “soft” science to be true science at all really.

On the other hand, I am bearing witness to the extreme stupidity and selfishness of the elder generation.  So far, they have saddled the youth with debt, flooded the market with money thereby inflated the cost of goods and services, spend themselves into debt where they are totally reliant on government, and voted for the people who will not change any of this but keep the gravy train rolling.  They have little regard for the youth of America and see us as little more than producers to be exploited for their own gain.  Even the elderly who can afford healthcare are on Medicare, justifying it by saying that they paid into the government Ponzi scheme (and it is a Ponzi scheme) and thus they deserve the payouts, regardless of how bad the return is.

Meanwhile, the youth by and large do not believe that either Social Security or Medicare will be available for them when they reach that age.  They know this because they understand how Ponzi schemes work and that there just simply isn’t enough money to be used in that manner.  They also distrust many of our leaders to do the right thing.

Since Mr. Goldberg is a little on the arrogant side himself, let me explain something to him: wisdom does not come with age.  I know that the motif throughout much of our culture is the wise old man but the truth is that wisdom is not something people get as they grow older.  But arrogance and haughtiness is something that many elderly, especially these days, gain as they grow older and become more set in their ways.

The fact that young people think Socialism is better than capitalism, that’s proof of what social scientists call their stupidity.

First of all, the fact that most people cannot explain the differences between Socialism, corporatism, and capitalism, regardless of age, shows that most people are idiots.  The fact that Jonah Goldberg and others like him cannot see the difference between capitalism and corporatism demonstrates severe retardation when it comes to the field of economics.

Secondly, one of the primary reasons that is true is largely because of the State-run education system in our country that has favored obedience over critical thinking and collectivism over individualism.  If Jonah Goldberg had any sense, he wouldn’t fault the youth for falling for thirteen years of indoctrination from the American Left.

Thirdly, this idiot probably wouldn’t know what true capitalism was anymore than knowing what the true Constitution really says about legal tender, standing armies, and the size of the House of Representatives.  I don’t see guys like him calling for limited government, but more government, just a socially-conservative and pro-world police one.  That is hardly a model for a free market.

Fourthly, if Jonah Goldberg had any wisdom whatsoever, he would know that our form of government is supposed to be a Republic and not “Democratic capitalism”.  This means he is a clear failure at understanding even the basic ideas behind the Constitution, which are taught in high school if you take advanced political science.

The fact is, National Review is, and always has been, a big joke of an organization.  It was founded on the premise of big-government corporatism in order to snuff out the Soviets, who were considered enemies not because of Socialism or communism but because they were not Catholic or, at the very least, Christian.  The founders of the organization, William F. Buckley, Jr. and Brent Bozell, Jr. were devout Catholics who viewed the Soviets as a threat to their beliefs.  They were probably correct, but they also were not conservative in their zeal to expand the military in order to continue the Cold War.

To his credit, William F. Buckley would later denounce the War on Drugs as having been a failure and denounce the War on Terror.  I don’t think Jonah Goldberg listened to the wisdom of the his elder in this case and shows the same level of stupidity he mention in the short video clip.

Jonah Goldberg represents the Republican party establishment here.  While his words are directed at the Left-wing youth, he considers all youth to be “Socialist” and I assume he probably lumps in groups like Young Americans for Liberty as well because they do not share his socially conservative, pro-war views.  Men like him are merely totalitarians (did he not say he wanted to beat sense into us, both literally and figuratively?) who disguise their true intentions with conservative buzzwords like “Founding Fathers” and “constitution” and “liberalism”.  The truth is, he is just as bad as the so-called Socialists he opposes, just on the other side of the coin.

As for me, I’m really hoping that the coin will land on its edge.

Monday, June 4, 2012

Comment of the Day

From here on Nadya Suleman's employment plans (strip club and porn):
Come on, give this Octomom woman some slack. She will be performing to sell out crowds. Lots of my cousins, the ones with three teeth, and playing a banjo on their porch, would pay many, many dimes to see this beauty. Right now, as I'm typing, my Kansas cousin, Bubba Eryall Pikkons, is tying up his fourteen houndawgs, and figeren out which of the nineteen cars in his front yard just might start. He'll make some lame excuse to his wife/first cousin, why he's leaving the porch this month. Come on, admit it, ya'll have a couple of those cousins too.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

News and Notes

Well, this is not the News and Notes I had planned. For those of you who don't yet know, this blog has been lacking in posts recently, not through any choice I've made to suspend operations here at old SE, but due to my recent health issues. Anyway, I plan to now post at least a little every day, even if it's just a short amount of text. Like the preceding. However, also be aware you can find postings from me on the SE Facbook page (see sidebar). And on Twiiter find me at @nikkjakson. I'm working on some fiction which I'll post soon (and some of it will be long, so expect continuing stories) and I'm creating new comics, but can't post them just yet, so, expect a bonanza when I'm fully up and running. I will also give you a multi-part (and complete as memory allows) account of my illness and hospital experience. It hasn't been something I've much energy to put into words so far, but I will get to it. Hope otherwise you're all doing better than I am. Nikk
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