Posts filed under 'The State'
Artus Register
Odd as it may seem, people are unhappy with government. So found a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. It is almost unimaginable that people would be displeased at being ruled by an impossibly large Beast that exists parasitically off of their labor, puts them in cages for victimless “crimes,” lies to them every second, forces itself into regulating every aspect of their lives, assumes it knows much better than do the people, disobeys its own rules, and has, almost from its inception, held the chilling distinction of being the greatest murderer, most prolific kidnapper, biggest thief, and worst polluter.
As shocking is the belief that the bulk of money stolen collected by Washington is frittered away rather than used for some meaningful purpose.
On average, the public estimates that 53 cents of every tax dollar they send to Washington is “wasted.”
Comically, despite having an inverted Midas’ Touch in that everything the state comes in contact with turns into a putrid, steaming pile of wholly digested sustenance, government proposes to fix every problem, none more pressing than those created by government itself. In order to repair that which is both in reality and imagination, broken, government forces the people to pay, regardless of the reality that less could easily be paid for better services or repairs on the open market.
So backward is the thinking of those that comprise government, that the disapproval itself will have to be addressed with a combination of increased revenues, and a surrender of additional liberties.
Note: In typical fashion, the referenced article, which started out making a serious and important point about the evolving attitude of Americans, once thought terminally complacent, shifted gears mentioning the manifestation of the angry and disenfranchised before equating the “tea party” movement with the quasi-statist, neo-neocon ramblings of alleged rogue Sarah Palin. Ignoring the plain reality, the Post writers even suggested that Palin is the Tea Party crowd’s first choice for the GOP nomination in 2012.
February 11th, 2010
admin
The truth isn’t always pretty, popular, or palpable. But it remains the truth. In many areas, the truth is sacrificed for the closely guarded alternative realities of “conventional” wisdom; particularly in times like these. As Senator Hiram Warren Johnson once said, “Truth is the first casualty of war.”
Indeed.
While the claim is rampant, and the sacredity of the cow unquestionable, the reality of our American military personnel is much different. Those fighting a phantom enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan are not fighting for our freedom. Those dying in those theaters of wartime absurdity have not been killed in the service of their country, nor have they made, as is often said, the ultimate sacrifice for we the living.
Though it is much less poetic, and devoid of the tearful, pride-swollen romance of popular sentiment, the dead Americans in the pointless and illegal conflict in Iraq, and the nation-building experiment in Afghanistan have died not for freedom, but for its opposite. These lives have been sacrificed for government. The deaths are part of a not-so-secret neo-conservative plan to remake the world in the shape of “big government conservatism,” (ala PNAC) and to give the United nations a permanent place in the Middle East, another swipe at US sovereignty and step giant leap toward global government.
There was never the slightest threat to U.S. national security posed by a prostrate Iraq, too weakened by sanctions to seriously concern any nation. Without a threat, there can be no protection. Without protection there is no glamorous hero’s death died by our betrayed countrymen.
The other war is at once different and similar. It would matter were our focus on al-Qaeda. But our military is instead focused on spraying Roundup on poppy fields (which drives up the price of heroin, and thus increases drug-related crime domestically), and chasing disorganized remnants of the Taliban, even after we trained an army and installed a government to do this very thing.
It will be said that some vast conspiracy succeeded in hiding the illusive WMDs in Iraq, and that the Taliban may justly be pursued unto the ends of the earth for harboring al-Qaeda operatives (apparently Pakistan harboring such terrorists is permissible).
Other than actually pursuing al-Qaeda in the months after 9/11, one would search in vain for a time since World War II that American military personnel died while protecting the rest of us from a real enemy. This sad reality does not result in fewer claims to the contrary.
So on this Memorial Day, when we are asked to quietly believe the deceit of our “leaders,” and listen silently to the warm, fuzzy lies of all who wish to sound patriotic by repeating the fictions that allow the state to demand more pointless deaths, we should pause to reflect on the reality. We should neither weep in silence, nor nod in agreement. We should instead demand a return to the just war theory, and insist that elected officials charged with commanding our brave men and women in uniform place them in harm’s way solely in the defense of the Republic; not for the benefit of foreign tyrants, blue flags of despotism, or the revived, frightening call for empire.
May 25th, 2009
Artus Register
Imagine an obsessive golfer claiming he hates the sport, or a typical shopaholic making bizarre statements about her hatred of finding a good deal. What would you think about your cousin, the reality TV junkie swearing she can’t stand the contrived, scripted nonsense she can’t miss a second of. Crap, right? And those above would be fairly categorized as liars, or crazy people.
Enter U.S. President and flawless messiah, Barack Obama.
Turns out, gaffing the economy, blaming everyone but the guilty (government), destroying industry, playing God, and attempting to outmaneuver umutable, natural laws is a dirty job, but, sadly, somebody’s got to do it.
That this latest incarnation of a state power is a liar is plain to see, and saying so should shock no one outside cave dwellings. But the blatancy has become similar to the examples in the opening paragraph. The latest whopper doubtless caused many a double take, and an instant did he really say that? check.
He doesn’t like to meddle in the free market.
During a another discourse in patent dishonesty, the unabashed socialist-cum-fascist made the following statements, presumably with a straight face:
If you could tell me right now that when I walked into this office, that the banks were humming, that autos were selling, and that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting health care passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran, and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal.
I want to disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy, you know, meddling in the private sector.
The best way to accomplish such a feat would be to stop doing it, or at least stop smiling as you pillage away accomplishment and pretend to wield more power than the natural laws of mathematics, economics, and human desire.
And that’s why I’m always amused when I hear these, you know, criticisms of, oh, you know, Obama wants to grow government. No. I would love a nice, lean portfolio to deal with, but that’s not the hand that’s been dealt us.
Yes, Mr. President, critics calling things exactly the way they exist in reality is hilarious. Laugh it up, buddy. History will rightly remember you as the destroyer of free enterprise, the man who murdered the greatest system in the greatest country in history. And you dealt the hand.
So Mr. Obama would take a deal that allowed him a little extra time to focus on complete economic fascism, and destruction of only these select areas of illegality? Of course he would. He’s in no hurry. The next crisis will afford government the opportunity to use it’s reverse-Midas Touch on other industries. What’s the rush? He has eight years to corral the entirety of the free market, and transform it into a motionless pile of socialist stagnation.
To paraphrase this insane megalomaniac:
If I could illegally use the power, might, and economic strength of this government to insert my opinion into places from which it is Constitutionally forbidden, pretend I am a king, rather than a President, continue illegal, undeclared wars and further weaken the dollar through unlawful nation building, pretend government can solve every issue and that I have extensive medical knowledge, uproot the medical ingenuity tree that is free market health care, blame everything possible on the concept of liberty, and use government to try to solve an energy issue that government created, I would.
I hate to meddle.
April 30th, 2009
admin
There was never much hope among the educated that the Obama administration would do much for the cause of freedom, save for adopting a slightly more sane medical marijuana policy, considering ending the abortion of a war in Iraq, and closing Gitmo. That said, such immediate idiocy of Obama & Co. is a bit of surprise. Both of the nations two remaining fiscal conservatives had predicted that the new President would delay the implementation of Marxist moronity until summer.
There was no time, the then President-elect explained as he readied for phase one of Operation Outspend Bush even as the echoes of his own voice blaming Bush’s spending record for the economic woes America faces were still audible.
In fairness, it takes a brave soul filled with self-confidence, and equally assured of public complacency to even attempt a feat as far-reaching and dangerous as outsquandering Bush the lesser. Mr. Obama, apparently feels up to the task.
Beyond the dual absurdities of calling for abject socialism without limit, and the championing of the heretofore veiled and sanitized concept that government can do limitless good if given limitless power, comrade Obama is now performing his Disaster-is-Necessary trapeze act without a net, making real decisions rather than paper ones. This first of many colossal blunders-in-waiting (as recognized by everyone without a government job) has been relegated to fail-safe by Mr. Obama’s economic advisers, who, judging by their obtuse refusal to accept plain economic realities, likely doubt gravity and a heliocentric galaxy, as well.
Passing billions of newly-printed dollars through the extraordinarily greedy and inefficient hands of the state before watching as the remnants are gifted to companies helmed by those too stupid to turn a profit, we are told will magically “stimulate” an economy choked out of consciousness by government itself. This is the plan conceived by the Godlike agent of change. Excuse me, waiter, I ordered the change.
I loathed Bill Clinton in a way that defied explanation. But George W. Bush made me long for the days of the sexually frustrated and Teflon-coated Bubba. I hated Herr Bush with a passion usually reserved for 20th century tyrants from other hemispheres. But I may miss him yet.
February 18th, 2009
Artus Register
The AP is reporting that in the latest wave of violence eleven men were killed in the eastern Chihuahua state of Mexico. The response is typical of government: use force to “crackdown” on drug trafficking, which will result in arrests, seizures and ultimately higher prices for the increased risk and relative scarcity of product and therefore more profit for dealers. The higher profit will result in more jealously guarded territory which means more violence.
Since the US forced Mexico to abandon its drug decriminalization plan in the spring of 2006, the country has instead engaged in a massive crackdown on drug dealing. The result? 5,300 people were killed in drug-related attacks in 2008 alone, which was more than double the amount from the previous year.
Citizens and politicians alike in many Latin American countries are tiring of the incessant drug-violence and are considering the obvious: wiping away the profits with the stroke of a pen.
In the past few years governments in Mexico, Columbia, and Honduras have either seriously discussed or actually attempted drug decriminalization. Additionally, governments of Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador seem to be tiring of the all-out drug war approach and may be warming to the idea of ending violence by ending prohibition.
Thus far the American government, ever the on-paper proponent of free enterprise, has imagined into being a mystical exception to simple economics for the drug trade, pretending that neither risk and reward, nor supply and demand have any bearing on the economy of drugs.
January 15th, 2009
Artus Register
Despite the singularity of the campaign, president-elect Obama,the man who campaigned on nothing but his desire for change and outsider status appears to already be out of ideas. Thus far his most significant promises have been:
- Spend more money on fascist-style bailouts of failed industry (just like Bush did)
- Send more Americans to die in a foreign war fought for increasing vague objectives (just like Bush did)
- Use the power of government to take money from some and give it to others in an attempt to “stimulate” the economy (just like Bush did)
The only surprising thing about Mr. Obama’s true colors is that he has displayed them so quickly. I would have bet on concealment until at least Valantine’s Day. But it appears that the current straights are too dire, and the economy too important for delay. Government interference and the subsequent worsening of problems must begin right away.
January 15th, 2009
Artus Register
The Australian government is apparently unfamiliar with the ecological disaster that resulted from the U.S. government playing God in Yellowstone. It went like this:
In its boundless wisdom, the government, in the manifestation of the Park Service thought the number of park visitors would increase if people saw more wildlife of the hoofed variety. So the began killing, trapping and otherwise removing the wolf.
As is normally the case with government involvement, ignorance, a lack of planning, and abject arrogance combined to form an unmitigated disaster. When the natural order of things is unnaturally changed, bad things happen. A trophic cascade occurs when predators are removed from the equation, and an abundance of their one-time prey gums up the natural order.
In Yellowstone, the wolves and foxes were gone, allowing the elk population to flourish. The larger elk ran off the smaller deer, and set up house along the riverbanks, which they trampled, sending the beavers scurrying. No beavers meant no dams, so the wet areas favored by the mink, otters, ducks, etc.
Sans the berries and trout and fruit shrubs along the river, the grizzly bears moved on to the next most reliable food source–visitor’s picnic baskets.
In response to this destruction, park officials had to begin trapping and removing bears, as well as re-introducing the wolves and fox.
Officials in Australia figured they could do better.
Due to the stubborn refusal of feral cats on remote Macquarie island to stop behaving like feral cats, Australian officials made the decision to exterminate them–all of them.
To protect the bird population, Parks and Wildlife Service of Tasmania officials assumed they could play god, eliminate the predators, and watch the island transform into a naturalistic utopia where life would flourish. And it did flourish for some species.
It seems the cats were not on an all-poultry diet; they also ate a lot of rabbits. Famous for their reproductive abilities, and now absent any danger, the island’s rabbit population exploded. This took a massive toll on the island’s vegetation which provided cover and nesting for the birds officials sought to save.
Dana Bergstrom of the Australian Antarctic Division described the less-than successful government foray into environmental architecture thusly:
“Our study shows that between 2000 and 2007, there has been widespread ecosystem devastation and decades of conservation effort compromised…We estimate that nearly 40 per cent of the whole island area had changed, with almost 20 per cent having moderate to severe change,”
Wow, nice job. Lest anyone wonder what can now be done, fear not, the government has a solution. The problem, they contend, is that the rabbits were not eliminated at the same time as the cats. So in this alleged treasure of natural history government is now going use helicopters to drop poison on the island to kill all of the rabbits, rats, and mice. The remaining rabbits will later be trapped.
Poison bait dropped from helicopters, a hare holicost, the forceful removal of three different species, and all of it done by a government ready to spend $16.2 million fixing their last idea. What could possibly go wrong?
January 14th, 2009
Artus Register
The Supreme Court has changed mightily since the appointment and confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts. Finally shed of the remaining illusion that the high court exists as part of the third triumvirate, allegedly assembled to protect individual rights and limit the state, the new court is at last both willing and able to focus on its true raison d’être: empowering government.
Anyone clinging to the sophomoric belief in separate powers effectively engaging in checking and balancing must be thoroughly nauseated by the court’s continued reliance on phantasmagoric findings and citations of the fabulous.
In the latest trampling of liberty, “Justice” Roberts again took the lead in stomping the individual with the heavy, allegedly righteous boot of the state. From his bully pulpit Roberts continued his preaching of the doctrine of government supremacy, this time assuring us all in Herring vs. US that evidence collected as the result of a warrant recalled five months prior (due to its original issuance having been in error) should not be suppressed.
In 2004, authorities in Coffee County Alabama arrested Bennie Dean Herring on a mistakenly issued, since-recalled, and severely outdated warrant from a neighboring county. The result of the arrest was discovery of an unloaded gun in his vehicle and methamphetamine in his pocket. As there was no legal reason for the arrest, Herring reasonably argued that evidence collected during the then-unlawful arrest should be suppressed.
The court decided in a 5-4 split with Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia and Thomas siding with the state, to gift governments across the country the de facto power to write open-ended warrants. The abuse this tyrannical decision will doubtless lead to should frighten us all, especially as it is but a cog in a wheel the trident of state has been systematically constructing.
Justices Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Stevens seem to have possessed the ethical fortitude, or at least the requisite shame to dissent. Ginsburg wrote in the opinion against:
The arrest and ensuing search therefore violated Herring’s Fourth Amendment right “to be secure . . .against unreasonable searches and seizures”…the exclusionary rule provides redress for Fourth Amendment violations by placing the government in the position it would have been in had there been no unconstitutional arrest and search.
January 14th, 2009
Goathe
