Libertarian – Page 8 – Zombies Uncensored

SPLC: Where is the map of propaganda groups?

After seeing this Dylan Ratigan video from the Southern Poverty Law Center, which grouped ‘Patriot’ groups with hate groups, I decided to look into how these groups are defined.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhKjlItVhJY

From the Southern Poverty Law Center – definition of ‘Patriot’ groups:

Generally, Patriot groups define themselves as opposed to the “New World Order,” engage in groundless conspiracy theorizing, or advocate or adhere to extreme anti-government doctrines. Listing here does not imply that the groups themselves advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist. The list was compiled from field reports, Patriot publications, the Internet, law enforcement sources and news reports. Groups are identified by the city, county or region where they are located.

The list doesn’t imply theses groups advocate or engage in violence or other criminal activities, or are racist, but Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center does imply these groups advocate violence in this video.

The kinds of things we’ve seen in the last year are for instance the murder of six law enforcement officials by people, members of the radical right. We have seen plots to murder Obama, we have seen plots to murder black people, to murder jews and so on. I think these are all prompted by the rise of Obama to power. These real changes that are happening around us, people are really angry and hurting out there and many of them feel quite ready to take action.

The terms hate groups and radical right and patriot groups were used throughout this video from Southern Poverty Law Center. I can’t tell exactly which group Potok means in referring to violence, because all these organizations have become an amalgam of one group to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

But what they (Oath Keepers) are really about is the idea that Americans are about to be herded into concentration camps that martial law is going to be imposed, that foreign troops are going to be on American soil, putting Americans done and so on. If what the Oath Keepers did was merely plead one more time to defend the Constitution there would be nothing remotely bad about it.

I can’t say if Americans are about to be herded into concentration camps, but Americans were herded into concentration camp during WWII, so it’s not delusional to believe it could happen.

What is really worrying about a group like the Oath Keepers is this is a group of people who are armed by the rest of society. And in the case of police officers these are people who sometimes have the power of life and death over you or me, and what that means if these men and women are animated by ideas that are completely false, completely paranoid and groundless, you’ve got to worry about who they are going to see as the real enemy and what kinds of decisions they make in stressful situation.

Not everyone knows about the Readiness Exercise of 1984, the plan by the US to test their ability to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest. Calling these fears completely false, completely paranoid and groundless is worrisome and inaccurate.

Whether the tea party movement becomes something more like the patriot group, more radical yet, or whether it becomes something else is something we don’t know yet.

So worrying over what the Tea Party movement might become isn’t paranoia, but worrying about what the government has done in the past being repeated is paranoia? The underlying argument is that Mark Potok’s paranoia about ‘Patriot’ groups is the good kind of paranoia and the concerns of ‘Patriot’ groups is the bad kind of paranoia.

Summing up the SPLC position on patriot groups: It’s OK to verbally defend the Constitution, but citizens possessing anything other than harsh words to defend the Constitution are dangerous.

The SPLC has a map of hate groups on their site.

Where is the map of propaganda groups?

Hey Rangel: Would You be for Simple Tax Laws Now?

Charlie Rangel faces several charges of ethics violations and dodging taxes.

A quick summary of the charges from The Washington Post article, “Rangel is alone in punishment but not wrongdoing”

The ethics committee scolded him for taking corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean, but has not yet ruled on claims about Rangel’s fundraising, his rent-controlled apartments, the taxes on his Dominican beach place, and even his storing of a vehicle without license plates in a House garage.

Here is another summary from NBC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSdvbKsaimM

Rangel claims to have done nothing wrong, that none of the acts were intentional and are simply matters of forgetfulness and sloppiness. I want to assume Rangel is telling the truth and that they were all unintentional, because it makes a really good argument for making tax rules simpler. When someone who oversees the writing of tax laws can innocently break them, it’s a strong indication the laws are too damn complicated.

From the Cato Institute article 10 Outrageous Facts About the Income Tax.

The U.S. “tax army” is bigger than the U.S. army in Iraq.
32 million IRS penalties assessed each year.
In 1913 there were only 400 pages in the federal tax rules, in 2003 the number of pages had risen to 54,846.

With fifty thousand plus pages of rules, anyone–even the person who writes the rules–could unknowingly violate the rules. I would not be surprised to find out all members in congress are in violation of at least one tax code. The tax code is to large to be comprehensible by a single person.

Expecting someone to not violate the massive amount of tax codes is comparable to a bad parent telling a child to behave, but not telling the child what constitutes good behavior. The bad parent only lets the child know the rules of good behavior once they have broken them.

The other reason I hope Rangel has done nothing wrong is that maybe Rangel will learn some compassion for others caught in the web he has helped weave. When an average citizen claims their were ignorant or forgetful or sloppy with the IRS, they have to prove their innocence. If those in congress feel the sting of being a mere mortal, then someday the tax codes might include an “innocent until proven guilty” clause.

Hey Rangel: Would You be for Simple Tax Laws Now?

Charlie Rangel faces several charges of ethics violations and dodging taxes.

A quick summary of the charges from The Washington Post article, “Rangel is alone in punishment but not wrongdoing”

The ethics committee scolded him for taking corporate-funded trips to the Caribbean, but has not yet ruled on claims about Rangel’s fundraising, his rent-controlled apartments, the taxes on his Dominican beach place, and even his storing of a vehicle without license plates in a House garage.

Here is another summary from NBC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSdvbKsaimM

From the Cato Institute article 10 Outrageous Facts About the Income Tax.

The U.S. “tax army” is bigger than the U.S. army in Iraq.
32 million IRS penalties assessed each year.
In 1913 there were only 400 pages in the federal tax rules, in 2003 the number of pages had risen to 54,846.

No Universal Insurance from Overreaching Government

This section of John Stossel’s “Hands Off My Meds” has a clip with physician Dr. Frank Fisher. Prosecutors indicted Fisher for the deaths of several patients by prescribing pain medication. The Doctor spent five months in jail and spent all of his money on legal fees before finally being acquitted. The doctor mentions he is fifty-six years old and is basically starting over because the cost of defending himself left him with a net worth of zero.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb9hkoJ1RR8

The clip from didn’t fully explain just how unfairly Dr. Fisher was treated by the legal system. Here is a bit from Stop the Drug War (stopthedrugwar.org) on Dr. Fisher:

It was Medi-Cal fraud charges that were at the core of Fisher’s latest legal case. Prosecutors originally charged Fisher with 99 counts of medical fraud regarding Medi-Cal claims and improper prescribing, but a state court judge dismissed all but eight misdemeanor counts of improper billing earlier this year. Now, he has been found innocent.

“Over five years ago, Attorney General Bill Lockyer came to Redding and declared that by arresting and detaining Dr. Fisher, his prosecutors had shut down the biggest drug ring in the history of Northern California,” Reynolds continued. “Apparently unaware that aggressive pain management had become a widely recognized imperative of mainstream medicine, Lockyer sought to characterize Dr. Fisher’s practice as sinister. Most of Dr. Fisher’s patients have been unable to obtain the quality of pain care they’d received from him, hundreds have deteriorated unnecessarily, and several have died as a result. At the time of Dr. Fisher’s arrest, for example, twenty-five people who had been working, with Dr. Fisher’s help, were forced to apply for full disability. In response, PRN intends to hold the State of California and participating counties and municipalities accountable for their wanton and reckless conduct.”

Here’s what one juror had to say to Dr. Fisher in an e-mail he received after the trial: “I was juror #1. Now that I am home and can read about you on the Internet, my heart really goes out to you for what you have been through. I was upset that the prosecutor wasted my time and the court’s time on such a weak case. But now that I know what you have really been through I feel embarrassed and selfish to be thinking about my own time. I hope you can reopen your clinic some day and get back to practicing medicine, in your office or back room or anywhere you choose. Thanks for doing the job most doctors won’t.”

What caught my attention with Stossel’s show was the discussion about fairness and medicine. In the health care debate the argument is often made that it is unfair for someone to lose all their life saving do to an illness. It a tragedy when someone loses all their saving do to an illness, but its not an injustice and has nothing to do with being fair. What is unfair, is when someone loses everything due to an injustice. Life is fair, and only people can choose to be unfair and unjust.

What is unfair is there is no call to protect people who have had their life savings destroyed by acts of an overreaching government. There is no call for a universal insurance policy to cover individuals like Dr. Fisher from the reckless conduct of zealous prosecutors. No charts or graphs to show the increasing costs of defending yourself in a free country. Not a word of debate over how people can continue to afford living free when the cost of freedom has risen to everything you own plus time in prison.

There is no comparison between wanting the government to be concerned about helping its citizens when the randomness of life deals them a tragedy, and the callousness of government causing a tragedy, because the first is about charity and the second really is about fairness.

If the government is concerned about protecting people from unfairly being wiped out, it should start by looking at itself.

Who wants to be pro-FED?

The hypocrisy of the American two-party system is so equally balanced, I wonder if they meet secretly to decided which party gets to champion the political issues of the day. If they do meet to debate who gets what, I imagine it goes something like this:

Each year the Democratic and Republican parties hold this secret meeting and divvy up political issues. The meeting is moderated by the wealthiest investors, financiers, speculators, and businessmen in America.

Chairman: From our pre-meeting polling it looks like we can keep this meeting fairly brief.

Chairman: The Republican party is content to keep hold of the following issues – the elderly, low taxes, Christianity, guns, heterosexuals, the rich, small government and the military-industrial complex.

Chairman: The Democratic party is content keeping the young, income taxes, everything but Christianity, the police, homosexuals, the poor, big government, and the anthropogenic global warming complex.

Chairman: The issues we have to divide up are the economy, jobs, terrorism, social security, education, Medicare, deficit reduction, and healthcare.

Chairman: From what I understand both sides have already discussed privately education and Medicare. Both sides have agreed that it makes senses for the Democratic Party to take education because they already have the young and for the Republican Party to have Medicare because they currently posses the elderly.

Chairman: That leaves us with the economy, jobs, terrorism, social security, deficit reduction, and healthcare. Neither party is willing to concede ownership, so the board has divided them as follows.

Chairman: To the Republican party – Economy, terrorism, and deficit reduction.

Chairman: To the Democratic party – Jobs, social security, and healthcare.

Chairman: Objections?

Republican Party: It makes sense to put the economy and deficit reduction together because if the economy improves we can take credit for deficit reduction too. We should also get to be the champion for jobs because those are tied to the economy.

Democratic Party: Putting social security and healthcare with our party makes sense because both of those are designed to protect people, shouldn’t terrorism go to the us because terrorism is about protecting people too.

Chairman: Its been part of our bi-laws for decades, and once again I’m forced to remind all of you that its doesn’t matter if the issue grouping makes sense. The purpose of dividing the issues is so the American people are equally divided in their support of the parties. As long as the public is divided in support, both parties will remain in power.

Chairman: One last thing, the Federal Reserve. Who wants to be pro-FED? Anyone?

Who wants to be pro-FED?

Chairman: From our pre-meeting polling it looks like we can keep this meeting fairly brief.

Chairman: The issues we have to divide up are the economy, jobs, terrorism, social security, education, Medicare, deficit reduction, and healthcare.

Chairman: To the Republican party – Economy, terrorism, and deficit reduction.

Chairman: To the Democratic party – Jobs, social security, and healthcare.

Chairman: Objections?

Chairman: One last thing, the Federal Reserve. Who wants to be pro-FED? Anyone?

Ron Paul and Shameless Media Bias

Here is Ron Paul on CNN’s Broken Us Government with Jack Cafferty

The shameless bias is near the end when Cafferty tells Paul that he wishes he’d run again….and I loved every minute of it.

Should I Slit My Wrists

I struggled for some time to understand what went wrong in the economic collapse.

I listened to a great deal of debate about who should be blamed.

The suspects for the collapse were speculators, mortgage bankers, the FED, Wall Street, Washington D.C., and borrowers.

It turns out the collapse was caused by all the above.

Here is Peter Schiff at the Mortgage Bankers Speech from 2006, with one of the best explanations for the crash before it happened.

Somalis too Skinny for Libertarians

When the subject of smaller government comes up, it is often met with the love it or leave attitude. If you think the government is spending too much or invading individual liberty, then you’re told to move to Somalia where they have basically no government and live in a fantasy paradise of no government.

Wanting a smaller and less powerful government does not equal wanting to live in Somalia. Its just another “love it or leave it” argument. Wanting to change something shows you care about it. If you didn’t care about this country you would move away or just not say anything. Asking a family member to stop drinking too much doesn’t mean you hate them; it shows you care.

Shrinking government is far from wanting no government. Taking away the government’s power to decide what constitutes victimless crime or power to appropriate away more wealth is not calling for the destruction of government. The if government isn’t big, it will be like Somalia argument sounds like someone overweight saying if they don’t eat donuts, they will become anorexic.

Political partisans can agree the government is too big and powerful, but they don’t see the government as a whole body and instead focus on individual body parts. Listening to pundits speak about how “the right side of the body is fat,” countered with “no it’s the left side of the body that’s fat” is like listening to firemen argue which side of a building needs water while the building burns down.

The huge federal budget is an example of a gluttonous government. Forty-three cents out of every dollar that it spends is borrowed. The solution to the deficit isn’t giving the government more donuts–it’s telling it to eat less. The government wanting to raise taxes is like a fat guy saying, “If I was 10 feet tall, I wouldn’t be considered fat.” The problem is when the government gets bigger, its appetite also grows; it will only turn into a fat giant if it grows any larger.

The gluttonous power of the government needs to be reigned in also. Their hunger of power is that of eating Chinese food: soon after they have the power, they hunger for even more. Taking away victimless crime laws won’t leave the government as skin-and-bones any more than drinking diet pop will suddenly make you skinny. It won’t be anarchy, as in Somalia; there will just be fewer things for which the government needs to be fed.

Don’t starve the government to death. Just see it has a healthier tax and power index.

In Everyone’s Best Interest

When is “in everyone’s best interest” just an excuse to have it your way?

Here are some of examples from U.S. history where individuals suffered “in everyone’s best interest:”

Sedition Act – censoring malicious writing against the government was in everyone’s best interest.
Slavery- keeping the country united was in everyone’s best interest.
Japanese, German, and Italian internment camps – national security was everyone’s best interest.
Americanization of Native Americans – “civilizing” or a standard set of cultural values was in everyone’s best interest.
Racial segregation – keeping races separate protected all races and therefore was in everyone’s best interest.
Women’s suffrage – keeping a women in her separate, domestic sphere was in everyone’s best interest.

Its easy to look back on these and see the underlying dynamic of the majority rationalizing control of the minority. Keep in mind at some point, the majority passionately defended and protected all the above laws as being in everyone’s best interest.

Here are some current issues which claim to be in everyone’s best interest that ignore the impact on individuals and minorities:

Gun Control Laws
Defense of Marriage Act
Bailouts for banks and auto industry
Mandatory Health Insurance
Sin taxes
Illicit drug laws
Deficit spending

If you can’t figure out who is, has been, or will be harmed by any of the items above, then you have fallen for the benefit of all argument. You have been blinded by the ends if you can’t see the harm of the means.

If are having trouble figuring out who has been harmed, ask yourself these questions:

When is it OK for you specifically to be forced to do something against your will by the government?
Where do taxes come from?
Has someone ever threatened your life?
Is there anything you do that is considered immoral by others?
Should the majority do anything it likes?

The phrase in everyone’s best interest is often a red flag for bad legislation; because there is little government can do that is beneficial to all without bringing harm to at least one person. Its easy to rationalize just about any action for the benefit of all, as long as you completely ignore those harmed by the benefit.