HT: reason's Hit & Run.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
libertarianism]The Libertarian Party is calling for more cooperation between Federal, state and local law enforcement to battle the scourge of child pornography:
"FBI Chief Robert Mueller was correct when he said we are losing the war on child pornography," says Libertarian Party Executive Director Shane Cory, referring to comments made by the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday before a House Judiciary Committee meeting. "We have an obligation to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse, and we can do this by increasing communication between state and federal agencies to help combat this repulsive industry. While privacy rights should always be respected in the pursuit of child pornographers, more needs to be done to track down and prosecute the twisted individuals who exploit innocent children."
Mueller called for "integration" between police agencies and increasing FBI resources to work on child pornography cases, which the LP press release mentions without comment, except to suggest that those resources could be freed up by not prosecuting victimless crimes.
So, yes: child abuse, particularly sexual abuse, is evil and those who engage in it can hang in the courtyard by their genitals for all I care. But what the hell is the LP thinking here? They're not even pretending to support the Constitution, let alone limited government, with this view. The LP is justifying not only the existence of a national police force (which is not authorized by the Constitution), but by implying support for "integrating" police agencies, they're calling for even more Federal intrusion into areas that should by law be the states' domain.
There's only one reason for such an ill-considered and frankly unlibertarian stance from the LP, and it's to further marginalize the radical core of the party. It started with the gutting of the party platform in 2006 and it continues through attacks on Mary Ruwart, an LP candidate for President and a more radical libertarian than the current leaders of the LP are comfortable with.
Even party founder David Nolan expressed his outrage in a comment:
I am appalled at the national HQ staff putting out a press release that implicitly disowns one of our candidates over such a relatively minor issue. First, because that’s not a proper role for paid staffers to assume, and second because several other candidates have taken overtly anti-Libertarian stances on a number of issues, and none of them have been shot at by the national staff for doing so. This whole fiasco just reeks of cronyism and witch-hunting. Our presidential nominee will be chosen by the delegates to the national convention in Denver, and attempts by the LNC or (especially) the office staff at LPHQ to subvert that process are despicable.
Once again, the New LP demonstrates its willingness to sell out its own principles, and even one of its most dedicated party members, in a futile effort to gain some mainstream political credibility. It's just pathetic. If you truly care about the libertarian movement then stop supporting these clowns.
Police in southern China have discovered a factory manufacturing Free Tibet flags, media reports say.
The factory in Guangdong had been completing overseas orders for the flag of the Tibetan government-in-exile.
Workers said they thought they were just making colourful flags and did not realise their meaning.
As prices for bread and rice soar, dictators are tottering.
Oddly, one of them is [Hugo] Chávez, who lost a constitutional referendum in December partly because of the combination of soaring food prices and shortages he has inflicted on Venezuela. Another is Robert Mugabe, who to his surprise lost a presidential election in Zimbabwe three weeks ago, though he has yet to admit it. According to the U.N. World Food Program, the government of North Korea faces another food crisis; bread prices explain in part why Pervez Musharraf lost control of Pakistan's government in February.
It's a painful way to bring down dictatorships, but in the long term it's not nearly as painful as allowing them to continue.
Then again, if your military-backed dictatorship has been placating the masses for decades by providing them with subsidized bread, you might think twice about wanting a free market to develop:
As global prices have soared in the past year, cheap bread has been disappearing from Egyptian shops, and free-market prices have risen 48 percent. The predictable result came on April 6, when workers at the country's largest textile factory, in the city of Mahalla el-Kubra, attempted to strike, only to be blocked by a massive deployment of security forces. Angry crowds took to the streets for two days. Schools and shops were burned, a huge billboard of President Hosni Mubarak was torn down and at least two people were killed when police opened fire.
Mubarak responded to the trouble the way the regime always has. His prime minister and a host of other officials rushed to the smoldering city to purchase peace. The textile workers were promised a month's bonus pay and new health-care facilities for their town. Mubarak ordered the army to begin baking and distributing more bread and lifted tariffs on some food imports. Meanwhile, his prosecutors brought charges against some 150 people blamed for the unrest.
As they say in the circus, the show must go on.
Another consequence of the food crisis: less resistance to biotech crops.
My F Score is 2.4. That's Mr. "Liberal Airhead" to you.
(This is nothing new, BTW. Some background information here. It has been revised and improved upon elsewhere.)
New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's hold on office seemed less certain Tuesday, as a legislative staffer said gubernatorial aides were in transition talks with the lieutenant governor and Democratic sources said Spitzer had no choice but to step down. . . .
Political opponents quickly called for Spitzer's resignation after federal investigators linked New York's Democratic governor to a high-rolling prostitution ring.
After being admonished by fellow libertarians, I will point out that no one, Spitzer included, should be called to account for the consensual non-crime of paying someone for sex. What Spitzer does with his dick and his money in his spare time is nobody's business but his.
He should not be punished for hiring a prostitute. He should be punished for all the real crimes he's committed as governor and earlier as attorney general of New York: for all the businesses he ruined in his overzealous (and sometimes extra-jurisdictional) pursuit of so-called white-collar crime; for all the people imprisoned for other victimless crimes under his watch; for his misuse of state resources to harass and damage his political opponents.
There's also Spitzer's reputation for being an arrogant, suppurating asshole (remember his "I'm a fucking steamroller" comment?). Of course, it's not illegal to be an asshole, but it sure makes it easier to take joy in his downfall.
Goodbye, Mr. Clean. You may not get the punishment you deserve, but you'll no longer be able to punish anyone else, and I can live with that.
Subject line courtesy of Lou Reed's "Strawman", from his album titled, appropriately enough, New York.
Mainline Republicans seem to hate McCain nearly as much as they hate Hillary Clinton. Conservative
To be honest, I don't get why McCain so inflames the Republican core. Of all the remaining candidates, he's most in favor of perpetual war. He's strongly authoritarian. He at least pays lip service to fiscal restraint even if it's no longer a core Republican value (has it ever been, really? Republican Presidents, Reagan included, have increased spending for decades). I don't see him spending any less money, particular to finance all of his planned overseas military adventures, than Bush has over the past seven years.
So he's not as freaked out by Mexicans as the other border-states folk are. So he's not in favor of reining in executive authority. So he's not such a big fan of free speech. Big deal; neither is George W. Bush. If Republicans want to retain power for another four years, aren't these issues worth overlooking?
Of course, if they are, they could just vote for Clinton instead.
See what I mean? Game over.
The lobbyist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Garcia exposed himself to her and said, "Wouldn't this be real nice inside of you?" . . .
The woman said she decided to register a complaint with [House Speaker Andrew] Romanoff after learning about four other similar allegations against Garcia over the past seven years.
Y'know, didn't any of these guys pay attention when Bill Clinton was in office? He wrote the book on this stuff!
Now if someone can just snap a picture of Douglas Bruce beating up a homeless guy, I'll be in political Schadenfreude heaven.
Going forward, I shall refer to the day on which I prepare my family's tax return, which this year falls on January 30, as Fuck Milton Friedman Day.
Friedman, for all of his great contributions to economic theory and advocacy of the free market, was also instrumental in developing the Federal government's most efficient means of confiscating the income of Americans with a minimum of protest: the withholding tax. Prior to the 1940s, citizens paid taxes in a lump sum every March. The 1913 tax act, which was adopted following the ratification of the 16th Amendment, originally called for withholding as well, but taxpayers expressed great displeasure at money being taken out of their pay envelopes before they even received them. The withholding provision was struck a few years later.
The problem with annual lump-sum payments is that it proved very difficult for the IRS to ensure it received all of the revenue that citizens were obligated to pay. Furthermore, it hampered the government's ability to fund operations throughout the year. Imagine getting just one paycheck every year, covering your entire annual salary. You would likely budget your money very carefully to ensure it covered your expenses throughout the year. On the other hand, it would also give you the opportunity to invest some of that money so it could earn interest until you needed it to pay later expenses. In retrospect, that's probably not a bad way for government to operate as well.
The Feds seemed to realize this, so to raise revenue during the year it sold "tax anticipation notes" to taxpayers to generate interest to help pay their tax bill the following year. This allowed taxpayers to meet their tax liability using less money than if they paid out-of-pocket when the bill came due.
With the country's entrance into World War II, the government was faced with skyrocketing expenditures. Congress adjusted the tax rates from a heavily progressive system that mostly impacted the rich into more moderate brackets that imposed obligations on nearly everyone. Within three years following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the number of tax returns received by the IRS increased more than four-fold. Had the lump-sum payments continued, the entire system would have collapsed under the effort of ensuring tax obligations were met with every return. Withholding taxes at the source—by conscripting employers to serve as the government's revenue agents—was the most effective method to protect the government's revenue stream. In 1942, Friedman, then working in the Treasury Department, devised a new withholding plan. But the challenge of selling it to a public which had roundly rejected the previous scheme remained.
And like any good bureaucrats and politicians, they used the time-honored trick of snake-oil salesmen everywhere: they lied about it.
The key strategies used to obtain support for income tax withholding in 1943 all entailed political transaction-cost augmentation. Government officials artfully employed national defense language, tax-cost information, and promises of "tax forgiveness" to engineer support for a withholding system at root designed to enhance and protect government revenue for all times to come. The above-noted conflict between the government's actual objectives and its publicly promoted objectives formed only one part of a systematic pattern of transaction-cost manipulation . . .
Treasury officials repeatedly testified to Congress that such withholding of income taxes--current collection at the source--represented "no additional tax." On dozens of occasions, Treasury official Randolph Paul and other government spokesmen testified:
This collection at the source mechanism is nothing but a mechanism for collection. It is not an additional tax. ... It merely speeds up the collection (U.S. House Hearings 1942, vol. 1: 100).
It should be kept in mind that collection at the source does not in itself increase or decrease the tax liability of the taxpayer (U.S. House Hearings 1943: 11).
Given the expert witnesses' knowledge of present value, statements so seriously misleading to Congress and the public could not have been inadvertent.
Because it replaced interest-bearing notes with a pay-as-you-go system, the withholding tax did represent an additional tax on the public, by taking money before it even reached taxpayers' pockets to be used by the government. Only when taxpayers filed their returns could they determine if they paid too little (and thus would have to send even more money to the IRS) or too much (and thus receive a refund, although the Treasury did initially suggest that interest be paid on any money returned). And with future dollars worth less than the present value of the money taken by the government, taxpayers would lose even more each year.
The Treasury Department acknowledged all this in hearings before Congress, yet insisted that withholding would not only impose no additional tax burden, but was merely a convenience for patriotic Americans to meet their obligations and support the war effort. And these same obfuscations were parroted by members of Congress during floor debates. Oppose such a sensible scheme, and you allow the Huns and Japs to win.
Sixty-five years later the government still gets its loot via the withholding tax, and despite many proposals to eliminate or at least greatly simplify the process, it remains the single greatest enabler of an ever-expanding state. As Murray Rothbard wrote about Friedman in 1971:
Only the Friedmanite withholding tax has permitted the government to use every employer as an unpaid tax collector, extracting the tax quietly and silently from each paycheck. In many ways, we have Milton Friedman to thank for the present monster Leviathan State in America.
Friedman did later express his regrets at helping bring about the withholding tax, as evidenced in this interview with reason's Brian Doherty in 1995:
It was a very interesting and very challenging intellectual task. I played a significant role, no question about it, in introducing withholding. I think it's a great mistake for peacetime, but in 1941-43, all of us were concentrating on the war.
I have no apologies for it, but I really wish we hadn't found it necessary and I wish there were some way of abolishing withholding now.
Yeah, me too. And while I stand to repatriate a significant chunk of my income from the Leviathan State this year, when I click the File button in TurboTax I'll remember to honor the man who made it necessary in the first place: fuck you, Milton Friedman.
In March 2000, an undercover officer killed Patrick Dorismond, a security guard, during a fight when the police mistook him for a drug dealer. The outcry infuriated the mayor, who released Mr. Dorismond’s juvenile record, a document that legally was supposed to remain sealed.
The victim, Mr. Giuliani opined, was no “altar boy.” Actually, he was. (Mr. Giuliani later expressed regret without precisely apologizing.)
Given Jailiani's vendettas against people who crossed him in NYC, imagine what he could do with the power of the Federal executive. Good thing his campaign is nearly on the rocks.
Fun Jailiani number of the day: the city paid at least $7 million during his tenure to settle civil rights lawsuits and pay retaliatory damages.
(And these results are different from the ones I posted to
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
ms_cantrell's entry, mainly because I didn't weight any of my answers before.)83% Ron Paul
63% Mike Huckabee
63% Tom Tancredo
56% Mike Gravel
56% John McCain
55% Mitt Romney
54% Fred Thompson
49% Dennis Kucinich
39% Rudy Giuliani
38% Bill Richardson
37% Chris Dodd
37% John Edwards
32% Barack Obama
32% Hillary Clinton
29% Joe Biden
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz
More over at Antiwar.com.
Now that Tom Tancredo is out of the race, does Paul feel inclined to pick up his "close the borders" torch and run with it? This is typical politics at play: pandering to voters' irrational fears of the Brown Menace.
I agree with Justin Raimondo; this ad is disgraceful and not in keeping with the positive "revolution" vibes Paul's campaign has nurtured thus far. I fervently hope he considers pulling this ad.
Ron Paul, having joined the ranks of evolution deniers, and having long been friendly to 9/11 Truthers, decides to come out of the closet on his affinity for conspiracy theories and anti-intellectual movements. He decides on a third party bid, dropping the libertarian label and naming his party the AWPTCAMLDP (Anti-War Peaceniks, Truthers, Creationists, and Moon Landing Denialists Party). He takes over 20% of the vote.
Bruce Sterling reports that angry motorists (or others) in Britain are finally fighting back against the surveillance state by torching speed cameras. Can't wait for them to start shouting down the agents who admonish troublemakers via talking cameras.
Critics on the right and left have excoriated Ron Paul for not returning a $500 donation from Don Black, the head of the white nationalist group Stormfront, but not much mention has been made about who Mike Huckabee has been cozying up to:
Criticism from co-religionists stands apart from criticism by the Club for Growth, the Cato Institute and the Arkansas Eagle Forum of Huckabee's 10 big-government, high-tax years as governor. Because no Republican candidate since Pat Robertson in 1988 has depended so much on support from evangelicals, opposition by Huckabee's fellow Southern Baptists is significant.
Huckabee's base is reflected by sponsors of Tuesday's fundraising luncheon (requesting up to $4,600 a couple) at the Houston home of Steven Hotze, a leader in the highly conservative Christian Reconstruction movement.
Uh-huh. Just how "highly conservative" is Christian Reconstructionism?
The use of the death penalty would be greatly expanded, when the Hebrew Scriptures' laws are reapplied. People will be executed for adultery, blasphemy, heresy, homosexual behavior, idolatry, prostitution, evil sorcery (some translations say Witchcraft), etc. The Bible requires those found guilty of these "crimes" to be either stoned to death or burned alive. Reconstructionists are divided on the execution method to be used. . . .
The status of women would be reduced to almost that of a slave as described in the Hebrew Scriptures. A woman would initially be considered the property of her father; after marriage, she would be considered the property of her husband.
On the other hand, they also advocate abolishing income taxes, so it all balances out.
Two years ago, South African deputy President Jacob Zuma resigned his office after being charged with financial corruption. Months later he was accused of rape by a dead friend's daughter. During the trial he claimed that he wasn't too worried about her being HIV+ because he took a shower after the sex.
You can guess where this is going: Zuma just won the leadership of the African National Congress and he's the frontrunner for the 2009 election.
Hoo boy, another quiz show winner on the inside track to take over one of Africa's few prosperous nations. And now that he's likely to become South Africa's next president, Zuma is already softening his rhetoric on Zimbabwe, where previously he had criticized current president Thabo Mbeki for not taking a harder stance:
Zuma defended . . . Mbeki’s refusal to publicly criticise his Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe, saying it “is better than any shouting from any part of the world.”
Zuma also criticised sanctions against Mugabe’s regime, which the European Union and United States say do not affect Zimbabweans as a whole.
I don't think Zuma is another Mugabe in the making, but he also doesn't seem to possess the type of enlightened leadership that African countries, even South Africa, so desperately need. (Enlightened being a highly relative term among politicians, mind you.)
A Russian opposition activist has been sent to a psychiatric hospital by authorities a day before a planned demonstration.
Artem Basyrov's detention is the latest in a series of incidents suggesting a punitive Soviet-era practice is being revived under president Vladimir Putin.
Mr Basyrov, 20, was ordered to be held at a hospital in the central region of Mari El on November 23, a day before planned demonstrations, said Alexander Averin of the opposition National Bolshevik Party.
So you have to convince the government you're not nuts before you can protest, but protesting against the government is clearly a sign of mental illness. Joseph Heller had this pegged.
Meanwhile, resource-rich regions in Bolivia take issue with Evo Morales' "social justice" programs, and they're taking their ball and going home:
Tensions were rising in Bolivia on Saturday as members of the country's four highest natural gas-producing regions declared autonomy from the central government.
Thousands waved the Santa Cruz region's green-and-white flags in the streets as council members of the Santa Cruz, Tarija, Beni and Pando districts made the public announcement.
The officials displayed a green-bound document containing a set of statutes paving the way to a permanent separation from the Bolivian government.
Council representatives vowed to legitimize the so-called autonomy statutes through a referendum that would legally separate the natural-gas rich districts from President Evo Morales' government.
The move also aims to separate the states from Bolivia's new constitution, which calls for, among other things, a heavier taxation on the four regions to help finance more social programs.
Morales, naturally, won't take this lying down. And like his buddy Hugo Chávez, he blames the U. S. for the latest round of troublemakers. More here.
Marc Andreessen checks in on new developments in artificial intelligence, including Microsoft's erstwhile "Santa-bot":
The idea was that you would add "northpole@live.com" to your kid's MSN Messenger and your kid could talk to Santa Clause online. Sounds like fun.
Thanks to The Register, let's roll the chat room transcript:
User says: Pizza
Santa says: Yum! What do you want for Christmas, User?
User says: Maybe you shouldn't eat so much! You are quite large!
Santa says: My elves will get right on that. And what else are you wishing for this year, User?
User says: Maybe you shouldn't eat it?
Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!
User says: Eat it
Santa says: No thank you. I don't eat things!
User says: Eat it
Santa says: See if you can get someone else to eat it!
User says: Eat it
Santa says: You want me to eat what?!? It's fun to talk about oral sex, but I want to chat about something else...
I think I need to go take a shower.
Western Digital succumbs to DRM hysteria:
Western Digital's 1TB MyBook external hard drives won't share media files over network connections (UPDATE: Don't install the "required" client software! See workaround below). From the product page:
"Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access."
It doesn't matter what the files are: If you try to share these formats over a network, Western Digital assumes not just that you're a criminal, but that it is its job to police users. You see, MP3, DivX, AVI, WMV and Quicktime files are copy-protected formats.
Awesome product planning: alienate your customers, but you'll look good to the media companies who aren't actually the target for your products. Way to hit one out of the park, WD. (Courtesy Coyote Blog.)
Best World Record That No One Should Actually Try To Break:
Six years ago, paramedic Matthew McKnight was working an accident on a road near Pittsburgh. What happened next is one for the record books. McKnight was hit by a car doing 70 mph and was thrown a record-setting 118 feet.
At the hospital, yes, he lived, he was diagnosed with two dislocated shoulders, one of which was also broken, and a broken pelvis, leg and tailbone. McKnight spent two weeks in the hospital and 80 days in rehab. His ER doctor was so impressed by McKnight's impromptu flight, he submitted it to Guinness World Records.
The record took a while to verify, but will be in the upcoming 2008 edition of the book.
OTOH, video evidence for that would be epic.
Not recommended reading if you're in a good mood and would like to remain that way.
In the other ring of the
What scares you more, Venezuela's somewhat stumbling march towards socialism or Russia's headlong rush into fascism? One's got oil; the other has nukes. May we live in interesting times, indeed.
Profile
- cluebyfour
- Brian Martinez
Syndicate
