Category Archives: Government

The Father Or The Son?

Government, Healthcare, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Natural Law, Political Philosophy, Regulation, Republicans, Ron Paul, Socialism

Ron Paul is the elder statesman, Rand Paul is scrappy and fit for a fight. And you do know that breaking free from the moochers and the looters, if at all possible, is going to necessitate a fight. I used to wonder about Rand’s deadpan delivery. But a poker face is just what the doctor ordered together with those revolutionary statements.

“SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): ‘With regard to the idea of whether you have a right to health care, you have realize what that implies. It’s not an abstraction. I’m a physician. That means you have a right to come to my house and conscript me. It means you believe in slavery.'” (RealClearPolitics)

Read the entire statement; it’s beautifully put.

To libertarians what Rand Paul said is real clear. We often describe the fabricated (positive) right to health care as a right to conscript doctors in the service of humanity. For what else does it mean? (“Protesters for a public plan have the right to seek out a doctor and pay him for his services; they have no claim to the products of his labor, and no right to enlist the State to compel third parties to pay for those products.”) But to hear a man who sits in the ossified Senate echo the natural law is just wonderful.

The other day, Rand Paul was quizzed about the absence of entitlement reform in his five-year budget plan. Without flinching, Rand replied that he chose to do away with whole departments, instead.

Assange Dishes About Facebook

Business, Constitution, Government, Intelligence, Law, Technology, The State

In an interview with RT (Russia Today) Julian Assange claimed that Facebook “in particular, is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations and the communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena. They have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use.”

“Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure on them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States intelligence agencies in building this database for them.”

More than anything else Assange’s statement about the overweening nature of the American state. Most businesses capitulate for fear of prosecution.

Facebook Forced To Fawn Over Beltway Bosses

Barack Obama, Business, Democrats, Fascism, Government, Regulation, Republicans, The State

Had Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook—which we all use to such great advantage—neglected to schmooze Washington, one of this or the next administration’s top dogs (Republicans are no better than Democrats in persecuting business) would pick-up the scent and give chase. Why? Because we labor under a system “in which the government leaves nominal ownership of the means of production in the hands of private individuals but exercises control by means of regulatory legislation and reaps most of the profit by means of heavy taxation.” So wrote the Tannehills in The Market for Liberty.

Fascism, in short.

Duly, Facebook now has a new Washington office. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

“… Facebook is still trying to find a path to Washington, where the company has only a fledgling lobbying operation, even though it finds its privacy policies under increasing scrutiny and is trying to navigate a politically sensitive expansion into China.

In seven years, Facebook has risen from a tiny start-up to an Internet power with a potential market value estimated at more than $50 billion. Now an online forum with more than 600 million users, Facebook faces growing pressure from lawmakers and regulators concerned about the way it uses personal information shared by its users. [Yeah, right; the Big Bosses only want what’s best for us.]

At the same time, the company is confronting questions about how it will handle its role as a global public square for dissidents if it enters China and other countries with little tolerance for dissent. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal about its approach abroad, Facebook officials in Washington suggested the company might be willing to play by China’s rules—a stance that could raise hackles in Congress.

Until lately, Facebook has spent very little money in Washington, even by Silicon Valley’s frugal standards. The company’s outlays on lobbying totaled $351,000 last year, federal records show. That’s a fraction of the amount spent by other technology giants, including Google Inc.’s $5.2 million and Microsoft Corp.’s $6.9 million.”

[SNIP]

Any serious student of economics knows that regulation hinders wealth creation, often forcing the entrepreneur to replace viable, voluntary trades and transactions with bureaucratic, politicized decision making. Rather than concentrate on satisfying and protecting his users on Facebook, Zuckerberg, is now compelled to divert resources from customer service and technical innovation into navigating the bureaucrat’s tax and regulatory laws.

TSA Screening Aims To Subdue Citizenry

Fascism, Government, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Terrorism, The State

If there was ever any doubt in your mind that the TSA and its home grown terrorists aim to cow the population into submission, not to protect it, read on:

“Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively. And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 ‘behavioral indicators’ that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially ‘high risk’ passengers at the nation’s airports.

Many of the indicators, as characterized in open government reports, are behaviors and appearances that may be indicative of stress, fear or deception. None of them, as the TSA has long said, refer to or suggest race, religion or ethnicity.

But one addresses passengers’ attitudes towards security, and how they express those attitudes.

It reads: ‘Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures.'”

[SNIP]

Remember when a secret Missouri State police report, “entitled ‘The Modern Militia Movement,’ and dated February 20, 2009,” warned about subversives like … me? Apparently, this scribe has the makings of a militia member, and then some. One of the incriminating telltale signs the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) was on the look out for were Ron Paul stickers. (I have one on my car. It reads: “Don’t blame me, I supported Ron Paul.”) Also deemed a sign of subversion was the “Don’t Tread On Me” flag (which has snaked across the front page of this website, where my seditious work is stored, since 2008). Everyone was supposed to keep their eyes peeled for “paraphernalia” associated with the patriot movement.

Now our oppressors have added another sign of insurrection: protesting the roger-and radiate routine at the nation’s airports. This is far more perverse than the aforementioned clues because verbal protests over the violations of individual rights are now equated with sedition.