Category Archives: Government

FAKE NEWS’ New Frontier: Against Any Efficient Reallocation Of Resources

Argument, Classical Liberalism, COVID-19, Democrats, Economy, Government, Natural Law, Propaganda, The State

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The deeply silly Washington post has one of its anti-Trump “scoops”: ICE special response teams were freed up to respond to the June riots, ongoing. OMG! You wouldn’t want to optimize the people’s resources to save their resources, now would you?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) used a flight charter service reserved for the transportation of detainees to move tactical teams to Washington, D.C., to help quell protests on June 2 in the capital, according to a report by The Washington Post.
To justify the flights, ICE transported immigration detainees from facilities in Arizona and Florida to its Farmville, Va., immigration jail, a current and former official told the publication.

Skim and consider the natural law: Is it not naturally licit for personnel who serve the people to be moved around so that they may better serve the people in another, more-urgent capacity?

At issue here are state rules: Why do state rules prohibit efficient allocation of resources? Because that’s the very definition of the state: Perversely inefficient allocation of scarce resources.

As to COVID: I, too, am concerned with COVID-19 spread, but COVID-prevention protocols have nothing to do with freeing up Immigration and Customs Enforcement to deal with riots. These are two separate issues, conveniently conflated here.

Outsourcing Life To The Expert Class: The Menace Of The Managerial Class

COVID-19, Family, Government, Outsourcing, Psychiatry, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The State

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In James Burnham’s Managerial State, explains , “political power moves away from … institutions like Congress and toward the executive bureaucracy … The effect is the reduction of nonmanagerial political institutions to increasingly nominal status. Forms of ‘constitutionalism’ may still be permitted to exist, but the managerial elite does not derive its power or legitimacy from them. It can, therefore, easily manipulate or simply ignore these institutions while pursuing its own ends.”

The managerial elite has given us our dysfunctional, atomistic, fragmented society, where traditional support systems no longer exist. To pick up the slack we have the Expert Class.

In a way, the insidious Expert Class that shapes and manages perceptions about public affairs is an extension of the Managerial State. The expert class tends to remove moral and medical decisions from individuals, families, and communities of faith by medicalizing problems of living.

Once, big-on-the-military actor James Wood got word about a veteran who was about to shoot himself in some remote location. So he galvanized the … experts. He got him “help.” He outsourced the problem.

Most people need community, not therapy.

The reason people are desperate and depressed is not because they don’t have a suicide hotline’s number handy or an AA support group buddy; but because they are bereft of family and community.

This simplest of logical deductions we are no longer even able to arrive at without outsourcing thinking to the generators of empirical evidence, the expert class.

Here is that “doh!” factor, confirmed by The Economist in, “A pandemic of psychological pain: How to reduce the mental trauma of covid-19″:

Humans are resilient. Those who experience trauma mostly cope. When their homes are destroyed by earthquakes, they rebuild them and carry on. Even the mass bombing of cities in the second world war did not break civilian morale. Nonetheless, the world should take the collective mental damage of covid-19 seriously. Steps to reduce it cost little, and can benefit not only individuals but also society more broadly.

Research into previous disasters suggests that survivors’ long-term mental health depends more on “perceived support” than “received support”. In other words, donations of money or food matter less than the feeling that you can turn to your neighbours for help. Such help is typically offered spontaneously, but governments can also chip in. France, for example, sets up “medical and psychological emergency units” after terrorist attacks and other disasters. These try to minimise the long-term mental-health consequences of such events by offering immediate walk-in psychological support near the site of the disaster. Several cities in France have reactivated this “two-tent model”, one for medical care and the other for mental care, to help people cope with the toll of the virus.

Some people draw comfort from the fact that they are not alone—millions are facing the same tribulations at the same time. But the pandemic also presents unusual challenges. No one knows when it will end. Social distancing makes it harder to reconnect with others, a step in recovering from trauma. And the economic shock of covid-19 has undermined mental-health services everywhere, but especially in poor countries.

The most important measures will be local. A priority should be bringing people together by, say, expanding internet access. Mutual-aid networks (eg, WhatsApp groups to deliver groceries to the elderly), which tend to peter out once the initial disaster subsides, should instead be formalised and focused on the most vulnerable. Mental-health professionals should connect patients to such services, and train more lay folk as counsellors. In Zimbabwe, well before the pandemic, hundreds of grandmothers were taught how to provide talk therapy on village benches to depressed neighbours who could not afford to visit a distant clinic. Such innovations can work elsewhere, too.

UPDATE II (9/5): NEW COLUMN: Kyle Goes To Kenosha: A Folk Hero Is Born

Founding Fathers, Government, Ilana Mercer, Natural Law, Private Property, Race, Racism, THE ELITES

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NEW COLUMN is “Kyle Goes To Kenosha: A Folk Hero Is Born.” The column appeared on Townhall.com, WND.COM, The Unz Review, American Renaissance, Newsroom For American And European Based Citizens. Check out the resistance out of East Europe.

You can now catch Kyle on American Greatness, the best paleoconservative webzine stateside, and London’s Quarterly Review, first established in 1809 by George Canning.

https://tinyurl.com/y65xdxbd

An excerpt:

Having done an about face against rioting, the sanctimonious Don Lemon, at CNN, giggled and smirked his way through a segment about “racist” white suburbanites, who imagined any decent rioter would bother with their ugly abodes. Hey, racists, there is no Gucci merchandise where you bunk down, taunted CNN’s silly man.

Desperate, suddenly, to appear on the side of normies, the Fourth Estate is currently yearning for a Sister Souljah moment. Sister Souljah had expressed sympathy for the 1992 Los Angeles rioters. If only black people would turn to killing whites instead of one another, lamented that eponymous rapper.

Back then, Bill Clinton—a master politician, and a conservative by the standards of Democrats today—diffused her weasel words. Candidate Clinton called the rapper a racist as bad as David Duke. As a master of triangulation, he managed at once to appease whites (who mattered back then) without alienating black Americans.

And, unlike Anderson Cooper, Bill Clinton felt your pain.

Behold the puzzled look on Cooper’s bewildered face, as he is told by an ordinary, working American what it means to lose your life’s work to louts and looters. The silver-haired Mr. Cooper, also a CNN celebrity anchor, is the son of heiress Gloria Vanderbilt. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Perhaps he cannot comprehend the concept of private property owners defending their modest residences and meager businesses given the fact that he grew up in a castle.

A Teen Rose To The Challenge
Not so Kyle Rittenhouse. Young Kyle went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, because he was never confused. He attempted to do the job politicians and police have refused to do. As the city’s mayor and the state’s governor watched Kenosha burn, Kyle confronted the enemies of the commonweal. Unlike the flaccid men of the media and in corridors of power, the 17-year-old rose to the challenge, firing only when he was prone and was being pounded by the feral fiends. …

… READ ON. NEW COLUMN is “Kyle Goes To Kenosha: A Folk Hero Is Born.” It is currently on Townhall.com, at WND.COM , The Unz Review,  American Renaissance , and Newsroom For American And European Based Citizens.

You can now catch Kyle on American Greatness, and London’s Quarterly Review.

UPDATE I (9/5):  Why not? I’m allowed. Via American Renaissance: 

SoberedByReality • 5 hours ago:

I like Ilana Mercer’s work. She has a very unique style of writing which combines prose, sarcasm, humor, and seriousness. She is extremely intelligent, and she is an outstanding source on the havoc and chaos which have befallen South Africa since apartheid ended.

UPDATE II:

In reply to my young friend, Chris Watson: MY WORK DOESN’T CHANGE no matter where it is published! Were I to be published by storm-troopers, the message would still be 100 percent true. @OfficialCWATSON, your mind is not where it deserves to be. You’re better than this. Read my recent deconstruction of the term racism, CLOSELY.

“Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!”

“‘Systemic Racism’ Or Systemic Rubbish?”

Next and last installment, next week.

UPDATE III (9/7):

Exclusive: PURGE THE KILLERS to RESTORE HONOR, Writes Grieving Father

Crime, Criminal Injustice, Government, Law, Race

“Bad cops are equal opportunity killers,” says Capt. William B. Scott, father of decorated ex-Army officer Erik Scott, a young white man, killed by cop.

In a piece exclusive to Barely a Blog, Capt. Scott writes:

Once again, our cities are being destroyed in riots triggered by a police officer’s senseless, horrific murder of a citizen who posed no threat. And again, the news media and professional agitators have adroitly shifted the focus to “racism.”

Yes, racism may have contributed to officer Derek Chauvin’s stupid decision to keep his knee pressed on George Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, even after Floyd’s heart flat-lined. As The Wall Street Journal reported, the victim was “nonresponsive for the final 2 minutes and 53 seconds.”

First and foremost, this incident was raw police brutality, not racism. George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, aided and abetted by other cops, who either kept their weight on Floyd’s back or stood by and ignored the dying man’s pleas. If not for a smart citizen video-recording the heinous execution, four Minneapolis police officers would not have been fired, and Derek Chauvin would never have been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Chauvin’s arrest is a good start. But it was slow in coming and smacks of weak politicians desperately trying to quell protests. Of course, obligatory promises of a thorough investigation into Floyd’s death were issued from on high. This time, though, Americans were having none of politicians’ well-worn pacification playbook. Millions were already frustrated and angry, after two months of Covid-dictated lockdowns and job losses. Because government officials had sacrificed what little credibility they still possessed, their pleas for patience fell on deaf ears. The shocking video of George Floyd being choked to death ignited a firestorm that consumed pat political platitudes.

Although I definitely do not condone the senseless destruction now sweeping our nation, I fully understand the anger and frustration fueling it. I, too, have lived the nightmare of naked police brutality and have experienced the exasperation of being thwarted by a corrupted “justice” system.

Ten years ago, my son, Erik Scott, was executed by a scared, low-functioning, hyped-up cop. Las Vegas officer William Mosher, who mistook Erik’s cell phone for a gun, panicked and fired, hitting the decorated ex-Army officer in the heart. A well-orchestrated cover-up followed, thanks to cops investigating themselves and finding themselves faultless. As they always do.

William Mosher and Derek Chauvin are poster-cops for what’s wrong with American law enforcement today—a pandemic of officer-involved death. Further, badged killers are endangering every good police officer, who’s trying to do a dangerous, thankless job.

Eight years ago, I predicted the current violent backlash and riots would happen, if cops continued to kill what they derisively call “civilians.” From my novel, “The Permit”:

“…A spark like young Steele’s murder-by-cop, at precisely the right time and place, will blow Vegas to smither-frickin-reens. ….[H]ere’s the issue that makes this a national security concern… If all these factors come together under the right circumstance—something as abominable as Steele’s execution—all hell will break loose, and uncontrollable violence will spread across the country.  …We’d have a full-blown revolution on our hands. Whole cities would be torched, and we’d incur thousands of casualties. The stock market would crater, people would be afraid to go to work…. Hell, son, America as we know it would cease…to…be!”

Maybe we’re already there. If not, we’re close. Wild beasts birthed by cops killing, then lying and covering up their crimes, are on the loose and may not be tamed soon.

All thinking Americans condemn the targeting of police officers. But as our nation mourns the senseless death of George Floyd, let’s not forget that cops routinely kill 1,000-1,300 Americans every year— roughly an average of 3.3 people per day, every day of the year—and get away with it 99 percent of the time. Those sworn to protect and serve the citizens who pay cops’ salaries and benefits kill more of us every few years than al Qaeda terrorists murdered on 9/11.

Granted, the majority of police officers are first-rate professionals, dedicated to protecting and serving, and they’ve rightly been hailed as heroes, during the Covid-19 ordeal. But honorable lawmen are now in danger, because they looked the other way, tolerating and protecting ruthless cops, such as Derek Chauvin, in their ranks. All in the name of a Mafia-like code of Blue Silence, an illogical, police union-dictated solidarity that infects every law enforcement agency in the United States.

The blood of any police officers killed or injured by Antifa and other anarchists, while trying to restore order in dozens of besieged cities, will be on the hands and souls of heartless killer-cops—Derek Chauvin and his accomplices in Minneapolis, and Las Vegas Metro PD’s William Mosher, Bryan Yant, Jesus Arevalo, Derek Colling, and hundreds of other rogues wearing badges. Every police officer who got away with murder under color-of-law bears responsibility for the chaos and destruction now plaguing American cities.

Until Cops Stop Killing “Civilians,”
Every Uniformed Police Officer
In America Is In Danger

It’s time to stop the hand-wringing and kumbaya calls for “calm” and “standing together,” and tolerating politicians who spew empty promises to DO SOMETHING, even if it’s ridiculously ineffective and unconstitutional. It’s time to implement real solutions, such as:

1. True third-party investigations of every officer-involved fatality, based on the National Transportation Safety Board model (see “Law Enforcement is Fifty Years Behind Aviation”).

2. A protocol similar to the Aviation Safety and Reporting System, whereby good cops can anonymously report the misdeeds of their colleagues.

3. Federal statutes requiring all law enforcement officers wear body cameras and carry personal liability insurance, ensuring taxpayers never shoulder the financial burden of jury awards and legal settlements for police misdeeds. Penalties for noncompliance include immediate dismissal.

4. Zero tolerance for preemptively killing citizens “suspected” of being a threat, solely in the name of “officer safety.”

5. Firing cops involved in cover-ups of an officer-involved fatality or other serious misdeed, banning them from the law enforcement field and subjecting them to racketeering charges.

6. Mandatory annual recertification of every law enforcement agent in the nation, to include psychological re-screening and several hours of education about the Constitution, particularly the Bill of Rights. Officers having multiple use-of-force complaints and/or a shooting on their records would be subject to dismissal in the name of public safety. Loose cannons wearing badges must be purged.

7. Launching a federally funded crash program to develop, test and field nonlethal means of subduing “suspects.” The program should focus on electromagnetic and/or electrostatic technologies that accurately deliver a nonlethal, disabling effect at some distance. These are feasible in the near-term. I saw a prototype of such a system in a Huntsville, AL, research lab 15 years ago. If such a nonlethal weapon had been in Officer Mosher’s hands on 10 July 2010, instead of a .45-caliber Glock 21 semiautomatic, my son would be alive today. Maybe George Floyd would be, too.

8. Repealing “Qualified Immunity” statutes that protect cops from prosecution. Although QI sounds reasonable, these well-intentioned laws have been perverted to the detriment of countless citizens routinely denied justice, when a cop kills. QI is literally a get-out-of-jail-free card foisted on American citizens by unprincipled police unions and naïve politicians who failed to foresee its obscene unintended consequences.

These must be absolute top priorities for politicos to tackle…IF they’re serious about curtailing the senseless killing of both citizens and police officers, and ending today’s rampant riots. God help us, if elected officials and law enforcement leaders decide to hunker down and ride out the current crisis ignited by the murder of George Floyd. Rather than kick the police brutality issue down the road yet again, they must purge police forces of dangerous killer-cops and restore honor to what once was an honorable profession—that of Peace Officer.

 

William B. Scott
“The Permit”, a Checkmate Justice novel
“License to Kill: The Murder of Erik Scott
******

William B. Scott, the late-Erik Scott’s father and author of “The Permit,” is a full-time author and consultant. He retired in 2007 as the Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief for Aviation Week & Space Technology. Over a 22-year career with the international magazine, he wrote more than 2,500 stories, and received 17 editorial awards. He is a coauthor of two other novels, “Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III” and “Counterspace: The Next Hours of World War III,” and a nonfiction book, “Inside the Stealth Bomber: The B-2 Story.”

During a nine-year Air Force career, Bill served as aircrew on classified airborne-sampling missions, collecting nuclear debris by flying through radioactive clouds; an electronics engineering officer at the National Security Agency, developing satellite communications security systems; and an instrumentation and flight test engineer on U.S. Air Force fighter and transport aircraft development programs.

Bill is a Flight Test Engineer graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School and a licensed commercial pilot with instrument and multi-engine ratings. He has logged approximately 2,000 hours on 80 aircraft types, and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from California State University-Sacramento.