Category Archives: The State

The Statist Mindset Of ‘Libertarians’ Garry Johnson & William Weld

Donald Trump, Law, libertarianism, Nationhood, Rights, The State, War

Gary Johnson and his sidekick William Weld, Libertarian Party goofballs, are running for president and VP, respectively. The two fulminated to CNN’s Victor Blackwell against Donald Trump. From the libertarian perspective, though, their mindset was much more statist and deferential to state structures than Trump’s.

Weld, in particular, went over the various policies Trump was proposing, voicing objections to each that were thoroughly statist.

WELD: Some of the stuff that he’s running on I think is absolutely chaotic. I’m going to do this to Mexico. OK, that’s a violation of the North American Free Trade agreement, which is the supreme law of the land. It is a treaty. We signed it. I’ll do this to China. No questions asked. OK, that’s a violation of the World Trade Organization rules [which good libertarians despise], exposing us, the United States, to sanctions. And we would be the rogue nation. I don’t think we want to be the rogue nation. You know? Let’s let North Korea be the rogue nation, not us.

Trump can’t do what he proposes because he’ll be in violation of this or the other agreement between states, national and international, which Weld treats as holy writ.

Not to real libertarians. The idea of radical freedom is to dissolve the chains with which others have bound us. Smashing or refashioning these agreements and reclaiming national, state and individual sovereignty, as Trump proposes, is more libertarian than the queasiness these two evince at such actions.

Johnson and Weld objected to Trump’s proposals on the statist grounds that renegotiating agreements or optimizing them for Americans would violate agreements that by their nature sideline the American people.

You don’t get more un-libertarian than that. Then there’s the viva Hiroshima attitude:

State-Controlled Airport Security In The West Hires For Terrorism

Affirmative Action, Homeland Security, Islam, Jihad, Private Property, Terrorism, The State

Donald Trump has a point when he emphasizes that the doomed EgyptAir flight MS804 had taken off (on Thursday May 19) from the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. All roads these days lead to the Dar al-Islam of France or Belgium and to government controlled airports where hiring is in accordance with a preferential spoils system based on race and gender. (And if you’re a black Muslim woman, wearing a nose bag, you’re perfect for the job.)

The Center for Security Policy seems focused on Paris, too:

While Egyptair Flight MS804 made six stops prior to the disaster, authorities in France are questioning workers at its last stop, Charles De Gaulle Airport, a reflection of growing concerns about the safety of air travel thanks to suspected penetration of sensitive airport sites by employees sympathetic to jihad.

Last December, following the Paris attacks Augustin de Romanet, head of the Paris Aeroport Authority, noted that 4,000 employees had their lockers searched, and 70 of them lost their red cards and were terminated over terrorism concerns. Red cards granted airport employees access to restricted parts of the airport including access to the plane. Last October, six IS sympathizers working as baggage handlers at Sharm el-Sheikh Airport in Cairo, allegedly developed the explosives used to destroy Russian Metrojet 9268.

On March 22, 2016, IS members attacked the Brussels-Zaventem Airport in Brussels killing 32 people. Two of the suicide bombers Ibrahim el-Bakraoui and Najim Lachraoui had worked at the airport as a custodians. The Daily Mail reported that Brussels-Zaventem airport had 50 jihadist sympathizers among their employees.

U.S. airports have also seen breaches. In 2015, multiple reports displayed security concerns at U.S. airports including hundreds of employee security badges from Hartfield and Dallas-Fort Worth airports went missing. In addition, reports found 73 TSA workers in U.S. airports were found to have already been placed on the terror watch list, yet did not have their access to sensitive areas terminated.

As for our Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security, not for nothing have the news nitworks stopped interviewing Israeli experts. This from “TSA: Home Grown Terrorism (& Cretinism)”:

In the words of a horrified Israeli aviation security expert, speaking to a Fox News crew: “You cannot allow the security personnel to see, and show the entire world, images of naked bodies of women and men!” Amid ongoing American insanity, this laconic Israeli, Isaac Yeffet, has been making the rounds on CNN, PBS, Fox News—has been doing so for a decade, at least. Yeffet is a former member of the Israeli Secret Service, and was once in charge of security for El Al. Almost a year has past since Fox News probed him for his opinion about the “full body scanners.” Nearly ten years have gone by since the man testified before an equally idiotic Congress.

No other western country is a bigger target for terrorists than Israel. Yet no other nation runs a better (largely privatized), less invasive, smarter, security system, whose able agents simply talk to travelers. These profilers understand that 99.9 percent of fliers are “bona fide” (Yeffet’s favored bon mot). “Shoes aren’t removed, passengers aren’t body scanned, and there are no pat downs,” confirms the New York Times. A “hand search” is seldom conducted, and only with probable cause.

Fox News wanted tough answers; Yeffet gave them smart ones. In countless news interviews over the years, Yeffet has implied that there is no substitute for intelligence—intelligence as in smarts; as in that dreaded G Factor. (No, Cosmo Magazine readers, that’s not the same as the G Spot.)

In a few, well-chosen words, Yeffet has suggested that the thousands hired by the TSA are riffraff. “What we should do is to stop using a low level of people.” And, “Unqualified and untrained people, undedicated people are running the security in our country.” “We need to hire people that, at minimum, have graduated from high school; speak English, are U.S. citizens.” (PBS’s NewsHour, 2002.) “Technology can help the qualified, well-trained human-being but cannot replace him. … We must look at the qualifications of the candidate for security jobs. He must be educated. He must speak two languages.” (CNN.)

Does Pidgin English qualify as a second language?

Yeffet’s are valiant but vain efforts to warn America that homegrown retardation is by far its most pressing problem. Alas, in addition to the perverse incentives that power all state bureaucracies, in general, government departments are staffed in accordance with a spoils system based on race and gender, and not on intelligence.

TSA , VA, ObamaCare, SandersCare; Gov.Com: Economically They’re The Same

Economy, Government, Healthcare, Homeland Security, Political Economy, Private Property, The State

To the economically literate: It’s your obligation to know by now—especially if you read this space—that nothing the head of the Transportation Security Administration and Homeland Security can say or do will change the fact of “long waits at the nation’s airports” this summer and any other peak travel time.

Lines—overload, undersupply, malfunction—are a function of a government system, whose incentives were explained in “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work,” and elsewhere:

Since it “manages” money not its own, government has no real incentive to conserve resources, ensure a job is properly done, or deliver on its promises. Entrusted with the administration of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of people you don’t know and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your on-the-job performance mirrors that of the government? …

… A monopolist, moreover, doesn’t have to please consumers, because he has them cornered. Therefore, in a politburo, political decisions trounce considerations that would win out in the market place. Consider: HealthCare.gov was coded with the goal of harvesting sensitive information from applicants while concealing rip-off prices from them. Why would the Central Planning Board (aka the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in charge of Obamcare) care that such coding has created a hacker’s dream, when their wet dream is to share data culled through HealthCare.gov with the IRS, the DHS, the TSA, on and on?

Like the communist elite, the Congress elite seldom subjects itself to the same health care or the same laws as the people. Unsurprisingly—and by legislative sleight of hand—lawmakers have used their privileged positions to pass laws exempting themselves and their lackeys from liability. “Governmental immunity” is designed to “stop people from suing the government and government employees and officials in many cases.”

With taxpayers ponying up for any … slip … and responsibility collectivized—fear of being fired or penalized is non-existent among the ruling class. Government failure will never see the closing of a government agency, or the firing of nasty, inefficient, over-paid, affirmatively appointed official.

I hope you are able to generalize from healthcare.gov to TSA.gov, to VA.gov and beyond.

Economically, the incentive structure is the same in the TSA , ObamaCare, SandersCare, Gov.Com.

The nationalization of airports by BUSH II was first explored in “WHOSE PROPERTY IS IT ANYWAY?” (June 5, 2002). Read it. Teach it.

NATO Another Noose Around The American People’s Necks

Donald Trump, Europe, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Nationhood, Neoconservatism, The State

Donald Trump, bless him, puts America First. He can’t help himself. And so it was, again, with his comments against NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. As with any bureaucracy, NATO is good for those it employs. The NATO superstate, however, is bad for The People, who must pay for it and live with its self-perpetuating policies and sinecured politicians.

NATO was “… formed to fight the Soviet Union . … “The USSR evaporated a quarter-century ago,” but like a zombie, “NATO has lurched along, taking on new roles. …”

Foolishly and self-servingly, the establishment, Left and Right, equates what governments do, with what the people need. These shysters, Ted Cruz included, have risen on their hind legs in defense of America’s continued membership in NATO, to the tune of 2 percent of GDP. It’s not a conscious act; like a single-celled amoeba, these single-purpose organisms thrash about in unison to preserve the physical integrity of the state structures that feed them.

Where Trump disappoints slightly is when he talks restructuring instead of disinvesting, but there’s so much one human being can say and promise to do. Mr. Trump is fearless.