Corporatism is the Reason Police Militarization

If there is one thing that the Ferguson riots have highlighted the growing militarization of the police.  I have not seen very many mainstream stories about this in the past and now that we are seeing police use brutal methods against American citizens with armored tanks and military grade weaponry.

But the reason for the increasing militarization of the police has nothing to do with a crazy administration hell-bent on a dictatorship and complete takeover.  No, it has more to do with corporatism.

During the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, defense contractors built up more and more military grade hardware.  But then the wars died down and a lot of this equipment went in surplus.

So now you’re a company with a bunch of extra products to sell to a government that doesn’t want them.  What do you do?

Simple, you contact your friends in said government and arrange a deal to sell off your equipment in another way.  Most of these vehicles and equipment has come to local law enforcement through Department of Homeland Security grants.

Of course, when you give a bunch of wanna-be soldiers army grade gear without any proper training, they’re going to misuse it.  The US military has protocol for using its stuff.  They tend to be very strict with what you do with armored vehicles.

Local law enforcement has no such restrictions or discipline.  And so we see them using it to catch some kid whose crime was selling $40 worth of pot to his schoolmates.

Remember When The Cops Blew A Hole In A Toddler’s Chest?

I heard about this story a couple of weeks ago.  I was outraged about it then.  Now I’m beyond outraged.  I have reached a level of anger that I haven’t been at in a long time.

If you aren’t going to bother to read the article, it’s written by the mother of the boy whose was hit by a flash bang grenade in his crib.  He’s still in the hospital right now in critical condition.  The doctors say that his ribcage is exposed.

That’s right.  His ribcage is exposed under the bandages.  He’s probably going to need skin grafts from many donors and months of recovery therapy.  And did I mention that he’s in a medically induced coma, which may hinder his brain development?

The cops involved claimed they didn’t know children were in the house when they threw their military grade weapons into the house.  They claim they were looking for the nephew of the family, who had been kicked out of the house.

Guess what they are looking for?  They wanted him on drug charges.  Not even a whole lot of drugs.  Nothing to justify a raid of that size.

The chief of police blamed the victims for living in the house of a drug dealer.  Except he didn’t live there.  He basically stated that the cops did nothing wrong.

So I guess the hole in that poor boy’s chest magically blew open.

Here’s the deal: the cops involved in this raid should be charged with attempted murder and reckless child endangerment.  The police chief should be charged with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to commit murder.

Because if an ordinary group of citizens did this exact same thing, they would be charged with all that and more.  Cops do not get a pass in my view.  They have to be better than citizens, not worse.

When Cops Murder

And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground. –Genesis 4:10

On July 5, 2011, a homeless man named Kelly Thomas was brutally beaten to death by police officers in Orange County, CA.  Normally, this kind of thing is let go because police officers enjoy a sacred privilege in our country where they are allowed to commit acts of extreme hyper-violence and get away with it, so long as officer safety was a concern.  Of course, officer safety has been extended to mean more than just simply a case of immediate danger.

However, in this case, the beating was captured on video.  And when the video was seen by enough people, they stood up and demanded that the officers involved be brought up on murder charges.

And so they were.  And yesterday the jury acquitted two of the officers involved with the prosecutor not interested in pursuing charges against the third officer.

This was truly a tragic result.  While a jury has found the police officers not guilty, it does not change the fact that they are guilty of murdering Kelly Thomas.

The quote I cited above is God’s immediate response to Cain after he had murdered his brother Abel and told God that he didn’t know where Abel was.  That verse should be remembered every time we hear about murder.

I don’t know why the jury found the cops not guilty of what is so clearly a murder.  If I had done that to Kelly Thomas, I would be in prison for life and possibly on death row.  These police officers were mad dogs who needed to be put down.

Unfortunately, the family members of Kelly Thomas will not see justice for his murder.  This is because for some reason, the American people actually believe that police officers are allowed to rape, murder, steal, and lie without consequences.

Ultimately, I am almost certain that the next time this happens, there will be no trial in any official court system.  Instead the perpetrators will be silently kidnapped and executed by the avengers of blood.  I don’t like it, but that is the natural response to those who behave like savages and get away with it because they are outside of the laws of civilization.  When justice is not served, the victims will take justice into their own hands.

“Just Doing They’re Jobs”

It gets better.  In response to the arrest, the local Sheriff stated the following:

Cumberland County Sheriff Butch Burgess says he hasn't seen the video and doesn't need to, because it won't tell the whole story. He says Aytes was just doing his job.

That’s right.  The Cumberland County Sheriff just pulled the Nuremburg defense out of his ass and people are taking it seriously.  In case you are wondering what the Nuremburg defense is, it comes from back when the surviving Nazis were on trial for crimes against humanity, their main defense was that they were just following orders.

These are dangerous times we live in.  The police arrest people for petty, stupid offense and ignore a huge majority of the real violent crimes that actually go on.  Wouldn’t want them to place themselves in danger after all.  They are police, not heroes.

The other laughable thing about that statement is that Aytes was following orders, but from the video I don’t see any orders being given to him.  In other words, he was acting without cause and the sheriff is backing him up despite the fact that he is clearly out of line in making the arrest.

One day, the police will just start indiscriminately killing people for no good reason in the name of officer safety.  They are brutal, murderous thugs with no moral compass and a desire to oppress those around them.  Do not trust them.

Non-Lethal Weapons Are Lethal Weapons

In a recent incident involving a stun gun, the police apparently killed an eighteen year old:

Miami Beach police say an 18-year-old died after being shocked with a stun gun as he resisted arrest for spraying graffiti.

Chief Ray Martinez told the Miami Herald that officers spotted Israel Hernandez-Llach painting graffiti on an abandoned fast-food restaurant early Tuesday. Martinez said the teen ran, but was eventually cornered. He said Hernandez-Llach then ran at the officers and one shot him with a Taser in the chest. The teen went into medical duress and died at a hospital.

This story makes me wonder: are police officers using more of these dangerous weapons because of their alleged non-lethal aspect? I don't know whether or not the use of the stun gun was justified in this case, however, if the cop had pulled a gun, would people express outrage?

The fact is, I doubt the cop would have pulled a gun on the kid for committing vandalism, unless the kid pulled a knife or gun. But given the supposed reputation of a stun gun being non-lethal, the cop had no trouble pulling it in the face of an unarmed teen running toward him.

I think that law enforcement needs to treat all weapons they carry, non-lethal or otherwise, as deadly weapons with specific uses. If these police officers had done so, then perhaps this kid would be alive and merely paying a fine for his property crime.

FBI Could Not Have Stopped Boston Bombing Because They SUCK

In what is increasingly coming as no surprise to anyone who is liberty-minded and knows how corrupt and degenerate Federal law enforcement is, the FBI has stated that they could not have prevented the Boston Marathon Bombing:

The F.B.I. has concluded that there was little its agents could have done to prevent the Boston Marathon bombings, according to law enforcement officials, rejecting criticism that it could have better monitored one of the suspects before the attack.

So let's get this straight: there was nothing that the FBI could do to stop the Boston bombing in spite of the clearly dozens of law enforcement officers and agents on the scene. They had been monitoring the Tsarnaev brothers previously and dropped their surveillance, probably because they like spying on white teenage girls more. And, assuming that the official story is true, they would still be unable to have stopped those boys.

I'm not buying it. This is typical of any organization or institution that is able to get money without having to worry about facing the lose of said money. Instead of taking professional responsibility for their failures as a law enforcement agency, the FBI has held their hands up in the air and said, "We couldn't have done anything".

Notice too that there are no calls for the agency to lose money as a result of their incompetence. Instead we will probably see this report be used as an excuse to give them more taxpayer dollars and expand their already overreaching, unconstitutional powers.

But it gets better (emphasis mine):

The most recent criticism of the F.B.I. from Congress came on Wednesday, when Representative William Keating, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a letter to James B. Comey, the incoming F.B.I. director. In the letter, Mr. Keating demanded that the bureau respond to several questions about its actions in the years before the attack.

“What I am looking to do is identify our security shortcomings and change them,” Mr. Keating said in the letter. “Without forthright information from the F.B.I., we are prevented from taking the critical steps needed to protect the American public.”

Mr. Keating said in a telephone interview that the F.B.I. had refused three requests by the House Homeland Security Committee to testify about the attack, citing an investigation. “Until they give us facts that we can review as an independent branch of government, I don’t think that’s particularly useful what they think,” he said of the F.B.I.’s conclusion that there was little it could do to stop the attacks.

They are literally refusing to be held accountable for their incompetence. They are acting like they are avoid Congressional oversight and thus, they are a domestic army answerable only to whatever asshole is head of their bureau, with some concessions to whatever asshole is Attorney General.

At this point, I think it is clear that this law enforcement agency should be shut down. They have clearly done next to nothing to keep Americans safe and have done much more harm than good over the past several decades. They routinely stage entrapment operations of terrorists, which is a dangerous operation given that one wrong move and the FBI-encouraged terrorist could actually kill people, much like Timothy McVeigh.

They have also spied on the American public without warrants, gone undercover in peaceful militias encouraging them to become violent, and generally caused more public mayhem and civil unrest.

And when they are caught screwing up, they publicly state that they are responsible for their own incompetence. All you FBI agents can go fuck yourselves.

12 Year Old Stands Up to Cop

I’ve seen videos of police officers intimidating young people, so it’s nice to see the opposite for a change.

If a police officer cannot be bothered to obey the little laws, how much more will he disobey the big ones when things are really bad?  And we all wonder why Boston become a police state in a matter of hours following the Boston bombing.

The police who behave like this have no interest in serving and protect.  That slogan is nothing more than propaganda to lull the dumb masses into thinking the police are guardian angels when in fact they are merely men with legal use of force and usually higher than average paychecks.

On a related note, I remember reading about the Soviet revolution in Russia and how one of the things that disgusted people was how the Orthodox priests were given special privileges.  Is this not the same thing, only instead of state-sanctioned religion, it’s just the state.  Some days I wonder if separating church and state was a good idea considering the sheer lack of morality among modern day bureaucrats, uniformed or otherwise.

The Filibuster Against Murder

Last Tuesday, Senator Rand Paul filibustered the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director.  This was not unusual as I recall Democratic Senators filibustered (or threatened to) judicial appointments under President George Bush (because democracy needs to be overridden by the court system populated by Leftist Statists).  What was different about this filibuster was that it was a real filibuster, in that Senator Rand Paul stood and talked for 13 hours.

He didn’t do this because he hated John Brennan.  He did this because John Brennan was the grandfather of the use of military drones and he wanted to highlight the current presidential regime’s use of them.  Recall that a couple of years ago, President Obama approved drone strikes that killed Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.   The father was accused of colluding with terrorists in order to attack the United States.  Really all they could possibly pin on him was the Fort Hood shootings as he was the cleric allegedly in contact with the deranged shooter.  His son was another problem entirely.

His son, you see, was taken out because the CIA feared that he might join up with terrorists following his father’s death.  In other words, not only did the Obama administration act as judge, jury, and executioner in killing Anwar al-Awlaki, who they charged with riding in the wrong SUV in Yemen, but they also charged his son with pre-crime and summarily executed him as well.  The United States Federal government murdered two American citizens on foreign soil because of either what they might have done or what they might have done.

What does this have to do with the filibuster?  Well, Senator Rand Paul asked Attorney General Eric Holder if he believed the President had the power to murder assassinate Americans on US soil with drone attacks if they are deemed to be terrorists (or, as Homeland Security Secretary Miss Hardcastle Janet Napolitano would label them: war veterans and libertarians).

The response he got was vague, wordy, and ambiguous at best.  You know, the kind of bullshit lawyer-speak we all get from time to time from people.  And so, without a real answer from the Whitehouse, Senator Paul took to the Senate floor and stood for the most basic right of every person: the right to life.

You see, the President wants full authority to murder people like you and me.  It doesn’t matter what ideology you possess or how much in the inner circle you are, if a man has the authority to kill other people without any check in place, he is effectively the dictator of the realm he oversees.  There is nothing more coercive than having your life threatened.

Of course, the Democrats (mostly), the Republicans (mostly), and just about everyone in this country don’t see it that way.  Like Federal tax dollars going to Planned Parenthood (which never, ever, ever go to abortions**wink, wink**), everyone assumes that such power will be used on the “right” people and never themselves.

Because it can’t happen here.

Christopher Dorner Murdered

Sadly, his murder will go unprosecuted as the people who did so have the whole backing of the legal system behind them:

What did they expect to happen when they set the cabin on fire?  Did they think he would surrender?

This whole incident should serve as a warning to all mundanes who are outside of the protection of law enforcement.  If the police are willing to burn one of their to death because of the horrible crimes he committed against you, then what hope do you have once they have cornered you?

Understand too that when I say Mr. Dorner was murdered, I mean it in the moral sense.  I am sure there is some legal bullshit that basically states these officers are off the hook.  But they are morally responsible for his life, regardless of what he had done to them.  Human life is sacred and should not be taken so easily or so brazenly.

Chris Dorner is the State’s Worst Fear

As I am writing this, Chris Dorner has been apparently cornered.  In case you missed it, Mr. Dorner has waged a one man, American-style war on the Los Angeles Police Department, largely because he blames them for his own failures in life.  I’ll grant that he was unjustly kicked of the police force for reporting police brutality and corruption of “fellow” officers, but he apparently lost his family and life after this, none of which can be attributed to the LAPD.

In any case Mr. Dorner has acted wrongly.  I know that I am a large critic of the police and the military and so it may come as a surprise to some of you but I don’t condone Mr. Dorner’s murders (if he did indeed commit them).  I think he deserves to account for the lives he has taken.

However, I doubt Mr. Dorner will come out of this alive.  Even if he tries to surrender, I have a suspicion that he will still be taken out by the police, largely because they are very eager to exact revenge on him for breaking the golden rule of the State: the law enforcement officer is sacred and righteous.

At no point has the mainstream media been critical of the tactics used by certain LAPD officers in pursuit of Mr. Dorner.  Firing upon vehicles that don’t even remotely resemble the perpetrator’s vehicle is an act of attempted murder.  And yet no one is calling for the officers involved in such shootings to be indicted for attempted murder.  In colonial times, such men would be in prison awaiting trial right now, police officer or not.

Meanwhile, the men who were the primary targets of Mr. Dorner’s War are pissing themselves, followed by hiding in a corner, and praying to their impotent gods (the State).  They have police protection round the clock.  And they dare to call Mr. Dorner a coward.  He is a murderer and a madman, but he is no coward.  Talk about projection.

This whole incident, though, highlights the worst fears of the State (the collection of selfish individuals who plan and/or implement the policies and procedures of government): they fear the civilians who rise up against them more than anything else.  This is why they implement policies of population control, where groups like Planned Parenthood are given tax dollars to wipe out black babies.  This is why they are hell bent on banning gun ownership among the non-governmental parasites as regular people with guns are probably better shots than their own enforcers.  And this is why they are trying to take over health care as they can then control when we live and when we die.

Mr. Dorner is a madman.  But he has demonstrated the pure cowardice, ineptness, and downright blood thirst of the police when they are faced with a real threat.

Police Entrapment is Immoral

When law enforcement engages in entrapment, the officers involved should be prosecuted.

But they are not, probably because law enforcement is a boring profession.  I mean, think about it.  Despite the fact that there are over 10,000 laws on the Federal books alone, not including State-level and County-level laws, there are plenty of crimes to catch people in.  Yet they persist in entrapping people in larger crimes for the purposes of not being bored and feeling good about their jobs because that is the only way they receive validation.

Now, I know that not all cops engage in such illegal behavior, but to be honest it is far too rampant to be ignored.

A good example of this is the tragic case of Salvatore Culosi:

The sad case of Salvatore Culosi provides a recent, vivid illustration of the folly of vice laws. Culosi (as irony would have it, he was named after a police officer) was a 37-year old optometrist in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Fairfax, Virginia. According to friends, Culosi was a wealthy, self-made man. He was easygoing and friendly, a guy who enjoyed his success.

He was also a small-time gambler. Culosi and his friends regularly met at bars in the area to watch sports, and frequently wagered on the outcomes of games. The wagers weren't insignificant -- $50, $100, sometimes more on a given afternoon. But the small circle of friends also had the means to back up their wagers. No one was betting the mortgage, here.

As one friend of Culosi's told me, "To Sal, betting a few bills on the Redskins was a stress reliever, done among friends...none of us single, successful professionals ever thought that betting $50 bucks or so on the Virginia-Virginia Tech football game was a crime worthy of investigation."

Apparently, it was. Fairfax police detective David J. Baucom met Culosi in a bar one evening last October, befriended him, and was soon making wagers himself. According to those close to Culosi I've spoken with, it wasn't long before Baucom began upping the ante, encouraging Culosi to wager larger sums than what the friends were used to. Baucom would later report in an affidavit that he'd wagered close to $30,000 with Culosi over a three-month period, and had lost nearly $6,000.

Baucom eventually encouraged Culosi to wager at least $2,000 in a single day, the lower threshold under which Culosi could be charged under state law with "conducting an illegal gambling operation." On January 24 of this year, Detective Baucom assembled the Fairfax County SWAT team, and marched off to Culosi's home to arrest him.

According to press accounts, police affidavits, and the resulting investigation by the Fairfax prosecutor's office, Baucom called Culosi that evening, and told him he'd be by to collect his winnings. With the SWAT team at the ready just behind him, Baucom waited outside Culosi's home in an SUV. As Culosi emerged from the doorway, clad only in a t-shirt and jeans, SWAT officer Deval Bullock's finger apparently slipped to the trigger of his Heckler & Koch MP5 semiautomatic weapon, already aimed at the unarmed Culosi.

The gun fired, releasing a bullet that entered Culosi's side, then ripped through his chest and struck his heart, killing him instantly.

Basically, this Detective egged on Culosi to make higher and higher bets in order to entrap him.  In other words, no real crime was being committed until Detective David J. Baucom met up with him.  While it is true that Mr. Culosi could have just walked away from the detective and wanted nothing to do with him, would Mr. Culosi have upped the ante had Det. Baucom not encouraged it?  Also, doesn’t the fact that Det. Baucom engaged in illegal gambling with Mr. Culosi make him an accessory from a moral standpoint.  I understand that some snarky lawyer will say that so long as it was official police business, he wasn’t immune, but what that say about a legal system that allows its officers to break the law and it is okay so long as it is official police duties?

This kind of thing is not isolated to local and state police forces either.   The FBI routinely and wantonly executes entrapment on many of its cases in order to get people locked up for much longer sentence than if they had simply been brought in.  This is not only illegal and immoral, it is also very dangerous.  While I am no conspiracy theorist, I do believe that the infamous Oklahoma City bombing was an undercover operation gone bad.  The FBI had agents inside McVeigh’s group (this is all documented) and they were probably looking to catch him in the act.  Unfortunately, they did not get to him in time, unlike the infamous Guy Fawkes.

Even if the scenario I described about McVeigh and the OK City bombing isn’t true and everything the government said is true (because that always happens), you would have to agree that any law enforcement agency who is seeking to entrap a terrorist who is assembling a dirty bomb would be a risky operation at best.

As for the sad case of Salvatore Culosi, know that none of the officers involved were ever suspended, fired, or held criminally liable for Culosi’s death.  His family, however, did win a wrongful death lawsuit against Fairfax County to the tune of 2 million dollars.  If there was any justice in this world left, it would have been taken out of Detective David Baucum’s retirement pension and garnished from his salary, not the taxpayers of Fairfax County.

Unconstitutional Speeding Ticket

Today I got a speeding ticket in the mail.  Apparently I was 13 mph over the speeding limit in a work zone, which under Montgomery County Maryland law, is a violation.  I never got pulled over but was flagged by a speed camera and sent the ticket by mail.

The whole thing is unconstitutional and is really just extortion.  Let me explain:

• On the front of the page, it indicates that if I pay the fine, then I am admitting liability.  However, if I do not pay the fine, I am still liable, just that now I can have my license suspended.  In other words, I am guilty either way, there is no innocent until proven guilty, and if I don’t pay them, I suffer more consequences.  If I were a private citizen doing this, I would be in jail for racketeering.
• If I were to contest it, the speed camera operator is not required to appear in court when I appear.  In other words, I am not allowed to face my accuser in court, which is a clear violation of the US Constitution, specifically Amendment 6.  Granted, I can request that he or she show up, but that’s not the point.  If I am to contest this, then he or she should be there without my request.  I am sorry, but this does not pass constitutional muster in my book.  I know there is probably some legal argument to be made that my accuser is available upon request, but that’s total bullshit.  It is the State that is accusing me and therefore, they have to provide the accuser when I show up, wait for me to request him or her.
• If I show up for my court date, I will not get a trial by jury nor will there be a one available upon request.  In Article 3 Section 2 of the Constitution it states that all trials are to be by jury unless they are cases of impeachment.  In other words, I have been accused of a crime by the State and they are failing to fulfill their duty-bound rules to provide a jury trial.  Yes it is only a speeding ticket, but there is no language in the Constitution that makes exceptions for the magnitude of the crime.
• I know that speed cameras can be accurate but they are just machines.  How can I contest this and have factual evidence that the speed cameras were working properly.  According to the ticket, it is a violation if I am 12 mph over the speed limit in a work zone.  How do I know that it wasn’t off by 2 or 3 mph when it measured me?  How does the operator not know that?  I know that in theory it is accurate, but these cameras are outside in the inclement weather and extreme temperatures everyday where machinery, even simple devices, can break down.

In short, this whole thing is nothing but a scam.  There were no workman on the road that day, I do not get a fair trial, and I am assumed to be guilty until proven innocent.  Welcome to the police state folks where your rights are about as meaningful as the jobs these worthless bureaucrats hold.

I am going to pay the fine though because I have no easy option otherwise.  The alternative is to go court, lose, and then have to pay for the court costs.  The court system has never been favorable of the individual because they are there largely to rubber stamp the actions of the State.  So it is either pay them or lose more money and time when I don’t.

I hope you people are happy with the government you’ve created with your worthless voting, especially the elites who live in Montgomery County Maryland (and there are many of them).  This is all because you people allowed assholes to take office rather than stepping up, paying attention, and telling these people off.

But there will be no more changes in the future because the vast majority of Americans would rather see a national collapse of our nation than actually fix something.

Another Reason Not To Trust Police

I can think of no other example of the arrogance of the police than this article:

An Ohio woman who gave the middle finger to an off-duty police chief trying to merge into her traffic lane was acquitted Monday on the basis of the First Amendment.

Chief Roger Moore, of Chillicothe, was driving his personal car last month when he tried to pull into a lane of stopped traffic on Bridge St., the Chillicothe Gazette reports. The unidentified woman reportedly honked and made the gesture, and Moore pulled her over and charged her with misdemeanor disorderly conduct.

“She did flip off Chief [Roger\] Moore, but it does not rise to the level of disorderly conduct,” her attorney Aaron McHenry argued in court on Monday.

Representing Moore, Assistant Law Director Michele Rout argued that the gesture the woman made stands for words that often lead to violence.

“I believe we’re all aware of numerous fights that have been started with those two little words,” Rout said.

Part of the law for disorderly conduct states that the conduct would have to be “likely to provoke a violent response.”

Municipal Court Judge John Street said the woman’s gesture is protected under her right to freedom of speech, guaranteed under the First Amendment.

“I’m not convinced in this particular case that the gesture alone constituted fighting words,” Street said.

Rout told the Gazette she is considering an appeal.

So let’s break this down:

1. An off-duty police chief of some small town tries to cut into a lane of traffic nearly hitting this woman’s car and damaging her property.
2. She responds by honking her horn and flipping the bird at this asshole (and yes, that was an asshole move on his part).
3. The police chief responds by arresting her.

I’m a firm believer in the non-aggression principle and I believe than when someone else aggresses against you, you should be able to respond with lethal force.  This police chief is lucky this woman probably doesn’t share my view (neither do the courts, so I’ll refrain from using lethal force in these kind of situations).  In any case, he was clearly not paying attention and nearly caused a car crash.

Regardless of how you feel about vulgar gestures, you have to understand that we have a police chief here who abused his authority to get revenge on someone.  He is so insecure in himself that he had to use his power to get back a woman whose car was physically threatened by his car.

This is why I do not trust the police in most situations.  While I know that there are many who would never do this, you can never know that you have a bad one until they abuse their authority against you or someone else.  How is it that this police chief can be so arrogant as to think that the mere fact he is chief of a small town, it allows him respect by the force of a gun?

I’m glad a judge disagreed with the police chief’s actions and acquitted her.  But she was lucky in that regard.  There are plenty of judges who will side with the police, largely because they have to in order to maintain a working relationship.

In Which I Agree With A Cop Ticketing People

This may come as a surprise, but I actually support the police officer in this case:

So the police officer was suspended for doing his job?  Nowhere in the report does the it indicate that the people he ticketed were ticketed unfairly.  By all indications, this officer was just a hard worker and was trying to make money for himself.  There is nothing wrong with that.

Also, note too that at no time do the local leaders or news reporter indicate that perhaps there are too many laws and that instead of suspending the officer, maybe they should have done away with the onerous laws on the books that allowed the officer to “abuse” the system he worked in.

The fact of the matter is, this country’s legislatures have gone stir-crazy when it comes to the passage of laws.  Every law they pass means one more crime that you can break.  The Federal government alone has more than 10,000 laws on the books.  I’ve said before that this presents a serious problem in our nation as these laws are often treated as some moral good, no matter how stupid or ridiculous the law actually.  If it was illegal to for a Chimpanzee to smoke a cigarette, for example (and yes that has happened in the past), then most people would just laugh at the absurdity of it but not get outraged over the sheer idiocy of their duly elected representatives.  And then they go and re-elect these buffoons.

I want more police officers such as these out on the streets doing everything they can to choke the general public with tickets, fines, citations, and other various shakedowns and crackdowns.  That way, maybe people will actually start to look at size and scope of the government’s presumed purview and start to roll things back.

Of course, the fact that this officer was suspended for his due diligence means that people want the laws, but don’t want to be targets of them.  In other words, they want the State to rule over us, but only want the iron fist in the face of other people who they don’t like.

Does Your Small Town Need A Federally-Funded Tank?

One more reason why I refuse to work for government contractors, despite the many lucrative opportunities I will have as a software developer:

Tell me, are they soldiers or police?

If you live in an area where the police have one of these or similar tanks, then you are probably under the thrall of criminals.  And by criminals, I mean the politicians and police chiefs who facilitate the purchases of this these death machines.

Now, I know many of you police-loving bootlickers out there see nothing wrong with this.  You think that the SWAT is used on only dangerous criminals and thus tanks are a legitimate use of law enforcement.

But you’re a moron if you think that way.  SWAT raids are all too common among drug raids, even raids for small amounts of marijuana, which no one has ever overdosed on and no one has ever become violent while under its influence (as far as I know).  Often times, these raids feature the ritual shooting of the family dog, no matter how small or harmless it is.  Sometimes, these raids result in human casualties as well.

In this video, the only thing that makes it clear that the men are portraying police is the fact that their uniforms say “police” and the flashing red and blue lights on the vehicle itself.

The government has declared war on the general population and the defense contractors are all too happy to provide the local law enforcement, no matter how small a town, with tanks and other military apparel at our expense (Federal funds usually go to local law enforcement for this kind of equipment).

Well, I’m sure the Statists will have their war, but not one they are expecting.

Chris Kyle, the Lying Sociopath

Poster's Note: this post is over a year old now. I will not be publishing comments for it, good or bad, because it is over a year old now. If you wish to see my response to Chris Kyle's murder, feel free to see it here.

Follow-up note: with my Disqus system in place, comments are easier to maintain than on blogger. Feel free to mock or whatever. Thanks to Nate for inspired update.

Ever heard of Chris Kyle?

If you have watch Faux News in the past couple of months, he made some minor headlines by claiming to have committed criminal assault against former Minnesota Governor Jessie Ventura.  He claimed to have knocked out the man in a bar after Mr. Kyle alleged to have heard him say that soldiers deserved to die (specifically it was SEALs or Green Berets, I can’t remember which).

All of these claims came out when Ventura himself was on the road to Mexico for the winter, as he has currently refused to fly commercial airliners due to the TSA’s love of groping his genitals.  This claim also coincided with Chris Kyle’s release of his ghost-written memoirs, American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History.

Jessie Ventura, as far as I know, was never given the proper chance to rebut this Chris Kyle’s claims, except on Alex Jones’ show, but I am certain that he is lying about the whole incident.  He probably did this in order to promote his book since Ventura has been in the limelight a few months before shouting about the injustice of the his civil case against the TSA.  He probably also did not like how a former SEAL reservist would be pointing out how the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are misguided and wrong.  In any case, I am convinced that he was lying about the whole incident.

But what was more alarming about Chris Kyle is not so much his willingness to lie on national television in order to promote a book, but the contents of the book itself.  William N. Grigg did a good overview of the book on his own blog, so I am just going to sum it up in one word: sociopath.

Chris Kyle boasts about killing Iraqis, who he refers to as savages and evil, all the while saying he did so because it was his duty.  I suppose he would be a wonderful candidate for Milgram’s obedience test and I’m sure he would gladly throw the lethal switch for the subject and ask the instructor if there were more.

Kyle claims to have killed over 160 people as a sniper in Iraq, including women in front of their children, all in the name of saving American lives.  Now, I am not going to question the heat of combat and certainly anybody making aggressive actions against your compatriots gets what is coming.  It is not the people he killed that I find horrific so much as the fact that he does not regret any of it.  Most soldiers (and normal people in general) always regret the killings they have done, even if it was justified in self-defense or in the course of duty.  Most normal people seek to avoid killing people unless it is absolutely necessary.

I am reminded of that scene in Gran Torino where Walt Kowalski explains to Thao that he once killed a man in Korea who was unarmed and scared and how it has haunted him all his life.  This is the mark of true man: one who is willing to kill if necessary but does not hold it up as a virtue.  Chris Kyle reminds of a child playing a video game and expressing regret that he didn’t get the high score.

Chris Kyle’s manner reminds of Odysseus who boasted to total strangers of how he raided villages and raped women.  He is a man without a conscious and believes wholeheartedly in the moral authority of the State.

But what is most chilling of all is not his exploits in wartime nor his lack of guilt or shame in the deeds he did in the name of his “duty”, but the fact that he is currently training our police.  A man with an attitude that the enemy is evil or a bunch of savages will almost certainly translate this philosophy unto the people he is instructing.

Kyle represents everything that is wrong with our military and police force.  He believes in the virtues of the State, never questions the moral or ethical issues of what he does, nor does he appear to care either.  As long as he gets to kill people in the name of the almighty State, he is content to not question the reasons.  He is, in essence, the perfect soldier for the oligarchs who presume to be our gods.

Whether or not you support the wars in the past decade, you have to agree that this man is not someone you would let babysit your kids or hang out with at a bar.  And you definitely would not trust to be with him in a dark alley somewhere.

Unfortunately, I fully expect more people like Chris Kyle to come out of the woodwork and start promoting the virtues of murdering for the almighty State.  I have nothing but pity for these men who are so screwed up in the head that they cannot make any moral decisions on their own.  This is how the police state grows: through the tireless work of sociopaths like Chris Kyle.

The Law

What is the purpose of a society that accepts a set of laws?  This is a very complex question that could probably be covered in a series of books rather than a single blog post, so I will try and do it justice.

From my perspective, at a very basic level, a law is designed to deal with a behavior that is generally considered evil or just very bad.  When a law is passed, it is designed to include some kind of punishment for dealing with infractions on said law.  Murder is probably universally accepted as the most egregious act of evil imaginable, although in the United States, child rape is considered a close second these days (which is why the UN only does it in the third world or New York City).

Until recently (and by recently I mean the last century), laws were usually used primarily to define what was generally accepted as evil in a society and the punishments that could result.   When the progressives gained significant political and state power (the progressive movement has taken over the political class and the bureaucracy in the United States and much of the Western World), they decided that they could use the State to bring about some vaguely defined Utopian vision.  In order to do so, they started to pass laws whose purpose was to not only punish lawbreakers, but curb the behavior of law-abiding citizens to suit their standards of living.

The Prohibition Era is a shining example of this line of thinking.  Instead of regarding alcohol as something to be tolerated, these positive-thinking individuals decided to ban it for everyone.  But what their ideology did not account for (and for most Statist Utopians, it never does) was that the demand for alcohol was be more intense than the people’s own desire to obey the law.  Combine that with the Great Depression and the ban on alcohol had its days numbered.  It has been said that Franklin D. Roosevelt, a progressive himself, initially won because he said he would lift the ban on alcohol if elected.  Indeed, the Great Depression had not yet reared the entirety of its ugly head yet in 1932.  On a side note, this probably means that illegal drugs like marijuana will probably be legalized in most states within the next decade or so and the Federal government will probably abandon its wasted War on Drugs.

As a Christian, I view the laws as Jesus taught the Pharisees: that the laws were created because our hearts were hard.  In other words, without evil in this world (or sin as it is commonly called among Christians), there would be no need for laws.  In essence, the law shows us what separates us from God and gives us a means to take corrective actions.  If you read much of the Law as handed down by Moses from God, you get a sense of a system that deals more with reparations rather than retribution.  While life is held as sacred, to the point where even accidental death is considered murder, most other evil acts required some form of reparation to the victim.

The Western justice system is not based on this principle and probably never really was.  I know that many people claim that are laws are based on Judeo-Christian ethics, but I think most of these are common among all cultures.  You would be hard pressed to find a society that accepts theft, murder, and kidnapping to be acceptable forms of behavior, at least among their own people.  Because of this, I reject such nothing that we are operating under a Judeo-Christian based system of laws and are instead operating under an old Feudal one.

Most punishments issued by the State, even in colonial times, serve to either enrich the State or deprive the criminal of his life.  When you are caught speeding in your car by a police officer and receive a citation, the sole purpose of said citation is to enrich the State.  While the Statists, both in and out of the State, will argue that it is for your own good and for the safety of others, do you really believe that these hypocrites do not violate these laws as much as the rest of us, if not more so?  The truth is that most of the laws which are enforced by the State serve only to benefit the State.

To illustrate this, take a look at the laws the Oakland, CA police chief said they will not enforce anymore.  You will notice that most of those laws do nothing for the State when they enforce them.  You will also notice that minor drug possession crimes are not on the list.  This is because drug laws actually serve to enrich the State as they are allowed to confiscate large amounts of cash without a warrant, as well as break into homes on pure suspicion.

The truth is, our system of laws and justice are not oriented toward liberty but toward the State.  They have nothing to do with dealing with evil acts, but justifying the existence of the State.  Today the United States has proportionally more people in prison than any other country in the world.  Many of them are locked up for minor offenses and other activities that many of us would not even recognize as crimes.

But still today the majority of Americans tend to view the State as the final say on all things evil, which is a sad state of affairs.  This is why so many people, including many misguided Christians, assume that lawbreakers are evil people when there are plenty of laws against actions that are not evil.  It is unfortunate that the vast majority of Americans still believe that the justice system we have is a righteous system of some kind and fail to recognize that the modern justice system only serves to enrich the State in some fashion.

Foreign Policy is Domestic Policy

Another thing that bothers me about conservatives in general: their failure to see the link between foreign policy and domestic policy.  This usually becomes apparent when you see what they say about Ron Paul.  In general, conservatives agree with Ron Paul 90% of the time (to paraphrase prominent conservative Sean Hannity).  But they would rather vote for someone with whom they agree with 75% of the time, like Mitt Romney, because apparently there is still fear rather than reason being the primary driving force in foreign policy.

The fact is, the more wars and overseas conflicts we engage in, the more enemies we will create and the more freedoms we will lose here at home.  The fact is, there were no Al-Qaeda militants in Iraq nor was Saddam Hussein willing to sell weapons to them.  But they were there after we toppled Saddam’s regime.  And of course Saddam’s loyalists forces were going to work with them because they needed the manpower.  It was the whole enemy of my enemy is my friend scenario.

Yes, I am aware that Iraqi agents met with Al-Qaeda in Europe at one point, but I have yet to see if any kind of mutual alliance came from it.  Since the United States and other NATO allies spend most of the 1990s monitoring Saddam, I am sure he was looking for people who could help get the monkey off his back.  Given that Al-Qaeda never joined up with them, it seems to me that Saddam probably considered them too dangerous to work with, until he lost his power.

Considering it has now been a decade of war on terrorism which has been waged on Afghanistan, Iraq, parts of Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and various other places, do you feel safer or freer from your government?  I feel like what used to be a minor annoyance is now a major pain in my rear when it comes to the progress of government encroachment.  Have you noticed how the police and various non-law enforcement agencies have gotten more militant?

Last year, our military budget was around $689 Billion.  The only other program that exceeds this is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.  Combined, the cost of those four programs is 2.1 Trillion, which is about what the Federal government gets in tax revenue, considering the economic depression.  This entirely excludes the domestic law enforcement and homeland security budgets, as well as the foreign aide and State Department expenses, such as elaborate embassies we build in various third-world nations.  All in all, it is quite clear that everything needs to be cut, that we cannot just simply exclude military and entitlement spending from our budgets.

The fact is, the United States’ domestic agenda is tied directly with our foreign agenda.  While you can separate these issues out for classification sake, they are intricately linked together.  We have lost our ability to board an airplane in the country without showing off our genitals to some stranger in a back room and having our luggage searched, where TSA agents have been known to steal from it in the past (Neal Boortz, a solid supporter of the War on Terror, has had stuff stolen in this way).  I personally refuse to use an airplane, unless I absolutely have to, which is sad because I was planning a cruise with my wife around Christmas.  Now, instead of boarding a plane and going south, we will have to drive or take a bus to Baltimore and board one there.

On top of that, even non-law enforcement agencies have started to crack down on things.  The Department of Education conducted a SWAT raid for a person who was delinquent on her student loan.  ICE has been shutting down websites for copyright infringements, which has nothing to do with immigration or customs enforcement.  And the IRS had ordered a whole lot of automatic shotguns for some reason.  Meanwhile, Janet “Shoulder-Pads” Napolitano has decided to classify war veterans and Ron Paul supporters as domestic terrorists.  The Federal court system has upheld many cases where police have entered people’s residences without a warrant.  Do not look to the court system to protect you from the government is the lesson here.  I am sure I am just scratching the surface here, of course.

How does this all link to our foreign policy?  It is simple: the culture of war is one that spills out everywhere.  In war, you have an enemy who you must target and take out quickly.  What we have domestically is a group of government technocrats who view civilians as either part of the system, sheep to be managed, or dangerous enemies to be squashed.  They do not consider themselves to be servants but masters and anyone who defies them will be punished.  The government culture is the us versus them culture and they practically brag about it all the time.

Because of the many years of warfare mentality, the government no longer views us as people to serve but people to control and direct.  I know conservatives will just blame this on Left-wing policies, but it was Left-wing policies of warfare which got us this way (see Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Truman, and LBJ’s war policies).  In fact, one of the best things the Left ever did was enter us into a state of constant war.  The Republicans have just recently been all too willing to carry on since 1955.

I want true freedom from government, but it will not happen so long as the United States government’s insane foreign policies are left in place.  If conservatives had any sense, they would follow suit.  Fortunately, given the Ames poll and various other things I have seen, it looks like many conservatives are waking up to this simple truth.

One Good Cop

After a series of hostile encounters, one good cop shows up

Police officers should take note: as long as what individuals are doing is peaceful and honest, you should not behave as many of these cops do.  These young men knew exactly what they were doing when they were approached by the local police in various areas.  God only knows what would have happened if they had turned off their cameras.

Lemonade Freedom Day is Coming

Do you have kids?  If you do and if you enjoy putting them to work for very little money in return (and what good parent does not), then you have have them participate in Lemonade Freedom Day on August 20th.

RENO 911!
Lemonade
www.comedycentral.com