Like it or not - I don't - there are only two platforms which determine who runs for 98% of our Congress and Presidential offices. Americans have found this illusion of voter power comforting. But for over these last few decades, the choices of candidates these two platforms finally produced have, in practice, offered little difference. In fact, many Americans now believe that both parties might as well be the same party regardless of rhetoric in terms of their results and our freedom of choice.
There are many details which lead up to this situation, but for simplicity, recently, this stands out as a difference between both parties to me:
In the first Republican Debate for the 2016 Presidential race, broadcasters tried to allow 17 candidates on the air. In the first Democratic Debate, broadcasters only aired 5 candidates. By the fourth Republican debate, the participants had narrowed to 12. The fourth Democratic debate, 3.
Much of the fighting and criticism that surrounded the Republican Party was because there were so many candidates. While it’s pretty obvious that the leadership of the Republican party did not want this level of division or number of choices, nor did it care much for some of the candidates (Carson, Paul, Trump) who were anti-establishment, it did present its membership (consumers) with more choices to consider. In this regard, the Republican Party looked like a supermarket, while the Democrat Party looked like a convenience store.
Seeing the Republican Party’s leadership unravel at the seams was a treat for almost everyone except those in the leadership. Because, at that tear, the people were finally being heard. Issues of true substance and importance were going out of bounds from all the scripting of the party leadership as well as the media’s coordinated corralling.
But what made this show even more spectacular was the unraveling of the Democrat Party’s iron-fist control of the candidate pool and premeditated outcomes. Thankfully, social media and their ability to control the freedom of discussion and information available on the internet turned out to be something both sides proved weak in. Finally many people are seeing now that our enemies are not in the category of Republican or Democrat, but rather the forces that control them both like a puppet show for us to watch.
What used to work before was constantly thwarted with contrary proofs, videos and testimonies from outsider discussions and information sources. While it’s painfully clear who the chosen one was for the Democrats, (http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-07-23/leaked-dnc-emails-confirm-democrats-rigged-primary-reveal-extensive-media-collusion), the same can not be said for the Republicans. But that doesn’t mean they hadn’t picked theirs and intended to run it out like the Democrats, it's just that things went further sideways for them and their plans because of the breadth of players in the field and the strength and tenacity of some of their most parting candidates.
I don’t favor either party because they're both props now. Call me "results oriented". If the vote came down to Republican Party’s “chosen one”, or the Democrat Party’s “chosen one”, then voting is just a waste of time for me. If there’s anything the past shows us, it’s that both parties are indisputably corrupt, self-interested organizations and are now more destructive than constructive to our lives, our nation and our liberties. But the unanticipated, more free-market-like action, that has nearly destroyed the Republican Party over the last decade has produced something that neither party has given us since I can remember. Our first presidential nominee who is not one of their “chosen ones” or a politician! Had the Democrat’s leadership been thwarted in their plans, that would have produced someone who was not a “chosen one’’ but whom was still a politician, making the choice between the two somewhat harder.
If the entities that continue to keep the best candidates out, corrupt and control our current political system, and sway public opinion, can not be diminished in the least this time, then I suppose it doesn’t matter who becomes president. Because, nothing will get better and will likely just get worse. If Trump doesn’t succumb to the same forces that ended so many good intentions of a few people before him (Ron Paul, Ross Perot), then maybe there will be something different to look forward to. But that’s where my hope is, not my bet. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still voting and by the time I vote, if Trump and Hillary look the same to me, I’ll just go with the libertarian again who is sure to lose, again.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
Sunday, March 30, 2014
It's time for Alcohol Registration(!)
It's time for Alcohol Registration(!) Nobody argues that more people die every year from drunk drivers than any other non-biological cause and it's time we finally do something about it. The one tool brought out all the time to solve other instances of wrongful death is never mentioned - "Registration". So how about, "if you want to buy alcohol, you must register." I know, people will say, "well how does that help? If someone registers, get's drunk, get's behind the wheel of a car (which is already illegal), drives and then kills a family and himself, what good did that do? So he was registered, so what!"
Well, the next logical addition to this law would be that registrations must be approved (for a small fee) by a trusted government entity (like the ATF) responsible for applying the proper regulations for the kinds of people who's registrations will be approved or not. For example, if you're a felon, then you're registration would not be approved - and therefore you could not buy alcohol, thus reducing the chances of you getting any and then getting behind the wheel of a car(!) And some will say, "well, that's fine but who will determine what these regulations will be?" Of course, a trusted government appointed committee can determine what the appropriate regulations should be. And what's the worse that could happen besides what all the government conspiracy kooks might think?
There's already plenty of examples of how this works in other areas. Take gun registration for example. Clearly you can see how "the people" would win(!)
For those of you who think I've lost my mind, I haven't. I'm only trying to make a point about registration and guns and registration in general, not alcohol. My punctuation errors are intentional. In many computer programming languages the "!" means to invert, it's a "Not" logical operator. I thought an honest attempt to apply this "Registration" thinking to another problem similar in nature to gun violence might demonstrate how foolish the idea of gun registration truly is, and how the only party that really benefits from the gun registration "solution" is the ruling party. Hopefully, you can already see some of the other fallacies in this argument. For example, how little of an effect it would actually have on preventing people from having alcohol who really want it.
Tuesday, March 18, 2014
How to tell if a Law is Good or Not?
It should be pretty obvious that in today's complex ecosystem of politics, almost nobody truly understands what the ultimate impact of every new law will be. Here's why:
- Today, it's common for legislators to not even read the law.
- It's common for a law to be motivated or opposed by a commercial interests or other corrupt intentions.
- It's common for legislators who actually do read the law to not understand it.
- It's common for multiple yet unrelated laws to be bundled together to help obfuscate the obviously bad or corrupted ones.
- It's common for those who transcribe the law into the practical US and State Codes and regulations to change it in someway as a matter of necessity, incompetence or ignorance.
- It's common for those who enforce the law to misinterpret or choose to enforce only portions of the law or twist the intent.
- It's common for those who adjudicate the law to twist the outcome or success of its intent.
- It's not possible to predict how future legislators, regulators, enforcement agents and judges will interpret and process the law - plenty of history on this starting with the second amendment, first and fourth amendments - then and now.
Given this gauntlet of improbabilities, that a law will even be in practice as it was originally intended, what is the possibility a law will actually even do most of what it is intended to do these days without other unforeseen consequences ala "if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor"?
Then, given all the incomplete, incompetent, misguided, obfuscated and corrupted information available these days, I believe that very few, if any people are actually qualified to determine that a law will be good. So with the impossible task of understanding the necessary complexities and interactions of our huge governmental ecosystem, in order to make finite judgments on individual laws, I’ve concluded that a philosophy about new laws is easier to manage and just about as effective, if not more, than trying to fathom the implications of every new law.
And I base that philosophy on personal liberty which many people feel is tied to the size of government. Indeed - as government grows bigger, individuals get smaller. But, it’s probably easier to show that the “size of
government” has decreased over this current administration rather than increased, so I wouldn’t even
attempt it.
Because, so much redistribution of government resources has taken place in the last 12 years, it really only boils down to how much liberty we are losing year over year. For example, decreasing the size of military but increasing domestic agency enforcement officers could result in a net effect of reducing the size of government but increasing the loss of personal liberty. Or reducing department size but increasing computational abilities, tools and intelligence could result again in more loss of liberty even though the number of personnel shrank. Basically, if we could show the increase in the power of government year over year, in its ability to invade and control the lives of its citizens, I think everyone would be seriously frightened. And new laws are often the justification for growing the size and/or powers of enforcement agencies.
And so, here's some of the statistics you'll never see:
A year by year comparison of:
·
The number of government employed or sponsored people
who are in enforcement positions.
·
A “liberty overhead coefficient” (for example, #
of regulations X severity of punishment)
·
Enforcement Systems Effectiveness (weapons,
control and intelligence gathering)
All I know is that I could do a lot more with a lot less
worry about being in “compliance” with something or someone, or the paper work to do it, the farther I
look back in time during my life. And there’s only one
organization that everyone always looks to for help solving the world's problems which displaces that level of personal freedom –
government.
So, in my opinion, the reach of the part of government which
invades my privacy and threatens my freedom has increased almost every year since
I was born. And this feels like and exponential progression,
not linear. So, with the impossible task
of understanding the necessary complexities and interactions as well as whose "facts" to believe, my philosophy has come down to this:
Anything that produces a
net growth in the government’s means of control or enforcement is further
detrimental to personal liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Since new laws generally make things more difficult and contribute to the growth or reach of some form of enforcement mechanism. I feel it’s statistically safer to be against any such law if you don’t have the time, resources or knowledge to fully investigate it. And, given the media’s incompetence, the purposeful obfuscation of information by both government and industrial entities with their own agendas, fear and omissions, I reassert that, it’s not possible for anyone to make these decisions for the overall good in any consistent manner regardless of where they are in or out of government!
And this is why of all the active politicians I’ve tried to follow,
Rand Paul is currently on top of my list. Rand Paul often has the fewest legislative proposals which increase the
invasive powers or corruptible power of the government. Of the legislation Rand Paul has sponsored or introduced, I would agree with at least 70% of it. No one else is above 30% in my
book. And at 70%, that's the best I expect to find. So what is the agreement percentage you honestly give your favorite politician in terms of HIS ACTUAL LEGISLATIVE ACTIONS (not what dribbles out of his mouth) which affect your personal liberty?
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Sunday, November 3, 2013
Saturday, July 13, 2013
RE: Zimmerman trial and Racism
I'm not going to comment on the outcome of the Zimmerman trial because I wasn't there in the courtroom. And to form my opinions based on nothing other than the typical sensationalism pumped media information that's overly available would be like designing a building on bad math. I knew the media was going to try to make this case into a big racism circus when the first pictures of both Zimmerman and Martin appeared (courtesy of our media). Zimmerman was shown in his most recent form, and Martin was presented in his form as a 12 year old boy when he was actually 17 years old at the time of the incident. And this was displayed this way in most stories for days with little or no footnotes about that deception.
Statistically, Native Americans likely have the highest incident per group of alcoholism and drunk driving. Does anyone with a brain honestly believe that it's because they are genetically an "Indian" - and drunkenness is symptom or predisposition of their actual race? No, it's because we have laws and/or policies which have helped shaped their culture in some of those negative ways causing that behavior to be more predominant in that group.
Our laws and policies specifically address their race and provide them special considerations. Similarly, we have laws and policies about other minorities which also create a divisional impact. Most black police officers will admit that if 4 people are suspect of a drug crime and one is black, the black one will get the most scrutiny, even by a black officer. Because, statistically, blacks are caught up in these situations more often. It's not because they're black that they're statistically the most probable suspects. It's because we have policies, laws and considerations for their race which have created and/or maintained a negative social condition for them, leading them to be involved in more crimes. With multiple generations of children now who are truly color blind, the real racism that remains is what was written into our laws and policies that remains.
Through the best attempts to make the information about actual differences in performance based on race unavailable because of the uproar such creates ("The Bell Curve") real science about what advantages and disadvantages each race typically has is absent. But we all still base judgements off empirical data nonetheless. If you're choosing the students to be on your basketball team, and they're all about the same height and you know nothing else about them, chances are you're going to choose the black students first. If you're picking team mates for your math team and the choice of students all get about the same grades, you'll probably pick mostly Asians.
When given a "choice" there has to be some criteria we use to decide or it's not a choice, it's just a random drawing. Obesity maybe more inherent in one race than another, but if I'm choosing teammates for a Sumo tag team, I'm going to pick the fattest kids. If most of the fat ones in my group happen to be white, someone could say that I'm being racist but that wasn't the case at all. If it turns out indeed that whites are statistically the most obese for whatever reason, then the fact that the results of my choosing would mirror the reality statistics simply on a probability basis.
In my life, on the average, I've found the biggest underachievers in life to be those who were spoiled the most and never had to really try to do anything. Likewise, the biggest achievers (relative to their starting point) have often had to do it alone, without help from anyone. In this instance, I consider outside additional support an actual handicap.
Special considerations based on race, whether those considerations benefit or inhibit those individuals creates a divide in either case. We can't treat people the same, if our government still doesn't treat them the same. And if they're not treated the same, we can't expect their groupings to behave the same. If that difference in behavior is noted, it will then be associated with the race and not the cause. Racism is still very much alive in our laws and policies. If we truly want to end it once and for all we need to start by ending it there.
Statistically, Native Americans likely have the highest incident per group of alcoholism and drunk driving. Does anyone with a brain honestly believe that it's because they are genetically an "Indian" - and drunkenness is symptom or predisposition of their actual race? No, it's because we have laws and/or policies which have helped shaped their culture in some of those negative ways causing that behavior to be more predominant in that group.
Our laws and policies specifically address their race and provide them special considerations. Similarly, we have laws and policies about other minorities which also create a divisional impact. Most black police officers will admit that if 4 people are suspect of a drug crime and one is black, the black one will get the most scrutiny, even by a black officer. Because, statistically, blacks are caught up in these situations more often. It's not because they're black that they're statistically the most probable suspects. It's because we have policies, laws and considerations for their race which have created and/or maintained a negative social condition for them, leading them to be involved in more crimes. With multiple generations of children now who are truly color blind, the real racism that remains is what was written into our laws and policies that remains.
Through the best attempts to make the information about actual differences in performance based on race unavailable because of the uproar such creates ("The Bell Curve") real science about what advantages and disadvantages each race typically has is absent. But we all still base judgements off empirical data nonetheless. If you're choosing the students to be on your basketball team, and they're all about the same height and you know nothing else about them, chances are you're going to choose the black students first. If you're picking team mates for your math team and the choice of students all get about the same grades, you'll probably pick mostly Asians.
When given a "choice" there has to be some criteria we use to decide or it's not a choice, it's just a random drawing. Obesity maybe more inherent in one race than another, but if I'm choosing teammates for a Sumo tag team, I'm going to pick the fattest kids. If most of the fat ones in my group happen to be white, someone could say that I'm being racist but that wasn't the case at all. If it turns out indeed that whites are statistically the most obese for whatever reason, then the fact that the results of my choosing would mirror the reality statistics simply on a probability basis.
In my life, on the average, I've found the biggest underachievers in life to be those who were spoiled the most and never had to really try to do anything. Likewise, the biggest achievers (relative to their starting point) have often had to do it alone, without help from anyone. In this instance, I consider outside additional support an actual handicap.
Special considerations based on race, whether those considerations benefit or inhibit those individuals creates a divide in either case. We can't treat people the same, if our government still doesn't treat them the same. And if they're not treated the same, we can't expect their groupings to behave the same. If that difference in behavior is noted, it will then be associated with the race and not the cause. Racism is still very much alive in our laws and policies. If we truly want to end it once and for all we need to start by ending it there.
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
The illegal drug racket is alive and well, and it thanks you.
As a father
of a beautiful teenage girl who I thought I had lost to drugs, I can tell you
now that she is alive and well. But my heart breaks as I have yet to see
her now because she is afraid to come back home. At 15 years old, she is now
afraid to face the police who will now, like thoughtless robots, enforce the
tragic train of victimless crimes she will now be charged with. And while
she is trying to better herself, she thinks she must stay on the run for fear
of being caught, and then placed side by side with the very tainted people she
is now trying to stay away from. The crime of drugs is the crime.
You can say that drugs make the problem, but they are as inanimate as guns - it
takes people with motives to make the problems with them.
So I wonder, who was
motivated first? The child who used the drugs, or the person who made
them available to that child because there was money in it? I'm going to
go with the money – a bet that’s usually never wrong. And why was there
money in it? Because it's a protected racket. A baggie of seeds
less dangerous than a bottle Jack Daniels sells for 10 times as much! And
not because they’re hard to grow.
Gangs need
and like money. They're violent, vicious and blunt headed antagonists.
Their best bet for making money? The highest profit? Nope, not
theft. Drugs. Again, not because drugs hard to make. It's
because we make them hard to buy. The drug cartels in Mexico are big enough to
militarily take on their own government. They don't make that kind of
money needed for that power by opening coffee shops and paying taxes.
They don't even make it off producing child pornography, human trafficking,
stolen credit cards, or any other modern crimes. Drugs. Many people
are unaware that covert government operations not approved by congress are
often funded from drug money that was made by government operatives in foreign
countries - that is how profitable we have made the drug trade!
I have friends in law enforcement. Most of them are too close to be able to see the bigger picture. It's easier for them to believe and obey their chain of bosses. I enjoy their company but I do wish they would long for being called Peace Officers once again instead of the heady, chest puffing title of "law enforcement." It just says shows how mechanized and heartless their function has become. My daughter has recovered from the drugs, but she has not recovered from the law. I only hope that if she encounters "the law" again, she is strong enough and smart enough to stay away from of it, like a drug.
I have no doubt that the filter of the drug conspiracy, which collects so many of the less fortunate people through these deceitful drug prohibition laws, eventually overflowing with a resulting sludge of humanity, is seen as the problem itself by those who have to deal with it every day. But for many people, falling down is also a "twelve step" process and only the last few steps are taken to blame by most in law enforcement. Thus, the real culprit, the racket we’ve made the illegal drug industry through prohibitive laws, escapes time after time. And most every time, the real public servants, who are often persecuted, as they attempt to dispatch this culprit at the ballot box, those people are looked at as kooks - like Ron Paul. Yet, in the hypocrisy of legal alcohol, we spend billions of dollars every year, destroy millions of lives and families and allow to thrive, violent criminals who are paid very well, by the illegal drug industry.
I have friends in law enforcement. Most of them are too close to be able to see the bigger picture. It's easier for them to believe and obey their chain of bosses. I enjoy their company but I do wish they would long for being called Peace Officers once again instead of the heady, chest puffing title of "law enforcement." It just says shows how mechanized and heartless their function has become. My daughter has recovered from the drugs, but she has not recovered from the law. I only hope that if she encounters "the law" again, she is strong enough and smart enough to stay away from of it, like a drug.
I have no doubt that the filter of the drug conspiracy, which collects so many of the less fortunate people through these deceitful drug prohibition laws, eventually overflowing with a resulting sludge of humanity, is seen as the problem itself by those who have to deal with it every day. But for many people, falling down is also a "twelve step" process and only the last few steps are taken to blame by most in law enforcement. Thus, the real culprit, the racket we’ve made the illegal drug industry through prohibitive laws, escapes time after time. And most every time, the real public servants, who are often persecuted, as they attempt to dispatch this culprit at the ballot box, those people are looked at as kooks - like Ron Paul. Yet, in the hypocrisy of legal alcohol, we spend billions of dollars every year, destroy millions of lives and families and allow to thrive, violent criminals who are paid very well, by the illegal drug industry.
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