South Puget Sound Libertarian

 
These two sickening, wannabe despots, Lieberman and McCain, are at it again:

Take a look at their latest monstrosity, The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010. As XPOSTFACTOID describes it:

The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010, a legislative monstrosity produced by John McCain and Joe Lieberman, goes further than any Bush-era legislation in abrogating the core principle of Anglo-American justice: that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. While the bill is deplorable in every detail — it denies terrorist suspects their Miranda rights and codifies indefinite detention without trial — one particular provision effectively ends the presumption of innocence for all of us. That provision codifies the President’s right to define any criteria he chooses to deliver any individual into the legal Twilight Zone defined by the bill.

The bill authorizes the President to establish an “interagency team” to make a “preliminary determination of the status” of an individual “suspected of engaging in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners through an act of terrorism, or by other means in violation of the laws of war, or of purposely and materially supporting such hostilities.” That team will determine whether the suspect shall be accorded a preliminary designation as a “high value detainee” (a.k.a. “unprivileged enemy belligerent” — the bill makes no coherent distinction between these terms). A final status determination is to be made by the Attorney General and Secretary of Defense; the President can only weigh in if these two disagree. Incredibly, the entire procedure from capture to final status determination is to be completed within 48 hours.

The provision that removes all discretionary limits to this secret determination of status is in the Criteria for Designation of Individuals as High-Value Detainees. That section creates an initial impression that such “determinations” are subject to the rule of law by laying out specific criteria, beginning with “(A) The potential threat the individual poses for an attack on civilians…” (B) the potential threat the individual poses to United States military personnel…” etc. But the final criterion (E) zooms to infinity: it is simply “Such other matters as the President considers appropriate. ”

Thus any individual, whether a foreign national or a U.S. citizen, can be designated an “unprivileged enemy belligerent,” forever denied access to civilian courts and subjected to indefinite detention “without criminal charge and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners” — that is, forever — on the basis of such other matters as the President considers appropriate.

We’re almost there; i.e., at a presidential dictatorship, a military police state. Is this simply political grandstanding by those 2 schmucks? Would congress actually pass such a bill? Which president would not sign it? What happens if there is a terrorist attack here tomorrow?

Remember that the proponents of a police state here say that the constitution is not a suicide pact. Translation: throw out the constitution and individual rights whenever there is any kind of threat, real or imaginary. In fact, just throw out the constitution, period, and govern by decree. Suppress all dissent and wage war on everyone.

What fun, no?

 
One of the great problems with the Washington State Constitution is in Article IX which deals with education. Recall that around the time of the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries, progressivism/socialism was all the rage. People in government believed that the State should hire experts to deal with all the problems of society. These experts would know more about specific areas than the general public and could propose measures that would lead to a utopian society based on their narrow but specific knowledge that would override the wishes of the ignorant people.

We are left with the residue of those fantasies in Article IX where the WA Constitution says:

SECTION 1 PREAMBLE. It is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children residing within its borders, without distinction or preference on account of race, color, caste, or sex.

SECTION 2 PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM. The legislature shall provide for a general and uniform system of public schools. The public school system shall include common schools, and such high schools, normal schools, and technical schools as may hereafter be established. But the entire revenue derived from the common school fund and the state tax for common schools shall be exclusively applied to the support of the common schools.

In essence, the Constitution provides for an education entitlement program for everyone in the State. Without going into the intellectual disaster that such a program could and does create (politicians, unions and bureaucrats dictating a uniform educational policy), the financial burdens of such a system, given the current depression, are now causing us great economic troubles. Tuition is being raised geometrically, bureaucrats are making tons of money and the system is rapidly becoming financially inaccessible to many students.

The reaction to this situation, here and in other states, is classic. The selfish young people, who believe they are entitled to an education provided by other people’s money, are much more concerned that they receive their free, compulsory gift, than they are about the people who are forced to provide that gift for them. Not surprising, especially given the educational system’s emphasis on the importance of feeling good about yourself. Now, oh my, what are we gonna do? Who’s gonna provide me with my "right" to an education? I don’t really care, as long as it’s someone else.

Education is too expensive, partly because of cheap loans and subsidies. The public schools, especially the colleges and universities, have no incentive to cut costs. The feds will solve all their problems by handing out more money. Also, much of college education is useless and pointless. Sure, employers look for a degree in the hope that it might mean something, but, for the most part, people would be better off learning a job or a trade rather than studying fraternity parties and beer drinking for 4 years. Jefferson’s idea was that a person would decide what he wanted to learn, go to a place where he could learn it and then leave. No degrees, no other meaningless nonsense.

The progressive educational ideas have failed, though you wouldn’t know that if you read the newspapers or watch TV. We need to get the State out of the education business and free up the many billions of dollars that parents and students could use to decide upon their own education. We need to end the entitlement mentality across the board, not just in education and, along with it, the inane, anti-competitive practice of State licensure for nearly all occupations.

A return to economic freedom is in order. But, I know, fat chance. The Fed will simply print more money and the government will hand out more welfare until the system finally collapses. The students need to quit whining and learn how to be real productive members of society and not perpetual drags on everyone else’s freedom.

 
It’s really standard government political maneuvering with taxpayers’ money. The Obama administration has decided upon "16 finalists for $4.35 billion in Race to the Top money for education reform". It’s a race to see who scores with big handouts by the feds and who loses, having to help foot the bill. The example of the poor, head-down, saddened bureaucrats in Utah is illustrative:

Utah spent hundreds of hours working on its 217-page application for the money. The governor, state superintendent and state school board chair all signed off on it. All 41 of the state’s school districts agreed to join the state’s quest for the money.

“It’s disappointing that we worked so hard and didn’t make the cut,” said Steven Peterson with the Utah School Boards and Utah School Superintendents associations. “There was a lot of energy and work that went into it at the State Office of Education and the districts.”

Poor folks. They spent hundreds of hours figuring out how to steal your money and didn’t get it.

What’s a poor ed bureaucrat to do? Try again. The feds can always print up more money to hand out to favored politicians, constituencies, state and local governments, next time around. Be of good cheer. The taxpayer is always there to fleece at your heart’s content. He’ll never wise up until the country goes bankrupt. It’s a Race to the Bottom.

 
From the Seattle Times:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says soldiers can’t solve the world’s problems alone.

Adm. Mike Mullen spoke Thursday to a crowd of military officers at the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

He says the military’s guiding principles of sharing the burden with government agencies, using a measured level of force and working with international partners are critical to resolving conflicts.

How humble! What a shocking comedown this statement must have been for all US warmongers. You mean to tell me that by stationing troops in hundreds of bases around the world, that by invading at least 3 countries in order to achieve regime change (or is it, democracy?), that the all-powerful US military with its bombers, missiles, drones, submarines, aircraft carriers, fighter planes, helicopters, nuclear weapons and God knows what else, cannot fix the world? You must be kidding. Why else would we be spending hundreds of billions of dollars every year on, uh, "defense"? Especially when most of those weapons systems have nothing to do with the War on Terra.

Here’s the world as seen by military commanders:

 

 

Looked at this way, it’s hard to believe that they do not easily fall into the mindset of "we run the world". At least they try to.

 
In a classic government move, Joe Blabbermouth’s "task force" on 401k investing wants to control the advice given to investors by financial advisers. In short, Big Mouth, et al., will have the Labor Department issue rules on what advisers can or cannot say to investors. Get this:

This proposal would allow financial institutions to give workers investment advice only if they follow one of two customer-protection practices:

1) The advisers do not get extra compensation for steering workers into choices that are more profitable for financial firms, with high fees and expenses.

2) The advice is based on a computer model certified as objective by an independent expert.

Gotta love those "certified" computer models, right? The report goes on to say:

The proposals can’t guarantee that workers will get good financial advice, or that they will get advice at all.

So, it doesn’t matter whether the advice is good. All that matters is that there will more regulation and therefore more bureaucracy that will accomplish nothing.

But then, that’s what Joe B is good for — nothing.

 
From CNN Politics:

A majority of Americans think the federal government poses a threat to rights of Americans, according to a new national poll.

Fifty-six percent of people questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday say they think the federal government’s become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Forty-four percent of those polled disagree.

[snip]

According to CNN poll numbers released Sunday, Americans overwhelmingly think that the U.S. government is broken – though the public overwhelmingly holds out hope that what’s broken can be fixed.

I guess CNN never heard about the US Constitution. It was put into place to create an agency of the States that would handle interstate and international matters. But it also created a government with strictly limited powers and many safeguards against the known threat of government to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens. Suspicion and fear of government power used to be as American as apple pie. But that was before the progressives and socialists came to power. I would guess that CNN is surprised at the results of its poll because so many Americans now rely on the feds for money; i.e., other people’s money. And since the feds are so generous with OPM, it comes as a shock that people can see through the pretense of help to the reality of theft and, thence, to the further reality of a government threat to all freedom. I don’t think this result would have surprised anyone here in 1776.

 
Wish you had voted for McCain? Or maybe you did vote for McCain? Well, McCain’s the same as Obama, only uglier. Here’s what he wants to regulate next:

Most are familiar with those commercials on television promoting prescription drugs that supposedly offer relief from a variety of ailments, if one would only pressure one’s doctor to obtain them. They have become a source of great entertainment and amusement to some, the kicker coming at the end of each commercial when the FDA-approved medication’s obligatory litany of warnings and dangerous side effects is recited: “Tell your doctor if….” and “Side effects may include…..” Some of the warnings are mild like diarrhea and constipation, some list serious effects like cancer or tuberculosis, and others admit that sometimes even death can result.

The point here is that these are all FDA-approved drugs being advertised and used extensively. Drugs that can cause serious diseases like lymphoma. Drugs that can kill. The FDA’s dismal safety record is well documented; even PBS ran a Frontline special that investigated and exposed the FDA’s unsafe drug record, the influence of Big Pharma inside the FDA, and lack of long-term testing and medical review of many, many dangerous drugs. The FDA seldom removes a drug from the market even after it proves to be harmful or deadly, however they do post quarterly reports with details of the latest potentially dangerous side effects of drugs currently under investigation.

Nonetheless, Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) wants this same FDA, with its dismal safety record, to regulate dietary supplements. The Dietary Supplement Safety Act (DSSA), S. 3002 (text of this bill posted on Senator McCain’s website), that McCain has introduced with one cosponsor, would repeal key provisions of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA) to “more effectively regulate dietary supplements that may pose safety risks unknown to consumers.”

Yeah, like all the neo-cons, McCain talks about small government and freedom. But when it gets right down to it, he’s a statist social and economic regulator like all the dems and repubs (except Ron Paul). They know what’s best for you and therefore cannot let you or you and your doctor decide how best to take care of you. No, the government should do it.

This is a "2-party system". BWAHAHA! What a joke. It’s a 1-party system, the party of big government, corporatism, interventionism, war and welfare. If McCain had won, everything would be the same as it is under Obama (and I do mean "under"). We are totally screwed.

 
Democracy, obliterating the old aristocracy, has left only a vacuum in its place; in a century and a half it has failed either to lift up the mob to intellectual autonomy and dignity or to purge the plutocracy of its inherent stupidity and swinishness.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

 
I  have completed a clean re-install of my operating system after irretrievably losing a lot of data. I’m now at the stage of re-installing programs and, of course, I don’t have all the disks, passwords, etc., that I need. It hasn’t helped to be down with a URI again and to have had other issues simultaneously with the crash.

Waaaah!

Meanwhile, nothing is too good for our political masters. They will construct a new embassy in London at the cost of a mere billion dollars (And that’s just the guess right now. It’s sure to double or triple in the future.) More than our fabulous embassy in Iraq. But then, what’s an aspiring state department apparatchik to do when he wants a latte, a game of racquetball, a swim, a drink or whatever? We must provide him with all the amenities, mustn’t we? Especially when we’re out of a job.

I suppose the State Department has to keep up with that other branch of government, Goldman Sachs.

 
The argument about whether the government has the power to torture people, that is. According to the "Justice Department", Jay Bybee and John Yoo, the Department lawyers who wrote the memos that said torture wasn’t really torture unless the victim nearly dies, were only guilty of "poor judgment". And the argument over whether their legal memos allowed torture or not, was merely a policy dispute.

Never mind that torture is prohibited under US law and under the Geneva Convention. Never mind that hundreds of innocents were tortured and many died at Guantanamo. Never mind that Bybee, Yoo and, yes, Cheney and Bush, are criminals. Who cares? Certainly not the Obama administration which wants to protect its ability to do exactly what Bush/Cheney did.

And remember that they can do it to you without charges and without a trial; just because they want to. We live in an executive dictatorship where the president or his minions can imprison, torture and assassinate you with no control on their behavior. Today, this is called a constitutional republic. Instead, it is a presidental dictatorship incorporating aspects of democracy, fascism and socialism. But that’s the way many/most of the people want it. God save us from these bastards; neither the people nor the courts nor the congress will.

 
Sorry, but I will be posting at random for a while while I restore my computer and software after a crash. What a bloody, freakin’ mess!!