IJ on the Individual Mandate

Institute of Justice constitutional law professor Elizabeth Price Foley, explains how Obamacare threatens centuries of Anglo-American contract law, and essentially gives the government tyrannical power over what agreements we may, may not, or must enter into.

The Supreme Court must strike down Obamacare, or it's the end of the line for individual liberty in this country. Read more...

The 0.25% Disrupts Council Meeting

I attended the Whatcom County Council meeting last night, at which the Occupy Bellingham Borg had a little tantrum. Immediately following a couple of public hearings, and the public forum section of the meeting, the lead conformist stood up and yelled, "Mic Check!", and then proceeded to read his little manifesto, as the other conformists dutifully bleated out each line in response. Most of the council, to their credit, simply left the chambers after the gavel failed to restore order. After their little charade, the 0.25% left the council chambers.

I never heard what the 0.25% were complaining about. I was distracted by my own thoughts of, "What a bunch of narcissistic losers!", but a remark by councilman Weimer later indicated that they were upset about the idea that the council were considering moving the public forum to the end of the council meetings. As it turns out, the council were considering nothing of the sort. They simply wanted to add a rule that would allow them to switch the order of the public hearings and public forum depending on how many people were waiting to speak. This was an attempt to allow some staff to go home earlier, and to make the hearings more convenient for the citizen speakers. But the 0.25% will never know, because they didn't bother to stay for the council's discussion on the topic. Ironically, the 0.25% had the opportunity to line up to express their concerns about the proposed council rule changes in the open forum, but they chose anarchy instead.

Note: The Occupy Bellingham Borg refer to themselves as "The 99%", but my calculations based on the turnout (about 200) at various stunts around Bellingham (a city of population ca. 80,000) yields 0.25%. Using their arithmetic, The Bellingham Tea Party would be "The 725%". Ludicrous, isn't it?

You Are the Merchandise

If you're not paying for something, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold. ~ blue_beetle, Metafilter discussion.

Any time you think you're getting free stuff, think again. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Free radio, free TV, free email, free health care, free education. Forget it. It isn't free. You're being sold.

Just out of college, I was the chief engineer for a radio station. The radio station had a sales department. Did the sales department go door to door, soliciting listeners? No, the sales force went business to business selling listeners, selling time to advertisers to propagandize the listeners. Sure, there is some kind of symbiosis between listeners, advertisers and the radio station. The station needs listeners in order to sell their time to the advertisers, so the radio station provides useful services and entertainment to the listeners, because more listeners means higher ratings, which translate into more advertising dollars.

Listeners don't like advertising all that much, but they tolerate it for the free music and news. But make no mistake, the listeners are the merchandise. If you watch free television, or use free services on the web (Google maps, Google mail, etc.), then you, your activity patterns, and your privacy are being sold. Someone has to pay for all that free stuff. And it's you. Oh, right -- it's the advertisers. But who pays the advertisers? You do. In response to their propaganda advertising.

What about public broadcasting? Aren't PBS and NPR supported by viewers like you? Aren't their programs made possible by grants from The Ford Foundation, or The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? Or Mobile? Well, maybe insofar as individual viewers do make a pledge now and then, yes. But the foundations? The commercial supporters? Those are mini-advertisements. And, PBS and NPR have to keep doing what those foundations like, or they'll stop supporting public broadcasting. It's still propaganda.

Which brings us to government grants for public broadcasting. Everything up until here has been voluntary. Listeners who don't like being sold can turn off their radio. You don't have to patronize the advertisers, or contribute to NPR, or the foundations and corporations making public broadcasting possible. You can opt out at any time. Except when it comes to your taxes. The government taxes you, and you have no recourse but to pay -- under penalty of law -- without any significant say in how your taxes are spent, even if it goes against your beliefs (no taxation without representation -- are your beliefs being represented? Anything? Hello?)

When the government buys listeners from NPR and PBS, they are buying your eyes, ears and mind, and NPR and PBS are selling propaganda time. Public broadcasting is always in need of cash, and the government has tremendous power over them, because it can withdraw its grants any time it doesn't like what the network says or does. You say it can't, or doesn't happen in America. Really?

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. ~ James Madison (Federalist 51)

Unbelievable Helicopter Landing at Sea

We recently lost a local Ferndale boy in a military helicopter crash. You might wonder how that can happen. Well, sometimes it's because they have to do really difficult things, like this:

Well done, guys.

Agenda (Tinfoil) 21 (Hat)

Preservatives have recently started connecting the dots on Agenda 21, and the 'progressive' shape-shifters have naturally started calling us conspiracy theorists. Never mind the fact that Agenda 21 is on full display for all to see, where they say they intend to do precisely what we say they are doing! You'd think they'd take the website down. But no matter. It's all archived now anyway. There's no plausible deniability.

Part of the reason that the conspiracy theory attack seems to gain traction is that Agenda 21 is broken up into smaller pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle, so the useful idiots on the ground who are actually busy putting together the corner pieces, can't see the big picture, until the whole thing is grandly moved into place, when it would be too late. So much for government deriving its just power from the consent of the governed.

So, who are the useful idiots?

Education: The teachers, who are blithely "teaching" students e.g., Connected Math -- which asserts that there are no "wrong" answers. Here's the thing, though: If you are building a life-critical system such as a bridge, airplane, or medical equipment -- lawyers will beat you to death with every "wrong" answer they can find. You bet your arse there are wrong answers! Regardless of what the teachers say, the real world doesn't kid around.

Connected Math discourages teachers from teaching students how to do arithmetic. Instead, students are supposed to develop their own algorithms for time-tested operations such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. While it is possible that a fourth grader might come up with a ground-breaking improvement over the ones which have served us well for a thousand years, it is highly unlikely. It is even more unlikely that a heavily indoctrinated teacher would recognize it as such, much less point out the superiority of it to the chagrin of the other students. Still, should any teacher happen to question whether Connected Math is defensible, it's nothing that a little "performance review" can't fix.

True scholars would argue that most education, and certainly objective disciplines such as mathematics and science, should be devoid of any political agenda. But here it is. And here...

Though not part of Agenda 21, it is significant that The US Constitution has not been taught favorably or comprehensively in public schools for many decades. Why would that be? Well, for starters, The US Constitution, in addition to being being the official specification for the US Government, was specifically designed to limit government to the powers enumerated therein.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. ~ James Madison (Federalist 51)

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Why would government schools not teach about limited government? Do you see the conflict of interest?

Non-Government Organizations (NGOs): A recent trend, these federal-grant-powered "non-profit" corporations contract their "services", a.k.a., agendas to local and state governments. These tend to be environmental organizations, pushing for farm plans, water rights regulation, land use controls, LEED bulding ordinances, and just about any other illiberal control freak regulation you can think of. Such a deal: our taxes pay NGOs to instruct our government on how to oppress us. Now, mind you, I might personally want a LEED home or office building. Storm water runoff might be a problem here and there, and I'm not opposed to using permeable paving stones in lieu of poured concrete where it makes sense. But why do these people want to use the force of government to compel the rest of us to join their religion? If their religion is so great, wouldn't we join them voluntarily, if only we knew "the truth"? Everything we need is already right there in The First Amendment.

Local Government: Lacking adequate formal education about constitutional principles (see above), local governments (city councils, county councils, planning councils, etc.,) take an oath of office to uphold and defend something they know scarcely about. As such, they are all too willing to allow the federal government to override and usurp their authority, by taking government grants (which always -- always -- have strings attached), or by simply accepting state or federal controls where local control used to be. Or they allow ICLEI to come swooping in under the constitutional radar with centralized non-government control (to be imposed locally, with global uniformity -- forget diversity). Our local officials accept ICLEI's "help" to implement "sustainable", "environmentally friendly" "solutions" to "problems" that We the People have not asked to have solved.

Agenda 21? No, never heard of it. We're not doing that. What conspiracy theorist is saying that? The tea parties? Now, that makes sense!

Most of these local participants don't even know they're implementing Agenda 21. It's best that they don't know. It gives the useful idiots some plausible deniability.

Why We Suck

Bill Whittle lays it out about as clearly as is possible:

Sorry about the vernacular, but we're all adults here, right? Thanks to Sondrakistan.

The New Dark Ages

The tea parties might be the last gasp for liberty for another 1000 years, during which time human numbers and mobility might drop sufficiently that another small group of rebels could found a new republic on some isolated continent, based on Classical Liberalism, which will again over a couple of centuries grow, thrive, prosper and flame out.

It's weird... animals and other constantly changing natural conditions drive species to extinction all the time. But when we humans do it, it's somehow different. I'm not saying that we should deliberately set out to drive species to extinction (although we have, and failed: anopheles mosquitoes, smallpox virus...). Many species boom and bust, and humans are no exception. We may think we're invincible with all our technology, but we're not so great. We're just having a bloom. The irony is we might bring about our own demise in the name of sustainability. I’m convinced that it is no exaggeration to say that if successful, the watermelons will usher in a new dark age.

Wait For It: Single Payer Health Care

This is the tactic: The Obama administration tries to force Catholics and other groups to adopt mandates against their principles, protected under the First Amendment. These groups rebel. The Regime backs down. Finally, The Regime says, "We've tried, we've really tried to implement this health care bill, but now we see it's impossible, on First Amendment grounds. Therefore, the only way it will work is if we go to single payer government insurance."

See if they don't. I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone talking about this. I'm sure it would have gone easier for The Regime if everyone would just go quietly down The Road to Serfdom, but government monopoly is the logical alternative if we don't. Evidently, diversity is only a Good Thing^TM when it doesn't apply to economics.

Political Moneyball: The Conservative Strategy for Winning the Fight Coming After the Election

Kurt Schlichter, writing over at Andrew Breitbart's Big Government provides this advice to the tea parties:

The GOP Establishment we keep hearing about is real, and it is also doomed. That will not change whether the Establishment’s candidate Mitt Romney wins in November or not. After the election, the battle really starts; what is happening now are just skirmishes in a fight for control of the Republican Party. Not the soul of the party – if it had one, it auctioned it off long ago – but the mechanism of the party. The Grand Old Party matters only as a vehicle to carry our banner forward.

To do that, we need to seize control, and we do that by destroying the Establishment starting next November 7th. (Continue reading...)

This reminds me of what Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe said about the tea parties several years ago in a Wall Street Journal editorial, A Tea Party Manifesto: "The movement is not seeking a junior partnership with the Republican Party. It is aiming for a hostile takeover."

Restoring the US Government to constitutional fidelity will not be an overnight process. It is the long game.

Thanks to Dave and Maddie for sharing the Breitbart article.

Occupy Movement vs. Tea Party Comparison

The media love to compare the occupy movement with the tea parties. This is from an email circulating on the Internet:

REPORTED	OCCUPY MOVEMENT	TEA PARTIES
ARRESTS	4149+	0
RAPES	12	0
DAMAGE	$10,000,000.00	$0
PUBLIC DEFECATION	307	0
ANTISEMITIC RANTS	12	0
COST TO TAXPAYERS ( by 11/9)	$19,327,487.00+	$0
PUBLIC MASTURBATION	3	0
MOLOTOV COCKTAILS THROWN	10	0
FIGHTS STARTED	222	0
CHILDREN EXPLOITED	YES	NO
POLICE CARS DAMAGED	44	0
PUBLIC DRUNKENNESS	4750	0
DRUG POSSESSION ARREST	726	0
CONCEALED WEAPON ARREST	329	0
DRUG OVERDOSE	174	0
THEFTS	1131	0
BURGLARIES	918	0
VANDALISM ARREST	2754	0
TRESPASSING ARREST	9921	0
NON FATAL SHOOTINGS	1	0
PUBLIC URINATION	7624	0
URINATION ON OTHERS	29	0
ISRAELI FLAGS BURNED	2	0
AMERICAN FLAGS BURNED	102	0
AMERICAN FLAGS DANCED ON	29	0
AMERICAN FLAG DESECRATION	25	0
FELONY ASSAULT ON AN EMT	1	0
HEAD/BODY LICE OUTBREAKS	4	0
TUBERCULOSIS OUTBREAKS	1	0
MURDER	4	0
SUICIDE	1	0
SHOTS FIRED AT WHITE HOUSE	1	0
SCABIES OUTBREAKS	1	0
OBAMA ENDORSED IT	YES	NO
PELOSI ENDORSED IT	YES	NO
CAIR ENDORSED IT	YES	NO
SOCIALIST PARTY ENDORSED	YES	NO
NAZI PARTY ENDORSED	YES	NO
MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD ENDORSED	YES	NO
COMMUNIST PARTY ENDORSED	YES	NO
BIDEN ENDORSED	YES	NO
HUGO CHAVEZ ENDORSED	YES	NO
BLACK PANTHERS ENDORSED	YES	NO
HEZBOLLAH ENDORSED	YES	NO
MARXIST UNION ENDORSED	YES	NO
9/11 TRUTHER ENDORSED	YES	NO
BOLSHEVIK ENDORSED	YES	NO
IRAN GOVERNMENT ENDORSED	YES	NO
AYATOLLAH ENDORSED	YES	NO
NORTH KOREA ENDORSED	YES	NO
FARRAKHAN ENDORSED	YES	NO
NATION OF ISLAM ENDORSED	YES	NO

The 'progressives' will say children were exploited by the tea parties. But of course, you have to use the same definition of exploit for both. If by "exploit" you mean letting children hold flags or signs, or even wear sandwich boards carrying some kind of political message, then guilty as charged. 

Other than that, I have no real quibble with what is presented here. As always, comments are welcome though. 

Robert Heinlein Quotes

Robert Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Here are some good quotes by him:

• A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore!
• Taxes are not levied for the benefit of the taxed.
• The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for "art" that leaves him unmoved--if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such.
• Place your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

And here is where I think American culture may have crossed a line:

• The two highest achievements of the human mind are the twin concepts of "loyalty" and "duty". Whenever these twin concepts fall into disrepute, get out of there fast! You may possibly save yourself, but it is too late to save that society. It is doomed.

Here's my favorite:

• Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.

More quotes later.