Blackmoor Vituperative

Most anti-civil rights legislation is based on the argument, “I don’t like the way you live, even though it harms me not at all, and therefore it ought to be illegal.” Give that some thought before you advocate legislation to criminalize behaviour that does you no harm. Ignorance, prejudice, and irrational fear are a poor foundation for public policy.

Of course, it doesn’t help that some of the people exercising their civil rights are assholes.

Here is an interesting article from Matt Bai: How Much Has Citizens United Changed the Political Game? The gist of it is that Citizens United may not have exactly the impact that people tell you it has (or will have). Which, in retrospect, really shouldn’t surprise anyone.

And here is a … not so much a rebuttal, because he doesn’t respond to any of the original article’s points… it’s a reply, I guess, from Russ Feingold. I don’t find it persuasive. “A new form of corruption”? Hardly. Matt Bai makes it amply clear that this form of corruption has been around since at least the 1990s (and in my opinion, since long before that). But this Feingold fellow was the ONLY Senator to vote against the so-called PATRIOT act during the first vote on it, so I’ll give his arguments my attention based on that alone.

I confess that the continued authority to selectively tax citizens in order to encourage desired behaviour disappoints me, but not because of Obamacare. I am mostly indifferent to the Affordable Care Act itself, because it will affect less than 2% of the people in this country in any significant way. My own health care costs will continue to rise, with or without it.

It disappoints me because it makes it less likely that the existing tax system will be eliminated and replaced with a fair tax (such as the FairTax), since the current tax system is rife with such selective taxation. For example, if there were no taxation benefits or penalties associated with getting married (or not) or having children (or not), there would no longer be any reason for the government to interfere in who could marry whom — it would be a purely personal issue between consenting adults, beyond the authority of government to regulate or prohibit (and that’s how it should be, in my opinion).

Had the selective taxation of citizens in order to manipulate their behaviour been declared to exceed the authority granted to our government, a great deal of the current tax code would have had to have been discarded. But it wasn’t, so it won’t be. Despite the wailing and gnashing of teeth, the Supreme Court’s ruling really only affirmed one thing: the status quo has been preserved. Which, ironically enough, primarily benefits the people doing most of the wailing.

I am disappointed, but not angry, nor terribly surprised. Life goes on.

I write to my Congress people every so often asking them to abolish the TSA (not reform, not privatize — abolish). If more people did so, at least the corruption would be more obvious.

It’s bad enough having to shell out exorbitant amounts of money in order to travel, but there’s no reason any individual should be forced to choose between a certified health risk or a humiliating, invasive search of their person by ill-trained government agents. Even the airport personnel have expressed concerns about the scanners. The Allied Pilots Association has urged its members to opt out of the body scanning measures because of the “ionizing radiation, which could be harmful to their health.” That caution has been echoed by the Federal Aviation Administration’s medical institute, which has raised a concern about the effects of radiation exposure on pregnant pilots and flight attendants.

(from Cancer-Causing Airport Scanners? Enough Is Enough, The Rutherford Institute)

Controversy continues to rage over the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) District’s unilateral decision to follow in the footsteps of Egypt’s now fallen dictator Hosni Mubarak, by cutting off cell phone services in an attempt to quell protests (in BART’s case, a protest that didn’t actually occur).

The “Anonymous” group has today already hacked BART’s external Web sites in response, and more protests triggered by BART’s actions may be forthcoming.

Is comparing Mubarak and BART unfair? Over the top? After all, various U.S. observers have been supporting BART’s decision, saying that riders really didn’t need cell service at those locations, didn’t have it in those locales a relatively few years ago, and have suggested that pretty much anything was acceptable in the name of proactively preserving “public safety” — even in the face of nonexistent protesters.

And since luckily it appears that no critical phone calls (“Sorry, I can’t reach the doctor’s cell phone!”) were blocked as a result of BART’s action, it’s no harm, no foul, right?

Wrong. Dead wrong.

[…]

(from BART, Cell Phones, Lenin, and a Steel Cage, Lauren Weinstein’s Blog)

Some local news I think is interesting. A pity that not everyone has the courage and intelligence of this young man.

Tobey’s attorneys argue in court papers that the TSA agents and airport police “humiliated and punished him in direct retaliation for his protected act of peaceful protest, detaining and arresting him without probable cause, repeatedly searching his belongings, seizing and discarding certain of his personal effects.”

The lawsuit alleges false imprisonment, malicious prosecution and violations of Tobey’s rights under the First, Fourth, Fifth and 14th amendments. It seeks $250,000 in compensatory damages, legal fees and additional training for TSA employees.

(from RIC airport protester, federal officials present arguments in lawsuit, Richmond Times-Dispatch)

I know that abuses of power happened in the good old days. I know that rights were trampeled, people were railroaded, and that race or social connections meant more than evidence of guilt or innocence. Still, it’s worthwhile to recall that there was a time when people knew right from wrong, even if they didn’t live up their own ideals.

I’m not sure how much weight to give a silly television show’s version of what the United States used to be about. And I know there were no “good old days”. Still, it’s enough to make me wonder if maybe one or two things used to be better than they are now.

Something I overheard in a chat room recently:

Harrigan: Hmmm… I need to find out how to go through airport security these days. The last time I flew, I got stopped and was asked what was in the small pouch on my belt. The security guard waved me on when I said it was a Swiss army knife and told me he just wanted to make sure it wasn’t Mace. I think things have changed since then.
Berrianna: Yeah, knives are right out.
Berrianna: As are liquids and gels over five ounces, firearms, jackhammers, hacksaws, dental implants, transplanted kidneys, a sense of personal privacy, any bag over 10 pounds, jackets, underwear with natural fibers, broken glass, scarves, dental floss, dignity, the first and fourth Amendments, and dogs over fifteen pounds.

Heh. Heh heh.

I don’t play a lot of video games. I played WOW for a couple of years (rather, I paid for it for a couple of years), and from time to time I dust off my neato-bitchin’ Logitech Extreme 3D Pro flight stick and fly my WW2 fighter plane into the ground a few dozen times, but really that’s about it. That’s not the point, though. It doesn’t matter whether I play video games, collect Norwegian ballads, or spend my days writing pornographic limericks about toothpaste — in the USA, no one is allowed to pass a law against it, or even regulate it. Why not? The important reason why not is because IT’S NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS WHAT PEACEFUL, CONSENTING ADULTS DO WITH THEIR FREE TIME. A less-important reason is because we have these rules that the government is supposed to abide by, and one of them says (among other things) NO LAWS RESTRICTING FREE SPEECH, YOU FASCIST JACKASS.

So why am I spouting all of this stuff that every child ought to know by the age of ten (and which most legislators apparently never learned)? Because some jackasses want to pass laws regulating video games. That by itself is not new. This sort of thing comes up every so often. Before video games, it was movies, before that it was rock and roll, before that it was novels, and before that it was movies again. Ad nauseam. I bet you dollars to doughnuts that the first time some monobrowed cave dweller scratched a stick figure in a limestone rock, another monobrowed cave dweller was there claiming it would cause the downfall of not-yet-quite-humanity. And yet here we all are, and it’s turned out more or less okay so far.

What’s new (ish) is the Video Game Voters Network. So watch this short but entertaining public service message, and then get off your butt and do something useful: vote. Vote libertarian, if that’s an option, but if not, at least vote for the least oppressive, least power-mad, least war-crazy, least superstitious person you can find. And then call them periodically to remind them that you voted for them because they were supposed to be less of an irrational fascist dillweed than the other irrational fascist dillweeds that wanted the job, and if they don’t shape up you’ll vote for some other irrational fascist dillweed next time around, and they’ll have to go get a real job.