A gang of thieves writ large

Policing for Profit

by Robert Murphy

A shocking news report recently documented how Tennessee police were stopping drivers on the interstate and confiscating large amounts of cash, even if the drivers were accused of no crime. The report was particularly shocking because the special unit was operating far outside of its jurisdiction in exchange for giving a cut of the seized cash to the local government in question.

This episode is outrageous enough that any regular American can see the problem. Yet most people who see the report will probably conclude that the government "went too far" in this instance, and some reforms are needed. The real lesson here is that the War on Drugs — just like every other war waged by our politicians — doesn't solve the ostensible problem, and in fact strips away other liberties.

More generally, the report is a perfect vindication of the Rothbardian point that, in a very real sense, government is a gang of thieves writ large. Such a radical viewpoint sounds crazy to most Americans in the abstract, but when they watch the video, it's hard to deny.

The Bitter Fruits of the Drug War

From a standard libertarian perspective, the government has no business interfering in capitalist acts between consenting adults (to use Robert Nozick's felicitous phrase). This includes situations where one person wants to grow a plant, for example, and sell it to somebody else who intends to use it to induce a feeling of euphoria.

To be sure, private organizations can lay down whatever regulations they want "regulating" drug use. Airlines can still subject pilots to randomized drug tests, and schools can expel students caught smoking in the bathroom if they so choose. After all, private schools can tell students what clothes they can wear on school property, so they obviously have the right to prohibit the use of particular drugs.

Yet even if we put aside such principled opposition, it should be crystal clear by now that the War on Drugs has shredded traditional liberties. The scandal on the Tennessee interstate shown in the video above is just one example. Precisely because the War on Drugs has fostered an immense black market, the authorities can now seize large amounts of cash from anyone simply on the suspicion that the person "must be" a drug dealer (or a terrorist financier).

Fatal conceit

Stop the Bad Guys

by Donald J. Boudreau 

It’s not too much of a simplification to say that modern American conservatives believe the national government to be ignorant, bumbling, and corrupt when it meddles in the U.S. economy, but sagacious, sure-footed, and righteous when it meddles in foreign-government affairs.

Nor are the boundaries of acceptable simplification breached by saying that modern American “liberals” believe the national government to be sagacious, sure-footed, and righteous when it meddles in the U.S. economy, but ignorant, bumbling, and corrupt when it meddles in foreign-government affairs.

This striking contradiction in political viewpoints has not, of course, gone unnoticed.

I was prompted to ponder this contradiction not long ago after I read an op-ed in the Washington Post by the neoconservative William Kristol calling on Uncle Sam to attempt to influence the outcomes of the recent popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. My ponderings produced a hypothesis: Modern conservatives and “liberals” are obsessively fixated on bad guys (just different ones).

For both conservatives and “liberals” the world is full of problems caused by bad actors—greedy, heartless, power-hungry autocrats who deploy illegitimately acquired power to trample the rights and livelihoods of the masses. Ordinary men and women seek liberation from these tyrants, but—being ordinary and oppressed—the typical person cannot escape the overlords’ predation without help. Their liberation requires forceful intervention by well-meaning and courageous outsiders.

For “liberals” the oppressed masses consist of workers and the poor, and the oligarchs who do the oppressing are business people and private corporations. What encourages this oppression are free markets and their accompanying doctrine of nonintervention by government into the economy.

Eternal childhood

Australia: the world leader in illiberalism

From bans on video games to drinks advertising, Australia has become the world’s number one nanny state.

by Chris Snowdon 

There is a PhD thesis waiting to be written some day about how Australia came to be the world’s number one nanny state; how a country that was once renowned for rugged individualism capitulated to puritanism with barely a whimper.

The Australians were recently in the news after making the decision to wrap cigarettes in olive-coloured plain packages. With tangible patriotic pride, campaigners claimed this as a world first, and so it is, but it only scratches the surface of the plans Australia’s public-health lobby have in store.

Last week, the Preventative Health Taskforce published a report which, in its words, launched a ‘crackdown’ on drinking, smoking and the eating of ‘energy-dense, nutrient-poor’ food. This report made 122 recommendations, called for 26 new laws and proposed establishing seven new agencies to change the behaviour of Australians. To take just a few examples related to tobacco, the Taskforce called for the price of 30 cigarettes to rise to ‘at least $20’ (£13) by 2013, for a ban on duty-free sales, a ban on vending machines and a ban on smoking in a host of places including multi-unit apartments, private vehicles and ‘outdoors where people gather or move in close proximity’. They even contemplate a ban on filters and the prohibition of additives that enhance the palatability of cigarettes.

As in so many countries, Australia’s anti-smoking campaign has acted as a Trojan horse in the effort to fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and state. By no means does it end with tobacco. The Taskforce also wants to ban drinks advertising during programmes that are watched by people under 25 – a category so broad as to include virtually every programme – and calls for graphic warnings similar to those now found on cigarette packs to be put on bottles of beer. It also wants the government to establish ‘appropriate portion sizes’ for meals, to tax food that is deemed unhealthy and to hand out cash bonuses to those who meet the state’s criteria of a healthy lifestyle.

Coming on the back of a tobacco-display ban and the aforementioned plain-packaging ruse, it is no wonder that a recent survey found that 55 per cent of Australians believe their country has become a nanny state. An even greater majority – 73 per cent – thinks the government is too busy micromanaging people’s lives to address important issues.

The End of the Age of Reason

Putting humanity in a kangaroo court

When Nobel laureates staged a mock eco-trial in Stockholm last week, they were really demanding to rule the world.

by Ben Pile 

You may not have noticed, but last week you were a co-defendant in a court case. In Stockholm, the Third Nobel Laureate Symposium on Global Sustainability met at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. The event website proclaimed that ‘hjumanity [sic] will be on trial as the Third Nobel Laureate Symposium brings together almost 20 Nobel Laureates, a number of leading policy makers and some of the world’s most renowned thinkers and experts on global sustainability.’

The charge against us, humanity, was that ‘our vast imprint on the planet’s environment has shifted the Earth into a new geological period labelled the “Anthropocene” – the Age of Man’. But this was a showtrial. The guilty verdict had been written before the court had even assembled. ‘The prosecution will therefore maintain that humanity must work towards global stewardship around the planet’s intrinsic boundaries, a scientifically defined space within which we can continue to develop’, claimed Professor Will Steffen, showtrial ‘prosecutor’ and executive director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University. The website and literature accompanying the symposium made no mention of the defence’s argument. Indeed, why would a Symposium on Global Sustainability invite a defence that challenged the premises it intended to promote?

The ‘trial’ was merely a stunt, of course, designed to make a stuffy, pompous and self-serving enterprise such as this more appealing to the media and the hoi polloi it sought to prosecute. It was one of a number of sessions at the event, each intended to qualify the sustainability agenda with the expertise of its participants. But this circle-jerk, show-trial symposium revealed far more about its members and the hollowness of the sustainability agenda than it revealed about humanity.

A trial implies a question mark over the guilt of the accused. A showtrial on the other hand, is a performance designed to serve some agenda or purpose, to make political capital from the trumped-up crimes of the defendant, whose ‘guilt’ has already been established. And so it is with the litany of charges served against humanity: we are ‘influencing critical Earth system processes’, ‘pushing the planet out of the 10,000-year Holocene environment’, causing ‘irreversible and abrupt changes’. These are our transgressions. They were recited in the courtroom melodrama, not to encourage scrutiny of ourselves, of society, or even really our relationship with nature, but to elevate the judges and their agenda. After all, without criminals, there can be no judges.

There is a strange irony to the spectacle of the world’s best thinkers putting humanity on trial. At the same time as they sit in judgement of humanity, those who seemingly best represent its virtues distance themselves from it. This act reflects a disconnect between the world’s elite – the establishment, in other words – and the rest of humanity. It is a practical demonstration of the extent to which contempt for humanity has been absorbed into establishment thinking.

People that Sheeple are conditioned to hate

Khodorkovsky gives his verdict

by The Economist online | MOSCOW

Some words become history years after being spoken. Others carry historic weight as soon as they are uttered. The last words spoken today by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as his 18-month trial drew to a close, belong to the second category. The  statement[PDF] he read out from his bullet-proof glass cage in a packed Moscow court will be cited in history textbooks, just as the case itself will be.

Mr Khodorkovsky’s arrest in 2003 and the destruction of his Yukos oil company have changed Russian history, and continue to determine it. Today's short speech was clinically accurate in its description of where, seven years later, Russia and he have ended up.

As Mr Khodorkovsky said, the people who put him and Platon Lebedev, his business partner, in prison wanted to show that they are above the law and will always get their way. “So far, they have achieved the opposite: they turned, us, ordinary people, into symbols of a struggle against lawlessness. This is not our achievement. It is theirs.”

As the second trial against Mr Khodorkovsky went on, its absurdity became more and more pronounced. In 2003, he was charged with underpaying taxes on a vast scale, and two years later was convicted and imprisoned. He was due for release in 2011. The second case tried to prove that the very object that Mr Khodorkovsky had been convicted of underpaying taxes on—the oil—was stolen in its entirety. Even some Russian officials who testified in the trial admitted that this was absurd. Yet the prosecution is demanding that Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev spend another six years in jail.Nobody, as Mr Khodorkovsky said today, would believe that he had stolen all the oil from his own company, even if he were to admit it. But nobody believes that a Moscow court would acquit him either. “Over these years they have begun to fear me more and to respect the law even less.” The Kremlin is right to fear Mr Khodorkovsky because his stand undermines the foundation of a system held together by corruption and the supremacy of the state—with the security services as its guardian—over an individual.

How long can such a system last? Earlier this week Mr Khodorkovsky tried to answer this question in an interview [link in English] given to Novaya Gazeta, a courageous and critical newspaper. In it, he argued that crisis will hit in about 2015, when the sinking potential of an unmodernised economy rubs up against the greed of the bureaucracy on the one hand and the material expectations of the population on the other. Exactly, in fact, what brought down the Soviet Union in the late 1980s.

Mr Khodorkovsky was nearly 25 years old in 1987 when Andrei Sakharov, Russia’s dissident nuclear scientist, was released from his exile. Describing the sense of optimism shared by his generation back then, today Mr Khodorkovsky said, “Our country was living on the hope of freedom, hope that we would be able to achieve happiness for ourselves and for our children…The responsibility for why this hope was not realised all the way, and not for everybody, probably lies on our entire generation, myself included.” 

States' assassins

Seventy-One Shots: The Death of Jose Guereña

Jose Guereña survived two tours in Iraq, but he couldn't survive his own government

by Bob Owens 

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik infamously railed in January of this year that Arizona is a “Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

One must wonder if the “prejudice and bigotry” he considers endemic to Arizona is to blame for the death of U.S. Marine veteran Jose Guereña, killed when Dupnik’s deputies gunned him down in his home. They fired 71 shots. They hit him 60 times. And then, as if this wasn’t enough, Dupnik’s deputies blocked paramedics for an hour and 14 minutes from approaching the scene, denying Guereña treatment until he was assuredly dead.

Dupnik’s SWAT team initially claimed that Guereña fired at them while they were serving a warrant — as he slept. They claimed that his bullets hit the bulletproof shield that the entry team hid behind, and that the barrage of bullets they fired back was in self-defense.

Only, Guereña never fired his weapon. Awoken by his wife with screams that men with guns were invading his home and threatening his family, Jose Guereña armed himself with a AR-15 rifle and crouched in the hallway. The SWAT team unloaded upon Guereña on sight. He apparently recognized the home invaders as police. He took 60 rounds, but never — as the Pima County Sheriff’s Department was forced to admit — took off his weapon’s safety as he was being killed.

Prejudice and bigotry?

It was, you’ll recall, a claim Dupnik made in the wake of Jared Loughner’s bloodly rampage at a “Congress in your Corner” event at a Safeway supermarket in Tucson, where six were killed and 14 others were injured — including, gravely, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Dupnik was attempting to blame the conservative Tea Party movement for the shooting when he made the comment. And even after it was revealed that Loughner’s few known political views had been described as “quite liberal,” and were in fact muddled at best, he refused to retract his slur.

So when Dupnik’s teams attempted a complicated four-house raid of minority families looking for drugs, perhaps bigotry and prejudice really was in play.

Is it When or If?

What happens when Greece defaults

By Andrew Lilico

Financial markets merely aren’t sure whether it’ll be tomorrow, a month’s time, a year’s time, or two years’ time (it won’t be longer than that). Given that the ECB has played the “final card” it employed to force a bailout upon the Irish – threatening to bankrupt the country’s banking sector – presumably we will now see either another Greek bailout or default within days.

What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:

- Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.

- The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece.

- The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.

- To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.

- Greece will redenominate all its debts into “New Drachmas” or whatever it calls the new currency (this is a classic ploy of countries defaulting)

- The New Drachma will devalue by some 30-70 per cent (probably around 50 per cent, though perhaps more), effectively defaulting 0n 50 per cent or more of all Greek euro-denominated debts.

- The Irish will, within a few days, walk away from the debts of its banking system.

- The Portuguese government will wait to see whether there is chaos in Greece before deciding whether to default in turn.

- A number of French and German banks will make sufficient losses that they no longer meet regulatory capital adequacy requirements.

- The European Central Bank will become insolvent, given its very high exposure to Greek government debt, and to Greek banking sector and Irish banking sector debt.

- The French and German governments will meet to decide whether (a) to recapitalise the ECB, or (b) to allow the ECB to print money to restore its solvency. (Because the ECB has relatively little foreign currency-denominated exposure, it could in principle print its way out, but this is forbidden by its founding charter.  On the other hand, the EU Treaty explicitly, and in terms, forbids the form of bailouts used for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but a little thing like their being blatantly illegal hasn’t prevented that from happening, so it’s not intrinsically obvious that its being illegal for the ECB to print its way out will prove much of a hurdle.)

Sometimes they 'Fall' but they never break

Lawmakers Concerned About Ex-IMF Director's 'Golden Parachute'

By Judson Berger

The former head of the International Monetary Fund accused of sexually assaulting a New York hotel maid will receive a $250,000 severance payment -- paid in part courtesy of the American taxpayer -- unless U.S. lawmakers can stop the "golden parachute" from landing in the French politician's bank account.

The IMF claims it has no discretion in the matter of Dominique Strauss-Khan, who was already pulling down nearly $500,000 as managing director when he resigned after being arrested in New York. The one-time severance, along with a much smaller annual pension, was part of his contract.

But considering the heavy financial stake the United States has in the global lender, some lawmakers are trying to exert pressure on an organization that has come under increased scrutiny over how its vast international resources are being used.

"The scandal at the IMF is putting that organization in the public eye again and American taxpayers -- who pay the largest share of the IMF's bills -- are raising a lot of important questions," Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., House Republican Conference vice chairwoman, told FoxNews.com in a written statement.

"What does it say about the IMF that its managing director has a higher annual salary than the president of the United States, that he stays at $3,000-per-night hotel rooms, and that he gets a quarter of a million dollars in severance pay while awaiting charges for [attempted] rape?" McMorris Rodgers asked.

Jim Specht, spokesman for House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., said his boss will request hearings in the Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs on the IMF directorship, and review what leverage the U.S. might have over operations. Lewis is a member of that subcommittee.

"He definitely wants to look at whether or not something can be done. If not now, certainly in the future," Specht said, adding that Lewis wants to know more about other perks enjoyed by Strauss-Kahn. He said Lewis doesn't want to cut off U.S. support for the IMF, but said the U.S. should have some control over the "behavior" of the agency’s leaders.

"

I would bet on spontaneous order on this one

There’s something about marriage

by DAVID HARSANYI

When an actress — no, an artist – the caliber of Cameron Diaz weighs in on the future of social institutions, America has an obligation to listen.

And listen we did. In a widely discussed interview with Maxim magazine, Diaz offered America a peek at her body, her relationship with Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez (which, needless to say, is “awesome”) and her views on the future of matrimony. Does she think marriage is a dying institution? “I do,” she explained. “I think we have to make our own rules. I don‘t think we should live our lives in relationships based off of old traditions that don’t suit our world any longer.”

Let’s for a moment pretend that we share a world with Cameron Diaz. Does marriage suit this domain? It should be noted that this ancient ritual is at the center of an emotional national debate. There is one side claiming that exclusion from it is discrimination and another claiming that the very sanctity of the institution is at stake. I‘d say lots of folks are expending a ton of energy and angst arguing over a ritual that’s on its last legs.

We all know why men marry. Love, yes. I’ve been married to a wonderful woman for, like, 10 — or maybe it’s 11 or 12 (somewhere in that area) — years. But men are irresponsible and forgetful. The evolutionary need for companionship is a need to moderate childishness and bring a basic moral order to lives that would otherwise revolve around sports highlight shows. Women? Love, of course. But historically, as Diaz implies, it’s also been somewhat of a necessity.

Things are changing. A new Pew study says that Americans are postponing marriage and that fewer of us are getting hitched. But those who do marry stay together longer. “Three in four couples who married after 1990 celebrated a 10-year anniversary,” according to a Washington Post story on census statistics. “That was a rise of three percentage points compared with couples who married in the early 1980s, when the nation’s divorce rate was at its highest.” Researchers are also finding a connection between marriage and education. In 1996, only 21 percent of brides had a college degree, but by 2009, it was 31 percent. It seems to be growing.

Women with higher education levels are increasingly marrying. These are also presumably women who are likelier to have the economic freedom not to be married. So why do they do it?

Chicken little can be lethal

Teen kills herself ahead of foretold rapture

by Russian Times

A 14-year-old girl from the Republic of Mari El in Central Russia has committed suicide, allegedly because she was afraid of the upcoming doomsday, predicted by the American radio preacher Harold Camping.

Nastya Zachinova believed the news that the world would end on May 21, her family told the tabloid LifeNews. The once lively teenager became angsty and withdrawn. On the Saturday in which the rapture had been predicted to start, she committed suicide after returning home from school.

Her personal diary shows she was terrified of the perils of the apocalypse, which she believed humanity was about to endure.

“We are not righteous; only the righteous will go to heaven, and we’ll stay on earth and face terrible suffering,” one of the entries says.

A farewell text message says she didn’t want to die with everyone else and would take her life in advance.

“She took this date too close to heart,” Nastya’s mother Lyudmila told the tabloid.

Police are currently gathering reports from Nastya’s friends .They believe somebody may have been behind the terror which haunted the girl in her final days.

Harold Camping and his supporters launched a world-wide campaign to inform humanity about the upcoming rapture, the date of which he predicted based on a series of convoluted calculations taken from the bible.  A few ads promoting his message were put on billboards in Russia as well.

After the prediction proved false, Camping recanted his original claim, stating that the end of the world will now come in October.

Some pigs are more equal ...

More ‘Do as I say, not as I do’ from our betters

by MEREDITH JESSUP

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood unveiled new fuel economy labels for cars today, noting how they are “a win for automobile consumers and for the nation’s energy independence.”

As for Mr. LaHood himself, he reportedly arrived to the ceremony in this 12mpg Chevy Suburban SUV:

Liberal control freaks in action

If you want to see the future of American (or Greek) cuisine under ever-encroaching soft totalitarianism, have a look at Denmark, where they have just banned a British delicacy called Marmite:

The strongly flavoured dark brown spread made from brewer's yeast has joined Rice Crispies, Shreddies, Horlicks and Ovaltine prohibited in Denmark under legislation forbidding the sale of food products with added vitamins as threat to public health.

Many well known breakfast cereal and drink brands have already been banned or taken off supermarket shelves after Danish legislation in 2004 restricted foods fortified with extra vitamins or minerals.

But Marmite had escaped notice as an exotic import for a small number of ex-pats until the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration telephoned Abigail's, a Copenhagen shop selling British food, to ban the famous yeast spread.

"I don't eat it myself, I don't like it but Marmite was one of our best selling products. Not a day goes by without someone coming in and asking for it," said Marianne Ørum, the shop owner.

"All the English people here are shaking their heads in disbelief and say that it is insane. I agree but it is the law. It's becoming impossible to run a business in this country. We are not allowed to do anything anymore. It is the way Denmark is going."

As New York's nanny state dictator Michael Bloomberg constantly reminds us with his bizarre jihads against basic food staples like salt, it's the way the whole Western World is going. Once bureaucrats have gotten away with claiming authority over what we eat, they will incrementally ban everything imaginable until we are left gnawing on bark like North Koreans.

This is why it is crucial to never yield a single inch to liberal control freaks.

It's not a joke. Really.

Oil-Rich Venezuela Still Suffers From Energy Shortage

by Dave Blount

As the great counter-moonbat Milton Friedman observed,

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand."

What would happen if you put a socialist of similar stripe in charge of Venezuela, a founding member of OPEC that is floating on oil? Naturally, the result would be an energy shortage:

Venezuela will ration power again this year, planning steps similar to those taken in 2010 amid an energy crisis, Electricity Minister Ali Rodriguez said.

"We're going to reapply the measures we applied in Caracas last year nationwide, which punishes the wasting of electricity and encourages energy savings," Rodriguez said in an interview on state television….

The USA also has massive fossil fuel reserves. But unless we overthrow our leftist kakistocracy, this won't do us any good.

"Managing the poor. Part II

A Nation of Takers, Not Makers

More Americans work for the government than in manufacturing, farming, fishing, forestry, mining and utilities combined

By STEPHEN MOORE

If you want to understand better why so many states—from New York to Wisconsin to California—are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, consider this depressing statistic: Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million). This is an almost exact reversal of the situation in 1960, when there were 15 million workers in manufacturing and 8.7 million collecting a paycheck from the government. It gets worse. More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined. We have moved decisively from a nation of makers to a nation of takers. Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees. Is it any wonder that so many states and cities cannot pay their bills?
Every state in America today except for two—Indiana and Wisconsin—has more government workers on the payroll than people manufacturing industrial goods. Consider California, which has the highest budget deficit in the history of the states. The not-so Golden State now has an incredible 2.4 million government employees—twice as many as people at work in manufacturing. New Jersey has just under two-and-a-half as many government employees as manufacturers. Florida's ratio is more than 3 to 1. So is New York's.
Even Michigan, at one time the auto capital of the world, and Pennsylvania, once the steel capital, have more government bureaucrats than people making things. The leaders in government hiring are Wyoming and New Mexico, which have hired more than six government workers for every manufacturing worker.