Here are some goodies from Don Boudreaux on what would happen to Civil Rights and Civil Liberties without the heavy hand of government making us behave.
Remember: Jim Crow was legislation, not custom. PLEASE read the whole thing....
Letter to editor: Reacting to Rand Paul’s remarks about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, you say that his libertarian philosophy “is a theory of liberty with roots in America’s creation, but the succeeding centuries have shown how ineffective it was in promoting a civil society…. It was only government power that … abolished Jim Crow” (“Limits of Libertarianism,” May 22).
Don Boudreaux: You’ve got it backwards. Jim Crow itself was government power. Jim Crow was legislation that forced the segregation of blacks from whites. Research shows that people acting in the free market that you apparently believe is prone to racial discrimination were remarkably reluctant to discriminate along racial lines. It was this very reluctance – this capacity of free markets to make people colorblind – that obliged racists in the late 19th century to use government to achieve their loathsome goals.* Had Mr. Paul’s libertarian philosophy been followed more consistently throughout American history, there would have been no need for one government statute (the Civil Rights Act) to upend earlier government statutes (Jim Crow) and the business practices that they facilitated.
Once again, hit the link up top to read the whole thing....
I live in Texas.
Mitt Romney is going to carry Texas by something like 9% - 15%.
That's what's going to happen this year.
Some Texans will still go to the trouble of voting for Obama, and a vote for Obama isn't a wasted vote. Their Obama votes still send a signal that they tolerate certain giveaways, particular forms of graft, Middle-Eastern wars, and Prohibition.
You can say the same for a vote for Romney.
The election isn't decided by number of votes. It's decided by which states are carried by each candidate, and their collective Electoral College totals.
If a Texan voted for Barack Obama in 2008, he sent a signal about his preferences, but had no impact on the election. If ZERO Texans had voted for Obama, it would've changed nothing. Texas went for John McCain. Therefore, 38 Electoral College votes went to McCain. None went to Obama.
If a Texan voted for John McCain in 2008, he sent a signal about his likes and dislikes, but had no impact on the election. McCain carried Texas, but lost the Electoral College vote.
That's what's going to happen this year. Mitt Romney is going to carry Texas. As best I can tell, neither Obamney campaign has spent any money here except to raise more money to spend in states that are close. There are almost no Romney or Obama bumperstickers on Texas vehicles this year. (I honestly think both sides are embarrassed, but I don't have a dog in their hunt....)
The states that still matter are Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Wisconsin.
So if a voter in a truly "Red" state votes for Obama, is he wasting his vote? Well, that depends on why he's voting for Obama. If he's a civil libertarian, he's possibly voting for the party that's supposed to be better on civil liberties, but hell, look at Obama's record.... massive drug raids, domestic spying, Patriot Act, deportations, and allowing corporations to run up massive debts on your bar tab. He's been horrible. IMHO, Barack Obama has been our worst president on civil liberties since Nixon.
I don't think this hypothetical red state voter is necessarily wasting his vote in Texas. But he is wasting his time. Yeah, he's sending a signal, but it's a weak one. There are better uses of his time than sending out a weak transmission that he prefers one Statist over another. He's using a shovel instead of a bulldozer. He's drinking from a thimble.
If you are a Texas (or any other reddish state) civil libertarian, there's really only one way to send a strong signal that you're tired of the domestic spying, the Patriot Act, raids on medical marijuana dispensaries, kids having their lives and educational opportunities destroyed for owning trifling amounts of weed, NDAA, indefinite detention, Monsanto in the FDA, Fast And Furious, and all the rest, I hope you'll consider voting for Gary Johnson.
Is Gary going to carry Texas? Hell no.
Is Obama going to carry Texas? Hell no.
That's not the point.
Please stop voting for the lesser of two evils, and please stop wasting your time. Send your signal in favor of Gary Johnson. Hit the link to see Gary's positions on every issue that matters.
“Just after midnight Saturday morning, authorities descended on the Cerritos home of the man believed to be the filmmaker behind the anti-Muslim movie that has sparked protests and rioting in the Muslim world.”
When taking office, the President does not swear to create jobs. He does not swear to “grow the economy.” He does not swear to institute “fairness.” The only oath the President takes is this one:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
By sending — literally — brownshirted enforcers to engage in — literally — a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated that oath. You can try to pretty this up (It’s just about possible probation violations! Sure.), or make excuses or draw distinctions, but that’s what’s happened. It is a betrayal of his duties as President, and a disgrace.
Why are the streets not packed with angry mobs with pitchforks and torches??
This is the picture that should cost Obama his job. End of story.
You know what? I didn't particularly like the art installation known as "Piss Christ". I didn't like the painting of the Virgin Mary made of elephant crap. I didn't like Michael Moore's movie "Capitalism". (It should've been called "Mercantilism", or maybe "Too Big To Fail".) I don't like the Richter mirror hanging in the Dallas Museum Of Art. I think it's a ripoff.
Here's another dirty little secret: I didn't like the new Batman movie.
In the USA, we don't bring this stuff up for a vote. If someone creates something we don't like, we don't try to have the creators silenced. We DO and we SHOULD keep them from getting any government funding, but that should apply to everybody.
A proposed amendment to North Carolina’s constitution which would make marriage between a man and woman the only legal union recognized by the state has passed a statewide vote, the Associated Press reports.
The referendum- North Carolina Amendment One- goes a step beyond outlawing same-sex marriage, which was already illegal in the state. The law decrees that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State”- meaning that civil unions and potentially other types of domestic partnerships will no longer be legally recognized.
Here's more:
Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council- a conservative Christian organization- released a statement applauding the vote.
“We applaud North Carolina voters for joining voters in 31 other states upholding the historic and natural definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman” the statement said. “At every opportunity, the American people have demonstrated a deep appreciation for the unique benefits that marriage between a man and a woman brings to families and society. They recognize that marriage is the only kind of union that results in natural procreation and keeps a mother and father together to raise the children produced by their union.”
Yeah, I think it's best that a child have two parents. If a child has more than one sister and one brother, it might be best to have four parents just to help keep everybody fed and clothed.
If a child is going to Texas A&M, it might be best for the kid to have six parents: A mother, a father, a banker, a lottery winner, Bill Gates, and an illegal immigrant getting paid under the table, just to help pay for all the A&M fees and services.
But back to the point raised by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, which needs refuting..... The Bible says that heterosexual marriage is not the ideal condition for Christians. I repeat: "He on She" marriage is not the ideal condition for Christians.
If you take the Apostle Paul seriously, and if you believe he was divinely inspired and not just blogging, heterosexual activity within the confines of heterosexual marriage falls short of perfection. Therefore heterosexual sex is a "sin", just like gay sex, lesbian sex, rape, pedophilia, bestiality, and forcing children to watch the John Edwards sex video are all supposedly sins. Sin is anything that falls short of the ideal, anything less than perfection.
Paul said so. Here's the man himself:
I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.
To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. (1 Corinthians 7:7-8)
The man has spoken. Remaning single is the ideal. Anything else falls short of perfection. And elsewhere in the Bible, sin is "falling short of the glory of God". To top it off, here's James 4:17.....
17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
What you should do, according to Paul, is to remain single. If you know what you should do (remain single) and fail, then you have sinned.
(Note to my friend Mike Coyne, who is seriously considering falling into sin this fall....Don't do it !!!)
Yet fundamentalist preachers do weddings all the time. Strange.
There are a few other problems in the biblical view of marriage (only one of these is defended at great length at the Family Research Council website).
See, there are multiple types of marriage authorized in the "Bible". One of the interesting ones is detailed in Deuteronomy 22:28.
28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
There are others. The book of Judges, Chapter 19, has a long story about the responsibilities of concubines. You can have a wife and a Ho, and if the Ho is a disappointment you can chop her into smaller pieces and send the dismembered whore parts all over Israel. Look it up.
Here's a helpful chart for every man who doesn't have the spiritual strength to remain celibate and single, and who wishes to sin by marrying a woman.
Paul was the last "divinely inspired" person to write on this issue. He said don't get married. To anybody.
I still don't understand why the Family Research Council is so opposed to gay marriage and not all the other kinds.
Here are 6 things that various ConservaPundits think that Ron Paul has to explain before getting any more traction in the (snicker) Party Of Small Government.
•The “disaster” of Ronald Reagan’s conservative agenda
•Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional
•American drug laws are designed to fund rogue governments, CIA programs
•U.S. foreign policy “significantly contributed” to 9/11 attacks
•Returning white supremacist donation is “pandering”
I had an interesting conversation today with a new employee. He's 55 years old, works in another department, and he mentioned that he really felt grateful to have a job with us since many companies are no longer willing to take a chance on a 55 year old.
The guy has plenty of experience, and probably has great references and credentials.
So why wouldn't other companies take a chance on him?
It's because if he doesn't work out and he has to be fired, he can sue his employer for age discrimination.
Doh !
In my previous job, I hired, trained and promoted enough gays to staff the Disneyworld parade. But the powers-that-be got nervous. Very nervous. I eventually got sat down and told about the realities of Civil Rights law, and that I might want to take it easy on hiring those fine folks. Lots of lawsuits over minority firings were in the works. (Comic episode: I'm ashamed that I actually tried to comply with this. I promoted 3 consecutive people who came out of the closet 15 minutes after I promoted them. Ha ! I hope you're out there reading this, Betsy Batchelder.)
Do you think that maybe, just maybe, more companies would promote more racial minorites to better positions if the companies couldn't be sued for changing their minds later on????
If I decide to stop giving money to Joe's Plumbing Service and start purchasing the same service from Bill's Plumbing Service, do I have to prove that I didn't do so because of Joe's age, race, weight, sexual orientation, religion, voting record, or attitudes toward dachshund ownership? No. That's why excellent plumbing services owned by old, black, fat, gay, Mormon, Libertarian dachshund owners are likely to stay in business just as long as excellent plumbing services owned by young, Hispanic,healthy, straight, Presbyterian, Democrat cat owners. Customers aren't punished if they take a chance on a minority employee and change their minds later. (And if you hire a plumber, you are an employer. The plumber is your employee. Please hurry up and wrap your head around that concept !!)
Purchasing labor and effort should be just like purchasing pizzas or lug nuts.
If I decide to switch from Kroger to Wal-Mart, I don't have to fill out any paperwork. I just purchase goods and services from Wal-Mart. Same thing for the people who replace my roof after every hailstorm. I don't think I've ever used the same people twice. I probably change my mind every time, and it's none of Harry Reid and John Boehner's business.
Civil Rights law doesn't apply to those situations, thank God. It only applies to certain labor agreements.
If you ever allow yourself to be placed in a protected category by the government, you might be in big, big trouble. There is a good chance that The Law Of Unintended Consequences is going to kick you very hard. Good luck.
There will come a time when every man, woman and child will have to answer this question: Will you stand with The Drummers of the Occupy Wall Street Movement?
Here's an email from the so-called Occupy Wall Street "movement", outlining their strategy to silence the voices of the people. OWS is over after Tuesday:
Friends, mediation with the drummers has been called off. It has gone on for more than 2 weeks and it has reached a dead end. The drummers formed a working group called Pulse and agreed to 2 hrs/day at times during the mediation, and more recently that changed to 4 hrs/day. It’s my feeling that we may have a fighting chance with the community board if we could indeed limit drumming and loud instrumentation to 12-2 PM and 4-6 PM, however that isn’t what’s happening.
Last night the drumming was near continuous until 10:30 PM at night. Today it began again at 11 AM. The drummers are fighting among themselves, there is no cohesive group. There is one assemblage called Pulse that organized most of the drummers into a group and went to GA for formal recognition and with a proposal…
At this point we have lost the support of allies in the Community Board and the state senator and city electeds who have been fighting the city to stave off our eviction, get us toilets, etc. On Tuesday there is a Community Board vote, which will be packed with media cameras and community members with real grievances. We have sadly demonstrated to them that we are unable to collectively 1) keep our space and surrounding areas clean and sanitary, 2) keep the park safe, 3) deal with internal conflict and enforce the Good Neighbor Policy that was passed by the General Assembly…
In the meantime, there are other drummers who refuse to acknowledge OWS or the GA as a body they are interested in, and these drummers show up on site when they fell like it and drum when they feel like it. Over the weekend, it was for 10 or 11 hours straight, until late night.
So in the meantime, while we are grateful for the negotiations and positive relations with Pulse, we recognize that the issue of whether we’re evicted over drumming or not remains. For that reason we are asking for people to show up during quiet hour shifts, to ensure that drumming does not start....
And from one of the other messages, here are some Wall Street sympathizing pigs, enemies of The People, calling for more pawns to enforce the whims of the non-rhythmic, reactionary agenda:
We’re in serious need of bodies here. The drumming will happen daily from 12-2 and 4-6pm, that’s OK. But that means that we need folks in these shifts:
2-4 PM: people here to make sure drumming doesn’t start
5:45–8 PM: ppl here to make sure drumming stops at 6 PM sharp and doesn’t start again
8–10 PM: ppl here to make sure drumming doesn’t start
This is an all-call. Really really need help, tonight. There are some fabulous drummers here who have been in mediation with OWS and the community board for weeks. There are a small handful of drummers who have been violent, agro, and committed to playing as loud as they can, for as long as they can (until 11 PM this weekend).
Tomorrow night is the community board meeting, they are logging when they hear drumming and keeping a record. If we can show that we’ve made progress in implementing the Good Neighbor Policy that limits drumming then they won’t call for our eviction (they in fact have been bending over backwards to support and defend us). If we can’t get support here tonight at 6pm, or tomorrow, then we are facing an eviction vote at tomrorow’s meeting, in front of all the cameras, and we lose the electeds and allies who’ve gone to bat for us.
This is a final ditch effort as it’s been weeks of false promises and failed enforcement, so we may be close to the end of OWS over this issue this week, but we have a fighting chance!
Unfortunately there is one individual who is NOT a drummer but who claims to speak for the drummers who has been a deeply disruptive force, attacking the drumming rep during the GA and derailing his proposal, and disrupting the community board meeting, as well as the OWS community relations meeting. She has also created strife and divisions within the POC caucus, calling many members who are not ‘on her side’ “Uncle Tom”, “the 1%”, “Barbie” “not Palestinian enough” “Wall Street politicians” “not black enough” “sell-outs”, etc. People have been documenting her disruptions, and her campaign of misinformation, and instigations. She also has a documented history online of defamatory, divisive and disruptive behavior within the LGBT (esp. transgender) communities. Her disruptions have made it hard to have constructive conversations and productive resolutions to conflicts in a variety of forums in the past several days.
DRUMMERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE ! YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS !!!
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" - George Bernard Shaw
Mother Jones magazine recently took Ron Paul to task for being too extreme. (As if there's a painless and moderate way to get out from under a 14 trillion dollar debt.)
Here are Dr. Paul's beliefs that made Mother Jones run for the smelling salts, along with additional commentary on my part.
1. Eviscerate Entitlements: Believes that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are unconstitutional, and has compared the failure of federal courts to strike them down to the courts' failure to abolish slavery in the 19th century.
People of good will can indeed argue that the constitution's General Welfare clause gives Congress enough wiggle room to collect their party money via Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid contributions. And all of those funds will be out of money by the time I retire. The constitutionality of those programs is irrelevant. Our government will never, ever use the money responsibly, and the contributions to those funds went to other programs ages ago. This one is irrelevant, and the sooner I'm allowed to put my own money into my own retirement fund, the better off I'll be. The sooner you can do the same for yourself, the better off you'll be. It takes a lot of humility to admit that I have no idea what is best for you. I wish that our Washington Lords and Masters felt the same way. This one is a moot point.
2. Lay Off Half His Cabinet: Wants to abolish half of all federal agencies, including the departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Labor.
Ok, let's beat hook the winch and the chain hoist up to this dead horse and drag it out of the bushes for another beating.
Since its founding, the Department of Education has almost doubled education expenses and test scores haven't budged.
Since its founding (to decrease our dependence on foreign oil) the Department of Energy has spent billions and our foreign oil purchase percentage is within 1% of where they started.
The Department of Agriculture gives subsidies to some of the wealthiest people in the nation. They also support ethanol subsidies. For this alone, their building should be nuked.
If the Department of Commerce were to cease their endless quotas, tariffs, protectionism, kickbacks and allotments and let us have a more frictionless economy, we just might be able to get out of this recession. But no. They've got to do something. Why does anyone need an 800 page Free Trade Agreement? Why not just say "Fort Worth can trade freely with Dallas". "Oklahoma can trade freely with Florida". And last but not least, "You can trade freely with Canada". We wouldn't need to take in so much in import duties if we didn't have to support these unnecessary a-holes. I occasionally have to get things done via companies that are afflicted with Teamster's Union members. Screw the Department of Labor, and all that they stand for. If your boss promised you X, but didn't give it to you, take him to court. If your boss had faulty equipment that took off one of your fingers, take her to court and sue her until she glows. It's that simple.
If we could get the CIA on a shorter leash, we wouldn't need a Department Of Homeland Security. If we could get our troops out of Germany, Korea, Japan, and the Middle East, and bring 'em back to the house, we wouldn't need a Department Of Homeland Security. We could cut troop levels in half, and still not be able to see the beach because of all the troops defending our borders. Ok, imagine you won $100 million in the lottery, and you wanted to give it away to good, helpful institutions. Make your list of your top 20. Did you include the Department Of Health And Human Services? Good. Nobody else would either, including Ron Paul, or whoever wrote this tripe for Mother Jones.
3. Enable State Extremism: Would let states set their own policies on abortion, gay marriage, prayer in school, and most other issues.
It's called States' Rights. If a state wants to legalize gay marriage, abortion, etc., the state should be allowed to do so. Gays and lesbians could be married in those states. Women wanting an abortion could travel to those states. Before long, those states would have an advantage that others did not. The alternative is having the heavy hand of Washington oversee everything, with a one-size-fits-all policy.
4. Protect Sexual Predators' Privacy: Voted against requiring operators of wi-fi networks who discover the transmission of child porn and other forms online sex predation to report it to the government.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including "obscene" cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000.
That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection.
Most wi-fi providers have other things to do. I don't want to spy on my neighbors. I can also promise you that my definition of "obscene" doesn't match yours. And then there's the 4th Amendment:
5. Rescind the Bin Laden Raid: Instead of authorizing the Navy Seals to take him out, President Paul would have sought Pakistan's cooperation to arrest him.
Would that have worked? Who knows. But our potential Paki enemies would be a lot less pissed if we had given Dr. Paul's method a try. How would you feel if a group of VietNamese invaded D.C. with a helicopter raid and took out Henry Kissinger?
6. Simplify the Census: The questions posed by the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey, which collects demographics data such as age, race, and income, are "both ludicrous and insulting," Paul says.
True. The race questions are often used to reenforce tribalism. They don't need to know anything but your name and address.
7. Let the Oldest Profession Be: Paul wants to legalize prostitution at the federal level.
I believe you can find other instances where he says its a States' Rights issue. There's something funny about these people....
....enforcing a ban on whoring.
8. Legalize All Drugs: Including cocaine and heroin.
Yes !! And if we do, are you going to suddenly start doing coke and heroin? I'm not. I hope you don't. But it'll end almost all of our problems on the Texas/Mexico border, they way the end of alcohol prohibition ended our problems on the Canadian border in the 1920's. Which monopolies do you want to preserve for the Drug Lords of Mexico and Afghanistan?
9. Keep Monopolies Intact: Opposes federal antitrust legislation, calling it "much more harmful than helpful." Thinks that monopolies can be controlled by protecting "the concept of the voluntary contract."
Yep. Can anyone name a true monopoly that has existed without help from Uncle Sugar?
10. Lay Off Ben Bernanke: Would abolish the Federal Reserve and revert to use of currencies that are backed by hard assets such as gold.
And speaking of monopolies that answer to no one, here's what The Fed has done to our money supply. Folks, prices aren't going up because of weather, China, India, famine, or Global Warming/Cooling/Climate Disruption. Dollars are less scarce. Therefore it takes more of them to swap for something else.
11. Stop Policing the Environment: Believes that climate change is no big deal and the Environmental Protection Agency is unnecessary. Most environmental problems can be addressed by enforcing private-property rights. Paul also thinks that interstate issues such as air pollution are best dealt with through compacts between states.
Yep. The EPA is a jobs program.
12. Not Do Anything, but Still...: Would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it was a "massive violation of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of a free society."
This is true. I discriminate. You discriminate. There are some people that I won't allow into my house or my truck. There are others that I welcome. A business has the right to do this also. But if you don't allow people in because they're black, gay, coneheaded, hispanic, or green, I'm not going to shop at your business. Lots of other people will follow suit. The market works, and is more efficient that setting up a feast for lawyers.
13. Let Markets Care for the Disabled: "The ADA should have never been passed," Paul says. The treatment of the handicapped should be determined by the free market.
Has the percentage of handicapped people in the workplace gone up or down since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act? Google it. (Hint: It's gone down. Government regulations screw up the best intentions, without fail.)
14. First, Do Harm: Wants to end birthright citizenship. Believes that emergency rooms should have the right to turn away illegal immigrants.
It's called "Birth Tourism". It's a huge problem as long as we have a welfare state. Have your kid on this side of the border, and your kid is an American. End the welfare state, and its no problem. Go here to join the Facebook group called "Ron Paul Supporters For Open Borders".
15. Diss Mother Teresa: Voted against giving her the Congressional Gold Medal. Has argued that the medal, which costs $30,000, is too expensive.
When time permits, read "The Missionary Position", Christopher Hitchens' devastating attack on the life and works of Mother Teresa. The expense is the least of the problems.
************************
Those are Ron Paul's positions that scare the bejeebers out of Mother Jones magazine. What's funny is that getting out of our current mess is going to require people who make Ron Paul look moderate. Hope this helped ! Have a good Memorial Day !!!
As usual, Radley Balko has the best perspective on the events of the last couple of days:
In The Looming Tower, the Pulitzer-winning history of al-Qaeda and the road to 9/11, author Lawrence Wright lays out how Osama bin Laden’s motivation for the attacks that he planned in the 1990s, and then the September 11 attacks, was to draw the U.S. and the West into a prolonged war—an actual war in Afghanistan, and a broader global war with Islam.
Osama got both. And we gave him a prolonged war in Iraq to boot. By the end of Obama’s first term, we’ll probably top 6,000 dead U.S. troops in those two wars, along with hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans. The cost for both wars is also now well over $1 trillion.
We have also fundamentally altered who we are. A partial, off-the-top-of-my-head list of how we’ve changed since September 11 . . .
We’ve sent terrorist suspects to “black sites” to be detained without trial and tortured.
We’ve turned terrorist suspects over to other regimes, knowing that they’d be tortured.
In those cases when our government later learned it got the wrong guy, federal officials not only refused to apologize or compensate him, they went to court to argue he should be barred from using our courts to seek justice, and that the details of his abduction, torture, and detainment should be kept secret.
We’ve abducted and imprisoned dozens, perhaps hundreds of men in Guantanamo who turned out to have been innocent. Again, the government felt no obligation to do right by them.
The government launched a multimillion dollar ad campaign implying that people who smoke marijuana are complicit in the murder of nearly 3,000 of their fellow citizens.
The government illegally spied and eavesdropped on thousands of American citizens.
Presidents from both of the two major political parties have claimed the power to detain suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, based solely on the president’s designation of them as an “enemy combatant,” essentially making the president prosecutor, judge, and jury. (I’d also argue that the treatment of someone like Bradley Manning wouldn’t have been tolerated before September 11.)
The current president has also claimed the power to execute U.S. citizens, off the battlefield, without a trial, and to prevent anyone from knowing about it after the fact.
The Congress approved, the president signed, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a broadly written law making it a crime to advocate for any organization the government deems sympathetic to terrorism. This includes challenging the “terrorist” designation in the first place.
Flying in America now means enduring a humiliating and hassling ritual that does little if anything to actually make flying any safer. Every time the government fails to catch an attempt at terrorism, it punishes the public for its failure by adding to the ritual.
American Muslims, a heartening story of success and assimilation, are now harassed and denigrated for merely trying to build houses of worship.
Without a warrant, the government can search and seize indefinitely the laptops and other personal electronic devices of anyone entering the country.
The Department of Homeland Security now gives terrorism-fighting grants for local police departments across the country to purchase military equipment, such as armored personnel carriers, which is then used against U.S. citizens, mostly to serve drug warrants.
Hit the link at the top to read the rest of the piece. It's excellent.
Rights belong to individuals, not groups; they derive from our nature and can neither be granted nor taken away by government.
All peaceful, voluntary economic and social associations are permitted; consent is the basis of the social and economic order.
Justly acquired property is privately owned by individuals and voluntary groups, and this ownership cannot be arbitrarily voided by governments.
Government may not redistribute private wealth or grant special privileges to any individual or group.
Individuals are responsible for their own actions; government cannot and should not protect us from ourselves.
Government may not claim the monopoly over a people's money and governments must never engage in official counterfeiting, even in the name of macroeconomic stability.
Aggressive wars, even when called preventative, and even when they pertain only to trade relations, are forbidden.
Jury nullification, that is, the right of jurors to judge the law as well as the facts, is a right of the people and the courtroom norm.
All forms of involuntary servitude are prohibited, not only slavery but also conscription, forced association, and forced welfare distribution.
Government must obey the law that it expects other people to obey and thereby must never use force to mold behavior, manipulate social outcomes, manage the economy, or tell other countries how to behave.
Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, was 2010's Person Of The Year for this website.
He achieved this by outlawing the Kindle ebook readers as a substitute for college textbooks. (They discriminate against the blind. Swear to God, that's the argument he used.)
Well, Perez is back in action, going for back-to-back trophies.
A middle-school math teacher who happens to be a Muslim asked for three weeks off work so she could make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
As she had only worked for the district for nine months, and the time off would've disrupted the end of semester exam schedule. The teacher, Safoorah Khan, was the school's only math teacher.
Khan said to hell with it, I'm going to Mecca.
Ok, a brief digression here....Is there any other group you would've suspected of this type behavior other than government employees? Just wondering....
Justice Department lawyers examined the same set of facts and reached a different conclusion: that the school district’s decision amounted to outright discrimination against Khan. They filed an unusual lawsuit, accusing the district of violating her civil rights by forcing her to choose between her job and her faith.
Now I have to confess something. I, too, have made people choose between their jobs and their superstitions. For about a year and a half, I ran a chain of bookstore/coffee bars at D/FW airport. One of them was a total mess. I went in one morning and the line of customers was out the freakin' door. There was only one employee working the register, making the cappuccinos, and ringing up books. Customers were pissed.
I asked the employee where (I'm making up names here) Raffi and Muhammad were. She said they were in the back room. I helped her work the line of customers down to a manageable level, and then stomped into the back room.
Raffi and Muhammad were kneeling on rugs in the back room with their noses pointed toward Mecca and their asses pointed toward Lubbock, Texas.
"WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU ****ING IDIOTS DOING?" I said politely. "We've had customers out the door."
Raffi and Muhammad explained that it was prayer time. I explained that they could talk to Allah during their lunch break. They disagreed. I explained that I was purchasing their time and effort, and that other people were willing to sell me their time and effort, people who might not need to shut down work to commune with The Prophet.
I made them choose between their faith and their jobs.
Was I wrong?
Should I have made accomodations for them? Brought other employees into the airport for 20-minute shifts to accomodate Raffi and Muhammad's spiritual requirements?
Anyway, Thomas Perez has not yet made his entrance into this story. Sorry for the digression. Here he comes....
“It sounds like a very dubious judgment and a real legal reach,” said Michael B. Mukasey, who was attorney general in the George W. Bush administration. “The upper reaches of the Justice Department should be calling people to account for this.”
His successors in the Obama administration counter that they are upholding a sacred principle: the right of every American to be free of religious bias in the workplace. “This was a profoundly personal request by a person of faith,” said Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for civil rights, who compared the case to protecting “the religious liberty that our forefathers came to this country for.”
You gotta love him.
I believe that one of the other liberties that our forefathers came here for was the liberty to employ people who can work through a rush hour without stopping to plant their foreheads on D/FW Airport concrete for 20 minutes. But I'm a minority opinion more and more these days.
Perez denied any political motive in the Berkeley lawsuit, saying it was pursued in part to fight “a real head wind of intolerance against Muslim communities.” People in the rapidly growing Muslim community in Chicago’s western suburbs praised the Justice Department’s involvement.
He's lying. See the next paragraph in the article.
“It rings the bell of justice that they will fight for a Muslim wanting to perform a religious act,” said Shaykh Abdool Rahman Khan, resident scholar at the Islamic Foundation mosque near Berkeley. “That certainly can win the hearts of many people in the Muslim world.”
I didn't think that was what our justice department should be up to, but there you have it.
Although the Justice Department, including during the Bush administration, and private plaintiffs have filed civil rights lawsuits on religious grounds, they have tended to be over issues such as whether employees can take off on the Sabbath or wear religious head coverings.
Cases involving the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, or hajj, are exceedingly rare, said Christina Abraham, civil rights director for the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
Sorry for the lack of top-quality posts for the last two weeks. We're trying to open a new warehouse, and are violating the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian sabbaths while doing so. Don't bother asking for a job unless you are willing to occasionally work on all of them.
The standards for Person Of The Year were put in place a couple of weeks ago. The ballots have been counted. The auditors have verified the decision.
Because of the ghastly nature of The Year Of Our Lord 2010, necessary attributes of POTY2010 will include:
1) POTY2010 must be a government employee, or someone receiving taxpayer money. This opens up the field to almost all of us.
2) Since "Doing Harm While Claiming To Help" was the story of 2010, the POTY2010 winner must be someone who did significant economic or physical harm to a significant number of people.
3) All POTY2010 nominees, in striving for the prize, can gain style points with politically correct justifications for the harm that they have done.
4) Since 2010 was dominated by rent-seeking, subsidy-hogging, quota-queening and stimulus-stalking, the POTY2010 must necessarily be a Prince or Princess Of Protectionism. No obvious quid pro quo is necessary, but a little evidence of mutual backscratching helps the contestant.
5) Nominees lose style points by going too far. The Omnibus Spending Bill of a few weeks ago, for instance, was so outrageous that even a few Democrats were disturbed by it. The POTY2010, on the other hand, must be a master of subtlety, mis-direction, and spin-doctoring, and show that he understands the exact degree to which we are a nation of compliant sheep.
6) POTY2010 is all about accomplishing a lot of harm with limited authority and resources, but remaining within the boundaries of polite society. Therefore, presidents, dictators, generals, plutocrats and serial-killers aren't eligible. When the POTY2010 dies, goes to Hell, and approaches The Throne Of The Beast, Satan should embrace the winner, take his hand, and say "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, you have been faithful with a few things; I will give you many things."
7) You don't have to be an economic idiot to win POTY, but it helps.
The envelope, please....
Person Of The Year for 2010 is Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division !
Byron York has the story. Tom Perez, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division....now has completely severed all links between his lefty-ideological, artificially constructed world and the normal realms of common sense and logic. Several colleges wanted to institute a voluntary program to use the Kindle book-reading device for its class texts. Repeat: VOLUNTARY. But Kindle didn't have voice-activation gizmos (or somesuch) for the blind. Reports York: "The Civil Rights Division informed the schools they were under investigation. In subsequent talks, the Justice Department demanded the universities stop distributing the Kindle; if blind students couldn't use the device, then nobody could."
Yeah. Outlawing college textbooks on the Kindle because the Kindle discriminates against the blind? That's brilliant. Statists across the land probably removed their hats to Mr. Perez as a gesture of respect.
This is lunacy. Sheer lunacy. How does it hurt a blind student one iota if his normally sighted classmates use Kindle? Does that keep a blind student from getting the texts braille or another blind-friendly format? No. Does that do a single smidgen of a fraction of a hemi-demi-semi-quaver to violate the civil rights of the blind person? Of course not. No, no, and no, no, no, no. The educational opportunities and/or experiences of blind students would be affected in no way at all if other students use Kindle
So, let's look and see if Mr. Perez met the standards required of POTY2010.
1) Yes, Perez is a government employee. According to Wikipedia, he has spent his adult life working in government or teaching in government schools. By currently popular standards, these are excellent credentials for making me pay far, far, far more than I should for my daughter's damn college textbooks.
2) Has he done significant harm while claiming to help? Something like 30% of us now attend college. Almost all of us now attend elementary school, middle school, or high school. Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, has ensured that we will continue to purchase expensive hard copies of required textbooks because THE ELECTRONIC VERSIONS DISCRIMINATE AGAINST THE BLIND !!!! Brilliant. Absolutely freakin' brilliant !!!
3) Ok, how is this for a politically correct justification for outlawing electronic books that discriminate against the blind.....
"Advancing technology is systematically changing the way universities approach education, but we must be sure that emerging technologies offer individuals with disabilities the same opportunities as other students," Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez said in a statement. "These agreements underscore the importance of full and equal educational opportunities for everyone."
Well done, sir. Well done.
4) The Kindle is quite possibly the dominant nightmare for the academic publishing industry. There is no evidence of a quid pro quo between the Justice Department and publishing companies. None. None at all. But when Thomas Perez and I arrive in Hell, all things will be known. And if Thomas Perez and the DOJ weren't under pressure from publishing companies to arrive at this decision, I will kiss his ass on the steps to Satan's throne, and give him 30 minutes beforehand to draw a crowd.
Rational humans don't come up with stuff this stupid unless there's a lot of money at stake.
5) Mr. Perez didn't go too far. Most people haven't heard of him. A few parents and students are upset. The people at Kindle are probably upset. Overall, though, there hasn't been a populist uprising. Are we scared the Perez will outlaw iPods on campus because they discriminate against the deaf ?
6) Compared to an Obama, Bush, Kim Jong-iL, or Bernie Madoff, Thomas Perez is small potatoes. But he's done a lot of harm with the authority he has, and that's what counts.
7) And the final qualification, economic lunacy.... The market generally solves problems because of demand, not be decree. But naw, Thomas Perez says "screw that". Here's Byron York again:
Some officials at the schools were puzzled. Given the speed of technological development and the reality of competition among technology companies -- Apple products were already fully text-to-speech capable -- wasn't this a problem the market would solve?
That's not Perez's way. To him, keeping the Kindle out of sighted students' hands underscored "the importance of full and equal educational opportunities for everyone."
In early 2010, after most of the courses were over, the Justice Department reached agreement with the schools, and the federation settled with Arizona State. The schools denied violating the ADA but agreed that until the Kindle was fully accessible, nobody would use it.
One obvious solution to the problem, of course, was to fix the Kindle. Early on, Amazon told federation officials it would apply text-to-speech technology to the Kindle's menu and function keys. And sure enough, last week the company announced a new generation of Kindles that are fully accessible to the blind. While the Justice Department was making demands, and Perez was making speeches, the market was working.
But as Amazon was unveiling the new Kindle last week, Perez was sending a letter to educators warning them they must use technology "in a manner that is permissible under federal law."
Now, Perez is at work on a far bigger project, one that could eventually declare the Internet a "public accommodation" under the ADA. That could result in a raft of new Justice Department regulations for disabled access to all sorts of Web sites.
Of course, most Web access problems are already being solved by the market, but that won't stop the Justice Department's zealous civil rights enforcer.
That wraps it up. Thomas Perez meets every qualification in a way that lesser Nannies can only envy. He is our winner !
The picture of the winner came from here. The photoshop of voluntary blindness came from here.
"In order to prevent democracy from becoming a tyranny over minorities, individual rights must supersede all democratic voting and all regulations. Rights must come first. Laws should come second, and only to protect those rights; nothing more." - Stuart K. Hayashi
The pic of the wolf in sheep's clothing came from here. It doesn't matter how nice the words Democracy, Majority Rule, or Nation Of Laws sound. If Democracy interferes with anyone's rights, it becomes Tyranny.
Here's a quick listing of all the things I can quickly think of that are more dangerous than a mosque a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center site. IMHO, all of these are a much greater threat to your physical and economic well-being than the Ground Zero Wedge Issue.
1. Your Friendly Neighborhood Swat Team - They're starting to show up at the wrong houses, based on bad info, for ridiculous reasons. Then if you're lucky the worst thing they do is shoot your dogs.
2. Democrats - Their Senators and Representatives want to get between you and your doctor with ObamaCare. They want more of your money to give to their constituents.
3. Republicans - Their Senators and Representatives have no intention of repealing ObamaCare, otherwise we would have seen a "Contract With America" campaign based on doing so. They want more of your money to give to their constituents.
4. Saudi Arabia - To name just one. Almost all of the 9-11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia. After 9-11, we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan.
5. American military bases - They're costing us a fortune, advocates claim that they're for defensive purposes on American soil, and yet if a disgruntled Major wants to go on a shooting spree in the middle of one of them, nobody can find a gun to use in self-defense. That's a great use of your money, isn't it? Plus we have soldiers in 135 other countries. How would you feel about a Mexican military base in the middle of Dallas? Would it irritate you? Would it make you want to take up arms against the Mexican invader?
6. The Federal Reserve - The Dems and Republicans are on a spending spree like none other the world has ever seen. How are we going to pay for it? We're going to print our way out of debt. Your dollars are about to be worth a quarter. Unfortunately, this is hard to understand and is boring. Muslims in Manhattan are easy to see, and they typically dress differently. Great target for politicians who need a distraction.
7. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - They're still getting people into houses that they can't afford, with almost no down payment required. But it's ok if they default. Fannie and Freddie are there to step in and make it all ok between the borrower and the bank. (Using your money, of course.)
8. Our insane drug prohibition laws - The Texas/Mexico border is a very dangerous place because Mexican drug cartels are fighting each other for control of the drug corridor. Our border with Canada, however, is perfectly safe. But back during the era of alcohol prohibition, the U.S./Canada border was a very dangerous place because bootleggers were fighting each other for control of the moonshine corridor. Prohibition equals violence.
9. The other million or so Mosques, meeting rooms, houses and apartments within 20 miles of Ground Zero - There are already 9 Mosques in Manhattan, and I can promise you that the CIA and FBI have them infested with more bugs than the Iraqi embassy. If the bad guys are going to meet someplace to plot another attack on the U.S., it ain't going to be at the Ground Zero Mosque.
10. People who don't understand Liberty - Free Speech, Gun Rights, Freedom Of Assembly, and Property Rights aren't things that we vote on. They are things that we protect. We shouldn't even have to think about it. If our Muslim friends want to show up on their property (a couple of blocks from the World Trade Center site) so they can study the writings and ravings of an illiterate pedophile, they should be allowed to do so.
From the Washington Post, here's something else for your "Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss" file:
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. It does not include, the lawyers hasten to point out, the "content" of e-mail or other Internet communication.
But what officials portray as a technical clarification designed to remedy a legal ambiguity strikes industry lawyers and privacy advocates as an expansion of the power the government wields through so-called national security letters. These missives, which can be issued by an FBI field office on its own authority, require the recipient to provide the requested information and to keep the request secret. They are the mechanism the government would use to obtain the electronic records.
I don't know about you, but to me this sounds like a 4th Amendment violation.
Your communications, whether written (papers) or online (effects) are not Barack Obama's business, and he cannot have access to those communications without a court order.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
It really is that simple.
No one will ever convince me that Barack Obama was a constitutional law professor.
Freakin' fascist. Pic came from a post-Blownstar event. I like houses that have the 4th Amendment in a frame on the wall.
Here's John Stossel, weighing in on how to fight bigotry without government:
"Backwards and hateful ideas ... oust John Stossel," said Colorofchange.org.
In a newspaper, the organization went on:
"It's time that FOX drop Stossel ... we'll go directly after the network with a public campaign unlike anything we've pursued to date."
Media Matters joined in: "By airing Stossel's repugnant comments, Fox legitimizes his indefensible position."
What "indefensible" position did I take?
I said this: "Private businesses ought to get to discriminate. I won't ever go to a place that's racist, and I will tell everybody else not to, and I'll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist."
Read that carefully: I condemned racism. I said I'd speak out against and boycott a racist's business. But to some people, I committed heresy. I failed to accept the entire catechism. I didn't say that we need government to fight racism and prohibit racist policies in private establishments.
For this, they demand that I be fired.
This controversy started when Rand Paul, who had just won a senatorial primary, told TV talker Rachel Maddow that the part of the Civil Rights Act that bans discrimination by private business is improper interference with property owners' rights. He, too, condemned racism.
But the chattering class's reaction to Paul's statements must have made him uncomfortable. The next day, he issued a statement saying that he would have voted for the entire act because federal intervention was needed.
Maybe. At the time, racism was so pervasive that such an intrusive law may have been a good thing. But, as a libertarian, I say: Individuals should be surrounded by a sphere of privacy where government does not intrude. Part of the Civil Rights Act violates freedom of association. That's why I told Fox's Megyn Kelly, "It's time now to repeal that part of the law."
You can't say that in America?
America's fundamental political philosophy has deteriorated quite a bit if we can't distinguish between government and private conduct. I enthusiastically support the parts of the civil rights act that struck down Jim Crow laws, which required segregation in government facilities, mass transit, and sometimes in private restaurants and hotels. Jim Crow was evil. It had no place in America.
Racist policies in private restaurants are also evil, but they do not involve force. Government is force, so it should not be used to combat nonviolent racism on private property, even property open to the public.
I just don't trust government to decide what discrimination is acceptable. Its clumsy fist cannot deter private nonviolent racism without stomping on the rights of individuals. Today, because of government antidiscrimination policy, all-women gyms are sued and forced to admit men, a gay softball team is told it may not reject bisexuals and a Christian wedding photographer is fined thousands of dollars for refusing to take photos of a homosexual wedding.
I'll say it again: Racial discrimination is bad. But we have ways besides government to end it. The free market often punishes racists. Today, a business that doesn't hire blacks loses customers and good employees. It will atrophy, while its more inclusive competitors thrive.
In the pre-1964 South, things were different. But even then, private forces worked against bigotry. White owners of railroads and streetcars objected to mandated segregation. Historian Jennifer Roback writes that in 1902 the Mobile Light and Railroad Company "flat out refused to enforce" Mobile, Alabama's segregation law.
In cities throughout the South, beginning in 1960, student-led sit-ins and boycotts peacefully shamed businesses into desegregating whites-only lunch counters. Those voluntary actions were the first steps in changing a rancid culture. If anything, Washington jumped on a bandwagon that was already rolling.
It wasn't free markets in the South that perpetuated racism. It was government colluding with private individuals (some in the KKK) to intimidate those who would have integrated.
It was private action that started challenging the racists, and it was succeeding—four years before the Civil Rights Act passed.
Government is a blunt instrument of violence that one day might do something you like but the next day will do something you abhor. Better to leave things to us—people—acting together privately.
Well said, Mr. Stossel. For those of you who aren't living and working out of Arizona hotels that don't carry the Fox Business Network, John Stossel can be seen on Thursday nights. Each installment is shown several times throughout the week. Easily the best libertarian program on the tube.
I'm going out to find someplace to fight racism sobriety. Y'all have a good night !
Within 48 hours, Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul has managed to 1) attack the now-venerated 1964 Civil Rights Act, and 2) defend the now-villainous British Petroleum Company.
Well, maybe he'll be more subtle in the future.
Here's one of the transcripts of what Paul did and didn't say, according to The Wall Street Journal:
"What I've always said is, I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would have--if I was alive at the time, I think--had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism," he said in response to a first question about the act.
"You would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater?" asked an interviewer.
"I think it's confusing in a lot of cases in what's actually in the Civil Rights Case (sic)," Paul replied. "A lot of things that were actually in the bill I'm actually in favor of. I'm in favor of--everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the Civil Rights--and indeed the truth is, I haven't read all through it, because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue on the campaign on whether I'm going to vote for the Civil Rights Act."
Here's his take on the public vs. private property portions of the act:
Paul explained that he backed the portion of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public places and institutions, but that he thinks private businesses should be permitted to discriminate by race.
"I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I'm all in favor of that," he said. "I don't like the idea of telling private business owners. . . ."
And then, in another interview:
Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?
Paul: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part--and this is the hard part about believing in freedom--is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example--you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things. . . . It's the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.
Paul has said elsewhere that his preference for ending segregation would be through boycotts, shaming, and other forms of peer pressure.
What Rand Paul should have said, of course, is that he loves, no, he actually adores the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its entirety, including the punctuation, and that he sleeps with a copy of it under his pillow.
That is the only sensible answer for a politician to give.
The distinction between "government" and "private" property is lost on most voters.
Private property owners are free to say "No shoes, no shirt, no service". Others have signs up that state that they reserve the right to refuse service for any reason.
If it is your castle, you really should be able to refuse entry to anyone you want to refuse: left-handers, Okies, blacks, whites, Palin supporters, or people who think To Kill A Mockingbird is overrated.
And the left-handers, Okies, blacks, whites, Palinites, and Harper Lee fans should be free to boycott your ass and encourage all their friends to do the same.
As far as the effectiveness of the CRA of '64 goes, my public school classes at A.W. James Elementary school in Drew, Mississippi, were de facto segregated until 1969.
My doctor's office in Merigold, Mississippi, had segregated waiting rooms (hello, Westerfields !) until the Doctor retired sometime in the mid-1970's.
What changed everything? Simple economics. Boycotts. Shaming. The same remedies that Paul (foolishly, but truthfully) proposed in his interviews (as if he could go back in time to '64, and vote as a two-year-old senator). People generally don't move to places that discriminate unfairly just for the hell of it. And they eventually stop shopping there.
What would have worked better for Paul would be to ignore the Bill's attacks on property rights and say "I support the goals of the Act, if not some of the wording. I especially support the provisions that ended the Democrat party's vile segregationist practices. When this bill came to Congress, there were Democrat politicians standing in the front doors of public schools and universities. Racist, Yellow-Dog Democrats were setting attack dogs loose on citizens who merely wanted to use public transportation that their taxes paid for."
Then remind the country that when the Act came up for a vote in '64, three-fourths of the "nay" votes in the House Of Representatives came from Democrats.
Remind the country that 80% of the "nay" votes in the Senate came from Democrats, and that those voting "nay" included Al Gore's Daddy, plus a former Ku Klux Klan Community Organizer named Robert Byrd, who, last I checked, is still a Democrat Senator representing the subsidy hawgs of West Virginia.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you don’t want to get rid of the EPA?
PAUL: No, the thing is is that drilling right now and the problem we’re having now is in international waters and I think there needs to be regulation of that and always has been regulation. What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, you know, “I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.” I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault. Instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen. I mean, we had a mining accident that was very tragic and I’ve met a lot of these miners and their families. They’re very brave people to do a dangerous job. But then we come in and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you believe that the regulation of BP was adequate?
PAUL: I don’t know exactly what the regulation of BP is. I think there’s hundreds of pages of regulation of drilling in the ocean and I think most of that’s justified. I think we’ll have to figure out from this accident, is there anything that could have beend one to prevent it? What can we do in the future to make sure that it doesn’t happen again? So, I think we use logic. We use objective facts. And yeah, we try to go forward. Nobody wants this to happen. I love the beautiful beaches down in the panhandle of Florida and nobody wants to see oil washing up on those white sand beaches.
All of that sound plenty vague to me, but if you pull the "shit happens" quotes out of context, and ignore the point he's trying to make about our Nutcase-In-Chief trying to demagogue the issue, you won't hear anything except a defense of BP.
I would still trust Rand Paul to protect the beaches of Kentucky.
As an officer in the Libertarian Party, I can't endorse any non-Libertarians, but I can give some advice.
Someone in Paul's campaign needs to go to the Louisville, Kentucky, Border's or Barnes & Noble, and get Dr. Paul a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals.
Then Dr. Paul needs to go to that Trappist Monastery in Kentucky, the one where Thomas Merton lived, and spend two weeks there, studying Alinsky's book, the playbook that the Statists have used since the day it was published.
When Paul leaves the monastery, he will perfectly understand what has just happened to his campaign. He will understand how to avoid those situations in the future. He will understand that the public cannot understand nuance or ambiguity. He will understand that whoever controls the narratives about the past will control the narratives about the future.
And maybe he'll never play into his opponents' hands again. He'll use every interview, every position statement, and every editorial to attack, attack, attack, even if the attack has nothing to do with the topic at hand. That's how the game is played.
