Peter Schiff wrote an article titled, “Why Not Another World War.” It’s actually an interesting article in which he explains how we all agree that World War II ended The Great Depression and sparked the greatest American economic trend, so why not have another? This Gulf War is too small to do the same thing again. Except, war sucks and has this annoying tendency to be deadly and break things — so let’s make it a great World Water Balloon War!

Go ahead and read the article; it’s short and entertaining. But, then at the end of it he takes a sharp turn into La-La Land.

After laying a good case for describing the World War as the biggest socialized employment program, evah, (major props to Schiff on this — most right-leaners usually berate the New Deal as being evil socialism and shout that it was the war that saved the country… and then conveniently ignore the fact that how the war saved the country was by creating government jobs for millions and spending truckloads of taxes on government programs known as weapons manufacturing), he explains how his proposed Fun War of the same scope of government spending wouldn’t work because the government couldn’t afford such a project like it did 70 years ago: We’re already too taxed and there’s no savings.

“Current tax burdens are now much higher than they were before the War, so raising taxes today would be much more difficult.”

(Keep that in mind for a moment.)

And again, I give Schiff a hand for observing:

“If all of this seems absurd, that’s because it is. War is a great way to destroy things, but it’s a terrible way to grow an economy.

What is often overlooked is that war creates hardship, and not just for those who endure the violence. Yes, US production increased during the Second World War, but very little of that was of use to anyone but soldiers. Consumers can’t use a bomber to take a family vacation.”

It amuses me when libertarians like Schiff and Marxists share the same opinion. The base of our modern capitalist economy has been the military industrial complex. Nearly half our taxes go to the Pentagon to help create metric craptonnes of ammunition and rockets and equipment that gets spent out in some foreign land, and in support of politics which makes sure we continue to have a reason to spend massive amount of natural resources and labor in sending stuff overseas to help kill people and get left there.

OK, so, war is bad. Got it. We’re on the same page. But what suggestion does Schiff have to revitalize the economy? Well, after spending paragraphs outlining a doomed-from-the-start Global Liquid-ular War, and then more to explain how we can’t afford it, his plan is explained in his final paragraph:

“What we need is more savings, more free enterprise, more production, and a return of American competitiveness in the global economy. Yes, we need Rosie the Riveter – but this time she has to work in the private sector making things that don’t explode. To do this, we need less government spending, not more.”

Why, of course! Let’s just do that! Here we go– oh, wait… How? See, I left my magic wand at the dry cleaners, and my Genie isn’t returning my calls.

Look, first of all, you, Schiff, already agreed that it was government spending that pulled us out of the Depression, so already we can establish that theoretically, yes, government spending can be an answer. What it gets spent on is important, and it’s better that it gets spent on infrastructure, for example, and not eternal war. But where is this magic savings, production, and private sector making-of-things going to come from? If it were as simple as saying, “Hey, let’s do that now,” it’d be done. But the problem of why Schiff’s hand-waving solution can’t work is the very reason we’re stuck in this economic melt-down in the first place:

High unemployment means less people with jobs to have money to spend on consumer goods, and lowering wages means less money for people to spend on consumer goods. The excuse of “We’re overtaxed!” is utter nonsense and here’s why:

U.S. citizens are already one of the lowest tax payers in the developed world.

(http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/background/numbers/international.cfm)

And yet, some of the most taxed countries have higher rates of general “happiness,” and higher standards of living on many criteria. Based on other examples around the world, there’s no reason why we in the U.S. couldn’t pay a little more in taxes. Most modern nations do pay more and are getting their money’s worth.

In fact, the current average tax rate for the average middle-income wage-earner is between 25% and 28%. During World War II, the lowest tax rate for anyone was 39% with middle-income tax rate in the 50% region. So where Schiff gets this idea that our current tax burden is already greater than it was for WWII and we couldn’t stand any more, I have no idea. Convenient since he provides no numbers or sources and just seems to pull “facts” out of his… hat.

But you know what, it’s not even necessary to raise taxes on the middle-class. There’s another group is not only not at any kind of breaking-point, but is so far away from the tax rate they were paying in the 40s and 50s that they can’t even see it from where they are: The top 1 to 5% of the wealthiest in the country. Back during WWII, the 5% of the nation who owned 80 to 90% of the nation’s wealth, were paying 80, 90, even 95% in taxes! Can you imagine? Now, guess what they’re paying today? 60%? 50%? Try around 35%. Mr. Schiff claims we’re already taxed to death, beyond WWII levels, and yet the people who own nearly all of the nation’s wealth are paying a third in taxes from what they were paying during WWII and throughout even the 50s!

Now, one might protest the idea of taxing the rich more. I mean, why should they have to pay more taxes? Just because they have more? Well, actually, yes. It’s as simple as that.

Take yourself, your family, everyone you know. It’s a safe bet that you and everyone you know earns less than $1 million a year or so, yes? If you’re earning a middle-class income of $50,000 a year, and 25% is going toward taxes, that’s $12,500. What if that increased by 10%? You’d be paying another $5,000 a year. In your budget, what would that mean? That’s your car payment, or mortgage payment. That’s eating out money for a year. Maybe have to take a part-time job. You would be immediately impacted.

If the top 1% wealthiest had to pay a measly 10% more on their $750,000 income, their 10% would be more than your entire annual income. Honestly, do you think a person making half, a quarter, a million dollars a year has to stick to a grocery budget really close? Has to consider whether they can afford daycare or not? Has to decide whether they can afford to go to Applebee’s this Friday? Yeah, the rich have more they can afford to lose, it is right that they should have a higher burden supporting the social services and infrastructure and military apparatus that they take advantage of to maintain and increase their wealth. As I already pointed out recently, the wealthy already aren’t even paying a fair share of burden off their wealth, much less are they burdened by taxes.

And let’s not forget, this is all assuming they’re paying the percent for their bracket — which they’re not! The wealthiest have tax loopholes, breaks, shelters, and strategies available to them to pay even less-to-no taxes than you or I have available to us. When we have to pay our 25 percent, we’re actually paying our 25%. When the wealthy are told to pay their 35% (remember, as opposed to the 91% they used to pay), their accountants and lawyers are getting them out of paying even that. (Tax law that, by the way, often get voted in by the poor and middle class who will never ever come close to being in the top even 20%, because the conservative mindset is deluded into thinking they will one day earn a quarter of a million a year, if they just work hard enough! So they vote against their own interests.)

There’s that other pesky problem to Schiff’s magic buy-stuff-so-stuff-can-be-made solution: unemployment and lowering wages. Despite what Republicans are spouting, that the unemployed are lazy and not looking for work (yeah, that $250 a week unemployment check is a king’s ransom!), there are more people looking for work than there are jobs. Do the math. But the more significant problem with the economy is even deeper and more entrenched. Labor wages are at best holding steady over the last 30 years while cost of living, cost of education, cost of debt, continues to increase. The value of the dollar for the average household is actually less every decade since the mid-60s (coincidently, the same period in which tax on the wealthy dropped precipitously and GOP-led deregulations and New Deal dismantling began. Odd timing, that.) Meanwhile, capital gains have increased, corporate profits increase, CEO compensations increase… In case you’re just now joining us, what’s going on here the last few decades, and fast and heavy since Reagan, is a destruction of the middle class and elevation of the rich back into a new Gilded Age.

“One of the major trends in income inequality that began in the 1980s was dramatic increases in executive compensation. From the 1980s on, compensation for the average American worker has barely kept pace with inflation, yet compensation for executives running the same companies at which worker’s pay has barely kept pace with inflation have seen their compensation levels increase by orders of magnitude.”
~ R.G. Price; source coming up…

(notice that Schiff wants more productivity, yet, GDP and other indicators of productivity in the U.S. show a constant increase already. Hmm, maybe something to do with labor getting less and less of the pie they are baking, maybe?)

Ever wonder why it was that after WWII, during the 50s, into the mid-60s, the average middle class family had only one working adult and still bought a car and a house and went of yearly vacations, sent their kids off to college, and did so without significant debt? What really has happened since then?

R.G. Price has an extensive, extensive, article explaining the beginning of the end of the middle class in the 60s, and the hammer-fisted pillaging of the middle class and Jaws of Life widening of the class divisions Reagan facilitated, in “How Reagan Sowed the Seeds of America’s Demise“. And his arguments are held together by copious (but easy to understand) charts and graphs and numbers and actual data, as opposed to the fantasy-land wishes of Invisible Market Hand libertarians like Schiff.

“In the 1980s Reagan talked about restoring America, yet his policies were designed to do the exact opposite economically, they were designed to undo the America that middle-class Americans had come to think of as the “good ole days” to which America would be restored. The America of the 1940s and 50s was an America of a strong central government, with a highly regulated economy, built through the extensive use of federal programs and massive federal subsidization of the white middle-class. And that is what it was really all about. “Restoring America” always meant “restoring white dominance”, yet it could never really be admitted that the white dominance of the 1940s-1960s was itself a product of government programs.”
~ Price

Well, his U.S. trial recently concluded. And during the trial it was shown the officers written testimony contradicted their oral testimony, they contradict each other, and witness testimony confirmed that Mr. Watts did not resist and never laid a hand on an officer.

So all is good and justice prevailed and the charges dropped, right?

This is Amerika; think again.

Mr. Watts was convicted of a felony and faces two years in federal prison in the U.S. … because he questioned the officer.

• Boing Boing: Peter Watts may serve two years for failing to promptly obey a customs officer

Even a juror after the trial has stated that the officers mishandled the situation and “committed offences” against Watts. But they determined that based on the letter of the law, questioning an officer constituted felony obstruction.

This isn’t about safety, it isn’t about security, it isn’t about the rule of law.

It’s about obedience.

Authoritarianism is a disease of the mind. It criminalizes the act of asking “why?” It is the obedience-sickness that turns good people into perpetrators and victims of atrocities great and small.

Sure, we think, in order to keep us safe and secure, some cops may go overboard now and then. It’s just bad apples. But these bad apples are sprouting up in many, many places performing various acts of brutality and abuse of power, and getting away with it. (See link on that page of “Classically Liberals” collection of documented police abuse.) What’s worse, though, is it doesn’t stop at the apples–here is a case in which a jury of peers, who have the ability to enact jury nullification in contrary to the letter of the law applied to the defendant, (and according to at least one juror, this would have been a good situation to use that right of the jury), but instead decided to uphold and support state abuse against someone who simply questioned authority.

When “peers” support the state in its abuses even when they recognize its illegitimacy, the whole barrel has become rotten.

Now that Democrat Obama (corporatist) is president, and Democrats control Congress (corporatists and oligarchs); just because the overtly fascist, corporatist, imperialistic, evil Bush regime is gone, doesn’t mean the threat of USSA, Amerika, is over.

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” – Thomas Jefferson

The Obama administration still has to repair a lot of erosion that has occurred to our civil liberties, for example: stopping the NSA from monitoring and recording all domestic phone and Internet usage…and it doesn’t look good that’s going to happen.

Another, recent display of how this country seems to have crossed over the line into an unstoppable slide toward fascism, to fight the war ‘gainst them ter’rists! is a recent New York Times story on how the Boy Scouts (Explorers) are encouraging and training your future Brown Shirts, er, Blackwater mercenaries, er, I mean, warriors ‘gainst terrahism.

Better than what I can say, check out these articles reacting to the story:

• A truly frightening story.
• Scouts training to fight immigrants and terrorists

I was a Boy Scout in the 80s, as the organization was being taken over by Christian fundamentalists, and becoming a tool of the Mormons. I did learn a lot as a scout, and I do have some great memories of it. Well, in Colorado most certainly, and in Missouri under one particular Scout Master…the following leaders my troop had were kind of scary racists who looked more like they’d be at home in an Idaho compound. But the best experiences I had I could have had without the Boy Scouts; what the BSA was mainly responsible for in my life was an attempt to instill worship of authoritarian power structures and a reverence for conformity. Yep, pure and simple.

BoingBoing has been following the issue of a new surge of British “fear everything” posters:

David Byrne’s snapshots of UK police posters.

London Police poster mashup (in which people have ‘shopped their own versions)

And my favorite so far:

Make your own paranoid British terrorism poster!

The fine print in that one’s dead-on.

(Whew! Finally, I can close those tabs off my browser!)

(For the Facebook users: This is a post from my blog getting auto-noted to Facebook, which cuts off any images or videos in the transfer.)

Wil Wheaton says, “Don’t be a dick!”

• “…or else we didn’t win anything at all.”

Wise words.

But on the other hand, they’re almost always complete bunk. Not to say there haven’t been grand conspiracies in the past: Military radiation testing on civilians, CIA selling crack, Watergate. But here’s the thing about conspiracies: they never stay secret. I think it’s supposed to be an old Sicilian saying, something like: “Two people can keep a secret if one of them is dead.”

Someone talks. Someone always talks. Documents are kept. Conspiracies become known, the bigger they are the more certain they’ll be exposed. And, unlike most fringe and popular but unfounded conspiracies, it won’t be some outside group of amateur conspiracy hunters who have all the answers but are frustratingly ignored by so-called scientists and experts, who expose the cover-ups. And the more impossible and absurd the scope of the conspiracy, the more likely the conspiracy is BS. Like 9/11, “Loose Change” khrap. For 9/11 to have been a government planned event, it would have required the cooperation of literally thousands of people.

Occam’s Razor here: What’s more probable? That thousands of military, police, firefighters, and civilians were involved in setting up and carrying out an event so huge and devastating that it would have required unimaginable about of planning, organization, timing, cooperation, and yet no one involved has come forward to say they were a part of it and become the most famous person in the world for exposing the greatest and worst conspiracy ever in the history of human civilization…. or, that several fundamental religious zealots took advantage of holes in air transportation security to fly some planes into buildings?

Like I said, conspiracies are entertaining; reality is often banal in its horrific simplicity.

Anyway,to the point: Here’s a recent news item that goshdarnit, sounds a lot to me like it could be a valid conspiracy-murder:

• Man who set up alternate email for White House dies in plane crash

A tipster close to the McCain campaign disclosed to VR in July that Mr. Connell’s life was in jeopardy and that Karl Rove had threatened him and his wife, Heather. VR’s attorney, Cliff Arnebeck, notified the United States Attorney General , Ohio law enforcement and the federal court about these threats and insisted that Mr. Connell be placed in protective custody. VR also told a close associate of Mr. Connell’s not to fly his plane because of another tip that the plane could be sabotaged. Mr. Connell, a very experienced pilot, has had to abandon at least two flights in the past two months because of suspicious problems with his plane. On December 18, 2008, Mr. Connell flew to a small airport outside of Washington DC to meet some people. It was on his return flight the next day that he crashed.

Now, here’s where critical thinking has to come in. For example, these tips…can they be independantly verified? More importantly, can they be proven to have come before the event? It’s simply amazing how much people just knew something, or state they predicted something, or had a clue to something…in hindsight after an event has happened. Cognitive bias is rife with this kind of post hoc misthinking.

And of course, there’s the reader’s own subjective bias. I, for example, would believe Rove, Cheney, many others in the Bush administration, would kill and eat babies if it meant massive quasi-fascist control of the free world. I don’t think much better of most politicians in general–the neo-cons just happen to be Hitlers in an ocean of SS. Am I more prone to confirmation bias and self-selecting evidence to fit my personal bias? Yep. Guilty as charged. We all are. It takes a lot of work to be fair and unbiased, and argueably, we never can be.

(Which, by the way, to go off on a tangent, the scientific method is vital to get at objective truths. Proper scientific methodology demands blind and double-blind testing to correct for bias, as well as repeated retesting and verification of results by other people. Science: it works, bitches.)

So, I’m going to watch this case of the killed Bush admin. I.T. guy and see what, if anything comes from it. But then, the co-called liberal media, the “4th Estate,” has been horrifically bad the last eight years at following up on and putting to task recent conspiracies, such as Valarie Plame and Scooter Libby/Cheney. And Congress has no interest in investigating Bush or Cheney for impeachable offenses nor is the media interested in investigating the possibility. Nor for the possible war crimes charges againast Rumsfield and Bush that were recently released. Nor for the countless open-for-all-to-see conspiracies of war profiteering (highly illegal by the way) committed by Cheney and Rumsfield and Bush with the help of Haliburton, KBR, BlackWater, and several other contractors in Iraq.

So, while it’s still true that conspiracies are exposed and are rarely huge and complicated, it doesn’t mean there’s always anyone paying attention.

• Why people who try to bring toothpaste on a plane should be arrested

• FBI Proposes Building Network of U.S. Informants

Excellent, emotional and enlightening movie, by the way, of a story set within the end of the East German informant society: The Lives of Others.

Well, here’s one more story of overreaching abuse of power and damage to civil liberties:

• Top Maryland cops ordered nonviolent peace activists’ names added to anti-terror, drug trafficking databases

And a good editorial on the subject:

• Opposing death penalty gets people listed as terrorists.

In the midst of the ever-increasing shift from police watching over the public to the police watching the public, one will try to mitigate the fear and disappointment by rationalizing: “Well, these are just the bad ones in the news. Most cops are good ones!” So, where are those “good cops” when the bad ones are breaking the law, violating the Constitution, and generally harassing and beating the public? Why aren’t the so-called good cops standing up against the few bad ones and eliminating them from their ranks?

Because: (a) police forces generally draw the power-hungry bullies of society which tend to create a pervasive culture of abusiveness from the inside;

(b) police forces are being funded by the Department of Justice and given neato-cool paramilitary toys to play with based on their devotion to and performance in the War on Drugs (and increasingly the War on Terrah) which is inherently a civil liberty trampling campaign that routinely treats harmless citizens as wanton and deadly criminals, fostering a culture of abuse and power from the outside;

(c) police forces are fiercely fraternal and loyal to each other–a useful and vital trait for military units in war, a destructive and criminal trait in a group that is supposed to serve the interests of the public over and beyond any sense of brotherly camaraderie.

These influences from the inside, outside, and the pathological in-group loyalty police forces encourage, generally lead to an environment which will quickly reject or break the few people who go into police work with a true desire to serve the public and put citizen above fellow cop.

However, there are very rarely exceptions to the rule. A story out today tells of a Chicago sheriff who is (at least in this case…who knows what he’s like otherwise) thinking and feeling like a real person and not RoboCop (pre-self aware RoboCop, of course) :

• Illinois sheriff scolds banks for evictions of ‘innocent’ renters

Banks on foreclosed houses aren’t doing basic checking on who’s actually in the houses, and are literally forcing renters out onto the street even if they’re good, rent paying renters, despite what defaulting the actual owners of the home are doing on their mortgage.

“These mortgage companies … don’t care who’s in the building,” [Sheriff] Dart said Wednesday. “They simply want their money and don’t care who gets hurt along the way.

“On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We’re not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We’re just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today.”

So, good for him!

They tried to get her convicted on threatening the public with a “hoax device,” (again, this was a harmless wearable electronic, no different than some of the commercial, store bought novelty clothes–except she made this herself…did I mention she was a student at the Massachusetts’ Institute of Technology?) and the state has threatened her that if she doesn’t do community service and apologize (for doing absolutely nothing wrong) they’d convict her of being a “disorderly person” which basically has no defense. The state can tag that onto anyone they like.

Here’s the transcript of one of her first public appearances discussing the event and ensuing court drama since it happened:

• Star Simpson, one year after Boston airport terror-scare: unedited BBtv interview transcript

Moral of this story? Be a completely unremarkable and passive citizen. Don’t do anything interesting or unique or else someone in authority will put a gun in your face.

XENI: Star, how old are you now?

STAR: 20.

XENI: Do you feel like what happened with this incident has caused you to grow up faster?

STAR: The main thing I can say is that I believed that police were nice, friendly folks before last September. And my opinion has changed drastically in that respect.

• Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush?

He talks about how McCain was at the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy (likely got into the Navy through his Admiril dad), has no intellectual curiosity, is only capable of speaking in canned responses, is good with a quip or a jibe but can’t think on his feet…he’s very much a Bush pt. 2:

George Bush’s record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens’ faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

The fact that we may get John McCain as President is scary enough. But what magnifies the fear a hundred-fold is comments from “ordinary people” like this one from a “Jimmy P”:

I certianly hope so! Because whether you liberal pansys like it or not, it’s this administration’s policies that have kept the homeland from being hit again. Don’t think for a minute that these lunatics, that fools like Obama would attempt to negotiate with, wouldn’t hit us here at home if possible. We are not entitled to unlimited civil liberties – check my phone, pc, bank account, who cares! Fascism is the best form of government! The majority of people are unable to run their own lives in a responsible manner. To he** with Democracy, it’s a failed experiment!

Is that an ironic, joke comment? Based on similar sentiments I’ve seen elsewhere, I doubt it. While so far that’s the most fanatic response on the CNN.com post. half the comments are from people who are supporting McCain for his rhetoric against terrorism and bashing Obama for his desire for diplomacy. (Yeah, because Nixon didn’t think to use diplomacy dealing with the Chinese who were fueling the Viet Nam war from that side ot it. He blew them off the face of the Earth, right?)

Many people hate to foster the supposedly illusionary division in this country they think is a manufacturing of the media and their color-coded states; but regardless of “red” or “blue” state coloring, there IS two Americas: one that believes the President should be a smart, educated, versatile, adaptable, statesman; and another that believes the President should be a butt-kickin’ regular joe who takes no guff and will show the rest of the world who’s boss. The former believes there’s a balance between security and civil liberties and cares about how the country is run and how healthy it and its citizens are, the other seems to not care less about other people so long as they can say they’re winning a foreign war.

I see this division every day at work, I read about it all over the blogonets, I hear it all over the radio. It’s a very real and deep division, and I really have no idea how it can possibly be bridged without A. the U.S. collapsing under the watch of neo-cons (which I don’t want to happen!), or B. we once again become a strong, stable country with a powerful middle-class and no bloody foreign entanglements. No, even then, the people on the far right would never admit they might be wrong and will continue to criticize and complain about socialism and we’re not doing enough to kill our enemies.

How will this possibly end?

A couple of communities have taken very different approaches to the threat of crime in their community. (Before I get started, I’m comparing apples to crabapples here as the threat of crime are two different types for the communities. Regardless, I think the differences in approaches are far reaching and grander than the specifics of what they’re trying to protect themselves against.)

A town in Arkansas, plagued by a criminal culture of drugs and shootings, has allowed its law enforcement to place the town under martial law:

• Crime-ridden Arkansas town expands 24-hour curfew

“Curfew” is a rather quaint term for what’s going on there. The police, with automatic assault rifles, are stopping anyone from being on the streets after curfew. Their attitude it clear:

“As far as I’m concerned, at 3 o’clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law,” Councilman Eugene “Red” Johnson said. “Anyone out at 3 o’clock shouldn’t be out on the street, unless you’re going to the hospital.”

It seems to be the opinion of the town’s “leaders” that free citizens don’t have the liberty to be out on their own business in their town when they wish. His belief that everyone should be resting snug in their beds at night else you’re a ne’er-do-well is being imposed by force upon free citizens.

Of course, as all things are, the issue is complicated. There’s no doubt that their town is overrun by crime. Randoms shootings, drive-bys, drugs rampant. In a very significant way I feel for this town. There’s a part of me that thinks in order to deal with an out of control crime wave, the fascist fist of martial law is needed to stem the tide so that more democratic means can be allowed to have an effect. Martial law is an addressing of a symptom–crime come from failures in the social structure and no amount of fascist strength will solve the problems of social distress.

I don’t completely disagree with a limited and controled use of strength to get a situation under control, but that’s not what appears to be happening in this town (I’ve never even visited and know nothing about aside from news articles). It would seem the law of the land has an attitude that armed enforcement of curfew is not a limited and should not be a limited solution but rather a norm. When you have community leaders making statements that no one should be out on the streets late at night, you have a truly fascist attitude which seeks to control the populace and not help it to live with liberty and freedom. This town may push the criminal element to other neighboring towns, but they will not solve the underlying issues this way and will in fact end up do more harm to the very concepts of what it means to live in America.

In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward.

That sounds like an establishing shot from a movie set in East Germany or the Soviet Union, maybe a movie version of 1984.

Meanwhile, to protect their school children from what they see as a rising tide of school shootings, a Texas school district will be allowing its teacher to carry concealed handguns:

• Texas district will let teachers carry guns

“Gun free zones” are basically game preserves for anyone who has enough disdain for law as to want to shoot people and are going to ignore “gun free zone” declarations in order to do it. A look at school shootings the last couple of decades and you see pretty much two scenarios playing out: 1. A shooter enters a school and starts killing and wounding unprotected people until they decide when to stop, and then they kill themselves. Police arrive after it’s all done. 2. Someone (a student and/or teacher) runs to their car, grabs their gun, and comes back to stop the shooter thus ending the spree earlier than the shooter would have decided to. Police arrive after it’s all done. (Same goes with the recent church shootings.)

Unless a school is placed next door to a police station, it can take several minutes for police to respond to a shooting (which even in this age of cell phones, may not even be placed until a couple of minutes into the event), and then it can take longer for the police to make an organized counter “attack” on the shooter. And as we’ve seen, it doesn’t take very long for a shooter to exhaust their ammo and turn a final shot on themselves.

The idea of a “liberal media” is absurd, except when it comes to issues of successful non-police use of guns to protect innocent people, then the media is generally silent on reporting it:

• When killers meet armed resistance
• A quick index to our articles on guns, gun control and gun free zones.

(Although, as you can see, CNN.com appears to be doing a fair piece on this Texas town–kudos to them)

The important thing is that the school district is being smart about it. When rabid liberals hear the idea of letting teachers or students carry firearms on a campus, they immediately commit reductio ad absurdum and imagine a wild west shootout left and right. The district will be requiring very specific and strict guidelines for who can carry:

For employees to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun, must be authorized to carry by the district, must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and must use ammunition designed to minimize the risk of ricocheting bullets.

(OK, so this isn’t brief.) These are indeed two different situations that have received two different solutions, but I would like to point out the mindset and the larger repercussions of both solutions. In the Arkansas town you have a situation where the empowerment of the people has be abdicated in favor of police control. The populace have turned over their ability to take matters in their own hand, to fight to make change in their community, over to an entirely different group of armed thugs. A more organized and better funded group of thugs, perhaps. The free citizens have given up their freedom and have chosen to live under siege. Safe, perhaps, but disempowered and cowering to a different force that’s become even more uncontrollable than the criminal element.

On the other hand, the Texas town is determined to take matters into their own hands and protect their own themselves. They have recognized the absurdity of both fascist control and posting warning signs that have all the effect of “Nuh uh, mister baddie-bad. You can’t bring your guns in here to express your sociopathic suicide rage–this is a ‘gun free zone!’” Instead of relying on the near-impossible protection of the police, they have chosen a course of action that empowers themselves and not only does not eliminate freedom but rather express and celebrates it.

It’s this exact difference in attitudes which can be extrapolated into the bigger context of our reaction to terrahism. Our government has decided to take the attitude of the Arkansas town and enact police state tactics. It has decided the best way to protect the land of the free against those who despise our freedom and liberty, is to remove freedom and liberty. To paraphrase Penn Jillette, the first act our government should have done after 9/11 was to remove laws, not make more restricting our freedoms. The best attack against fundamentalism is to increase freedom and liberty and not do their job for them.

And the tragic thing is that we the people are letting it happen. We’re peeking out the crack of our doors and closing them tight as the law drives by in the middle of the night. We imagine we’re nice and safe, but unlike the “safety” of the Arkansas town, our safety is completely illusionary. Time and time and time again it’s pointed up how worthless the TSA security is in anything except controlling the innocent. How worthless the border controls are at anything except controlling in innocent. How worthless port inspections are, shipping truck control is. We’re living under increasingly fascist state control without the benefit of the safety we’re supposedly being sold in exchange for our civil liberties.

• Man whose US immigration notice was sent to the wrong address is detained with untreated spinal cancer until he dies, denied access to his wife and children

I have no comment of my own that could add to the story itself. I’ll just post what some others have said:

OM:

…You know, one day everyone’s going to finally get tired of hire-a-cops, and it’ll be *them* put up against the wall before the lawyers.

Bastards.

Victor Trac:

The terrorists win again. I bet they didn’t expect to be /this/ successful when planning 9/11.

FLUP:

Yet another reason never to go to the US: after they copy the contents of my laptop and phone, they post a letter to the wrong address, lock me up and watch me die.

K2R:

> he no longer received painkillers,
> because he could not stand in line to collect them.

This sounds like one of the pervert things my Grandparent’s generation did in Germany.

“Of course you can have painkillers, just line up there! You can’t walk anymore? Well, I’m afraid, you will have to pick up you medication yourself, it’s the law.”

This is exactly the inhumanity small people in Germany showed while hiding behind buerocracy.

I cannot imagine how desperate he was, being stuck in the bad dream of Kafka the US has become, always hoping to wake up.