Government Governing the Least Is Best; Except In Indiana

In the past couple of weeks the Indiana's Religious Freedom Reformation Act (RFRA) has shown a division not just between inclusionary liberals and exclusionary conservatives, but also among conservatives that hold to the principle of limited government and those who will toss the principle aside for the convenience of escaping civil liabilities of prejudicial business practices. The defenders of the Indiana RFRA, will point to the federal statute, or Connecticut statute (only being compared due to that state's governor barring of state travel to Indiana) that is similar in name but not spirit and differs in letter where it counts from the Indiana's RFRA variant. If the differences were innocuous as the defenders claim, then why wouldn't they protest against a redundant legislation? If the differences are innocuous then what is the purpose of the law, and why won't the limited government conservatives come out and chastise the Big Government conservatives? Is it not so, that the government that governs the least governs the best, or that only the least number of laws that are absolutely necessary should be passed and enforced? Where are the tri-corner hats claiming that the what happens between a customer and a business should stay between a customer and a business and no more bail outs for businesses reckless liabilities even if they were discriminatory business practices? Sec 9 of the Indiana RFRA clearly stated that an individual that was "substantially burdened or likely to be substantially burdened" could invoke their RFRA rights as a defense in any lawsuit or binding arbitration. The amended statute included clear anti-discrimination language, which in essence voids section 9 for being used as a defense in civil lawsuits making the whole legislative effort by Governor Mike Pence futile, so I ask again where are the small government conservatives pointing out the superfluous nature of the Indiana RFRA? Even if the liability shield for discriminatory businesses remained shouldn't the small government conservatives still have joined the big government liberals in protesting this law as unnecessary?

The reason why there isn't an open schism among conservatives regarding this social issue or a bevy other conservative social issues is that the conservative establishment knows that social issues are for the hoi polloi that are being hoodwinked by the big business to distract them so that they don't find common interest with the fellow wage slaves and demand a diffusion of power away from corporate boardrooms and back into family's living rooms. As Lyndon Johnson so aptly said fifty years ago "If you can convince the lowest white man that he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket." In this case, if you can convince a believer to be judgmental and prejudicial towards others he won't notice that his pockets are being picked clean by a supposedly fellow believer.

Racism and the Law: Spirit of the Law for Most and Equality for None

The overwhelming belief that racism can be cured through regulations and statutory cures is a liberal/progressive ideal, while the opposing worldview that regulations and overbearing laws are contrary to liberty and are intrinsically tyrannical. It could very well be that both perspectives are wrong. Racism may not have a cure available in the law, no matter how ingenious and wise the law is crafted to be, while the freedom to being racist carries with it the tyranny that that perspective actually despises.

The following is a quote from a book review that proposes the liberal white agenda of civil rights being partially responsible with the current Prison-Industrial-Complex:

This is the fundamental thesis of Murakawa’s book: legal civil rights and the American carceral state are built on the same conceptions of race, the state and their relationship. As liberals believe that racism is first and foremost a question of individual bias, they imagine racism can be overcome by removing the discretion of (potentially racist) individuals within government through a set of well-crafted laws and rules. If obviously discriminatory laws can be struck down, and judges, statesmen or administrators aren’t allowed to give reign to their racism, then the system should achieve racially just outcomes. But even putting aside the fact that a removal of individual discretion is impossible, such a conception of “fairness” applies just as easily to producing sentencing minimums as school desegregation.How White Liberals Used Civil Rights Create More Prisons thenation.com

This is an article from the New Republic that profiles the current NYPD work slow down in response to #BlackLivesMatter protests and the killing of two police officers in Brooklyn back on December 20th:

Many of the offenses police have tacitly declared legal are considered quality-of-life (QOL) infractions. Those follow the broken window strategy, a policing philosophy that has been widely discredited since its heyday in Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty. QOL meets small transgressions with arrests and fines—a way, it's thought, to nip more substantial crimes in the bud. Perhaps because QOL policing grants cops near-unlimited discretion in determining whom to sanction, its penalties fall disproportionately on people of color. Between 2001 and 2013, the New York Daily News found, more than 80 percent of the 7.3 million people penalized for these infractions were black or Latino. The vast majority of African Americans and Latinos in all walks of life feel like they're treated unfairly by law enforcement, and consider police discrimination the most endemic form of societal mistreatment. It's unfair, brutal, racist, and financially burdensome, and it often follows such small transgressions as jaywalking, skipping $2.50 subway fares or merely irritating police.  NYPD Work Slowdown Being Celebrated New Yorkers of Color newrepublic.com

Comparing the two different implementations of criminal justice, one that removes discretion under guises of making it impossible to have one set of laws for people of color and another for whites and the other that provides absolute discretion to the beat cop, provides an anecdotal example how neither is a step closer to alleviating racism from the criminal justice system. No matter how impartial the law may be the individuals that are the cogs within the criminal justice system all get to do their bit to tip the scale towards their own bias. On the other hand, letting the wisdom of the individual rule supreme will lead to confirmation bias where any citizen that for whatever reason is not relate-able to those cogs of the criminal justice system get harsher treatments. This isn't merely a racial prejudice being played out in both scenarios, but a powerless versus powerful prejudice as the NYPD officers are now more likely than not non-white. Though it may very well be a demonstration of how flexible the classification of 'white' is in contemporary America as the term begins to become inclusive to 2nd generation (and further) South Americans, Caribbean-Americans, East and South Asians. We may even forgo the nomenclature of 'white' and replace it with 'middle class' or some other term that won't be so exclusive to race; this is a problem that the term 'white' didn't have when it excluded Irish, Southern Europeans, and Slavs in the first half of the last century and second half of the 19th century.

But I digress, to return to concept of racial prejudice or racial indifference being codified in the law or race being overtly absent from the law entirely, it is quite impossible to eliminate what is in the hearts of individuals through legislation. Either setting the terms of racial tolerance in stone or intentionally ignoring race and hoping that it would resolve it self, would do little to progressing what the society as a whole knows to be their Truth. It may be that their Truth is that they do not interact more than tacitly on a daily basis with someone of another culture, race, religion, etc, so they can only base their reality of what the people that they never interact with on a substantial level, on media representations or the most memorable (and likely worst) interaction with a member of that demographic. Since the most innocuous actions are neither memorable nor dramatic, no matter what the law says, we as human beings will revert to our tribalistic caveman minds and feel uncomfortable to whatever we are not regularly exposed to. So as much as those that wish it would all work itself out, the criminal justice system actually reimposes much of the racial prejudices on the society as a whole and all the cogs of the criminal justice system participating in the system. Simply saying "If it was purely a market based society, we wouldn't have segregation because there wouldn't be a government to enforce Jim Crow Laws" are deluding themselves, just as much as those that say "If we struck just the right balance in law and police regulations, we would eliminate racism altogether from society." It will take a cultural shift and a transformation of the human heart throughout society that will weaken racism to the point of insignificance, this has already begun but not in earnest. Those of white or middle-class privilege still play the 'good block/bad block' within metropolises, or denoting shared entitlement towards individuals of color with a toothless decree of "well, you are basically white anyway" blissfully unaware that their black-friend will not get to skate by police harassment because they are "one of the good ones," but that is by definition the white privilege. To be privileged to lead a life that is blissfully unaware of the dangers that exist in parallel to the swaths of society not already in receipt of an universal pass to be assumed innocent; presumed guilty with legal statutory so thick that it could choke a horse means that we are all acting outside of the law at some point or another and yet only those of color get slapped with the book for those misdemeanors.

In the TV series The Wire, Deputy of Operations Rawls (the series' go to hardass for everything) demands of one of his intradepartmental snitches to find something that the protagonist cop is doing against policy. The snitch replies, "But he's not doing anything wrong." Which riles up Rawls to respond with "With this big book of regs, and you can't find anything that he has done wrong?!? If you can't find something that he has done wrong then you shouldn't even call yourself real police!" In this vein, communities of color are held to the 'letter of the law', where the law is written in such a way that it is impossible to lead a life without some minor offense and the majority of those with middle-class privilege receives the 'spirit of the law' treatment and then turns around with genuine incredulity that if cops are arresting these people of color they must have been doing something wrong.

So what is the solution to this paradox that can't be ignored and worked out on itself nor legislated away?

The Faith-Based Economists Are Hoping For Dire Results And Collapse of Full Faith And Credit Of America

EndOfAmerica.com? HighlyDoubtIt.com!

Chicken Littles of the financial markets claim that they have secret knowledge that tomorrow is going to be the beginning of an economic collapse of the American economy and the U.S. dollar. This is the financial equivalent to the religious fundamentalists that were equally assure of the rapture back on May 21st 2011 and will be shown to be equally disassociated from reality.  At the heart of the concern is that Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), that seeks out to tax the foreign investments of American citizens greater than $50,000 that are currently in foreign tax havens. The fear is that the IRS attempting to extract taxes from tax havens with American clients will cause capital flight from the investments priced in American dollars and cause international financial firms and governments to no longer hold the American dollar as a reserve currency, though that outcome may become a reality in the future it won't be due to the implementation of FATCA. There is data set of Chinese government attempting to corner the market on gold, silver and other rare metals to back their yuan, while the same individuals will decry any attempt by the U.S. government to take any intervention into the American economy, as if we should take our lead from an authoritarian socialist government but do so without any government action. Or what these Chicken Littles would likely prefer, let the tax avoiders that are affected by FATCA continue to welch on the obligations of paying what Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said were the dues of civilization.

The ill-conceived solution to the non-existent calamity? Buy gold bullion, buy gold coins, buy gold futures. Yes we should return the American economy to the gold standard where those that have already accumulated vast fortunes are protected from inflationary effect of fiat monetary policy and those that had the misfortune to depend solely on their own labor as a means of economic enrichment will be in a race to the bottom to attain the crumbs of those that have the gold. To clamour for the bad old days of a gold standard or even bi-metalism is an exercise in historically ignorance. To voluntarily place ourselves back onto a cross of gold will not be to the benefit of the masses, but only expedite the concentration of wealth that is considered a positive outcome in the minds of the predeterministic economic outlook of the libertarians and Anarcho-Capitalists, for they operate under the rubric that if you don't already have money then you certainly don't deserve even subsistence standard of living. 

Pointing towards contradictory data points such as for-profit companies are far better stock purchases than that of state owned operations like Petrobras (Brazil), Gazprom (Russia),  or China National Gold Group Corporation while professing that BRICS countries will abandon the American dollar as a reserve currency; it is mutually exclusive that the American economy bolstered by the largest and least restrained corporations somehow is being abandoned by developing countries because of lack of value and inflationary monetary policy that the dollar is to be deemed worthless, while state controlled enterprises are at the same time too valuable and valueless making those countries delink from the 800 pound economic gorrilla which the U.S. is. American economy having the least regulations. The American government retracting it's obligations to continue market sustainability as well as consumer protections has the response from the 'free marketeers' it not enough. The catch-22 from the 'free marketeers' is that when the economy fails, it will be rationalized as the economy still has too much regulation no matter how little regulation is enumerated or enforced (laws on the books not being enforced by SEC is a assumed result by market makers on Wall Street).

So tomorrow there will be an absence of calamity (except for the millionaires that owe millions in taxes, with their nest egg hidden off-shore), and continue calls for elimination government defense against the concentration of wealth. I didn't even need to look into my crystal ball for that prediction.

Seattle Raise Minimum Wage to $15; Plutocrats Pull Their Hair Out That Consumers Will Have More Purchasing Power In Northwest Washington State

Seattle becomes the nation's leader in minimum wage Monday when they set the minimum wage to $15 (incrementally increased over next three years) nearly doubling the the Federal minimum wage and increasing the state minimum of $9.36, which is a 60% increase for the lowest paid workers. Small business employers such as Subway franchisee David Jones complain that he would have increase prices of his sandwiches by a dollar, nearly a 20% price increase; the implication being that his workers getting a 60% increase will require him to raise prices 20% to maintain his profit margin. Seattle's Clarion hotel claims that this will ensure rates will increase 10% to avoid large number of layoffs but instead only minor layoffs will occur; the implication being that they would have immediately hire far more than they actually need if they could pay the employees wages below what could sustain a subsistence living standard. The criticism of pushing local minimum wage has largely been based upon harming employment levels, but that ignores all economic analysis since Card & Kruger that in 1992 overturned the conventional wisdom that mandatory increase in labor costs would have a negative effect and shed jobs due to the increase of costs. Why that conventional wisdom seems intuitive, but does not bare itself out in reality, is that it assumes the perspective of the employer as the central decision maker in a local economy when in reality the aggregate of the consumers/employees has a larger effect on demand than the parochial concerns of the overly vaunted entrepreneur.

Even the uber-individualists of Reason.com, fail to include the employee's individual choice to demand higher wages as a liberty that should be respected. Only those that have already shown themselves to be the select elected, as in the theological Calvinist use of the term, can have their liberty defended by the libertarians while those not elected by not being graced by the invisible hand of the market should suffer with their station in life without complaint nor question. The employer can't bear to see a top marginal tax rate anywhere near the Laffer Curve, but the lowly minimum wage worker should not demand his/her fair cut for being industrious through his/her labor? That paradox that those who already have money beyond what they could reasonably spend in a lifetime would somehow have no further incentive if they were to minimize even an iota of luxurious living, but those that are barely getting by can have no financial cushion or they would no longer be incentivized to work (ignoring the incentive of continuation of said employment slightly above a subsistence wage).

Here is a hypothetical to exemplify this economic argument: if we were to have three individuals with different incomes a hedge fund manager with income of $100 million per annum, a insurance claims adjuster earning $50,000 per annum and a fast food worker getting paid $20,000 per annum (assuming Washington state minimum wage of $9.36/hour 40 hours a week, 52 weeks allowing for $600 worth of overtime pay). If we then were to increase the income of all our hypothetical earners by 60% of their income, would their economic activity differ and would that economic activity be beneficial to the rest of the economy? The minimum wage worker going from $20,000 to $32,000 can now put away savings for the inevitable rainy day AND viably climb into the middle-class becoming a more active consumer purchasing more products and services including local businesses such as restaurants. The insurance claims adjuster going from $50,000 to $80,000 can now purchase a newer car from the local dealer more often, go on family vacation (though economic benefits are transferred to wherever they travel, it would be reciprocal were the increase be nationally implemented rather than locally), and the additional funds would also allow the employee to be a little more risk-tolerant and possibly begin to invest along with a slight increase to his/her savings for retirement. Then we have the hedge fund manager earning a $100 million a year, having nearly unlimited purchasing power so increasing income would have no noticeable effect on personal consumer choices, leaving the only effect to what investment the multi-millionaire makes. If the hedge fund manager decided to start a labor intensive enterprise that required (at least down the road after it grew) a large number of employees that would beneficial to the greater part of the economy, but the return-on-investments (ROI) on such ventures are notoriously low which is why the financial industry has been growing as regulations and taxes on investments have evaporated over the last 30 years ensuring the high ROI with the least depency on labor. With the hypothetical income increases for anyone that are already keenly aware of their own economic limitations, any increase will almost entirely go to more consumption creating a demand in the consumer market while having a multiplier effect across the masses whose financial status has improved; conversely those that have nearly limitless purchasing power will not change their economic activity in any way that will increase demand in the economy and very likely would not increase employment in any way.

To argue that if the employer was free to hire the lowest possible wages while also free to set the highest possible prices to attain the most profit is not to the betterment of even those employers in the long term, as the employees getting squeezed on both ends will be resentful of those financially comfortable while they struggle. The counter argument would be that the masses of consumers given a greater purchasing power will cause more money chasing the same amount of product and service, though inflationary, benefits all working members of the economy and encourages consumption while rewarding income from work over passive income from investments which in the near term is the optimum scenario for our economy.

Those that despise the minimum wage has little to do benefitting the many, rather it has to do with that it doesn't exclusively benefit the few preordained economic victors. This can be seen in the plutocratic perspective that cheer for the immediate benefits of tax cuts for the wealthy, and their finger wagging towards immediately benefitting the lowest paid employees. Representative democracy exerting the will of the vast majority, those that are (or have in the recent past) getting paid at or near the minimum wage are seen as far too selfish which is the exclusive domain of those that have become accustomed to economic and political domination that claim their own selfish is a virtue and a vice for everyone else. Thanks alot Dagny Taggert!


http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2014/jun/03/seattle-council-approves-15-minimum-wage/

http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/03/seattle-prepares-for-robot-revolution-by

Anti-Government Militia Will Support Nahshon Shelton and His Anti-Tax Stand... {cricket chirps, cricket chirps}

Refusal to pay taxes while brandishing guns only works when owing over $300,000, not for 22 cents which gets you jail time without bail.

Income Tax is viewed by many within the anti-government movement as theft through  coercion, since if you do not pay it then the government will seize your person and imprison those who refuse to pay their income taxes. Sales tax being transactional in nature, is just as coercive since it is not at all voluntary, even if one wishes to actively avoid it one could not without the retailer participating in a tax avoidance scheme. Fees for service are the least coercive since they can be avoided outright, though an extremist may take the outlook that any government is too much government.

This past weekend Chicago resident, Nahshon Shelton, claimed that since he lived in the neighborhood he was exempt from sales tax, in response the retailer informed him that he was not and refused to let him purchase a bottle of diet pepsi without the 22 cent sales taxes being paid. Mr. Shelton went home and took a strategy straight out of the Bundy Ranch Playbook and returned brandishing firearms believing that would alter the outcome (as it altered the outcome in Clark County and the return of trespassing cattle), but instead resulted in Mr. Shelton being held without bail.

Ammon Bundy when presented with Federal Court order for the confiscation of the trespassing (for the prior 20 years) cattle on federal land, part of the herd was eventually confiscated up until firearms brandishing anti-government supporters of the renegade ranchers confronted BLM agents with Cliven Bundy demanding that Clark County Sherrif's department confiscate all of Federal agents' firearms and brought to him. BLM stated that due to fear for the physical safety of the agency's employees as well as the general public decided to back down and release the trespassing cattle back to the Bundy Ranch.

What started Bundy Ranch from being law abiding to law breaking? In 1993 Cliven Bundy chose to ignore the existence of the Federal Government, therefore began to withhold fee for service that he and his family had been paying his entire life. At no point has the 600,000 acres been owned by anyother landowner other than the Federal government, so the claim that Bundy Ranch has ownership to the land is wholly without merit. The defense of the Bundy Ranch usurping NOT HIS LAND, is an amalgamation of a longtime history of grazing on that land (ignoring the fact that they paid for such service) and the federal government is overreaching in other segments of the American society. The same individuals that prioritize property rights over rights to life and life sustaining resources can not acknowledge the inconsistency that housing stock far out strips the homeless households-- but that banks that own vacant houses have a right to withhold their property from those that are homeless people. Then turn around and say that the Federal government doesn't have a right to withhold access to it's land for non-payment of grazing fees.

To avoid paying Federal grazing fees has a very simple solution-- keep your cattle on your land otherwise join the 16,000 of ranchers that pay agreed upon grazing fees. So just remember, if you don't want to pay your rent or mortgage just simply take the stance that you don't believe in your landlord's or bank's existence and roll up with your buddies while strapped implicitly threatening violence to anyone that dares to challenge your delusion... and don't be black.

Law Abiding Rancher? Or Criminal Trespasser?

Dave Bundy , son of rancher, shown kicking law enforcement canines

This week the Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) repossessed 900 head of cattle over a dispute regarding grazing rights. Back in 1993, BLM and the Bundy Ranch to continue grazing as long as the ranch remained less than 250 head of cattle and a restricted 150 acres land while paying federal grazing fees. The Bundy Ranch agree to the compromise and then almost immediately ignored it growing the herd and grazing range past the agreed upon limits, while refusing to pay the grazing fees. Clive Bundy, the owner of the Bundy Ranch, claims that the ranch had been grazing on the open range since the 19th century and therefore is his right to continue to use the land without limit since the Ranch predates the BLM. Then where is Bundy's title to the land? Claiming that he has unlimited grazing rights to public (ie government owned land) lands just because he always has had that right. Based upon that logic Native Americans would really like their continent back, and is unlikely that the Bundy Ranch will revert back to the tribes that lived there in the pre-Colombian era. Mr. Bundy is even quoting acknowledging that federal agency is usurping state rights when regarding to the Federal Government owned land:

“I’m a producer,” Cliven said. “I produce edible commodity from the desert forage, and all of these things are governed under state law. So, in other words, this type of government has eliminated all of our state law, eliminated our state sovereignty, and has took control over our public lands and even took control over our Clark County sheriff. They’ve taken the whole county over. The whole state, almost.”

How dare the Federal Government tell him whether or not his cattle can trespass on Federal owned land?!?
Sarcasm aside, the militia movement and other right-wingers have come to support this self-entitled interloper but mostly just to spit in face of the Federal Government (which they have a right to do) but pragmatically speaking how do they transition to their ideal of no or very limited government while still maintaining property rights? The government owned lands, that had been being utilized by the Native Americans for a millennia though without the Western styled property rights, the title of those lands came into existence only from federal government action not ranchers declaring it be. Government activity (whether US Federal government or Royal Spanish forces) forced onto the land the Western concept of private property, reserving vast lands of the Western states to remain under the stewardship of the Federal Government whether the individual rancher that buys a fraction of land necessary to maintain a herd sized to their desire. How ever many acres the Bundy Ranch actually owns should be the limitation of how large the herd is, and his whining over not being able to trespass as he has always done is simply a thief demanding he is entitled access to someone else's land.

So Federal Government that made the concerted effort to attain these lands should just be handed over to private owners without payment? The Bundy Ranch should get title and deed  because they need it and the government has it? "From those with abilities to those of need", is absolutely evil according to the right-wingers except when those with abilities happens to be of the Federal Government. Individual rights seem to be doled by right-wingers entirely based on race, imagine an African-American disputing with the government over a million dollars (only $300,000 had the Bundy Ranch paid the grazing fees and kept the herd within restrictions agreed upon in 1993), would the militia movement come to their aid or would they simply characterize as welfare-queens with a million dollars of ill-gotten goods? Mitt Rommney, Paul Ryan, Rush Limbaugh, Michelle Bachman, et al have been bashing government programs such as Medicaid, SNAP, Section 8, Headstart, and any other program that benefits the least among us as being freebies given away as a means to get their votes; when a white man gets a million dollars of government benefits and expected to pay for those benefits there is nothing but incredulity "The Federal Government has overreached, demanding that this law-abiding* citizen can't let his over-sized herd graze on public (ie Federally owned) land!"

Even if the government was overreaching when trying to wrest control back of their land from a rancher that had gotten used to using someone else's land (or at least not his own land if you want to consider government land to be owned by the public), where the land his herd was trespassing on was privately held land would it have been overreaching after 20 years of the herd trampling the rights of the private landowner for that private landowner to take the herd as his own? If the title owner of land kept having to deal with a herd of cattle from down the road grazing on his land, the title owner has the right to the herd after the rancher welshes on paying for the access to landowner's land for 20 years straight. To assume the opposite ignores a right to property just because the entity that owns the land is the Federal government, moral relativism at it's worst.

But libertarians are adamant to never acknowledge the practical existence of the government, they believe in the Pollyanna-ish view of the world that there is a magic wand where government will no longer exist and never consider how to pragmatically transition  to that ideal. Federal government activity was essential to existence of property rights being imposed on the Western states before the wagoners made their way to those states, just to remind you that Lewis and Clark were hired by the Federal Government while the contemporaneously the American hinterlands were modern day Tennessee. So to claim that one doesn't need the government now, also needs to accept the benefits and assets that have been accumulated by the government prior to the epiphany that the government should be disbanded. Libertarians need to come up with a path to transition from our current status of "overreaching" government to disbanding of that government with all the property dispersed in a fair and equal manner-- you know if they actually believed in fairness and equality.

Re: Free Birth Control and Unfree Photographers

 

So everyone has a right to the market when they open a business, and a right to withhold services and resources based upon nothing more than spite? That is an opinion that could only be held by individuals who have the privilege of being a member of the dominant class. Acceptability of excluding all those that do not meet the majority's expectation is a sign of irrationality; and Jacob Sullum is free to proselytize the right to refuse your fellow Americans without a viable reason, but to appear on a venue such as Reason.com is abundant with irony.

The individual has a right not to offer consumer services to the general public, but once you take the endeavour to provide those consumer services the only way that it encroaches on the business owners right is when the owner choses to profess the withholding of services are based upon the demographic group that the consumer belongs to. The action, overt by the choice of the business owner, to choose to withhold while offending the perspective customer is impractical and unnecessary since the business owner could have simply stated “sorry, we aren't available that week, could I refer you to so-and-so they would be able to help you out.” Most of the readers of Reason.com will likely agree with the sentiment that Title II of the Civil Rights Act which bars discrimination within businesses that are available to the public is utterly irrational, but the social contract that provides government services to businesses implies that the businesses should be for the public that paid for the infrastructure the businesses utilize on a daily basis. Would it acceptable if businesses that did discriminate, that the local government would roll back the roads that lead to the business? To discriminate against counter parties that did business with the discriminating owner? If there is a right to discriminate then any business exercising that right would have a lot more to lose than just one gig for a betrothed couple that the business owner despised. You have a right not to participate in any market, but once you choose to enter said market it is no longer your right to discriminate; and once you do choose to infringe on the rights of individuals for simple practicality find any other excuse to withhold services or goods and return to under whatever bridge you come from. Every market relies upon public goods, and deny that fact is irrational and unreasonable.

In regards to Hobby Lobby, they are receiving tax credits (which they free are to reject) when they provide their employees with health-care insurance that happens to include birth control. If they were so adamant they would refuse the tax credits and pay for health insurance that did not include birth control (which would be difficult to find since birth control has such a great epidemiological benefit that any insurance company denying birth control would see their expenditures go up and so the market and reason has spoken and few health insurance policies are offered sans birth control at reasonable rates) as well as the difference in costs that are being set by the for-profit insurance companies. Hobby Lobby, while paying lip service to their right to principle, would rather bemoan their inability to access government services and benefits on their own terms. But when your cant stick to stated principles because inconvenience, and you would rather have them subsidized than pay the true costs of those principles they are no longer principles but just a hobby.

Libertarian Father & Son Heroes Seem to Have A Racism Problem

Whenever one says "I don't mean to be offensive, but..." or "No disrespect, but..." you should always be prepared to be offended or disrespected. Similar to Ron and Rand Paul that keep having to say that their supporters, their newsletters, their staffers, their political party, their policies, are not racist. It came out yesterday that Rand Paul's director of new media and co-author of his 2011 book The Tea Party Goes To Washington Jack Hunter had the alter ego and column with Charleston City Paper as the "Southern Avenger."

Jack Hunter has previously described his alter ego as "super hero/ pro-wrestler persona, and entertained FM rock audiences with his antics and conservative political views until his departure from 96 Wave in 2007." Though he has stated today through his blog "In radio, sometimes you’re encouraged to be provocative and inflammatory. I’ve been guilty of both, and am embarrassed by some of the comments I made precisely because they do not represent me today. I was embarrassed by some of them even then." He continues to be an unapologetic defender of the "Old South" and former chairman of the Charleston Chapter of the League of the South, a self described Southern Nationalist organization that seeks to establish a Southern Republic. Acknowledging that things he said while a radio personality was offensive and did not speak as to his beliefs as a political operative ignores all the stuff he has stated as a "serious" columnist and political operative.
Such embarrassing statements as: 

"Americans aren’t wrong to deplore the millions of Mexicans coming here now, A non-white majority America would simply cease to be America for reasons that are as numerous as they are obvious – whether we are supposed to mention them or not." 

and 

"...not only was Abraham Lincoln the worst President, but one of the worst figures in American history"

The second quote especially embarrassing to Mr. Hunter's employer Senator Rand Paul, since the Senator back in April incredulously asked traditional black college Howard University students "How did the Republican Party, the party of the Great Emancipator, lose the trust and faith of an entire race?” The question was asked with his new media director, and former chairman of the League of the South, present and staffing him at the Howard University event. Rand Paul should not be too surprised since he himself has defended the right of businesses to discriminate and that Title II of the Civil Rights Act that bars businesses from that practice (which was extensively used in the former Confederacy) on his first national cable TV appearance on the Rachel Maddow show in 2010; it is not too far of a leap to defending the "Old South" when purporting that all public service should be provided by private enterprise that should be allowed to discriminate against people based upon the color of their skin.

Like father like son. Ron Paul in the 1980's had a newsletter that had very questionable topics that expressed sympathies for white supremacy. When it came to light during his 2008 presidential campaign that his newsletter (that provided millions of dollars in income in between his stints in Congress) had routinely articles without bylines that were thoroughly offensive--Ron Paul excused himself for being  "moral responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my name." Unlike the newsletter, Ron Paul has repeatedly stated in his own voice his opinion about about the civil war and how unnecessary it was as well as the tragedy that Lincoln imposed the supremacy of the Federal government over the state governments that they had just scrapped their inclusion into the America we celebrate every July Fourth. Ron Paul woefully ignores Civil War History by purporting Lincoln could have just bought the slaves instead of "starting" the Civil War. Ft. Sumter was taken by secessionists December 26, 1860 (84 days prior to Lincoln's inauguration) Confederate States Of America was founded February 4, 1861 (44 days prior to Lincoln's inauguration) with seven states four of which included slavery being the cause for secession by South Carolina, Georgia, Texas, and Mississippi. 

Father and son Paul both are apologists for racist institutions, and only have wishful thinking to save them from repeating the same systemic bigoted problems. They both believe that the magic of the private market will solve everything, ignoring all historically evidence to  the contrary. Do I think Rand Paul should dismiss Jack "Southern Avenger" Hunter? I don't particular care if he does or not, if it doesn't come along with acknowledgment from the Junior Senator of Kentucky that Jim Crow South could not have ended without government (specifically judicial intervention) and the antebellum South was a tyrannical racist police state not some revisionist version of a genteel Southern paradise that that "no good Lincoln" went and messed up for us "real Americans" that continue to toy with the idea of seceding from the America that has already come to a consensus racism in all its forms are evil.

http://freebeacon.com/rebel-yell/

http://dixienet.org/rights/2013/what_is_League_of_the_South.php

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/07/09/rand-paul-aide-has-history-of-racial-comments/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2013/04/10/rand-paul-at-howard-university/

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/angry-white-man

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/company-ron-paul-keeps_613474.html?page=2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbOE4Ip7In0

http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html

CIPSA permanently enshrining warrant-less wiretaps: Best Government Corporations Can Buy

CISPA is legislation that recently was passed by over whelming margins in the House of Representatives will codify the fact that corporations can invade their employees and customers privacy under the guise that it might prevent some national security-- but that employees and customers can never sue the corporations for infringing their rights. So where is the Tea Party Congressmen with their tri-corner hats to stand up for all the rights spelled out in our Constitution? Should the nation expect another speaking filibuster over the trampling of individual rights by this piece of legislation just as he used it against the nomination of John Brennan for CIA Director?

But due to the $600+ million of lobbyist money used to promote this legislation against the paltry $4.3 million that opposed the legislation, probably will be seeing this get passed in the Senate and signed by Capitulator-In-Chief Obama. When your next employer asks for your personal email passwords and social network passwords, don't be surprised-- and unless you want remain unemployed-- then don't resist because your boss will have a right to demand such things. If the government (or those that hold influence over the government) can look into specific individual without just cause or going through judicial process and find out all of that individual's online activity without ever having the purpose preventing crime and terrorism, then on paper our nation becomes the police state that we have always said America could never be.

Though this legislation is multitudes worse to the civil liberties of denizens of the Internet than SOPA, it doesn't have big money interests like Google, Microsoft, etc. along with Internet giants like Wikipedia Huffington Post, and others that participated in the March 2012 Internet Blackout protest and therefore CISPA isn't getting its due attention.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/how-cispa-opponents-were-outspent-by-industry-lobbyists-38-to-1-20130422?mrefid=site_search

Libertarian Pardox: How the free market will lead to a One World Corporation

Two ideals for most libertarians are in direct conflict with each other. The free market without government intrusion is the ideal economic environment; the sovereignty of the nation-state (specifically the United States sans military adventurism) is supreme and should be without intervention of foreign government or any semblance of  a One World Government.

Free enterprise being motivated purely by profit, and the stock market seeking out perpetual growth to out pace the rest of the market, without outside regulation of government and other disinterested entities monopolies and oligopolies are the  inevitable result. As the corporations grow too large for consumers to counteract monopolistic tendencies for their patronage choices to exert the 'invisible hand' of the market and assert reforms on the these economic Leviathans, competitors will either be acquired by or collude with the biggest enterprises of their particular market. Along with the horizontal monopoly (or effective monopoly among the few colluding competitors) for the sake of efficiency vertical monopolies would be sought out due to profit motives and demands for higher returns on investment. The current trajectory of the economy is veering towards a more globalized one, if this continues while there is an absence of government intervention then there is nothing to prevent a One World Corporation dominating every aspect of economic life.

I can hear my conservative-libertarian friends bellowing "No! That would never happen because the market is self correcting and the government only gets in the way." The profit motive does not have any incentive for either self-restraint nor delaying gratification, so whatever action or transaction that can be profited in this fiscal quarter and avoid liability or risk to the next fiscal quarter if it couldn't be avoided in perpetuity, leaving nothing off limits. But what of the individual moral compass that make the decisions for the corporations, won't they show restraint? With the free market and amplification of person-hood through incorporation accountability and responsibility are diffused beyond any individual.

For example the in the recent economic downturn that had provided incentives to initiate mortgages regardless of the outcome (mortgages brokers), to provide liar-loans (Countrywide Mortgages), securitized risky loans (Lehman Brothers, Bear Sterns, Salmon Brothers), then create markets to be traded (Goldman Sachs, Bank Of America, Citibank, etc), have the securities fraudulently rated providing false sense of stability to the typical investor (S&P, Moodys, Fitch), securitized risky mortgages with intention of losing value (Magnetar Capital), the risky financial transactions all insured to further diffuse accountability (AIG).

How would less regulation have prevented the credit crisis of 2008? How would an unrestricted pursuit of profit been different in the prior five (5) years of the crisis? If the self regulating market was hindered in it's course correction by say, the Federal Reserve, why would the for-profit private banks that ostensibly run the Fed also be the biggest barrier to a self regulating market? Removal of the Federal Reserve as Ron Paul and his acolytes would propose wouldn't be a reasonable cure-all unless one were to ignore economic history prior to 1913 and the raison d'être for the Fed: the Panic of 1907, where the American stock market lost 50% of value within a year. At the time of the Panic there was no means to insert liquidity into the economy so Teddy Roosevelt's had to accept J.P. Morgan's acquisition of Tennessee Coal, Iron, & Rail Company into his already monopolistic U.S. Steel Corporation in order for J.P. Morgan's to infuse liquidity into the market. J.P. Morgan was then given wide latitude when the Federal Reserve was formed and the reason why the Federal Reserve today is remains a tool of the private market rather than answering to people's representatives in the government.

The libertarian movement, in an bizarre attempt to achieve their goals, only target the public sector and do not speak ill of the private sector letting loose the golem that is corporations as if they could do no wrong and would never be destructive to the long term of the economy for short term gains. Of last year's Libertarian Party platform plank 2.6 (curiously named Monopolies and Corporations) concludes that corporations should be freely able to form and regulated by the free market alone, no mention other than the title of monopolies. Without government intervention there is no means to restrain monopolies occurring, and from the libertarian perspective that governing via free market is an inalienable from human freedom then there it should be a universal form of government for the entire planet. How could the free market prevent the monopolies of each country's economy from merging? If the free market is seeking out the most profitable (allegedly the most efficient) means and with the removal of redundancies of multiple competitors the most profitable and the only logical conclusion without government intervention is a one world corporation.

The libertarians fearful of a One World Government with command economy devoid of individual freedom holds up an ideal that would lead to a One World Corporation with an corporate aristocracy that will be the sole source of all employment and consumer products imposing their will without any repercussions other than outright rebellion against the free-market overlords. This has been an argument for moderation and a mixed economy, rather than the extremism that free-marketeers put forward. Extremism on either end and those that are proponents of extreme economic philosophy and ideology should be castigated and shunned at all costs.

Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

Rather than the opposite that tends to be the Libertarian and Ayn Rand Objectivists perspective, of acknowledging those that are already morbidly wealthy has deserved their hoarded wealth and those of abject poverty simply are suffering there due punishment.

This incorrect presumption that economy and general resource distribution is some how held by Newtonian rules of actions having equal reactions in the opposite moral direction; therefore that every moral action is given a merit based reward or karmic reaction. If, as in reality, there is no justice and no one-to-one relation of action and reward then there is no excuse to stand on the sidelines to let the metaphysical-machinery to carryout justice that will not come.