A Geek With Guns

John Tierney, a politician from Massachusetts, is introducing a bill that would require all firearm to be equipped with technology that prevents them from being used by anybody besides its owner. What makes this case interesting isn’t the legislation but Mr. Tierney’s justification:

A House Democrat inspired by the last James Bond movie has offered legislation to produce handguns with “personalization technology.”

The idea is to produce guns that can only be used by the gun’s owners. Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) cited the latest James Bond movie, “Skyfall,” as inspiration for the bill.

Technology appearing in movies is now real? Awesome!

Seriously, my life is going to be so much better with a giant walking robot!

According to the Star Tribune the State of Minnesota lost 11,600 jobs last month but, somehow, unemployment went down:

Minnesota’s job market posted its second straight negative month, shedding 11,400 jobs in April, the state said Thursday.

The biggest job losses were in trade, transportation and utilities, which shed 5,700 jobs, according to figures released by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota unemployment rate fell to a seasonally adjusted 5.3 percent in April, its lowest point since May 2008 and well below the U.S. rate of 7.5 percent in April. The March figures were revised upward from 5,200 jobs lost to 3,300 jobs lost.

One may wonder how an economy could lose jobs and experience a drop in unemployment. Logic would dictate that unemployment would go up as the number of people without jobs also went up. What we’re seeing here is another example of the state cooking the books in order to make unemployment look better than it actually is. I’ve touched on how the Bureau of Labor Statistics uses what is called the U3 unemployment statistic in order to make unemployment look better than it actually is. Another trick often used by statist statisticians, such as the ones employed by the State of Minnesota, is seasonal adjustments.

Seasonal adjustments, as the name implies, involves removing drops in unemployment caused by seasonal changes from the official statistic. The theory goes something like this:

1. During certain seasons there is a spike in employment during the rush to hire needed seasonal help. Christmas, for example, generally involves a spike in employment as stores try to have enough staff to deal with the Christmas season rush.
2. After these seasons conclude stores, who no longer need the additional help, can the seasonal employees.
3. Since this is seasonal it can be safely ignored when creating unemployment statistics because those employees aren’t actually unemployed, they’re, err, um, look over there!
4. …
5. Prosperity!

In other words if your unemployment statistic is looking bad you merely have to write off a large section of unemployed people as a seasonal phenomenon and your unemployment statistic will suddenly look better! Further adding precedence to this scam is the fact that there are multiple seasonal adjustment calculations to choose from! If one of the calculations isn’t giving you the statistic you want you can simply use a different one. Eventually you’ll find a calculation that will give you the statistic you desire.

War is peace, freedom is slavery, and unemployment is employment.

Remember when the Minnesota legislature and Mark Dayton said Minnesota’s tax victims wouldn’t be on the hook to pay for the new Vikings Stadium because proceeds from electronic pull tabs would cover the costs? As it turns out gambling revenues weren’t as high as the estimates had people believing so Minnesotans are going to be paying the bill:

Gov. Mark Dayton wants to rely on new revenues from cigarette and corporate income tax to help pay the state’s share of a new Vikings stadium.

Myron Frans, commissioner of revenue, explained Dayton’s plan to the Tax Conference Committee Thursday.

It would include two funding sources: approximately $24.5 million in one-time revenues from tax on the current cigarette inventory once the tax is increased. Dayton is proposing an increase from the current tax of $1.23 per pack to $2.52 per pack.

It’ll state with cigarette and corporate income tax but I guarantee that the state will be pilfering from everybody in a short while. Meanwhile Zigy Wilf, the owner of the Vikings, will continue enjoying his life as a billionaire thanks, in part, to the fact we’re all paying for his Colosseum.

I always thought the point of bread and circuses was to distract the serfs from their miserable existence not remind them of it.

The more power the state obtains the lower the quality of life for the general populace is. Power production is one of the most heavily regulated markets. Although the state claims it must regulate power production in order to reduce pollution its interests in the market involves protecting its cronies from competition. Consider the Clean Air Act, which we’re told was passed to ensure better air quality. In actuality it was designed in such a way as to drum up business for expensive sulfur dioxide scrubbers and protect eastern coal producers. From Political Environmentalism by Terry L. Anderson:

Under the 1970 Clean Air Act, the EPA had established a policy whereby all coal plants were required to meet a set emission standard for sulfur dioxide. The original standard of 1.2 pounds of sulfur dioxide (SO,) per million British thermal units (BTUs) of coal could be met in a variety of ways.

Despite its apparent flexibility, this regulation had disparate regional effects. Most of the coal in the eastern United States is relatively “dirty” due to its high sulfur content. Western coal, on the other hand, is far cleaner. Using western coal enabled utilities and other coal-burning facilities to meet the federal standard without installing costly scrubbers to reduce the sulfur content of their emissions. At the time, scrubbers were so expensive that many midwestern firms found it less expensive to haul tons of low-sulfur coal from the West than to utilize closer, dirtier deposits.

When the Clean Air Act was revised in 1977, it was time for the eastern coal producers to get even. As Ackerman and Hassler (1981) noted, eastern producers of high-sulfur coal elected “to abandon their campaign to weaken pollution standards and take up the cudgels for the costliest possible clean air solution-universal scrubbing” (31). The result was a “bizarre coalition of environmentalists and dirty coal producers” that successfully advanced a new set of environmental standards that probably did more harm than good in much of the country (Ackerman and Hassler 1981, 27).

Under the 1977 law, coal plants had to meet both an emission standard and a technology standard. In particular, the law contained new-source-performance standards (NSPS) that forced facilities to attain a “percentage reduction in emissions.” In other words, no matter how clean coal was, a new facility would still be required to install scrubbers. This law destroyed low-sulfur coal’s comparative advantage, particularly in the Midwest and the East. If all new facilities had scrubbers, then there was no need to transport low-sulfur coal across the country. Less expensive, high-sulfur coal from the East would work just as well, even if it produced substantially greater emissions.

The result of such regulations is predictable, power production facilities pay more money to install sulfur dioxide scrubbers and we, the consumers, pay more money for electricity so the power production facility can pay off the scrubbers. We end up getting less electricity for more money and suffer a hit in our overall qualify of life because of it.

Now consider the United Kingdom (UK). That state’s rule over power production has led to a shortage of power. Being a state the only solution seen by the UK is rationing:

Fridges and freezers in millions of British homes will automatically be switched off without the owner’s consent under a ‘Big Brother’ regime to reduce the strain on power stations.

The National Grid is demanding that all new appliances be fitted with sensors that could shut them down when the UK’s generators struggle to meet demand for electricity.

Electric ovens, air-conditioning units and washing machines will also be affected by the proposals, which are already backed by one of the European Union’s most influential energy bodies. They are pushing for the move as green energy sources such as wind farms are less predictable than traditional power stations, increasing the risk of blackouts.

The result of the UK’s unwillingness to expand their power production with reliable sources may lead to massive amounts of food spoilage as refrigerators across wide swaths of the country shut themselves down and people dying of heatstroke because their air conditioners automatically shut off when it was 115 degrees outside. Once again the state’s desire to control everything is leading to a drop in the overall qualify of life and, in a rather ironic twist, a potential waste of food, which isn’t a green policy at all. Oh, and to add insult to injury, people living in the UK will be footing the bill for the development and installation of the technology that will allow the power facilities to automatically disable your appliances.

Why wouldn’t the power production companies demand to be allowed to build more reliable production facilities? Because that would cost them money and so long as they enjoy the state-provided protection from competition they have no motivation to actually spend money to improve their product. Who would want to spend millions to build a new power plant when they can charge more money for the same amount of electricity thanks to state-mandated rationing? Nobody, that’s who.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued a recommendation (i.e. do it or your state won’t receive federal highway funds) that states reduce the legal blood alcohol limit for driving from .08 to .05:

States should cut their threshold for drunken driving by nearly half – from .08 blood alcohol level to 0.5 – matching a standard that has substantially reduced highway deaths in other countries, a U.S. safety board recommends. That’s about one drink for a woman weighing less than 120 lbs., two for a 160 lb. man.

If somebody is willing to operate an automobile above the current .08 level what makes the goons at the NTSB think those people won’t do the same thing if the legal level is reduced to .05? In all likelihood they don’t believe that. Why would they recommend a reduction in the legal rate then? Easy, traffic tickets are big business and the lower the legal blood alcohol level is the more tickets can be issued. Setting the legal limit to .05 would put many people at risk of receiving a citation even after a single drink.

This latest “recommendation” isn’t about safety, it’s about expropriation.

If there was ever a story that demonstrates the fact that the primary job of the police is to expropriate wealth from the general populace it is this one:

The city of Keene has filed a lawsuit (copy here) against me and several other people regarding robin hooding (Respondents). Basically, the city wants the court to issue a “preliminary” and “permanent” injunction “restraining Respondents, or anyone under their direction, supervision, employment, or control, from coming within a safety zone of fifty (50) feet of any PEO [Parking Enforcement Officer] while that PEO is on duty.” Additionally, the city wants to stop us “from video recording, within a safety zone of fifty (50) feet,” and “from communicating with any PEO.”

The city alleges that “Respondents have repeatedly video recorded, interfered with, taunted, and intimidated PEOs during the performance of their employment duties,” which is ridiculous for several reasons, most importantly, according to the job description for a city of Keene parking enforcer, “This position requires a person” to “relate with the general public” and “Endure verbal and mental abuse when confronted with the hostile views and opinions of the public and other individuals often encountered in an antagonistic environment.”

For those of you unfamiliar with robin hooding, it’s a practice partaken by some residents of Keene that involves inserting quarters into expired parking meters so the unsuspecting owners of the car don’t come back to a parking ticket. The police don’t like the practice because it eats into their parking ticket revenue, which is why they’re filing a lawsuit.

Under statism no good deed goes unpunished.

Central planners never learn. When one of their plans go awry they blame the data, implementation of the program, and anything else that allows them to avoid admitting central planning doesn’t work. Centralized plans rely on things never changing, which in an ever-changing world is a pretty stupid thing to rely on. Hell, the fucking continents don’t even remain the same!

The United Nations (UN), the largest central planning organization in the world, want people to supplement their diet with insects instead of current livestock:

A 200-page report, released at a news conference at the U.N. agency’s Rome headquarters, says 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diets with insects, which are high in protein and minerals, and have environmental benefits.

Insects are “extremely efficient” in converting feed into edible meat, the agency said. On average, they can convert 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of feed into 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of insect mass. In comparison, cattle require 8 kilograms (17.6 pounds) of feed to produce a kilo of meat.

Most insects are likely to produce fewer environmentally harmful greenhouse gases, and also feed on human and food waste, compost and animal slurry, with the products being used for agricultural feed, the agency said.

Currently, most edible insects are gathered in forests and what insect farming does take place is often family-run and serves niche markets. But the U.N. says mechanization can ratchet up insect farming production. The fish bait industry, for example, has long farmed insects.

How could this possibly go wrong? Let’s pretend that the majority of the regions that currently rely on beef, poultry, and pork for their protein intake decide to rely on insects instead. While the number of cattle, chickens, and pigs raise by farmers would decrease the number of insects being raise would increase. Simply walking around in forests and gathering insects wouldn’t provide enough foodstuff to replace current livestock so insects would have to be farmed. Farming insects is likely to be more difficult than farming current livestock because insects are difficult to contain (and difficult to keep out of your house). The UN report notes that many insects feed off of waste but it fails to note that insects also feed off of crops. Have you ever heard the phrase “A plague of locust?” There’s a reason people use that phrase, it’s because locust have a pension for wiping out crops.

Now let’s pretend that one of the insect farmers experience a failure in the system they’re using to contain their insect herd. What consequences would follow a massive number of fast-breeding crop-consuming creatures breaking out of their cages? In all likelihood all crops in the vicinity would be wiped out. In other words foodstuff would escape, more foodstuff would be destroyed, and the people in our hypothetical society would face the potential of starvation.

Of course central planners tend to believe they can control everything so this scenario has likely been written off as impossible.

For the longest time news agencies have enjoyed privileges above and beyond what us mere serfs enjoy. When you look at the very biased news that pretends to be unbiased it’s not hard to see why these agencies have enjoyed special privileges, they were toting the statist line. Now things are beginning to change. The current administration, who many news agencies shilled for, is finally targeting journalists:

The Associated Press has described the US government’s secret seizure of its journalists’ telephone records as a “massive and unprecedented intrusion”.

Chief executive Gary Pruitt said AP was told on Friday the justice department had gathered records of outgoing calls from more than 20 phone lines.

The press are finally experiencing what the rest of us have been experiencing for decades, a complete loss of privacy and liberty. I hope the press responds but airing out the state’s dirty laundry but I doubt that will happen. In all likelihood the Associated Press will roll over after a little complaining because that’s what people in this world do today.

The wonderful thing about government regulations is that they’re so versatile. Most people think of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as merely a government agency that collects taxes. However to an extremely devious, and somewhat creative, fellow the IRS can become a club to wield against your political opponent, which is what the so-called progressives did:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Internal Revenue Service inappropriately flagged conservative political groups for additional reviews during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status, a top IRS official said Friday.

Organizations were singled out because they included the words “tea party” or “patriot” in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

I don’t have a horse in this race beyond explaining how the IRS can be used as a political tool beyond tax collecting. My beliefs generally oppose the beliefs shared by organizations with the word “patriot” or phrase “tea party” in their title. However it is worth noting, regardless of your political orientation, how the state can prevent certain messages from spreading without resorting to direct censorship. By using tax laws the IRS was able to harass specific political organizations. Such harassment sends a very clear message: if you don’t subscribe to the dominate state-held political beliefs you can either keep your mouth shut or your life will be made miserable.

What’s even more interesting is that the IRS claims the harassment was initiated by a low-level employee:

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice. She did not say when they found out.

In all likelihood the low-level employee received orders from higher up and is now being used as a scapegoat. If that isn’t the case then the IRS just admitted that they have no real oversight and that even low-level employees can wield the agency’s power against specific targets. The implications of this are frightening. Imagine a low-level IRS employee sending the agency to harass an ex-girlfriend or ex-boyfriend because the breakup wasn’t amicable. Suddenly vicious revenge is as simple as getting a job at the IRS.

Tax codes are just as useful for dealing with political opponents as outright censorship or passing laws for the specific purpose of targeting those opponents. Al Capone was taken down by wielding tax code because the state didn’t have enough evidence to charge him with anything else.

The power to tax is the power to suppress.

Although this news is likely to excite my “tough on crime” friends I find it rather disgusting, especially for a nation that calls itself the freest on Earth:

“Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today,” writes the New Yorker’s Adam Gopnik. “Over all, there are now more people under ‘correctional supervision’ in America – more than 6 million – than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height.”

Is this hyperbole? Here are the facts. The U.S. has 760 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. That’s not just many more than in most other developed countries but seven to 10 times as many. Japan has 63 per 100,000, Germany has 90, France has 96, South Korea has 97, and ­Britain – with a rate among the ­highest – has 153….

That’s right, the United States, the supposed bastion of freedom on this planet, has more people in its prison system than the Soviet Union did under Stalin. Anybody who has paid attention to the prison-industrial complex in the United States is unlikely to be surprised by this news. We’re talking about an industry where children have been sold to prisons so those prisons could enjoy the benefits of young slave labor. It is rather sickening that people still claim the United States is some kind of bastion of freedom considering we have more people in cages than any other nation, including some of the most tyrannical regimes.