The key point to remember in all this is that when one congresscritter (or other government functionary) occasionally "gets it right" it is not a validation of that individual, their office, or the government system of which they are a part. It is almost always merely an example of the "blind squirrels / stopped clocks" phenomenon.
By "gets it right" I mean saying or doing something meaningful in support of individual rights and liberties. Political grandstanding, pandering, lip service, symbolic horse$#!t and the like do not count here.
The present case is a clear example of Massey pandering, in addition to showing pure contempt for free speech and the court precedents saying he cannot block people from an official account. His blocking of Mike Masnick for pointing this out is simply contemptuous lagniappe. We can only hope some version of the Striesand Effect comes into play here.
The problem is fundamental to the premise: when you put someone in control of a system you necessarily enforce corruption of the system. The corruption doesn't become a possibility, it becomes a command as certain as gravity.
Or, put another way:
"Anarchy is no guarantee that some people won't kill, injure, kidnap, defraud or steal from others. Government is a guarantee that some will." -- Gustave de Molinari
Free speech is being attacked by both factions of the US government, by authoritarians in other countries all over the world, and possibly even on Tor. Private entities are becoming more censorious, and, while they have the right to censor, it still may not be the right thing to do. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find places to speak freely to others. And if you just talk to yourself . . . .
Like so many things, if enough people would just quit caring about, paying attention to, buying into, and feeding this nonsense it would all just go away. MLB has legalized monopoly status, which would be unthinkable in most other contexts. It often uses local tax dollars to fund stadiums which primarily benefit zillionaire team owners and their associated crony capitalists, which, again, would be completely unacceptable in most other contexts.
Let's all just show MLB the door to oblivion, and shove the NFL and the NBA out that door, too, while we are at it.
Together, these three societal parasites constitute a significant portion of the mind-muddling, distracting circuses Juvenal warned us about.
I am clearly in the libertarian camp, but my belief in market forces is nowhere near religious. I think a free market market system should be the default, that is, it should (almost) always be tried first.
If it works, which it often does, fine. If not, go to Plan B, which usually involves government intervention and control to some extent. It can be loose control on a macro scale (Plan B-1), or tight control on a micro scale (Plan B-2), or somewhere in between.
But, at least in the U.S. in recent history, it seems that most, but not all, market failures have their roots in government intervention. In these cases, additional government intervention never seems to solve the problem. Instead, it typically seems to exacerbate and further entrench the problem. "Rinse, repeat" almost never helps here. More of the same failed "solution" will yield more of the same failed result. These are the situations where "burn it down and start over" seems like a much more viable option. Whether this option is successful or not will have to be determined by actually pursuing the option. Half-measures don't count.
It is an interesting idea, but we can't even think about free market competition in policing until we have achieved actual free market competition in the government that underlies the law enforcement system. Some people stubbornly believe (or insist, whether they actually believe it or not) that we have free market competition in government, via voting, but they fail to acknowledge that the existing government has rigged the "market" and effectively eliminated competition, largely via onerous ballot access laws.
Re: Re: Not "mishandled" if it is due to incompetence
I'll go you one better: It's not incompetence, and it's not corruption or cowardice, either. It's a deliberate effort to establish more and stronger police-state case law precedent. For some people, the current de-facto police state due to "qualified immunity" precedent just isn't good enough.
It is kind of like the old saying: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
The surprising part is the DOJ's stance in this, even though it is probably just for show.
NordicTrack to customers: "You think you have God mode? Watch this." [Pulls plug on God mode] "Ha, ha. My God mode is bigger than your God mode!"
I try my best to avoid products that have "right to own / repair" issues, but it is very difficult, and, in some cases, impossible, so sometimes I do without.
Unfortunately we do not have a consumeratti with enough principles and backbone to say "You can take your non-own-able, non-repairable, Internet server-dependent, paid subscription-dependent device and shove it up your arse!"
And our 20-year effort to have anything even vaguely resembling a useful federal privacy law for the internet era remains mired in gridlock thanks to a massive coalition of cross industry lobbying opposition with a near-unlimited budget.
". . . thanks to corruption." would be much simpler. Maybe not as explanatory, but just as accurate.
If you want to talk about "who started it" you should go all the way to the source: the Kenosha cop Rusten Sheskey who shot Jacob Blake, as part of an ongoing pattern of cops using deadly violence, mostly against Blacks, with little or no justification, and also with little or no accountability. You can read about it here.
But they still convicted him of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Most of the laws restricting rights and eligibility for privileges (like professional licenses*) after someone has completed their sentence and been released from prison need to go away. If someone is still considered dangerous, they should still be in prison. If they have been let out of prison, they should (generally) have all their rights restored, including the right to vote and the right to possess effective means of self defense, ie firearms.
There may occasionally be situations where exceptions to this are warranted, but this should be the default baseline.
*Whether professional licenses should exist at all is a separate topic.
Here the confusion is between rights and privileges, and it is completely intentional. The cops and their unions want people to think these absurd privileges are rights, when they are no such thing.
Rights are things that everyone has simply by virtue of being fully functioning people. Privileges are things that are granted to certain people by those in power.
Much like the difference between rights and powers, the difference between rights and privileges is very important. Without properly understanding these terms and their differences, and applying and using the terms appropriately, we cannot have meaningful discussions of these topics.
Every last one of those assholes should have been fired on the spot(at a minimum)
Yeah, and then they should have been charged with a litany of crimes, like assault (possibly with a deadly weapon), battery, reckless endangerment, etc, and maybe even attempted murder.
Remember, these weapons they used are considered less -lethal. They are NOT non-lethal.
I have never seen or heard of any correlation between police violence and open carry (or concealed carry). If there were any such correlation, never mind evidence of causation, you can bet that the correlation would be at the top of this list of the reasons the prohibitionists want to ban open or concealed carry.
It is not, so we can be quite sure that no such correlation exists.
I have heard prohibitionists speculate that the possibility that someone might be legally armed might cause an increase in violent police action, but this is clearly nonsense. Legally armed people rarely commit crimes, and even more rarely try to resist cops with deadly force, and the possibility that someone might be illegally armed exists whether or not carry of any type is permitted.
I just wouldn't be too surprised if the actual freedom of choice was somewhere around russian or chinese standards by now...
It is very close, though few will admit it.
For the last 150+ years, it has been only government sanctioned (R & D) candidates that have been allowed to be viable options. Actual opposition candidates and parties, while not explicitly prohibited, are effectively prohibited, largely by onerous, expensive, and time-consuming ballot access requirements and restrictions. The government sanctioned parties and candidates do not have these requirements and restrictions. As long as opposition parties and candidates are effectively eliminated by the policies currently in place, there is no need for the heavy-handed explicit prohibitions that other authoritarian countries have in place.
There have been a few "flash-in-the-pan" exceptions to the above, but nothing meaningful, just one-off attempts that got nowhere and had zero staying power.
On the post: Rep. Thomas Massie Seems To Have Skipped Over The 1st Amendment In His Rush To 'Defend' The 2nd
Keep your eye on the ball
The key point to remember in all this is that when one congresscritter (or other government functionary) occasionally "gets it right" it is not a validation of that individual, their office, or the government system of which they are a part. It is almost always merely an example of the "blind squirrels / stopped clocks" phenomenon.
By "gets it right" I mean saying or doing something meaningful in support of individual rights and liberties. Political grandstanding, pandering, lip service, symbolic horse$#!t and the like do not count here.
The present case is a clear example of Massey pandering, in addition to showing pure contempt for free speech and the court precedents saying he cannot block people from an official account. His blocking of Mike Masnick for pointing this out is simply contemptuous lagniappe. We can only hope some version of the Striesand Effect comes into play here.
On the post: New York Times Lies About City's Murder Rate, NYPD's Clearance Rate To Sell Fear To Its Readers
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Or, put another way:
"Anarchy is no guarantee that some people won't kill, injure, kidnap, defraud or steal from others. Government is a guarantee that some will." -- Gustave de Molinari
On the post: Rep. Thomas Massie Seems To Have Skipped Over The 1st Amendment In His Rush To 'Defend' The 2nd
Free speech under attack everywhere
Free speech is being attacked by both factions of the US government, by authoritarians in other countries all over the world, and possibly even on Tor. Private entities are becoming more censorious, and, while they have the right to censor, it still may not be the right thing to do. It is becoming increasingly difficult to find places to speak freely to others. And if you just talk to yourself . . . .
On the post: If MLB Thought Its Website Shenanigans Would Intimidate MLB Players, That Plan Has Backfired
Just say "No!"
Like so many things, if enough people would just quit caring about, paying attention to, buying into, and feeding this nonsense it would all just go away. MLB has legalized monopoly status, which would be unthinkable in most other contexts. It often uses local tax dollars to fund stadiums which primarily benefit zillionaire team owners and their associated crony capitalists, which, again, would be completely unacceptable in most other contexts.
Let's all just show MLB the door to oblivion, and shove the NFL and the NBA out that door, too, while we are at it.
Together, these three societal parasites constitute a significant portion of the mind-muddling, distracting circuses Juvenal warned us about.
On the post: After Months Of Troubling News, Israel's Government Finally Limits Who NSO Group Can Sell To
Government SOP
Israel's actions here are an excellent example of the "too little, too late" modus operandi so typical of government attempts at reform.
When they put everyone at NSO on trial for criminal / terrorist activity then it might mean something. Until then, this is just a lame attempt at PR.
On the post: The Bad Apples Control The Bunch: USA Today Report Details Law Enforcements Punishment Of Good Cops
Re: Re: Re:
I am clearly in the libertarian camp, but my belief in market forces is nowhere near religious. I think a free market market system should be the default, that is, it should (almost) always be tried first.
If it works, which it often does, fine. If not, go to Plan B, which usually involves government intervention and control to some extent. It can be loose control on a macro scale (Plan B-1), or tight control on a micro scale (Plan B-2), or somewhere in between.
But, at least in the U.S. in recent history, it seems that most, but not all, market failures have their roots in government intervention. In these cases, additional government intervention never seems to solve the problem. Instead, it typically seems to exacerbate and further entrench the problem. "Rinse, repeat" almost never helps here. More of the same failed "solution" will yield more of the same failed result. These are the situations where "burn it down and start over" seems like a much more viable option. Whether this option is successful or not will have to be determined by actually pursuing the option. Half-measures don't count.
On the post: The Bad Apples Control The Bunch: USA Today Report Details Law Enforcements Punishment Of Good Cops
Re:
It is an interesting idea, but we can't even think about free market competition in policing until we have achieved actual free market competition in the government that underlies the law enforcement system. Some people stubbornly believe (or insist, whether they actually believe it or not) that we have free market competition in government, via voting, but they fail to acknowledge that the existing government has rigged the "market" and effectively eliminated competition, largely via onerous ballot access laws.
On the post: DOJ Asks Tenth Circuit Appeals Court To Firmly Establish A Right To Record Police Officers
Re: Re: Not "mishandled" if it is due to incompetence
I'll go you one better: It's not incompetence, and it's not corruption or cowardice, either. It's a deliberate effort to establish more and stronger police-state case law precedent. For some people, the current de-facto police state due to "qualified immunity" precedent just isn't good enough.
It is kind of like the old saying: Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.
The surprising part is the DOJ's stance in this, even though it is probably just for show.
On the post: NordicTrack Patches Out 'God Mode' In Treadmills That Allowed Users To Watch Anything On Its Display
God mode?
NordicTrack to customers: "You think you have God mode? Watch this." [Pulls plug on God mode] "Ha, ha. My God mode is bigger than your God mode!"
I try my best to avoid products that have "right to own / repair" issues, but it is very difficult, and, in some cases, impossible, so sometimes I do without.
Unfortunately we do not have a consumeratti with enough principles and backbone to say "You can take your non-own-able, non-repairable, Internet server-dependent, paid subscription-dependent device and shove it up your arse!"
On the post: NYPD Continues To Screw Over Its Oversight By Denying Access To Bodycam Footage
Police state
I believe this is one of the definitions:
On the post: More Than 100 Hertz Customers Are Suing The Company For Falsely Reporting Rented Vehicles As Stolen
Francis Malofiy
I knew I recognized that name:
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/02/11/francis-malofiy-led-zeppelin/
https://www.techdirt.c om/articles/20180928/18021040739/9th-circuit-never-misses-chance-to-mess-up-copyright-law-reopens-le d-zeppelin-stairway-to-heaven-case.shtml
On the post: 'Anonymized Data' Is A Gibberish Term, And Rampant Location Data Sales Is Still A Problem
Simplify
". . . thanks to corruption." would be much simpler. Maybe not as explanatory, but just as accurate.
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
If you want to talk about "who started it" you should go all the way to the source: the Kenosha cop Rusten Sheskey who shot Jacob Blake, as part of an ongoing pattern of cops using deadly violence, mostly against Blacks, with little or no justification, and also with little or no accountability. You can read about it here.
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Re: This is why people hate you you scum
But they still convicted him of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Most of the laws restricting rights and eligibility for privileges (like professional licenses*) after someone has completed their sentence and been released from prison need to go away. If someone is still considered dangerous, they should still be in prison. If they have been let out of prison, they should (generally) have all their rights restored, including the right to vote and the right to possess effective means of self defense, ie firearms.
There may occasionally be situations where exceptions to this are warranted, but this should be the default baseline.
*Whether professional licenses should exist at all is a separate topic.
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Here the confusion is between rights and privileges, and it is completely intentional. The cops and their unions want people to think these absurd privileges are rights, when they are no such thing.
Rights are things that everyone has simply by virtue of being fully functioning people. Privileges are things that are granted to certain people by those in power.
Much like the difference between rights and powers, the difference between rights and privileges is very important. Without properly understanding these terms and their differences, and applying and using the terms appropriately, we cannot have meaningful discussions of these topics.
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Re: This is why people hate you you scum
Yeah, and then they should have been charged with a litany of crimes, like assault (possibly with a deadly weapon), battery, reckless endangerment, etc, and maybe even attempted murder.
Remember, these weapons they used are considered less -lethal. They are NOT non-lethal.
On the post: Minneapolis Man Acquitted Of Charges After Mistakenly Shooting At Cops Sues Officers For Violating His Rights
Re: Re: Re:
Should be:
". . . countless statues and court cases that give cops extra powers.
FTFY
Governments, and their agents, have powers. Individuals have rights. It is a very important distinction that you completely missed, here.
On the post: Fifth Circuit Awards Immunity To Cop Who Thought It Would Be A Good Idea To Jump On A Moving Car And Kill The Driver
Re:
I have never seen or heard of any correlation between police violence and open carry (or concealed carry). If there were any such correlation, never mind evidence of causation, you can bet that the correlation would be at the top of this list of the reasons the prohibitionists want to ban open or concealed carry.
It is not, so we can be quite sure that no such correlation exists.
I have heard prohibitionists speculate that the possibility that someone might be legally armed might cause an increase in violent police action, but this is clearly nonsense. Legally armed people rarely commit crimes, and even more rarely try to resist cops with deadly force, and the possibility that someone might be illegally armed exists whether or not carry of any type is permitted.
On the post: Clearview Officially Kicked Out Of Australia For Violation Country's Privacy Laws
Copycat?
Looks like Clearview may be trying to emulate NSO Group's business model.
On the post: The Corruption Is In Congress: When Your New Bill Exempts The Biggest Employers In Your State, Perhaps There's A Problem
Re: Re: Re: Re: Same old song, just louder
It is very close, though few will admit it.
For the last 150+ years, it has been only government sanctioned (R & D) candidates that have been allowed to be viable options. Actual opposition candidates and parties, while not explicitly prohibited, are effectively prohibited, largely by onerous, expensive, and time-consuming ballot access requirements and restrictions. The government sanctioned parties and candidates do not have these requirements and restrictions. As long as opposition parties and candidates are effectively eliminated by the policies currently in place, there is no need for the heavy-handed explicit prohibitions that other authoritarian countries have in place.
There have been a few "flash-in-the-pan" exceptions to the above, but nothing meaningful, just one-off attempts that got nowhere and had zero staying power.
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