I ask those Republicans who are losing elections, do you wanna win instead? Start talking like this guy.

On Reddit, I ran into this article about N.Y. Attorney Genral Andrew Cuomo strong-arming Time Warner into shutting down Usenet servers because they may contain child porn.

I have always predicted that the government would pry open the gate to internet censorship using child pornographers as the crowbar. How can any sane person take the side of child pornographers? None of it surprises me. Bit torrent is probably next.

But what did surprise me was this comment on Reddit from Jeff Simmermon the Director of Communications at Time Warner Cable:

Ahhhh — the cool caress of reason. I am the director of digital communications at Time Warner Cable, and I’m really, really glad to see folks cutting through the alarmist hype here. We’re not blocking access to Usenet nationwide — we can’t do that. We’re not blocking access to anything. We’re simply making the decision to stop offering newsgroups hosted on our servers — anyone that wants to use Time Warner Cable to read Usenet groups hosted on other servers can do that unabated…f any of you want to follow up with me directly, feel free to e-mail me at jeff.simmermon@twcable.com, btw.

What Jeff stated here seems reasonable. However, below, I have a few questions for Jeff. I hope he will be kind enough to stop by and answer them.

What disturbs me most about this article is that the decision appears to be based on a power play by the N.Y. Attorney General. I don’t have a problem with a business making a voluntary decision, but this doesn’t look voluntary. It stinks of threats and coercion.

“We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers to ensure they do not play host to this immoral business,” Cuomo said in a statement released after a press conference in New York. “I call on all Internet service providers to follow their example and help deter the spread of online child porn.”

If you are unfamiliar with the Usenet, it was the original social networking app.

Question #1

Did Time Warner turn off usenet because hosting usenet groups is “playing host to an immoral business?” If so, what about all the years you did host usenet? What about all the current hosts of usenet? Are they suddenly immoral, because Andrew Cuomo declared them immoral?

Question #2

What role did the government play in your decision to stop hosting usenet servers? What other services are you willing to stop hosting if Mr. Cuomo asks you to?

Question #3

From the article, it seems clear that this move was designed to combat illegal content - child porn specifically. Is that why you pulled the plug? Were your servers hosting child porn? Or was it because they could potentially host child porn? Was a crime committed? Or was it some other reason? If it was another reason, why does Mr. Cuomo’s talk revolve around pornography and morality?

You see, if ISPs are willing to shut down entire services with millions of legitimate users and decades of archived information because of 88 instances of illegal activity, it seems to me they are willing to shut down anything the government asks them to close, regardless of actual abuses.

More illegal activity happens over the weekend on your local freeway than happened in 15 years on the Usenet. Why doesn’t the Attorney General shut down the freeway system?

The answer is obvious. Government charlatans scapegoated Usenet as a test run to find out how much resistance there is and to clear the legal arguments. It a safe start because the Usenet is old and its user base is decreasing, and they can grandstand about how tough they are on pedophiles. Most ISPs won’t think the battle is worth fighting.

This move will do nothing to fight pedophiles. It is only an opportunity for politicians to conduct a test run of internet censorship.

We all want to stop child molesters, terrorists, drugs, and drunk drivers (CMTDDD), but many tactics used to fight these problems are unconstitutional and are analogous to chopping off your leg to kill toe fungus.

If you surrender your rights to fight CMTDDD you’ve still given away your rights, CMTDDD will still exist, and will have stolen your most precious gift, your freedom. Don’t sell your freedom for the promise of utopia. It’s a Faustian bargain. They promise an end to suffering but they will never end it with government programs. Socialism always creates more suffering. The real choice is between freedom and occasional suffering and slavery and constant suffering. Instead, ask your politicians to stop the fear of CMTDDD from controlling our country, our policies, and our lives. Tell your politicians that you demand your freedom no matter what evil people do. Tell them you don’t want your phone tapped, your email sniffed, your internet censored, your movement curtailed, or any other constitutional right violated because of CMTDDD. Tell them you will not live in fear of CMTDDD and the best way to fight them is to stand up and preserve our freedom.

If you are looking for a quick easy way to send a message to your politicians, visit downsizeDC.org. They’ve made it as easy as possible to tell your politicians how you feel with a few clicks of the mouse.

I know this is an unpopular view, but it must be said. Oil is not a threat to our way of life, lack of oil is a threat to our way of life. We must stand up to the environmental movement. The environmental movement is an unscientific scam, and our leadership is gutless to call them what they are - socialists. Every environmentalist solution calls for more government power over your life.

While environmentalist spokesmen like Al Gore and John Travolta lecture us about climate change, they produce more carbon than a small country. Al Gore is an absolute hypocrite, he has no intention of living like a pauper, stacked up like cord wood in an urban high rise, riding his bike everywhere. John Travolta owns five jets! I can’t believe he has the gall to lecture us, when this is how he lives:

It is the classic orwellian “some pigs are more equal than other pigs.” They have no intention of changing the way they live. They want to change the way you live by putting a government shotgun to your head. It is classic socialism in a new wrapper.

While a majority of Americans drape themselves in their latest pop culture fashion trend - green, our economy is grinding to a halt. Not because of corporations, but because of government interference in the market.

If we want to overcome our current economic woes, we need a free market energy policy.

There is no evidence we are running out of oil. Peak oil is a myth. If a shortage of energy exists, it is artificially created by government regulation.

We don’t need windfall profit taxes, we need investment, technological advances, elimination of regulation, and exploration. There are 400 billion barrels of oil under North Dakota waiting to be tapped by innovation. Do you realize that that is almost twice the amount in Saudi Arabia? Wind and solar are not going to get us out of this. Electricity, geo-thermal, and hydrogen might, but until then, this is what we need to do:

• Drill more, in more places like ANWR and the outer continental shelf. We need to increase supply now.
• Build more refineries
• Build more nuclear power plants

We are going to grow to 9 billion people over the next 50 years. Unless we want the vast majority of them to live in abject poverty, we need cheap abundant energy. Conservation isn’t going to work, unless you want poverty. I don’t. I want wealth for everyone. And in order to increase our wealth we must increase our supply.

Socialism sucks, even when it arrives in a shiny green package.

Three core values we should demand from our leaders:

• Authenticity
• Integrity
• Character

These are the core values by which we should measure all human activity.

At the Minnesota Republican State Convention on Friday May 30th 2008 what I witnessed was repugnant. The entire state party leadership and a significant percentage of of the rank and file delegates failed a basic test of integrity and decency.

Let me lay the stage. I’d like to jump right to the meat, but to understand the underhanded tactics used by the Republican elite you must understand the context of this story.

About 1100 delegates were seated, 400-500 of which were conservative/libertarian delegates. Many (but not all) of these delegates were recently inspired to get involved in politics by the message of Dr. Ron Paul. I was part of that delegation as the senate district 35 coordinator.

First, the state Republican elites denied Dr. Ron Paul, a 10-term Republican congressman and presidential candidate, access to the convention hall and forced him to address his supporters outside in the park.

But that injustice was only the beginning.

One of the privileges/responsibilities of being elected a state delegate is to elect delegates to the national convention. The national delegate saga began several days before the convention when I received this mailing from the “Conservative Delegate Team.”

It is important that you understand that this mailer arrived days before the convention (I’ll explain in a little bit). While the mailer is filled with inflammatory language, there is nothing unethical about it… yet. I will refer to this list as the “party appointed national delegates” because, as you will learn, the national delegate election was a sham.

In order to appear on the ballot, all prospective candidates for national delegate were required to appear before the “Nominations Committee” on Thursday May 29th, the day before the convention. On Friday morning when I entered the convention hall I noted giant 25 x 10 banners hanging on each side of the stage listing the “party appointed national delegates.” These banners must have been printed days, maybe weeks, in advance of the convention.

On each seat in the hall was a glossy 30-page magazine advertising the “party appointed national delegates.” The party elites clearly spent an unprecedented amount of money campaigning for these candidates, but as you will see, pulling out the big money guns wasn’t enough insurance for these goons.

As we worked through the convention agenda, what I believe were unelected McCain political operatives with ear pieces and floor passes, who by rule should not be allowed to influence the vote, walked the aisles holding up signs instructing delegates to vote yes or no. Several objections were made, the most eloquent by Quentin Reese a Zimbabwean immigrant who compared these tactics to those he had witnessed in Robert Mugabe’s communist dictatorship, but the party officials and the sergeant at arms did nothing to stop these people from flagrantly violating the rules.

The real dirty tricks started once the Nominating Committee Report was announced. The committee allowed only 18 candidates on the National Delegate ballot of which 14 were the “party appointed national delegates.” **sarcasm** What a coincidence! The mailer was sent, the giant banners were printed in advance, the glossy magazines published, and by some stroke of luck, all of them made it through committee! Could it it have been pre-planned? Could this have been orchestrated weeks in advance? **sarcasm** Only 4 grass roots candidates appeared on the ballot, and of those 4, 2 had committed to supporting McCain at the national convention. What does this mean? It means at best, only 2 non-McCain delegates could be elected regardless of how many delegates on floor were McCain supporters.

At this point, I was angry, but I could accept it, so I decided to vote for the 4 grass root national delegates, 2 of whom were McCain supporters. However, I was unwilling (and so were many others) to support the “party appointed national delegates” for reasons of principle. Then the chair instructed us we MUST vote for exactly 14 delegates or the ballot would not count. We could not vote for 4, 6, or 8, only exactly 14. This rule made it extremely improbable that the grass root candidates would be elected because each delegate who did not wish to support the “party appointed national delegates” was required to submit a ballot containing at least 10 of 14 votes for the “party appointed national delegates.”

This is the point at which I refused to participate in the sham election. Not only was I not allowed to vote for the people I supported, I was forced to vote for 10 people I did not support or my vote wouldn’t count. I have been to over 12 GOP conventions and I have never seen an under-vote ballot spoiled. It is standard to spoil over-votes but never under-votes. This tactic would be similar to tossing out your ballot in a general election if you voted for President but didn’t vote for Congress. Such a tactic in a general election would be considered a gross violation of voters rights. However, since the Republican Party is a private organization, this is legal. But because it is legal to disenfranchise 40-50% of your voters doesn’t make it right.

I stepped out of the arena and thought about this situation for a few minutes, and I made a decision. I went back into the convention, intentionally spoiled my ballot, and walked out. What pushed me over the edge was how so many rank and file Republicans supported the corrupt leadership tactics with their applause and their votes.

I learned later that the convention elected 13 of the 14 national delegates and all 14 alternates from the “party appointed” list.

To be honest, I’m jaded. I’ve been around this crap since 1989. I’ve seen dirty tricks used to destroy good people and to manipulate conventions. I saw Arne Carlson assassinate (my opinion) Jon Grunseth’s character in 1990. I saw the State Republican Party run Kevin Knight out of town - a man who actually had a plan to reduce the size of government. I was present when Rudy Boschwitz used highly unethical (but legal) tactics to defeat Bert McKasy. I saw the National Republican Party deny Buchanan the right to speak and hundreds of Buchanan delegates the right to carry a Buchanan sign on the national convention floor. But this situation is by far the worst thing I have ever witnessed in party politics. Using a pure power play, parliamentary procedure, and manipulative rules they denied the vote to over 40% of the delegates present, most of whom were new people, the very people we need to grow and expand the party. Our leaders are either compromised or they are fools. It doesn’t matter which, they need to go.

I have tried to convince people for years that they need to get involved in the Republican Party, that they matter, that the world belongs to those who show up, and that even when you lose your vote counts, but if you don’t show up, you don’t have a chance. Few people believed me. What can I say now? If I am honest, I can no longer tell people this. I can no longer look someone in the eye and tell them that their vote counts in the Republican Party, because I was present this weekend when delegates were denied the vote.

It is a sad time for the Republican Party. It doesn’t matter who wins, both Obama and McCain are going to do everything they can to destroy conservatives/libertarians. For those of you who say libertarians have no place in the Republican Party, remember, Jason Lewis recently quoted Reagan reminding us that Reagan called himself a libertarian. The Republican Party will face huge losses this year. If the party survives, rebuilding will take leadership we have not seen since Goldwater and Reagan.

This isn’t about Ron Paul or any other person. This is about creating a smaller limited government. Every Republican talks about it, but few follow through with action. I went to this convention, not for Ron Paul, but to send a message to elected Republicans that we are here and we expect you to act on what you say. I am a Reagan Republican, a Goldwater Republican, a Ron Paul Republican, and a small “l” libertarian.

I want thank Joe Repya for sharing his thoughts about the convention. I don’t know him personally, but he is clearly an honest and intelligent leader. He isn’t a Paul supporter, but he saw the convention for what it was, and was dead honest about it. Men like Joe Repya build parties, not tear them apart, because men like Joe have integrity, something which seems to be in short supply in today’s Republican Party.

Chicago indexed gas taxes to price. Drivers now pay a whopping 79 cents a gallon in taxes in Chicago.

And that, of course, is exactly the point for the politicians. Gov. Blagojevich, for example, is counting on the high price of gasoline to bring at least an extra $220 million in the State Treasury in the fiscal year that begins this July. Most of that will be used to balance the way-out-of-balance budget.

So my question is…
Once the government gets used to spending these windfall profits and gas prices come back to Earth, are you ready to hear the the big government spenders whine about massive deficits? Indexed taxes can go two ways. What happens when they drop? They’ll do what they always do, raise taxes once again.

******

I took a risk on a previous post and I was accused of supporting rapists. I was told repeatedly that this case wasn’t about civil liberties, that it was about rape. As if you can’t violate civil liberties in pursuit of a rape case. It appears I stand vindicated. The Texas Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas CPS overstepped its authority. IMHO those words are an understatement. I’d call it state sponsored child abduction. Remember, however repugnant and unpopular this group is, if we allow the government to swipe children without due process, we have empowered them to steal our children.

The danger of empowering government is that its agents are not accountable for actions which would be criminal for anyone else, like kidnapping children. They can act with impunity. People who abduct children should be prosecuted and imprisoned. But in this case no one will be prosecuted. I’d guess no one will even lose their job.

In a similar case of government abuse, Tracy Ingle was shot five times in a botched drug raid. While no drugs were found he was still charged with a drug offense because he possessed a scale and some baggies, which he has a legitimate reason to possess. But should anyone be required to explain why they own baggies and a scale? Isn’t that the assumption of guilt? Is that what we’ve become? A nation which will shoot innocent people over baggies? The government abuse in this case stinks of an organized cover up and mafia style intimidation. You have to read it to believe it.

On a recent thread on Reddit commenters ridicule a Highschool girl who said “I don’t believe in democracy because I am a Conservative, not a democrat.”

They impugn her as an ignorant fool who is indicative of the stupidity of the current generation, when in fact she is smarter than most of the fools on reddit.

The United States is not a democracy, it is a Constitutional Republic. The founders of this country were not in favor of democracy.

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” Franklin, Benjamin

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“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” - Thomas Jefferson

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“Our real disease - which is democracy.” - Alexander Hamilton

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“Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” - John Adams

Democracy is as large a threat to liberty as any dictatorship. Our problem today, is that most people don’t care what form of government we have and won’t take the time to understand it. They just want what they want and expect the government to give it to them. If the constitution or the rule of law gets in the way, few protest, and our freedom slips away because of fear, greed, ignorance, and laziness.

DUI law is a perfect example of this. Few people understand this, but DUI law may be the single largest threat to our constitutional liberty. It is a clear case of the end justifying the means and it is almost universally accepted, the 4th and 5th amendments be damned.

Do you think this is a joke? No joke. U.S. and Canadian governments are raiding farmers for distrubuting raw milk. Raids which mirror drug war raids. Yet another clear indication that our government has far too much money and has grown far too powerful.

In Ontario

Two officers had even infiltrated the farmer’s inner circle, obtaining for themselves samples of his product. Lab tests confirmed their suspicions. It was raw milk. The unpasteurized stuff. Now the time had come to take him down.

Schmidt had risen that morning at 4 a.m. He milked his cows and ate breakfast. He loaded up a delivery, then fired up the bus. But as he reached the end of the driveway, two cars moved in to block his path. A police officer stepped into the road and raised his hand. Another ran to the bus and banged on the door. Others were close behind. Eventually twenty-four officers from five different agencies would search the farm. Many of them carried guns.

“The farm basically flooded, from everywhere came these people,” Schmidt later told me in his lilting German accent. “It looked like the Russian army coming, all these men with earflap hats.”

In Michigan

In October 2006, Michigan officials destroyed a truckload of Richard Hebron’s unpasteurized dairy.

In Ohio

The previous month, the Ohio Department of Agriculture shut down Carol Schmitmeyer’s farm for selling raw milk. Cincinnati cops also swooped in to stop Gary Oaks in March 2006 as he unloaded raw milk in the parking lot of a local church. When bewildered residents gathered around, an officer told them to step away from “the white liquid substance.” The previous September an undercover agent in Ohio asked Amish dairyman Arlie Stutzman for a jug of unpasteurized milk. Stutzman refused payment, but when the agent offered to leave a donation instead, the farmer said he could give whatever he thought was fair. Busted.

Read the rest at Harpers magazine.

The raid and seizure of over 400 children from a Polygamist cult in Texas got me thinking.  First let me say that I do not condone the beliefs or actions of these cult members. I simply want to share some thoughts these events have triggered and I’d like your comments.

1. I was unaware that child protective services could seize children from their parents without evidence of abuse. If what I understand about this case is accurate, the government received an anonymous call from a female claiming to be a 16 year old victim of this cult. It now appears this call was fraudulent. A single unsubstantiated call gave the government probable cause to seize over 400 children from over 100 families. I must restate… I don’t like this cult… but regardless of that… does this mean that a single unsubstantiated anonymous phone call could lead the government to seize your children? Doesn’t that seem wrong to you? Shouldn’t the burden of evidence be upon the state? Shouldn’t there be some proof?
   
2. These mothers were not legally married to the men who fathered their children, so technically they were single mothers who drew welfare benefits from the State of Texas. It also appears that no one in this cult was employed in the traditional sense. So the taxpayers of Texas have been funding this cult for years? Isn’t this a case of the state creating (or at least perpetuating) the problem? Wouldn’t this cult have gone bust without government funding? Instead of using police force, why not cut off funding? Or prosecute them for welfare fraud?
   
3. One more time… I don’t condone polygamous marriages, but I must ask an important question. In our modern “loose” society, how can we criminalize this behavior? For example, I’ve met unmarried men who have three children from three different women. I’ve also met women who have three children from three different men. Why is it legal for some people to behave this way and illegal for others? It’s illegal if you have multiple sex partners as a matter of religious principle, but legal if you do it as a matter of casual promiscuity. Doesn’t that seem horribly inconsistent? Wilt Chamberlain claims to have had sex with 20,000 women, yet if he married two of them at the same time, even with their knowledge and consent, he’d be a criminal. So you can legally have casual sexual relations with as many people as you wish but if you make a commitment to more than one of them, you’re a felon? Can anyone explain this? I sure can’t.

I learned about this case listening to Ian and Mark at Free Talk Live who are being attacked for asking similar questions. I’m glad they are there. Someone needs to ask tough questions, even about weirdos.

Update:

As I expected, I have gotten some serious hate mail and I am being attacked in social media because of this post. I guess that’s what happens when people perceive you to be defending the indefensible. I am not defending these people. I am questioning the actions of the state. There is a difference you know.

I want to point out to those of you who think I am nuts, that right here in Minnesota we have two major immigrant populations who practice widespread polygamy and child marriage. So I ask you who are insulting me, should Minnesota CPS also remove all the children en mass from all the homes of these immigrants based upon their cultural and religious practices? Or would it be better to treat it on a case by case basis like we do now? I prefer case by case because it passes constitutional muster.

Is immigration the ticket to a new age of peace and prosperity like so many free market libertarians tout?

Is immigration the answer to our falling birth rates? Is it the best way to keep our youth competitive in the global marketplace? Is it the path to economic growth and continued freedom?

Or like many paleoconservatives claim, is it the road to national and cultural ruin? The end of liberty as we know it?

Or as many environmentalists say, is population reduction part of the answer to our environmental problems? To energy scarcity? To suburbanization of the hinterlands? Are too many people the problem?

Or will these arguments be proven to be an alarmist fraud, like the 1968 book “The Population Bomb” where Paul Erlichman wrote, “the United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 years by 1980 because of pesticide usage, and the nation’s population would drop to 22.6 million by 1999 ^[1].

For some reason people love to believe everything is going to hell, but I am skeptical about predictions of cultural collapse and massive eco-disasters, because there have been so many chicken little warnings in the last century, and not one has come to pass. I am even more skeptical of these catastrophic predictions when the only solutions are higher taxes, protectionism, increased police power, and more government regulations.

However, I don’t claim to have a crystal ball, and I will make no predictions in this post. But in our lifetime (the next 40-60 years) we will find out who was right, the warnings of alarmists or the optimism of libertarians.

Japan’s population is declining and they refuse all immigration for protectionist reasons. We will clearly see what happens to their economy and society. To a lesser extent, we will see the same in Russia and most of Europe. And for the first time, without war or natural disaster, we will see the rapid depopulation of major economic powers.

On the flip side, the U.S., Australia, U.K., Ireland, and Canada have liberal immigration policies which are unlikely to change soon. So we will see the populations of these countries explode. Some predictions show the US having over a billion people in less than 100 years.

I tend to favor liberal immigration policies, if the folks seeking our way of life embrace the idea of individual liberty and freedom and if they are here to build a better life and not to get a handout. Most of the complaints I hear about immigration in America are really complaints about our social welfare system. People complain that immigrants are draining our school system and our social services. Which leaves me asking the complainers…

Have you considered the possibility that immigrants aren’t the problem, but instead, that our school system and our social services are? It isn’t just immigrants who drain these systems. Have you considered the possibility that large swaths of humanity do not value things which are ‘free?’ If people had to pay for education and it was voluntary not compulsory, don’t you think they would value it more? There is little we could or should do about people desiring the freedom our nation provides, but there is much we can do about giving away ‘freebies.’

But I digress.

We live in fascinating times, and I am optimistic about our future. And I can’t wait to see our world evolve.

What do you think about these topics?

Sound off.

Irrational fear fuels ALL of our Nanny State legislation, irrational fear of highly unlikely events, events which do happen, but were an acceptable part of life a decade or two ago. Our nation which was founded by risk takers is fast becoming a risk averse nation. The Nanny State is fueled by people who want to prosecute others for taking the most minuscule calculated risks. Paranoid Nanny Staters are calling for the prosecution of New York Sun Columnist Lenore Skenazy who allowed her 9-year-old to ride the subway home alone. She is being attacked for publicly stating that building confident independent children is more important than risk avoidance. Oh the heresy! I don’t know if I’d have the courage and faith to do what she did, but I do know I was allowed this measure of independence when I was 9 and so was every other American kid. Paranoid Nanny Staters say things are different today. It’s far more dangerous. There are more perverts and weirdos than ever. But as Lanore highlights in her column, it is the exact inverse, things are far safer than the 70s and 80s, and abductions are decreasing every year.

From the article:

“The statistics show that this (child abduction) is an incredibly rare event, and you can’t protect people from very rare events. It would be like trying to create a shield against being struck by lightning.”

In another ray of hope - Charges were dropped against Treffly Coyne the suburban mother charged with child neglect for leaving a sleeping two-year-old in a locked car and steeping thirty feet away for less than a minute. But I still find it disturbing that the police arrested her for this. How humiliating. Have the police lost all common sense? When I was a kid, cops didn’t enforce trivial laws, but instead, as members of our community, they made sensible judgements about each situation individually. It almost seems like these young cops are brainwashed. The old-school ones are much more compassionate and intelligent. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I miss cops like Tony Bouza. I don’t agree with everything he said, but a least he was thinking for himself and not acting like a brain dead zombie. Zero tolerance rules are for robots, not human beings. Human beings have the God given ability to reason. We can understand that everything is not black and white, that every situation is unique and filled with nuance. A free society should reflect our individual ability to reason and judge.

There are those among us who believe individuals cannot be trusted to judge risk, and must be forced under threat of prosecution to avoid risk.
But that brings other questions to mind…

If individuals can’t be trusted to make their own decisions, why should we trust individuals in government to make these decisions? Are they somehow better than us? Smarter than us? It appears they think so.