Let’s say you’re unlucky enough to live in a state that has a mandatory “buckle up for safety” law. But you prefer not to wear a seat belt – for any of several perfectly valid personal reasons, none of which are anyone else’s business or at least, not the government’s business. Not unless you also believe that whether you eat your veggies, exercise three times a week and get a good night’s sleep each night are also ticket-worthy matters of public concern.
So, you don’t wear the belt.
You go about your business, harming no one. One day, Officer Not-So-Friendly issues you a ticket for not wearing the belt. This irritates you, because you don’t accept the right of people who aren’t your spouse or your parents to lecture you about your personal lifestyle choices – much less cotton to the notion that the state has any legitimate business harassing (fining!) you over such things. You accept that the state has the right – the duty – to intervene when your actions cause harm to others. But how is not wearing a seat belt a threat to anyone other than oneself? And is that any more the state’s business than the girth of one’s waistline? Or one’s diet? One’s recreations? Of course not. This is America – not nursery school.
So, you crumple the ticket into a little ball and throw it where it belongs – in the trash.
A few months down the road, you find yourself coming up on a “safety” checkpoint. You are forced to stop your car, roll down your window and hand over ID and other paperwork to another Officer Not-So-Friendly. He informs you that your “privilege” to drive has been suspended on account of your having not paid the fine for the seatbelt ticket of several months back. But he “gives you a break” – and says he’ll only issue you a ticket, which will be dismissed later on provided you pay the original fine. You of course have no intention of paying the fine but, wishing to end the encounter and be on your way, sign the new ticket and prepare to drive off. “Buckle your seat belt,” orders Officer-Not-So-Friendly. You do not. And drive off.
So does Officer-Not-So-Friendly.
Now you are ordered out of your car and arrested for driving a motor vehicle without the requisite permission slip. And for refusing to wear your seatbelt. Your car is hauled off to the impound lot.
Several hundred dollars later, you bail-bond yourself out of the Hotel Graybar and your friend (because you have lost your “privileges”) drives home your car.
Now things begin to get heavy.
Because you were convicted of driving without a valid/current permission slip, your insurance company has cancelled your policy. Since insurance is mandatory, if you want to keep your vehicle legally registered, you are forced to go begging to another one of the cartel’s members – which makes you an offer you can’t refuse: No insurance, or SR-22 insurance – and a premium jump from the $300 a year you were paying as a “good driver” with no accidents or claims filed against you to $2,000 a year as a newly minted “bad driver” – based on the record of your driving without permission because you didn’t pay the original seatbelt fine.
Well, you have a mortgage and other bills and only so much money – unlike the state, which has limitless access to millions of helpless victims’ pockets. So you decide not to purchase the “service” you are ordered by the state to purchase. You also decide that, on the principle of the thing, you will not pay that seatbelt fine.
A few weeks later, you go to get the mail and find a letter from the DMV. A random spot check has discovered that you have a currently registered vehicle that’s not covered by insurance, as per law. Your driving “privileges” are now revoked rather than merely suspended and you are ordered to pay another, even larger fine. Which you decline to pay. Check Sprouts Ad and Albertsons Ad.
At which point, you have become Tazer bait. Defend yourself against the uniformed goon and you become a felon.
All because you refused to pay a fine for an “offense” that’s of a piece with ignoring a high school hall monitor – only the assistant principle wasn’t armed and usually the worst he could do was order an afternoon or two’s detention.
This is not America. Or rather, it’s not what America was.
Is it not a tragic thing that we’ve allowed the country to become a large-scale reformatory in which almost everyone is guilty of some “offense” against the system – but hardly ever guilty of committing an actual harm? In which we’re treated like idiot children by heavily-armed busybodies empowered and prepared to do literally anything to us in order to obtain our submission? And to what end? Or rather, where does it end? Will it actually get to the point that armed men will hover over our dinner tables to make sure we’ve eaten all our veggies? Will we have “physical jerks” in front of the TV each morning a la Winston Smith in 1984? What will prevent things from going that far?
The answer, of course, is – nothing.
Nothing, that is, short of a wholesale rejection of the idea that how we live our lives is anyone’s business except our own – so long as we’re not harming anyone in the process. And a renewed appreciation for what Jefferson styled the pursuit of happiness. Our right to live our lives as we see fit, no matter what others may think of our choices, free of nannying-at-gunpoint.
I hope I live long enough to make it to the day when Americans – enough of them to turn the tide – recover their senses. And learn once more to live – and let live.
Throw it in the Woods?
A similar thing happened to me. Except I tried to “play by the system”. I was issued one of these tickets by a dopey cop standing around at a stop sign just looking for people to target who weren’t wearing their seat belts. I had a bit of pot in the vehicle, so to avoid any further intrusion and arrest, I just went along with it and accepted the ticket to avoid an illegal search and the cop finding something else to charge me with.
Now, I normally wear my seat belt 99% of the time. But at the time, I was driving an old Ford truck and the seat belt mechanism was broken. (it wouldn’t “click” into place)
The truck ran and drove great, but it was technically “totaled” with heavy body damage as a result of an accident. In that incident, after it was hit, the people fled. I chased them down and found them hiding a few blocks away. I called the police, but they didn’t even get arrested, and I was screwed over by the insurance company and didn’t get any money for my losses. Since it was the only vehicle I had, I continued to drive it to work, with the heavy body damage and broken seat belt.
After this dopey cop with nothing better to do ticketed me, I decided I would take the ticket to court and fight it. I had been issued another ticket at one point also, when a cop was standing on a highway on-ramp and harassing people for not wearing their seat belts. It was part of my State’s “click it or ticket” enforcement program where armed revenue collectors with guns would stand random places looking for people who dared not wear their seat belt.
So I signed the ticket, and mailed it in “not guilty”, and got a letter with my court date on it; as is standard procedure. The problem is, the bureaucrat working of the State court office failed to replace the printer ribbon on the printer that prints the letters. The ink was so light, I could barely read it. But I *thought* I could make out the court date, just barely. Turns out, I was off by about a week or so because one number was actually different one.
I then get a call from the State Police, in some barracks in some boondocks town way out of the way from where I live. They informed me that I had a warrant for my arrest for not appearing in court.
Wanting to be a “good citizen”, I reported to the barracks and turned myself in. I was rewarded the mystery prize of a $10,000 bond. I had to come up with around 10% ($1,000) bail to be released.
All over a seat belt ticket.
This is was one of the turning points where I continued down the spiral and ended up losing all respect for the police, government, etc.
The case ended up getting dismissed in court or whatever, but that is something nobody should have to go through over a ticket. I truly hate the government, police, bureaucracies and all these agencies.
“So my question to Don and, Eric as well, is, what are YOU prepared to do? Where and when will you draw the line?”
Asking when someone will draw the line between right and wrong is like asking a child if he understands it’s wrong to steal.
Just a small reminder on this day. War is a Racket, Smedley Butler. Great video of his famous speech.
War is a racket, because the state is a racket. Thus, it is mostly impossible for a state to engage in a just war, so ALL state wars are unjust. Except maybe in some very rare circumstances.
Yes that is about it. I think the only just war at this point would be against the state. It’s hard to see how any nation is actually a true threat to our people and I have never bought into the whole “They hate us because we are free crap”. Non-intervetion would actually make us all free from any threat, but from that of the State itself.
Pete Sisco.
That is just too funny. Because my buddies brother actually does already have a job lined up as a private contractor. I’m not shitting you. You called that one dead on. He is retiring when he gets back and going to work for Raytheon for about the same pay.
What is really ironic is that his four other brothers are all rednecks. We throw ATF parties. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Shoot skeet and pistols, have a hobo stew, Rafle off a gun or two. (it pays for the kegs, ammo and clay pigeons.)
A hobo stew is where you take a beer keg and cut the top off (old stainles steel ones). You fill it with meat, venison, rabbit, sausage and ham, then add cabbage, potato, carrots etc. Of course it varies each time. Just depends what people bring to toss in. You build a big fire and hang it over it then let it boil.
The wives and kids come out to camp at the start and shoot and eat a potluck lunch. We don’t get lit up until dark. Then when the sun goes down the women and kids leave us guys to party around the fire, play guitars, smoke, sometime beat each other up if we feel in the mood. (the guns get put away before anyone gets hammered)
of interest to all is the survival blog ( Jim Rawles ) server in the USSA has been down for 24hrs, it shows a DNS attack.
I have a long time reader of Survival blog and s sometimes letter contributor, in the decade I have been reading the sites material, I
never known the site to be down to an attack, I would this sort of attack to be a condition a step below condition red.
I have no doubt that the PTB have both the will, the means and the ability to do this, they also have the motivation to engage in such activity, it is not the Chinese or Russians or even the Taleban, I would point the finger diectly at the shadow government as the culprits.
SO BE AWARE !!!!! and duly warned !!!
Chris I don’t want to sound mundane but I have personally participated in web site crashes that have in fact lasted for days. Non-commercial sites don’t spend lots of money on redundancy. I’m sure you could be right and all, but the odds seem to be against you 🙂
I’ve read Patriots (Rawles’ book) and learned a lot – learned to think about certain things a lot. It’s worth buying – and reading.
eric
fluke or happenstance ? whats your take ? or am I getting too paranoid ?
of interest to all is the survival blog ( Jim Rawles ) server in the USSA has been down for 24hrs, it shows a DNS attack.
I have a long time reader of Survival blog and s sometimes letter contributor, in the decade I have been reading the sites material, I
Eric et all ……
dudes ……you yanks ain’t going to stand up, those on here maybe , but like us Aussies, nup the PTB have near all whupped, too many bread and circuses for the sheep, I used to think sensible people would rise up in at least the western countries and throw off the central bank created fiat money system, my conclusion now ? no way hosay !…..too far gone and the elitists know it.
they have 400 years of making and manipulating front men for their own sadistic enjoyment.
So what’s your solution, chris? Find a hole to hide in?
When it comes to it, I would rather die than live as a slave.
We have a narrow window of opportunity now–USE IT!
Go out and act like a maniac. Talk to everyone, strangers especially–they’re less likely to blow you off like people who know you, and any impact you have will be greatly magnified. Why do I say that? Because a stranger talking about this stuff normalizes it to the unaware; if even strangers are talking about it, they reason, it must be trendy.
That luciferian snake Brezinski himself, at an address to the CFR, went on in his droning, circumlocutory way for about 30 minutes on the single topic of “an unprecedented global political awakening”.
To you and me, that’s a wonderful thing; he and his audience were stricken by the news.
They’re scared, and that’s why their plans are proceeding at such a maniacal pace in the last few years; they’re showing their hands in a way they haven’t for 100 years of slow and stealthy progress…because they KNOW we’re waking up, and they’re panicking to get the last plans in place before it’s too late.
If anyone has an email address they are not afraid to use contact [email protected] and I will try to upload a copy of AMERICA’S FORSAKEN PROMISE. Twenty years in the making, it’s a mere 46 pages, informative, thought-provoking, and very easy to read.
I’d like to distribute it but I could sure use some help. I’m also very old and would like it to survive my death.
Tinsley Grey Sammons (1936 –)
Tinsley have you used Scribd? You can upload it for free and they’ll keep it forever. Anyone can download it.
Publicizing it is a different issue. Scribd.com. The one stop shopping solution for the self publisher that isn’t interested in getting paid.
scott
sure you could be right ! but depends if you trust the PTB
Thanx Scott, I’ll check it out. Just having it read by more than a few Individuals is payment enough for me.
I have everything I need and most of what I want.
methylamine
no hole to hide in , but how about using the right time and place to stand up ? I don’t object to standing up and going down with a fight, but tell you what I want to make it count if it comes to that, I want it to actually hurt them, bloody the nose !, and as for the people who sit in front of the idiot box ? and do nothing ? sure a lot of them are ignorant people, lots are kind enough and don’t go murdering, raping etc, but how do you deal with people who are wilfully ignorant !.
everyday I deal with naive, ignorant people, who will have the penny drop only when they lose their job and see 50% unemployment !.
I don’t believe the system is sustainable and when it does collapse then we will see.
You might also be understimating your brothers. I know some of you blokes can fight. One of the only times I have been knocked out was by some big ass Aussi with a fist the size of my head. He was part of ABCA. “Jolly good fight mate”
yea well, sure some Aussies will stand up, but tell you what precious few have so far !
I live in Michigan you know the Great lakes state, lookes like a hand? The media totally jacked up our militia after the Oklahoma City bombing. We used to be allowed to train at the National Guard Base in Grayling. Nope that ended right after our BS media tried to make some link. My best friend’s brother was in charge of the base and had to kick us out. Now he is in Liberia in charge of trainging their military. Full bird colonel. He is a nice guy but kind of a putts. Never seen a lick of combat but now he is in charge and making $250,000 bucks a year.
Ps. His last name is Peters.
One last thing, just cause the name Peters reminds me.
Eric, do you collect the Peters Ammo stuff? Lots of cool old pics. Actually collectable and fun, and heck it says Peters!
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=peters+ammo+collectables&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1024&bih=568&tbm=isch&prmd=imvns&tbnid=AIf2eosZMXBNlM:&imgrefurl=http://www.thespiritoftheoldwest.com/AAA-BuySell.htm&docid=voBEhsrfkmWjvM&imgurl=http://www.thespiritoftheoldwest.com/Img-Ammo-PetersShotgunShells.jpg&w=656&h=640&ei=BjbDT7eFMLPD6gG18fjGCg&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=708&vpy=211&dur=328&hovh=222&hovw=227&tx=108&ty=145&sig=107355638917286644422&page=1&tbnh=134&tbnw=137&start=0&ndsp=19&ved=1t:429,r:11,s:0,i:96
No, but I probably ought to – after all, my wife will be real happy if I pick up another hobby!
You’re kidding me, the tax parasite is pulling down a quarter mil a YEAR??
Ah god. I just threw up on my desk.
And the best part? The fuckers have free room and board…then they “retire” (as though what they did before was productive) and keep sucking at the teat.
They’re like those Joeys who cling to the mother’s pouch into adolescence, with their feet sticking out and the poor mother barely able to walk.
Actually that’s unkind to kangaroos, they’re awesome. A better analogy would be a giant, fat tapeworm so large it’s hanging out the country’s rectum.
@methylamine You forgot the step where the vet retires from his $250K “job” then goes to work for a contractor where he lobbies for more millions for his new boss, thus multiplying the financial damage to you and me. Truly a lifetime burden to the taxpayer!
This one’s for you Pete:
“As ever, post election herds of politicians are migrating from the public sector to the promised land of Washington lobbying, led this year by Representative Billy Tauzin, an architect of the people’s new Medicare drug law who is becoming the pharmaceutical industry’s chief lobbyist at a rumored salary of $2 million a year”. — http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/17/opinion/17fri2.html?th
Eric, it’s impossible to make a woman happy. Hell, you’re old enough to know that
Bingo. Most people don’t think through the math to realize that 100,000 homeless bums on welfare don’t cause as much damage to the economy as one or two successful lobbyists who can pry billions per year out of the “system” (i.e. victim taxpayers) for their Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Defense employers.
I see there’s another Alex posting here, so I’ll add two ++ to my name so as not to tar him with my ignorant and outrageous statements 🙂
You can find some pretty interesting videos on Youtube of people that don’t go along with this traffic scam. They defy police orders and get away with it because they do it properly.
As I understand it, it’s a question of sovereignty. Licenses in general, are permission slips from the state to engage in an activity, even though not such permission is Constitutionally needed.
EX: marriage license, driving license. Marriage licenses only go back to 1910 or so. Prior to that it was strictly a religious ceremony in which the state had no stake, but the state got churches to require a state issued license before performing a religious ceremony, through the tax free status. They also promised not to speak out against homosexuality from the pulpit, not support political candidates from the pulpit, and a few other things in return for the no tax benefits.
Similarly, driving licenses are dated fairly close to marriage licenses. When you apply for a driver’s license, you are stating that you’re a commercial driver and thus subject to their rules, whereas if you don’t have a driver’s license you’re traveling lawfully on the roads, and the Supreme Court as affirmed that you have the right to travel without being hassled by LEOs. Driving and Traveling are legally distinct, so when you register your car, and produce a driving license for the cop, you’re stating that you’re under their authority.
Georgia recently tried to pass a statute that says you don’t need a driver’s license in their state, though I don’t know if it passed, and other places allow you to post your own license plate on your car, and ‘travel’ where you will.
As I understand it, you pay off an automobile at purchase(no payments, no financing), you may record the purchase with the county clerk, but NOT register the car as registration gives them authority over it, and retain the MTO to prove you purchased the car. Then affix plates to your car to identify it and you in case of accident because then you would be liable for damages under tort law. The videos I’ve seen show these people beating both cops and courts, but the hassle of going to court to fight the money hungry LEOs and their masters may outweigh the benefits of traveling freely: that’s up to each of us to decide. Watch some youtube videos and check it out.
p.s. – since I touched on marriage, Eric, that’s another avenue for the state to bend a man over and rob him blind, at least. When you get a license you enter into a 3 way partnership, you, your wife and the government who is the controlling partner. That’s why they can dictate divorce terms, alimony and child support any way they want, with men usually getting shafted, where as if you’re not married they have much less leverage on you since you never entered into a contract with them.
Thanks for this, Eric. State and local governments have created an industry out of harassing people for victimless crimes. Now they need more and more revenue from these tactics and it will surely come to a head at some point. The only question is whether or not the system collapses from its own weight before that.
In America, the People could not ask for a better paper trail to use when the time comes for Payback.
@ methylamine
I have to agree with the idea that most people are not truly born idiots. Look at some of the brain dead sheeple who can still tell you the stats of all their favorite sports teams? These are not genetic idiots thay were made to be that way. (not that I have a problem with sports just with blind followers) Although I have noticed from living in a lot of the different parts of the nation that there are significant parts of our population that do have that vacant look that simply gives away their IQ.
For instance I live near a town called Cheboygan, their own mayor once said if God put an enema in Michigan he would stick it in Cheboygan. They seem to have a high population of really dumb people. I’m not talking about downs syndrome or Autism. I’m talking about those people who have an IQ that is simply never going to be up to par. That dim bulb look too. You know before they open their mouth that nothing good is going to come out of it. I have seen the same thing in parts of the inner city and out in the sticks. I’m thinking it’s something in the water, namely alcohol. Mom’s who live off a fifth of rum a day for the full nine months.
Best pickup line in Cheboygan: Hi, I’m Brad and I have a job. Second best: Hi, I’m Brad and I get disability.
A conclusion so obvious that I have long wondered how it is still possible for lawyers to hold office.
It’s insane.
Better a viper in your clothes closet than a JD in your legislature.
Any law that is for your own good should be deemed unconstitutional. But sitting in front of the TV watching the Ohio State House of Representatives I see where these laws come from. They come from a bunch of lazy lawyers who have nothing better to do with their time.
On the TV they all were identically dressed except for the color of the ties and the suits. The suits were wonderful. Like to own one except most cost a tidy sum of money.
We are a country of elected lawyers. Most want to do nothing more than provide for their poor relatives in the profession. So you have a bunch of parasites on the public wage doing their duty to zap us all one way or another. Look at your inheritance laws if you don’t believe me.
Is it wrong to legislate seat belts? It might save your life in an accident. Maybe you should legislate cigarette smoking in the Nursing Homes so no one dies of cancer? Guess they already have done that here.
Poor old soul, cannot even take a last puff on a cigarette before shipping off to the morgue. That is really sad.
Currently we have 3 truckloads of laws concerning environmental protection. The result is you cannot even get the dishes clean in your dishwasher in 16 states because of legislation banning good cleaning products.
My suggestion would be that no lawyer can hold public office. It is a conflict of interest to practice law and make laws. No one that has practiced law would hold elected office.
In the meantime, I suggest you watch them like a hawk. Just this morning they required a hunting license for exterminators to practice their trade in the state of Ohio with a $40 license fee.
The power of money invades every cell of the justice system and destroys its promise.
— Gerry Spence
Lawyers are everywhere. They abound in our hamlets and swarm in our cities. They overcrowd our legislatures, flourish as the heads of state and, like dead fish too long in the water, rise to the top of our great corporations.
— [Ibid]
Another point that should be made is that the more laws you have the less moral the people are. The people themselves stop enforcing mores and norms and rely on cops instead. If you can get away with something or skirt the law then you are ok.
You can steal from your neighbors by forcing them to pay taxes for your windmill and people actually think you are a hero for saving the planet. Same thing for the CEO who makes millions because he managed to get subsidies.
It is not so much that the laws make people less moral at first. It is the laws themselves that are immoral, and monkey see monkey do, neighbors start to copy there fellows, envious of they’re gains in status and wealth. Thus more laws are passes. The whole dang thing known as the state is nothing more than the institutionalization of coercion justified and made right by whatever God people believe in. It is the habituation of immorality.
The more laws the less justice. –Cicero
“Oh judge! Your damn laws! The good people don’t need them, and the bad people don’t obey them.” – Ammon Hennacy
I may be an anarchocapitalist but I must confess that greed and power are the primary driving forces of the States and of modern banking.
You do realise Eric, that in my opinion, we are going to have to have a good old fashioned Civil War if we want to reestablish Our Constitution and our individual rights.
Death to Tyrants !
It may come to that, unfortunately. I dread the effusion of blood, the chaos that will result. But I fear servitude – and tyranny – much more.
Alfred Adask realized that America’s legal system is an extortion racket even before I did. I claim a close second.
Google: tgsammons.wordpress.com
No need for bloodshed just need enough people to refuse to pay taxes, or use state money. That will light a fire up their as*@!.
No need for bloodshed if a significant number of Citizens get off their lazy asses and restore respect for the genuine Law of the Land by making good use of Grand and Petit Juries. If they do this instead of merely voting and hoping America can be fixed.
I’d like to horsewhip the next asshole who says: Don’t blame me, I voted for fill in the blank.
So Tinsley I have a practical question for you on this subject. It’s not a hypothetical and I don’t have experience with the Grand Jury process but from what I’ve read based on some of your comments I think I may need to learn much more.
I have an altercation in progress with my local Zoning department, who claim my business isn’t legal. Notwithstanding the issuance of permits to construct a guest house on my property in 1996, or a 16 year history of rendering transient occupancy taxes on revenues generated by the guest facility, last year my business was declared illegal when I applied for a small hotel liquor license with the state. The local zoning folks seem to have forgotten they had previously issued permits for the business, or that they’ve collected over $10,000 in use taxes on it over the years, and now claim it is in violation and must be re-permitted at a significant cost to myself.
I’ve wrestled with how to address this problem. Conversations with the head of the department have gone nowhere. I hired a private attorney who happened to be an ex-employee of the department that specialized in greasing wheels, however this just cost me a couple thousand bucks for advice to “play ball, everything will work out right if you just give them what they want” (money).
I spoke with my District Supervisor, who essentially told me the same thing the lawyer did but didn’t charge me for it.
I was down to a single alternative to submitting to extortion before reading your views on Grand Juries and their role as watchdogs on public servants. I planned to file a civil suit against the department to Quiet Title on the property under a theory that the State was claiming the right to tell me how I could and could not use my property without having made a legal claim that entitled it to do so. I believe this is the traditional approach to resolving issues like this. This claim is furthered by a State level statute of limitations that gives an entity (public or private) only five years to bring action against someone for a violation of the law (or zoning code in this case) once they plaintiff has become aware of the violation. Since my business has been paying occupancy taxes to the plaintiff on the property for over 10 years, it would appear the Zoning department have lost their option to complain about the use.
My question for you is, would this be the type of case that might better be brought before a Grand Jury? My essential claim is that I have a runaway bureaucrat running roughshod over my rights under the guise of his private interpretation of Zoning law in the complete absence of any legal or lawful restraint.
I’d appreciate your opinion, with the understanding this is a very high level view of the problem and no advice will be taken without careful consideration and consultation with other experts on the subject.
Free Delmarva. At various times in history, residents of Delmarva Peninsula have proposed that its Maryland and Virginia portions secede from their respective states, merging with Delaware to create a new state named Delmarva. Its combined population would be 1,392,713, roughly that of Hawaii.
A great time for the declaration of a new sovereign state will be Sept. 13-16th.
http://www.delmarvabikeweek.com/
Scotland, Quebec, Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, Greenland, Palestine, Arizona, Southern Nevada, Tibet, Chechnya, Hutt River, Westartica, Uzupis, British West Florida, Filettino, Easter Island, Aruba…
If the major sovereignity movements all act at once, then who can stop us?
Seems to me that the same arguments in support of “local” States can be used in support of national States. I believe that is why the USA has fell. The antifederalists tried to stop the federal government, by using the same arguments the federalists used, in defenestration’s of States rights. This has failed. What we need is the destruction of public law, and the turning over the creation and enforcement to the market. Only then does law respect rights and sovereignty. You are not free and sovereign until you can take your money elsewhere. Or appeal to genuinely independent courts that are financially independent. I could go on. 🙂
No Law of the Land will ever enforce respect for itself. An inert and ignorant People will always be badly used.
Jason, I followed your argument to “defenestration” with a collected mind then I damn near rolled on the floor laughing. I LOVE that word! Just throw it out the window! (or in the woods!)
Great!
My auto correct put it in there and was pressed for time. Thanks though. Was supposed to be in defends. 🙂
The problem with seeking a violent solution is the unpredictability of both the outcome and the aftermath.
An excellent fictional study is them movie VIVA ZAPATA with Marlon Brando. And of course there is the very real study of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GOGDOSqONPs/T7xdryh9OVI/AAAAAAAAAk4/Z1HgDxfiCdQ/s400/TSA_Janet_Napolitano_Scan.jpg
Seventeen key factors of an electronic police state:
Daily Documents: Requirement of state-issued identity documents and registration.
Border Issues: Inspections at borders, searching computers, demanding decryption of data.
Financial Tracking: State’s ability to search and record all financial transactions: Checks, credit card use, wires, etc.
Gag Orders: Criminal penalties if you tell someone the state is searching their records.
Anti-Crypto Laws: Outlawing or restricting cryptography and/or privacy enhancing technologies (anonymity networks).
Constitutional Protection: A lack of constitutional protections for the individual, or the overriding of such protections.
Data Storage Ability: The ability of the state to store the data they gather.
Data Search Ability: The ability to search the data they gather.
ISP Data Retention: States forcing Internet Service Providers to save detailed records of all their customers’ Internet usage.
Telephone Data Retention: States forcing telephone companies to record and save records of all their customers’ telephone usage.
Cell Phone Records: States forcing cellular telephone companies to record and save records of all their customers’ usage.
Medical records: States demanding records from all medical service providers and retaining the same
Enforcement Ability: The state’s ability to use overwhelming force (exemplified by SWAT Teams) to seize anyone they want, whenever they want.
Habeas Corpus: Lack of habeas corpus – the right not to be held in jail without prompt due process. Or, the overriding of such protections.
Police-Intel Barrier: The lack of a barrier between police organizations and intelligence organizations. Or, the overriding of such barriers.
Covert Hacking: State operatives removing – or adding! – digital evidence to/from private computers covertly. Covert hacking can make anyone appear as any kind of criminal desired. One example of covert hacking software is Magic Lantern
Loose Warrants: Warrants issued without careful examination of police statements and other justifications by a truly independent judge.
Six Worst Police States
1 China; 2 N Korea; 3 Belarus; 4 Russia; 5 England; 6 U.S.
Five Best Free States
1 Phillipines; 2 Mexico; 3 Brazil; 4 Bulgaria; 5 Thailand
FYI, there are no good and bad states, there there are only strong and weak States.
Just remember, the problem is not so much the “nanny state” in particular, it is the public ownership in roads. The nanny state reaction has more of a change in attitude and moor’s about the rules on public roads. With private roads, some would require insurance, some not, some having no rules, others being very tight, clean and run with an iron fist. In short, the only just rules are those of private origination.
jason,
I agree. Peaceful, self-interested actions and respect for others has produced far more than “govt” ever has. Since when has “democracy”(spelled ‘mob-rule’) ever been beneficial? And when did we morph into a ‘democracy’ anyway? A Republic was the original intent as I recall. When we quit studying actual law and sank into being cared for and entertained we dropped the ball.
Rome falls again.
Agreed – in principle. But keep in mind that insurance was not generally mandatory in most states until fairly recently (as recently as 25 years ago in Virginia) and it wasn’t all that long ago that the idea of having cops stop people for absolutely no reason (that is, absent any specific probable cause) would have been regarded as positively Soviet – and never tolerated. Much less “buckle up for saaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaafety.”
Well, here is how I see it. Public roads created problems that needed to solved. On public road with a single monopolistic owner that does not have rules, no protection, no lights or not requiring people to have insurance, or heck providing access to neighborhoods for gangs, ect… These problems could have been fixed mostly by abolishing public roads, instead people create police and give lots of power to them, thus creating more problems, making for crazy speed laws and arresting people for distracted driving. Current laws will create more problems and around and around we go…….
Hmmm. On the other hand there is the view, honoured by long standing, that public space is not the “private” property of the State but a sort of unowned residue. This view gives to whatever authority applies in the situation the task of preventing that realm from becoming owned. A minarchist reading would reduce the role of the State to only that; an anarchist reading would go further and put it down to broad consensus or have it conditional to the internal arrangements of this or that community. Whatever the case, I think it a good thing if there is land left over after everyone’s respective property has been counted; and I hold that the recent erosion of this condition is a contributor to our current ills.
Freedom of movement is a key component of personal liberty, and thus it is with good reason that tolls are listed among the monopolies that comprise State privilege. They constitute no service but merely the undertaking not forcibly to hinder; that is, the extraction of tribute by menaces, given one’s legitimate desire to be on the other side of the tollbooth: and that is theft.
Having the possibility of getting from A to B without crossing other people’s land is one thing; providing this ostensibly unowned land with feats of civil engineering is quite another. Who did this in the past? The Roman Empire did; so did the Third Reich, to some extent in romantic imitation; and so did the American Interstate project consequent to the New Deal, to breed money-spending livestock out of the population for the corporations. But in a more anarchic time the city-state of Venice did not, but situated itself to make use of the sea instead. The sea was there already; and by no stretch of the imagination – at least at the time – could it be said to belong to anyone but God.
The important thing is the right of way, not the road. Bring on no roads, I say. More likely it would be bad roads, mere tracks created by repeated use, old roads kept in patchwork repair by the voluntary efforts of those who want to use them. And then let us be clever with suspension.
“And to what end?”
Fines, Money, Revenue – to pay for the police, lawyers, judges, secretaries, clerks, etc… that work(sic) for the justice(sic) system.
Ta’Shon Rain Little Light dies from Obamacare.
http://youtu.be/lTKwih23OpM
This is what you have to look forward to when Obamacare or Romneycare becomes your health care like it already is for 2 million people living on Native Concentration Camp Reservations.
Marvin Heemeyer showed how a small thing can lead to big trouble for them. After years of fighting with the City Council of Granby, he built himself an armoured bulldozer, gave everyone fair warning to get clear, and caused property damage to the city and the city’s crony businessmen conspirators that cost 10’s of millions to repair.
http://youtu.be/PZbG9i1oGPA
CBS is part of a major defense contractor conglomerate, so you can safely discount 70% of what this teleprompter-reading nagger lady is saying and just enjoy the internationally acclaimed superhero and his Granby Concentration Camp Dozer.
The stories behind those that resist or attack government and are portrayed in the media as kooks usually turn out in one of three ways:
1) Different people who wanted to be left alone and posed no danger to anyone until the government started messing with them.
2) People who suffered years of economic harassment by the government and those who could wield the government against them. This includes people who had their homes, land, businesses, and/or other property stolen from them by government.
3) People who found themselves targets of malicious criminal prosecution by the government and/or tried to stand up to one of many various frauds that the government backs up with violence.
The masses stay in their illusions and then demand more government to protect them from these “kooks”. The tipping point is busting the illusions, not acting out. Government wins that game every or almost every time.
Bust the illusion and government won’t likely last 24 hours. Anything else is just a blip in the news cycle.
I don’t actually want to see a violent revolution. I think it could happen with massive strikes. But just think about this, there are less than five thousand people who actually control everything in this country. If we all stand up could they really take us down?
Where would the military stand? I bet they would take our side if we were serious.
The problem as I see it is the whole right/left BS. They honestly believe if only they can vote in their side things will change.
I’m not sure the military would turn on their masters.
In fact, I’m increasingly sure they would follow orders. They have throughout history; even in the early, wonderful years of America they did–remember the Whiskey Rebellion?
The best we can hope for is that a large percentage of the military will go AWOL, or quit ahead of time, and provide support for the revolution.
But the regulars, still in “service”?
Forget it.
And IF they fail–the NWO has been training foreign troops right here in the good’ol USSA for years. Alex Jones has a video in one of his documentaries of an American town, with foreign and American troops, going door-to-door confiscating guns, and putting people in mock POW camps.
The actors are shouting things like “I’m an American! You can’t do this to me!”
It’s the most frightening video I ever saw, because it reminded me of Red Dawn–except the troops were American and foreign, and they’re preparing it right now.
http://youtu.be/NWi8FvHiVOE
There may still be monopolies in food, water, roads/transit, health & drugs, and many other things without government.
But the insanity of having to pretend at gunpoint that there is a Colorado, a Utah, and so on is too much.
The fact that a father has to record his child’s name with the authorities at gunpoint is too much.
We are assigned so many slave names (social security number to work and so on).
Those who live in America and are racially or mentally superior to a pre-1865 slave, are delusional. We have a tenth of the freedom and self-determination that even the lowest field hand had.
Americans have been conned. You can’t go to Bern, Switzerland and tell them you are part of the “White Race” and want equal treatment and residency.
They’ll laugh for a minute and then push you back down the hill. An American is barely even a Golem anymore, much less a member of the highly cultured Europid ethnic class.
Look at any European racial map. We are all Western Mongoloid, same as far east Russians, Native Americans, and Northern Chinese.
For a little while longer we’ll run the machines and fight the wars obediently for our betters, until they gin up a new batch of Colonists somewhere else and give them the mantel and tin plate of authority.
The one area where I find myself in agreement with the elites is their conclusion that a large percentage of the populace – perhaps a majority – are cattle. For any of countless reasons, they are either:
* Not bright enough to understand.
* Too indifferent to care.
* Too fearful to want freedom – either for themselves or others.
* Envious of others more talented, brighter, more industrious than they.
* Share the same control-freak mindset as the elites.
Etc. Just a sampling.
In my darker moments I conclude that the only way humans will ever truly be free will be when the minority of humans who value freedom can completely separate themselves from those who do not value freedom.
And that may not happen, ever, on this Earth.
I used to be just as skeptical of the “average”, Eric; in my darker days I even wondered if we’d speciated, because I couldn’t believe I was the same species as some idiots I share space with.
But don’t go there. It’s a powerful Elite meme that snares even the awakened.
Those people have been made that way, very deliberately, very painstakingly, and very expensively.
Look at a Cape Buffalo–a highly intelligent, fierce creature smart enough to double back on a would-be hunter and gore him from behind. They protect their young, they migrate, they SURVIVE.
And compare it to a Holstein cow.
Take that Cape Buffalo and subject it to the same domestication a cow’s been through, and in a few generations…voila, a Cape Cow.
Conversely look at wild horses; descended from escaped imports hundreds of years ago, they’re pretty wily creatures and well-suited to survive in the wild…unlike their domestic cousins, and that’s just a few hundred years’ evolution.
Liberty and individual responsibility have the same quickening and livening effect on humans, only MUCH faster because we’re less driven by genetics than by intellect.
Take a few “gnomesayin’s” and put them in a competitive, win-or-fail on your own merits atmosphere, and they’ll sharpen right up. Hell–look at drug dealers! Sharp, entrepreneurial, innovative, take no crap kind of guys. I admire them; they provide a valuable service.
American’s aren’t vastly genetically different than they were 150 years ago. 150 years ago, we were the most enlightened, best-educated, most prosperous people in the world.
Provide the same milieu, and in a few decades–probably less–the lights would come back on.
You know what changed my mind? Having kids. You can look in any kid’s eyes, and SEE the potential. It’s there; in fact, it takes tremendous effort–see my previous post on fluoride/vaccines/indoctrination–to crush that human spirit out of them.
We’re a remarkable creature, so adaptable. Given liberty, we really shine!
In my cynical moments I think that I might as well take advantage of the way things are. So far I have resisted.
methylamine, While I see the potential in little kids I also realize the damage that has been done to myself. It is a constant attack. If most people really were genetically lower class, these exercises would be unnecessary.
There may be a genetic switch that works to resist the attack, but that’s about it.
How do we get the curtain pulled back on the wizards?
No violence is needed. Violence is counter-productive. The curtain needs to be pulled back or removed. This is what scares the shit out of the PtB. Violence doesn’t bother them, they know how to deal with that and have lots of ‘dumb animals’ (as Kissinger put it) to do the work. But the curtain they are so afraid that the masses will see them. And they should. They are toast if their little illusion goes sideways.
They are more scared of little old Ron Paul (or any other effective teacher) than they are of an armed revolt. They can shape and take control of armed revolts if they can’t suppress them.
http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/the-wizard-of-oz-the-man-behind-the-curtain/A256OXC8fjkqcO3Sf53uug
“Sherif: Is there not one thing in your life that is worth losing everything for?” – Sean Connery as Raisuli, in The Wind and the Lion. (Screenplay by John Milius) – Jim’s Quote of the Day
Something I’ve noticed which I don’t know if it’s a form of self deception in order to not go crazy:
Many (most?) people simply cannot grasp that even the smallest, most benign, most simple government edict, is _always_ backed up by the threat of overwhelming violence, imprisonment, and death.
The price of disobeying the state in any way is to die. The only variable is when.
Always, and for everything. A statute’s a statute, no matter how small.
Hi Bob,
Exactly. This is the point I have been hammering at in my columns for years now… others, too. I think we’re starting to get through, too!
Keep hammering Eric.
This could get long, I’ll try to restrain myself.
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
Ayn Rand
The threat of force is all they have. When they finally own up to the actual mathematical certainty of bankruptcy what will all the bureaucrats do for a living? In Wisconsin they organized to try to recall a governor..we’ll see.
As for the “crime” of violating a “statute”..In order to have a ‘corpus delecti’ (i.e. body of the crime) a case requires a ‘valid cause of action’ This must have three elements. 1) a violation of a legal right,2)damage or injury, 3)redress-ability by the court. If the state fails to meet all three elements there’s no standing,so, the court has no jurisdiction.
I could go on and on, but won’t. The whole issue of “privilege to drive” and “licensing” (i.e. “permission to be free”) infuriates me. Deception and ‘words of art’ ad nauseam.
I will, Nils – and, thanks!
I had to go to the Court House down here in semi rural So MD for some building permit BS. A Metal Detector was set up at the door. I have little doubt that Big Bruva thought it was putting on its best image by having it manned by a Senior Citizen in a suit and a Double Minority Armed Guard. After putting all my pocket junk in the tray and removing my metal ended suspenders Senior says “Belt too”. I made some comment about being strip searched next and Ms Double Minority looks very concerned and puts her hand on her gun. I then said “WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FEARS THE PEOPLE TO THIS EXTENT, THERE’S SOMETHING VERY WRONG WITH THE GOVERNMENT”.
Eric, try to imagine for a moment the increase in abusive behavior by those wearing government costumes if they knew we didn’t possess 300 million guns, many of which are inside our vehicles with us…
Agreed – though I hope it doesn’t become necessary to go down that road…
I got in at five because I had the money and it seemed like the best buy in sight. I followed silver since I was a kid. I saw no way that it could go down. The industrial uses are all over the place and even if that craps out people will still hold silver for barter. Take a Morgan silver dollar and put it in your hand, you can actually feel the value. I talked my parents into putting half their retirment into silver, some junk but mostly stocks. About two hundred grand. Hell the stocks were even better! I did the same for one of my best friends. Let’s just say I can always go over and drink beer for free.
Brad, you’re my kind of people!
Did your parents go into silver ETF’s, or mining stocks?
I’m still too cautious to get into mining stocks, but the gains can be unbelievable; they run multiples of the underlying metals, and if you’re brave enough to weather the junior mining stocks there’s some real money to be made.
I follow Casey’s Daily Dispatch…if I’d acted on their tips I would have made a bundle.
They bought some mining stocks and streettracks. The mining stocks were amazing.
Buncha guys just like me, some more so, some less.
We see the two ton heavy thing swinging this way.
Or is that, multiple two ton heavy things?
Problem is, so many others don’t, or won’t.
Or they’re pushing on it trying to get it to swing faster.
*They* are schizophrenic and/or sociopathic, most of them.
String pushers.
Some People wanna get out and stop it from swinging.
Others say that’s crazy, wait til it stops on its own.
When they argue it’s almost funny, as if they were children trying to find the best way, but they are not children and it’s not funny.
At least they are trying.
Most likely the powers-that-shouldn’t-be will toe the line until the crack-up-boom, in the meantime; they will never take everything to the point mass-man gets up and joins us.
It’s a free market in resistance.
Some will do it this way.
Others will do it another.
Will that work?
It’s all so uncoordinated.
It’s not like you can herd cats though.
But isn’t that what’s happening now from the other side?
… Just thinking out loud.
Dude you’re channeling Jim Morrison, right on!
In all honesty I think people should get themselves beaten and locked up every once in a while. (acceptions for the disabled) Why? Because it increases your rage! Plus you learn that you can take it. What is a day in county or ever a month? It’s not jack. What is a beating for the average healthy man? My wife jokes with me because I have been locked up more than anyone she has ever known. I never start a fight or commit what I consider crimes. I don’t dammage people or their property.
My longest stretch was four and a half months waiting trial for assault on an officer(s). I was found not guilty. Dash cams are apparetly good for somthing. $100,000 bail so I sat, let them feed me and worked out.
This was just about three years ago. State boys tried to beat on me. Funny part was they had me cold for DUI (barely, probably .08 at most) and no license or insurance they didn’t charge me for that. I mouthed off they hit me and I hit them back.
Twice for violating W’s No speech zone. Once for being in possesion of a QP (never paid that one). Once for being on acid in public. Once for putting a flag on the capital building in Lansing. Swat team got me in Alaska for giving a guy a ride home from the bar. I could go on and on. Who knows what it will be next.
Nice resume! I sat in the can for a couple weeks one time for eluding. Luckily I got it dropped to a misdemeanor. Had a drug violation back in the day too. These activities have to remain in my past because I wouldn’t be able to keep my current job otherwise. Excellent learning experience for sure. The eluding was 100% my fault and those two weeks taught me a lot.
I don’t get why they call it “eluding.” You didn’t elude shit if you got caught. They should call it “attempt to enduce heart attack by forcing fat cop to move his ass.”
Remind me to tell ya a story sometime….
They are starting to really get tough on eluding around here now. Our cops have the brush guard on the front now so they can bump you off the road. It used to be a bit of a sport especially if you had a pickup. Just take off accross a field.
The “TIP” maneuver only works on idiot drivers who’ve never countersteered a tail-happy car.
Of course, not to be attempted unless you’ve removed your license plates 🙂
And besides–who lets them get that close? After all, they’re driving a frikkin’ Crown Vic–how slow do you have to be to let one of them catch you??
Right on! One of the fun things we do is build bump and run cars. It’s dirt track racing and almost like dirby cars only on an oval track. They keep it watered down so you can’t go too fast. But still it’s fun. You buy a junker and fix it up over winter something that can take a beating and has decent HP. You have to take the gas tank out and put it in the back seat. There are a few tricks, like narrow tall tires. Heavy bodies so you can muscle people around,etc. It’s a blast, but dang you will be sore for a month.
Hey, I spent a night in the can for “reckless” driving (110 in a 55). I had a freeway to myself one Wednesday morning at 3 am. It was funny, the cop stuck his head in the window and sniffed a bit then asked me if I’d been drinking or smoking anything. I had to explain that one simply didn’t drive 110 miles per hour bent. He didn’t find my comment amusing and it was off to the pokey for me.
I spent another weekend in the slammer for $750 of outstanding parking tickets. Never fought with a cop though. Amazing they let you go!
One of my most savory experiences was blowing past a cop in a Brand Not To Be Mentioned supercharged V-8 coupe…. I was at 130-something when the oink appeared. What was I gonna do? Pull over? Hammer time! I never even saw the bastard again. Put maybe two miles between myself and the piggie, then disappeared down a country road that just goes and goes and goes… with turn-offs every few hundred yards. Bye now, Mr. Bacon!
Felt charged up for a week afterward.
I think I’ve already related my (similar) story.
Wife and I were on the way to San Antonio, doing about 110. The freeway is divided, and has those new-fangled safety wires in the median, with a cop-crossing every mile or so. Piggie came over a rise in the opposite direction, Valentine announced a loud instant-on Ka radar.
I looked over at my wife, and she just smiled…so a quick blip of the throttle took me from sixth to fourth, step into it, fifth at 125, stay in it hard to 150 and relax into sixth to hold it. No point going supersonic; I’m looking for an exit.
About three miles later, a nice exit with a big gas station. Drive around to the pumps on the side behind a big pick’en-em-up truck and casually begin filling up.
I couldn’t see his expression as he tore by on the freeway a minute later. But I wished I could.
P.S. this is one advantage of never having a front license plate…though I doubt he could have read one given our closing speed initially anyway.
Love it!
Such experiences give us a glimmer of what it must have felt like to be really free, some 225 years ago. Specifically, the process of obtaining that freedom.
These insolent fucks – the cops – are psychologically the same as the redcoat enforcers of that era: Submit and Obey. We are The Law. How satisfying, to kick one in the balls!
BE-autiful! The only thing that might have made it better is if the car had been coated with wave=absorbent paint that would’ve made Porky’s radar gun as useless as he was.
I try to think about events like that whenever they do get me for something. It sorta equals things out!
I’ve got the next best thing: a Laser Interceptor laser jammer. It’s the only one, I believe, that doesn’t raise a jamming code on sophisticated guns; and it will jam almost every gun right up to zero range.
Here in Houston it’s almost all they use nowadays, and the Interceptor is a get-out-of-jail-free card every time.
It pays not to abuse it; I’ll slow to five or ten over then disable it so it’s not so obvious I’m jamming them.
The one time this backfired–my favorite toll road, coming over a rise at just over a hundred and WHAM the Valentine and Interceptor both freak out. I turned it off at 77, the limit was 60…and he nailed me.
Beat it in court though, but still felt stupid.
I HIGHLY recommend the Laser Interceptor if they use laser in your area. In some parts–most recently, Texas–they’ve made it a Class C misdemeanor, similar to a broken turn signal. But good luck proving
a) I have one
b) I used it to jam
The jury let me go. I’m thinking they felt just about like we do. It did cost me a ton of money though. I was actually looking at prison so I hired a good lawyer. $9,000.
I respect this – kudos to you, Brad. I wish I could do the same. But if I did it, I’d be tossing my career (forget the press cars once the car companies discover I am in the clink for throwing a punch at Officer Shithead – and their car is in the impound lot) and then I’m putting the whole shebang (everything I have) at risk. This is the dilemma facing probably countless thousands of people who despise this system – but still have too much to lose to take a stand.
The fireworks will commence when they take away what we’ve still got – because then we’ll have nothing left to lose….
I agree and I say it all the time. In fact I fully believe that we have an economic collapse coming soon and that it will bring about a true revolution. First they will try even harder to crack down and that will only make things worse for them. When people lose everything they might finally make a stand.
I think I have mentioned it before. But I’m a prepper. I already mostly live off the land and yes I have my guns and ammo I also keep junk silver coins on hand, but hidden.
re: “junk” silver.
Smart move, Brad. I do the same. I love gold too, but silver’s got SO much upside.
Beware though; I think there’s a huge buying opportunity coming later this year when Europe begins its slow capsizing. Capital will flee to the dollar–among fiat currencies, it’s the leper with the most fingers left. For some unholy reason, people still think of US Treasuries as a safe investment. Go figure.
When that happens, the dollar will soar and precious metals will take a dive.
I’ll be there with cash in hand…because those same fools will finally figure out the dollar’s leprous too, and all hell will break loose.
PM’s will then take wing to heights we’ve never seen before.
I’m actually holding dollars too and waiting for silver to go back down. If it hits $15 I’m in!
I don’t think it will go that low. I suppose it could. I buy when I feel like it and try to buy the metal that brings my average down or hurt it the least.
If silver drops to $15 I might just pull up the truck and buy whatever I can get.
I am hoping for mid-low $20s.
Mid to low twenties would be a buy for sure. I bought in around $5.
Do you remember back in the day when the Hunt Brothers did their thing? I used to take all my money and change it in for fifty cent pieces then search through them. I cleaned up and cashed out. That was how I bought my first truck. Although I do feel like a bit of a dick because I used to pass off 40% coins as 90%.
Not long ago I would buy bags of barber quarters from APMEX and go through them and make sets. I auctioned them off on evilbay. Even after fees and such I was left with quart jars full of silver.
Damn Brad that’s sweet! I got in at 12 and have been buying roughly quarterly since. I’m way underwater on some $38 buys…but then I think about all I got at $12, 14, 18 🙂
Ditto on holding some cash. If it goes anywhere near twenty, I *might* even buy on credit and pay it off as quickly as I can later…though it hurts to even think that way.
Have ya’ll considered buying some nickels? Worth 7 cents at today’s copper and nickel prices; they’re 75% copper/25% nickel.
The only problem is BULK–silver’s already heavy, nickels would weigh a ton.
Brad Smith, how n the hell were you hip to buy at $5 per oz.?
What made you aware at that point?
…Just wondering. And a bit envious.
Damn, I didn’t even, “get it” when i was buying at $11 and refusing offers at $12 because I thought, “Who In THE hell is going to buy from me at $12? … $12 is crazy!”
Ha. If I only knew then,…
Not that I should feel bad, cause I had to explain to 60 yr. old People that silver was removed from the currency, and they were shocked and bewildered.
I wondered how that could be? I mean, they were not teenagers or younger at the time. Why the heck weren’t they paying attention to something like that?
Also, methylamine, you’re right, Ni is damn heavy. After a couple of boxes,… Au and Ag make a Whole lot more sense.
Although, Ni sure is a nice double play for when the Dollar makes a jump up for who knows how long?
I bought a few silver eagles when it was $6/oz spot, except premium at the time was about the same as it is now, $3-4 a coin. Making them $10 each. I was just getting started. I wish I had bought more.
I bought some near the high as well. But I always look at my average because it’s all fungible. What does buying X more at today’s price do to my average. That’s how I make my decisions. When I bought high it didn’t move my average much so I did it as a hedge it would keep going up. It crashed back down but my average was ok, so I’m ok.
Nickels will be the new ‘junk’ coins. Especially if the mint changes the composition.
Methyl, you’ve heard of the “plunge protection team”? Their job is to keep the market inflated. Unless someone pulls the plug on them, the dollar won’t soar as you predict. Here’s why.
You need to think of the dollar as a “share” of the labor represented by Americans. By having a dollar, I own a piece of you and of course it works both ways.
When I trade generic dollars for ownership of more specific labor, for example the high yield labor of Apple employees, I trade one contract (the generic labor represented by the dollar) for another (the specific labor represented by a share of Apple). In a supply/demand situation this is a wash trade, but as the demand for Apple labor increases, the value of generic dollars relative to it decreases. As long as Apple doesn’t print more stock, dollars “go down” relative to the stock.
This is where the plunge protection team comes in. It’s job is not to preserve the value of dollars. It’s mandate is to preserve the Dow and it has the ability to use all the funny money Ben can print. If the dollar gets too strong the PPT *will* step in and use that funny money to support those companies deemed “to big to fail”. We saw this happen in the aftermath of the 2008 crash. In about 6 months the Dow went from 7,000 to 12,000 thanks to Ben and the PPT.
You could be right that there will be another brief window of opportunity, but I don’t think it will happen. Remember the “flash crash”? It’s my belief that it was a test, and only a test. I’m fairly certain we will not see a repeat of 2008. This time I think they’re ready.
@Scott–
You’re saying that this time the PPT is ready. I think you’re hypothesizing that they’ll sink newly-printed dollars into equities and maintain the illusion of prosperity by a stable/rising Dow.
That’s just what they’ve been doing; the market has been magically levitating for years despite record-low retail activity. 70%+ of trades are high-frequency computer trading. It is a casino–with odds less favorable than Vegas.
But what we’re facing now is Ludwig von Mises “crack-up boom”; the end-game of these systems.
The capital flight from Europe will have to go somewhere; and it will be (and already is–look how much the dollar has risen over the last six months) the dollar…aka US Treasuries.
I hear your argument re: equivalence of labor and money. But it’s weakened by the fact that we’re a purely fiat system. Those closest to the creation of fiat benefit the most–the banks, then the politically favored. Those furthest from the spigot get the shaft–that’s us.
As the dollar “strengthens” during the influx of capital, it will free the Fed to print; and print, they will, for two reasons:
a) it’s politically expedient to inflate their way out of insurmountable debt
b) the deflationary pressures of a Euro implosion will scare the hell out of the Keynesians; inflation is garlic to Keynesian vampires.
Besides–you know history. No fiat currency lives; the average lifespan is 27 years, and the dollar’s 41 (off the gold standard August 1971). Empires ALWAYS debase their currency; we’ll never pull an Iceland.
You know what? As I was writing this I kept referring back to your comment and I think we’re saying the same thing:
The PPT wants to levitate the market, and to do so they’ll print money.
The only difference is I think there will be a moment of “strong dollar”–leper with the most fingers left. You’re saying the PPT won’t allow that, as it will weaken equities.
I say the equities will do fine, because of the flood of new capital.
In the end we probably agree 100%—the fiat debt-money regime is on its last leg. The paradigm shift is going to be momentous, probably the largest single shift in paradigm in human history.
Re: Jail
Experience is the best teacher. One cannot fully “appreciate” what it is like to spend time in jail unless s/he has actually done so. It’s helpless frustration taken to the limit.
I have spent enough time in jail to fully appreciate the experience.
I am sorry to hear that. I don’t believe in prisons. Maybe private jails where people are held for a VERY short time to see if they can press charges, for real crimes like theft, arson or murderer and the like.
Eric,
I’d like to see you take this to its logical extreme–not just hint at it. The logical extreme, of course, goes something like this: An arrest warrant is issued followed by an armed SWAT raid on your home (if they manage to get the address right). And because they chose to go for a no knock raid you were armed and ready to defend yourself–resulting in your eventual slow and painful death as you lie for over an hour (like the former Marine) in your own entrails while they refuse you proper medical attention. All this for a baseless infraction–an arbitrarily declared crime against the state.
What really needs to happen in the situation you describe (but most likely won’t, given that very few Americans even know their neighbors anymore, much less cooperate with them)is for neighbors to rifle up and come to the defense of others in their neighborhood when the armed tax feeders decide to launch a toy-soldier raid. I have it on good authority that the standard SWAT tactical manuals have NO provisions or tactics in them for what GI Porky and his pals are to do when they face armed resistance to a raid from the outside. If even a few such paramilitary raids were to be resisted in such a with a significant show of arms, it would have a measurably chilling affect on Porky’s yen to play commando (even moderate resistance will also cost Porky a few of his number).
I really believe that when significant numbers of people start telling Porky and his employers “FUCK YOU, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH AND I’M NOT GOING TO STAND FOR IT ANYMORE!” and if significant numbers of people can overcome the bystander syndrome and join in, progress will be made.
So liberranter, what’s your opinion of the militia? That is, afterall, what you’re describing, so I thought I’d ask. The only problem with what you describe–neighbors coming armed to the defense of the one targeted by the PTB–is that they have an unlimited supply of people and hardware and we don’t (never defend a fixed position if you can at all avoid doing so). The solution is to be proactive rather than reactive. Find like-minded others. Discuss it beforehand. Find out that a checkpoint is going to be set up on a certain day in a certain location? Take it down with extreme prejudice. Skidaddle. Repeat with variations. But then you shouldn’t listen to me ’cause I’m way out there.
Are we there yet?
Amerika hasn’t won a gurilla war since the revolutionary war,yea I’m there.
America hasn’t FOUGHT a guerilla war on its own turf (and no, the armies of the seceding Confederate states in the period 1861-65 were NOT a guerilla army) since the Revolution, so I guess we’ll never know till we try, right?
During the (not so) Great Depression, neighbors would arm up and repel attempts by sheriffs to repossess homes for nonpayment of property taxes.
I would start with those thug-scrum scenes where a cop (or several) are attacking someone. For example: the incident with an old lady in a parking lot wielding a puny two-inch knife. A fat female cop performed a judo maneuver that threw the old woman face-first onto asphalt, the proceeded to rough her up on the ground while she bled and cried.
As a bystander I would be completely unable to restrain myself at such brutality, and I’d invite the rest of the crowd to help.
Don’t beat up the cop; just pull it off and restrain it while someone helps the victim up and away.
Then run like hell. Or, as my criminal-defense attorney friend recommended: if you do something like that, DON’T run. Immediately call your lawyer and get him to call the press while he comes over. Stand trial, and hope like hell the jury sees the act for what it was–defending the innocent against a thuggish bully.
I like my friend very much but if I were sure I couldn’t be identified, I’d still run like hell after the victim was clear…because I suspect you’d be badly maimed or killed.
Mundanes don’t defy the Annointed Ones.
If I had run when I defended myself from the police I would have gone to prison, or even been killed. So I just sat there and waited for the local cops to show up. Four and a half months I sat there not knowing if I was going to prison. That was the worst part. Not being locked up in county, that was not the hard part. The hard part was knowing that I had to convince a jury not to send me to prison. I had to convince my neighbors not to take me away from my family. My youngest son was only 13 at the time, he would have been a grown man by the time I got out. The other hard part was not taking a plea. My mind was running in circles calculating my odds. If my wife hadn’t stood behind me and stayed strong I might very well have caved.
Look at what the empire has done overseas from vietnam forward. That’s what we are in for. We are all indigs now.
I agree with Eric: the only solution is going to be mass civil disobedience. I mean, that’s how we got to where we are now isn’t it? Mass civil compliance?
We do it already. Think about the interstate. Everyone’s speeding – sometimes 10-15 mph – over the limit but as long as you’re part of the masses, there’s safety in numbers and the state just doesn’t posses enough resources to pull us all over. And the cops have defacto accepted it.
So why don’t we employ the same strategy elsewhere? At TSA checkpoints. Imagine if 100-200 people all at once, peacefully and civily approached a TSA checkpoint and just started walking through. what could they do? What if it happened every day across the country? What if the cops got used to it?
We simply have to be the change we want, and if we work together then there’s strength in numbers. Force doesn’t work, never has, never will. We just have to be smarter than them, and how hard is that really?
As I’ve written before on this site, in other threads, my personal choice for responding to the depredations of the TSA is to quit flying commercial. Haven’t done so since 2010. Drove to Houston from Columbus last month to attend a wedding. Delightful road trip: haven’t taken one that long in over 25 years.
But I digress. It took no organizing or influencing others for me to adopt my strategy. I know that many others have gone the same way, completely on their own. The airlines have lost business. How much? Who can tell?
I do know that if enough people just opted out of flying, eventually the airlines would hurt enough to cry out in pain and plead for relief. Then what would happen? One or both of these two things: 1) Some degree (guaranteed to satisfy no one) of change in TSA practices and procedures, 2) A taxpayer bailout of the airlines. To quote Tinsley, above: “And the [financial] beat[ing] goes on.”
No doubt it would be fun to join a mass sit-in at a TSA gate. But I’m not going to be the one and only: who is then renditioned to who-knows-where, never to be heard of/from again. I may prefer acting alone, but not like that.
If enough people stop flying what will most likely happen is a government bailout of the airlines and/or the the government take over of air travel. It will become like transit. The airlines made their deal with the devil long ago. They could try to break it now, but that would mean being on their own. Their business models depend on taxpayer funded airports, traffic control, bailouts, and so on.
Government certainly won’t care if the airlines suffer lack of business due to government practices. The airlines are now captive to the government. Closing down the availability of transportation is key for control of the population. Also as airlines sicken government control of them becomes greater.
Expecting corporate executives or political office holders to admit their errors is practically fantasy. When have they ever done this? Never. Now sometimes they have quietly given up control on something after decades. The three examples of more freedom since the 1930s vs. the hundreds of thousands of new laws. Home beer/wine making, being able to own gold, and the repeal of the NMSL. That’s it.
Amair will be the eventual solution. Amtrack was the result of decades of government meddling in passenger rail and Amair will be the result of government meddling in passenger air travel.
Business travel will get really interesting with Amair as those working for businesses without connections are likely to have a hell of a time getting from A to B.
The faster this collapse the better because then people can recognize it for what it is. People have difficulty seeing slow trends.
Absolutely right. There is a big problem though. I’d estimate there are less than 10 of us per every 100 average Americans. Shit, maybe less…
It took my own wife years to acknowledge the truth that I’ve shared with her. She comes from an old fashioned New Orleans Italian, government-can-do-no-wrong family. Her family is infested with lawyers. One of her brothers, a niece and some cousins are lawyers. They avoid me like whipped dogs.
Hmm… I wonder why?
Dom – I’m pretty sure I posted this before but it bears repeating. I read an article where a gun writer was discussing how many “good men” there are (those willing to take the supreme risk and do what’s right when the heat is on) with a former German soldier that managed to escape a WW II Russian POW camp. I’ll dig up the reference when I can and post it; it was in Dillon’s Blue Press several years ago. The writer suggested there is 1 good man in 100. The German corrected him and said no, only about 1 good man in 3000. He said there were 30,000 trained professional soldiers imprisoned with him and the guards were little better than poorly trained night watchmen. He and some fellow inmates determined that they could take over the camp with one hundred good men, take the guards weapons, their vehicles and escape back to Germany. They asked for volunteers. They got ten men. Ten, out of thirty thousand! I doubt it’s an anomaly. These men were languishing away, cold, hungry and under the very real risk of death with nothing to lose at that point but their miserable lives. Most preferred the relative “safety” of captivity and even privation to the uncertain future of a revolt.
Now you have to factor in that these German POWs were also the victims of the ‘submit and obey’ programming of the Prussian school model. So it should come as no surprise that they were already conditioned not to resist authority in child prison. Then the German military worked its magic on their already softened wills in ‘boot camp.’ Add to that a healthy dose of national pride, fear-mongering propaganda and an authoritarian police state at home and you have the recipe for the compliant mass man. What they did not have back then was the Internet. That is turning out to be the bane of the establishment. But rest assured, they are doing everything they can to wrest control of the digital frontier from us and use it to further their own agenda. Let’s do everything we can to prevent that from happening.
It’s already happened Boothe. As soon as the majority of web sites adopted one of the registration plans (Facebook, Disqus, etc) anonymity went away, and with it free speech, which is really speech without the threat of reprisal.
You can see why it was done from a non-paranoid perspective; spam is the stated reason and it’s true spammers are vile creatures who abuse open media. So we can pretty much thank them for destroying free speech even though they were only useful idiots. Regardless of why it happened, it did and it will ultimately be the death of the internet as a vehicle for voicing dissent and gathering support for “regime change”. Look at what’s happened in the middle east. The first thing they did was shut down the net. The US has already claimed the right to shut it down whenever the current executive perceives it to be a threat to the status quo.
This site will never require users to sigh up with Shitbook or any other such thing in order to post comments.
I Understand that is your handle for dealing with your audience Eric, but what do you do with our emails? 😉
Nothing!
I give you – all of you – my word that we don’t do anything with them except use them as a way to screen out spammers. That;s it. We don’t “share” them or sell them or anything like that. As Elvis is my witness.
Thanks a lot. 😀 It really is not you I worry about anyhow. The feds are not really doing anything with the Internet right now, except watching, tracking and monitoring. However I suspect in the near future the information will be used against us in ways we haven’t thought of yet. I post here cause’ I care. I think your site is awesome just remember when swat shows up at your residence in fifteen years ransacking the place not to sell out. 🙂
Eric would not be the gatekeeper, it would be the company hosting the site. If they (PTB) really wanted to, all they’d need to do is contact the host/server and ask for the site info. It’s less than 2 gigs!
Jason, I don’t think you need to worry about Eric as much as you do about Adobe. Those folks actually install leachware on your computer 🙂
According to Wired, all communications on the net are now being recorded. It’ll be darned hard to do it, but with enough storage and enough context, that new facility they’ve built in Utah should be able to figure out what you had for breakfast last Monday.
Things really aren’t looking good from the ‘ole privacy perspective. I just enjoy finding new and interesting ways to mess with them, which is why I use 4096 bit hard encryption on the shopping lists I send to my wife and the car repair advice I send my son. I gives me no end of pleasure to know that somewhere there’s a whole bunch of cpu time being burned just to find out how I go about diagnosing a turbo boost leak in a ’98 Audi A4.
Adobe, Google, Yahoo, AOL, or whatever. They’re all collecting the data. Shit, even your cell and land line phone calls. Just wait until the black boxes are installed in cars. You being monitored bro…
There will be a day when one gets interrogated and the interrogator has your complete history completely query-able by any criteria (keyword, joins, dates, locations, you name it).
There is no doubt in my mind this is possible and happens right now.
I bet they even know how much air pressure is in our tires!
Also, every single thing you’ve ever told Dr. Google or Yahoo is recorded and can be delivered on court order.
Power On Dom!
@Scott
Sometimes I have bad days and start thinking of all the connections and links that are possible to make with the greatest of ease for those with the power to do it. Needless to say I don’t sleep well on those nights (which are many). I recently gave up drinking (it’s been almost two months). I didn’t give it up for health or safety reasons. I believe things are right at critical mass and even with a clear head and dry soul maneuvering thru what’s to come will be difficult to impossible!
Don’t get me started on observable data…
Good on ya Dom! I am in the process of giving up nicotine and opium. I’ve been on opiate pain killers over two years for a spinal injury (nerve entrapment L4/S1) I got during rescue diver training in ’93. It’s a bitch! But I’m 2 months into it and my wife says that even though I’m an irritable son of a bitch she likes me better now than when I was a lunatic vegetable. Go figure.
Hang in, hold on, get better!
BTW, my secret weapon in the fight against the evil poppy is, of all things, Cinnamon Altoid mints. The things work miracles. Try it if you get to feeling too bad. I also abuse Hagen Das Coffee Ice Cream. You have to balance that with crunches (the kind you do on a weight bench 🙂
Crunches… like leaf raking, not my favorite things… but gotsta do ’em!
My place in the rail car was reserved long ago if the feds actually read what I write.., I used to say that as a Nazi Germany reference… but that the recent relocation and resettlement document indicates they plan to use rail cars was interesting.
What the feds are doing is recording and occasional keyword searches. They really don’t give flying f about any of us individually. The idea is very simple… let’s say I run for elected office in the future. The feds will find something particularly well outside the hassle free zone that I posted in 2004 or when ever and then get the mainstream media to repeat it and make a big deal out of it. This will repel the voting public. If that doesn’t work they’ll find something else and spin it. Problem solved.
The secret is not to care. They want leverage over people. So when the media makes it public that someone running for office visited a website that features photos of naked women he should not bother trying to hide it or spin it. Just go ‘so what?’ People need to stop cowering about public image BS and worrying about judgmental people. It’s a social game and gathering data on us is about having the upper hand in it. So reject the game.
Most of the rest is just general research to better control the population. People just become anonymous data points and are treated as such.
Next is spying on political opponents. This is already being done and only matters on an individual basis. If you’re running for president you can bet your ass the NSA is reading your email.
Now maybe somewhere around 0.00001% of the effort is finding terrorists.
It’s a social game that those in power are playing. People have to care for it to work. Don’t care and it’s all worthless.
I suppose they might use the data to round us up in some point in the future… but at that point it’s fight and die or just die.
Brent, well-said.
I’ve often wondered what might happen if I started doing radio/TV stuff again (I am a very private person and loathe that sort of thing, plus I’m basically an introvert and just prefer my peace and quiet) and actually started scoring some points. One thing I am pretty sure would be dredged up: My college-era pot bust. The fambly values crowd would eat that one up. But I’ve decided that people who are swayed by such things – more precisely, who support such things as the “war on drugs” – are the enemy anyhow and unreachable. Write them off. Just as they write us off.
Concentrate on the people who aren’t marinated Clovers. People who can think. People who don’t give a flip what you do unless what you’re doing results in a specific victim specifically harmed by you – not a theoretical “harm” to “society.” Thus I:
Respect everyone’s right to do with their body as they wish, so long as the doings don’t involve not-consenting other parties who are harmed thereby.
Don’t give a flip who sleeps with whom, or who lives with/marries whomever – so long as the parties involved are freely consenting adults.
Of all the braying jackass idiocy that’s drowning out reasoned, intelligent discussion, perhaps the most noisome is the imbecile moralizing (at gunpoint) of kreeschun conservative types. The sort who gave us The Chimp. Bad as Obama is, he was only made fully real because of The Chimp.
Both sides of the collectivist Janus need to thrown in the woods!
@scott re: encrypted shopping lists:
I’ve got another one for you! Let’s start sending each other heavily-encrypted emails of…white noise random data.
Since good crypto makes data look like noise, almost in proportion to its effectiveness…
They’ll try to break the crypto. Having broken it, it STILL looks like noise (’cause it is)–and they’ll try another round.
It’s recursive mind-fucking!
I had this conversation with some other programmer buddies. I’m pretty good on crypto; I’ve been published in MSDN on strong crypto, and one of my friends has real credentials.
We agree that even 256-bit Rijndael is still out of the realm of even the biggest supercomputer, if you’re using strong keys.
That I suspect is the only loophole in strong symmetric crypto–they key strength.
I am a little–not very, but a little–worried about asymmetric crypto. For you non-techies, that’s the stuff that covers a secure website transmission, the “https” sites like your bank.
Although, I think we’re still a long way off quantum computers with enough “qubits” to smash 4096-bit asymmetric keys.
Our conclusion was that the NSA facility was for recording everything, plaintext and encrypted; and if the Eye of Mordor turns on you, they can print out everything you’ve ever said, and devote some CPU to giving a whack at your encrypted stuff, too.
I hear ya. I still smoke a cigar usually once a day:
Arturo Fuente Curly Head Maduro
Have one burning at the sweet spot right now!
I workout daily too, twice on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Don, there is another solution but it requires that very large numbers of Americans become sufficiently knowledgeable in court filings and other genuine Law of the Land matters to reclaim the power that has been usurped by the Brotherhood of Juris Doctors. The unlawful power wielded by the Evil Brotherhood must be destroyed in detail.
Sheesh. We have been brain washed. Look, laws are created as we go through contract. Sign no contracts? Then the only rules are, don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t step onto someones land without permission. That is pretty much it. Those are things most humans learn by age 6. Nothing to educate yourself about of course unless you want to engage in contracts.
Eric, I agree with everything you said and I detest the nanny state, but really, I have little sympathy for anyone who allows themselves to get into the position you describe (I also assume you were using this an example for explanatory purposes) and then thrown in jail or what have you. This is the logical conclusion to the series of events you describe.
If I choose to drive without a seatbelt then I accept the consequences of that action and pay the damn fine when / if I get one. It’s not the “hill I’m prepared to die on”. Sure, I’ll rage about the State etc. but I’m not going to risk my life, what little freedom I have left, my fortune (such that it is) on something this trivial. Maybe if cops were really peace officers and the risks to life and limb were much less, but since they aren’t anymore, there’s no frickin way I’m risking my ass over something this minor.
Why? This problem isn’t going to get fixed anytime soon. This is a symptom native to the type of gov’t we have and the type of people living in the US now. This current path has to run its course, and it’ll probably get worse before it gets better………
The problem is it’s getting harder to avoid finding oneself in such a situation – and that was the point I was trying to make:
They just won’t leave us alone.
A person ought to be able to go through his life – through his day – without facing the Hobson’s choice of servilely submitting to an asshole in uniform or retaining one’s dignity but ending up in jail.
This is what I am trying to get others to see – and to draw the necessary conclusion.
“This is what I am trying to get others to see – and to draw the necessary conclusion.”
Eric, after twenty years I’m convinced that many do see it but are unwilling to become a part of the Action that is necessary to pursue the American Ideal declared in the Unanimous Declaration.
Voting and hoping will never fix America. Begging those who profit from bad law will never work for the repeal of bad laws.
Consider this: If you are a harmless person, using deadly force in response to efforts to cage you are lawful. But it is not enough to use deadly force only against the goons trying to cage or even kill you, the People must take it a step further and deal with those who created and ratified the unlawful power.
If I order someone to crack the skull of a harmless person, then I must be subjected to even worse consequences than the unprincipled person(s) who do the actual cracking. It is imperative that those who make evil legal be subjected to the harshest of consequences for doing so. I would rather see a few hundred lawmakers dead than to tolerate the jailing of a single Individual whom they know to be harmless.
Do me a favor Damon and let me know when you’re in my neck of the woods so I can be sure and point the taxfeeders your way for a payday.
“accept the consequences of that action”. The possible consequences of not wearing a seatbelt are getting thrown through the windshield if you have an accident. Being fined by the state is a violation of your god given rights.
You say that things are not going to get better anytime soon and that it’s a symptom native to the type of people living here. You are correct! Cowardly people like you. People who – as you just admitted – would prefer to live with very little freedom left, rather than stand on principle and do the right thing even though the gov’t says it’s wrong.
Please tell me you didn’t reproduce? And I don’t say these things to be mean; it’s how I actually feel about people like you.
Don,
You file your income tax this year?
You pay the mandated state / fed taxes on your phone/cable/etc. bill?
You pay the state the yearly fees to register you car?
You pay your SS and Medicare?
Etc.
There is no difference between them and a seat belt ticket. Payment of these is a “violation of your god given rights”. Tell me you’re living the outlaw life and not doing all the above and I’ll place bets on how long you’ll live.
I pick my battles. I’ve made my choices on which hill I’m going to die on. Why? Because I’ve made the following determinations: 1) people of our like mind do not have the numbers to make effective change yet (although with Ron Paul in the last few years I’m slightly more hopeful). 2) This country will collapse before those of like mind have the numbers to change it. AFTER this country falls apart, maybe we’ll have the opportunity, but for now, no.
No, no and no. I don’t pay any of those things except the ones that are out of my control like SS/Medicare/Cable taxes. Nor do I pay frivolous traffic citations and other so called “fines”.
I have fiscal responsibilities and can’t afford to be handing over my money for nothing to the gov’t. Unlike them, I can’t just take my neighbor’s money, print my own or borrow more if I need it.
I don’t refuse to comply with the gov’t’s abusive nonsense because I have a death wish. I enjoy life as much as anyone and have no desire to die before my time.
But to live on my knees, kowtowing to the gov’t out of fear just isn’t in me; never has been. It’s just who I am and I like that person; I’m proud of that person. I refuse to live one day in fear of a bunch of fat, old, immoral, criminal bureaucrats.
Some prefer to live with “what little freedom they have left” – is that how you put it? They’d rather rely on trying to keep a low profile as long as they can. When you do that then the gov’t has won. You’ve assumed exactly the posture they want: kowering in subservience while bitching about it at the company party. That serves no purpose and makes no difference.
Don and Damon, we ARE on the same team.
I might disagree. Damon feels that even though he doesn’t like the way things are, he just wants to try and “ride it out” till he dies of natural causes.
I don’t.
I understand where he’s coming from in the sense that like him (I assume) I still have a lot to lose – things I’ve worked hard to get and would prefer to preserve, if at all possible. The problem is that’s becoming harder and harder. It seems as though each new day heralds some new “law” I must kowtow to or try to avoid. The circle grows smaller and smaller. I absolutely will not give up my right to self-defense (which means, my right to possess and carry a firearm). If they fuck with my home, it’ll be game on.
I desperately want to avoid that. I just want to be left the hell alone. I don’t want “nothing from no one, if I can’t get it on my own.” I mean – and cause – no harm to anyone.
Just leave me be. Let me tinker with my cars and bikes; leave me free to drive to the store to get parts in peace. Let me alone on my land, in my little corner of the world. I’ll pay your god-damned taxes. But there is a limit.
Please don’t push it beyond that.
Don says he doesn’t pay some taxes, but does pay those he cannot avoid, like phone taxes. Leaving aside the lack of logic in that, I get crap for choosing a similar position, slightly different from that, but still along the same continuum. Yah..whatever..
Don’s no doubt smart enough to know that not paying your taxes or fines, or such, will eventually end you up with a visit from a nice LEO or some other agent of the state. Failure to comply will eventually get you into a position where you’ll need to make some hard choices, i.e. resist or comply, and we all know the result of resisting. I’m not risking life, fortune, etc. on a speeding ticket or not filing my income taxes.
Now, as to my opinions on what’s best for someone to do, I don’t claim to advise anyone on their choices. My beliefs prevent me from telling others what to do. Now, Don thinks that I just want to “ride this thing out”. I don’t think so. We’re on a path, one that has few options left and we’re increasing speed towards the end state of all empires, and I doubt many will emerge on the other side, whether we try and ride it out or are more “active”. So my question to Don and, Eric as well, is, what are YOU prepared to do? Where and when will you draw the line?
part of the whole point trying to be made is that it is trivial, not just for the person refusing to pay the fine but for applying the force to “belt-up” or “pay-up”. THe point of the thought experiment to see how the plausible progression is so insanely illogical.
what happens if a man is a person is driving his car but without their seatbelt on. cop pulls them over, this driver was driving home from court after losing everything, kids, home, money in his divorce. his wife was cheating on him with a cop. The guy snaps once he sees the blue uniform and shoots the cop dead.
The cop pulled over this person for something “trivial”, was enforcing the seatbelt statute the “hill he was prepared to die on”?
The reason it will get worse before it gets better is the fact that the majority will wait until the issue isn’t trivial anymore. Evil can only exist because we allow it.
And the [financial] beat[ing] goes on….[and on, and on, and on…]
Unlawful punishment has become cruel and usual in America.
Have you seen this Greek graffiti art of the statue of liberty:
I thought of it when I saw your “graph” of Evolution of the Nanny State. Seems fitting here.
Jay mentioned “taking a seat belt-infraction ticket all the way to death row” I’ve known a number of guys who have gone through most of the process described in the article, I don’t think they so much as chose that route as they were funneled down it. The process stopped short of death row for all of them and now the rest of society pays to house and feed them. Not exactly a win-win situation.
For others, I think it might be a lot like dealing with a bully, you may wish to pick and choose your battles, but sometimes enough is enough.
And the beat goes on….
What If We Have Only Memories of Freedom?
by Andrew P. Napolitano
Hmmmm……
The premise of taking a seat belt-infraction ticket all the way to death row strikes me as, well, ill-chosen.
Does the aphorism “Pick your battles” apply anywhere in this thread?
It was just to make a point. I think the point is valid; i.e., that the system’s punishments are out of all proportion and – more – it has made “offenses” out of things it has no business making offenses of. To the extent that almost everything we do provides a way for cops to harass us – whether because of an actual “offense” or merely because they are looking for one.
Of course Eric was making an example but this isn’t a marriage we’re talking about. The time for “picking your battles” with the gov’t has long, long past. Everything is a battle. The gov’t intrudes in every aspect of your life from the moment you get up to the moment you go back to sleep.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/cooper1.html
It’s a matter of “how you fight the battle” now, not if and complying changes nothing. That’s how it got to be the police state it is. Of course one wants to avoid the states gulag at all costs, literally.
I agree with the author. This *IS* the way the State operates.
You get a ticket, and you refuse to pay it — you’ll be either given a court date or have a warrant issued for your arrest. If you fail to show up for court, that’s a warrant for Failure to Appear for sure.
If you then have a warrant, armed agents working for the State, can come to your house and kidnap you against your will. (for something as simple as a minor traffic infraction)
If you resist, it’s additional charges. If you defend yourself, it’s assault on a police officer. Or you might just get tased or shot and killed on the spot.
This is how the State escalates the matter. There are degrees of separation, but ultimately, the the only way the State can maintain it’s monopoly is through force and violence. Most people will comply under the threat of violence out of self-preservation. But there are many who just simply have had enough, and those are the ones you hear about on the news.
It starts out small, and the system has a built-in system that continuously makes the punishment more and more severe for the “dissidents” and those who choose to thumb their nose at the system.
Those whom practice peaceful non-compliance, without ever causing harm to another person — are then themselves placed in harms way, kidnapped by the State’s thugs with guns, and put in a cage.
The injustices committed “legally” and “lawfully” according to the State’s codes and statutes are typically more harsh and severe than the incident in question.
The whole “system” is just an employment scheme for tax-feeders. They add as many steps and stages as they can so everyone involved can punch a time card for participating. Just think of all the court clerks, bailiffs, process servers, lawyers, judges, language interpreters, court recorders, security guards and mail room clerks that get thousands of dollars off your little ticket. And if you get some jail time another wave of parasites punches in! They long ago ran out of thieves, rapists and murderers and have realized they need millions more victims – thus the illegalization of everything. Pure racketeering.
Who do you think funds the high pressure lobbying that forces through mandatory seatbelt laws, and at least 50% of all the senseless oppressive legislation…..?
Insurance Companies, that’s who! Your article notes their predatory practices, but does not identify them as a primary cause in the whole process.
Why not attack the source of the evil? Boycott every insurance company that lobbies against our freedoms, and Vote Out the elected whores that accept their bribes. You can be sure that one or two companies will change their ways if the market force is strong enough. As for the rest, let’s drive them out of business.
You’re missing the boat when you blame “busybody do gooders who want to tell us how we should live our lives.” They are not the ones who have the real lobbying power.
There’s something intrinsically criminal abut “lobbying”. It just ain’t right.
Yes. Lobbying could not exist if the government was not in the position of having the power to take people’s property and distribute it to other people.
You beat me to this response! 🙂
A lobbyist’s money can nullify everything that a legislator’s constituents hoped for when they elected him.
Tinsley, “lobbying” doesn’t seem right, because the term itself came from the men sent to D.C. by special interests in the 19th century to hang around the lobbies of upscale hotels waiting for congressmen and senators to walk through. These “lobbyists” had wads of cash in their pockets for the intent and purpose of entertaining and thereby influencing their targets. As one would imagine, “entertainment” often included the company of attractive young women, fine dining, imbibing expensive spirits, visiting the theatre and the giving of lavish gifts. In a word it was and is bribery. It is my understanding that this practice really came in vogue during the Lincoln administration. Imagine that.
De facto bribery it is.
You are being U.S.-centric. Lobbying goes back long before the U.S.A., to the Mother of Parliaments – at Westminster. It has nothing to do with hotels either, but to the lobby of each House of Parliament. These lobbies were used in counting the votes by having heads counted for whoever went in, and were accessible to certain outsiders (“strangers”) between times; these strangers used their access to try to persuade the politicians, and this activity became known after where it mostly took place.
Quite right P.M. – I should have qualified it with the caveat ‘lobbying in the United States.’ Bribing politicians undoubtedly goes all the way back to bringing the tribe’s chieftain gifts of seashells, animal skins and pretty girls from neighboring tribes to garner favor for one’s self or one’s group. But the current practice is as it affects us here in the USSA was my primary point rather than political bribery’s earlier European, English or even Neanderthal origins. The practice as we now know it, according to Thomas DiLorenzo IIRC, really came out of the closet *here* (along with a whole host of other nasty government practices) during the Lincoln administration in the lobbies of the fancy hotels in Washington.
I wasn’t trying to go into the origins of lobbying itself, which obviously go back well before Westminster. I was trying to show that the origins of the term “lobbying” have nothing to do with either hotels or the U.S.A., but rather with how it was done at Westminster.
P. M. – I suppose I should defer to your obviously superior intellect and knowledge, but in the spirit of that great philosopher Ron White, although I have the right to remain silent, I often do not have the ability. That being said, there are multiple arguments as to the origin of the term “lobbying” as it relates to political bribery and influence pedaling. We may rest assured, human nature being such that it is, the practice went on (as has been noted by others more learned than me) in the “lobia” or covered walks and vestibules of ancient Rome. Undoubtedly it went on in the porticos around the ecclesia of ancient Athens as well, although the Latin “lobia” or “laubia” would come closest to our current English derivation of the term. Someone undoubtedly derided or at least poked fun at the obvious influence peddling of a Roman Senator and the resultant bribery by prominent merchants under the “lobia” near the Senate. With the old adage in mind that ‘There is nothing new under the sun”, you can bet that some smart ass Roman cynic made snide comments about the practice long before there was a British Parliament. Perhaps if the crony-capitalist Roman merchant had hired an attractive young woman who was seen plying her trade with the Senator, she would have been laughingly called a ‘lobia labi-ist.’ But I digress.
According to the 1911 Ed. of the Encyclopedia Britannica: “The practice [lobbying], though not unknown in the British parliament, is most prevalent in the United States of America, where the use of the term first arose.” The BBC doesn’t agree with that assertion: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/82529.stm.
I’m fairly confident that the infallible veracity of the BBC is only closely approached by that of NPR, People Magazine or maybe the National Enquirer. Perhaps the surname, Lawrence is indeed the *English* adaptation of the Latin Laurus or Laurentis, as opposed to the alternatives; the German Lorrentz, French Laurenz or Laurenzo from Spain. That might explain your “Anglo-centricity.” Is it not enough for Lowlanders to be able to take credit for the engineering (?) of Lucas electrical systems or the perpetual tinkering required to keep a Zenith Stromberg carburetor breathing? But the English have to lay claim to nicknaming political bribery as well?
The term “lobbying” is reported to show up in its political sense as early as 1820 or 1826 depending on the source. One of the first recorded descriptions of the practice (without calling it such) appears as early as 1792 when The Virginia veterans of the Continental army hired one William Hull to “lobby” on their behalf for increased compensation for their wartime service. One story (that Wikipedia references) has it that President Grant frequented the lobby of the Willard Hotel for an after hours brandy and cigar. Those who wished to garner favor for their pet causes would wait there form his arrival. As I recall, DiLorenzo (perhaps you and the good professor share a common ancestor?) pegged it to the Lincoln administration. In any event, I’m relatively confident that the term came into common use as a pejorative to describe the reprehensible practice of political bribery in the late 18th to mid 19th century in the United States. Anyone interested in seeing just how pervasive and longstanding the practice has been can read the history of U.S. “lobbying”, paid for with our tax money no less, right hear:
http://www.senate.gov/legislative/common/briefing/Byrd_History_Lobbying.htm
The root is not just at the feet of the insurance companies, it also lies at the feet of the State Insurance Commissioners who are elected officials and are supposed to regulate the industry. But… none of them actually regulate the industry to protect the consumer. They are in bed with the industry and actually regulate the consumer at the industries behest. They are the wolves in sheep’s clothing selected by the sheep to protect the flock but in fact are eating the flock. One of our previous commissioners (who wound up in prison by the way) actually promoted seat belt laws in Louisiana saying they would lower insurance premiums. He only spent 6 months in prison but should have spent the rest of his miserable life hanging in a gibbet from the Mississippi Bridge. Insurance companies are evil fascist entities and their elected enablers are all liars and frauds.
Well done Eric.
I sure get tired of feeling angry every waking moment of my life. Actually it’s beyond mere anger, I stay on the brink of RAGE.
Why have most Americans lost, or never had, a capacity for OUTRAGE! Has the self defense gene been bred out of existence in America?
In principle, if a street criminal tried to do what agents of government routinely do, I would kill him in a heartbeat if I could.
WE the People outnumber the bastards many times over, so, why are we eating their shit?
Thanks, Tinsley!
In answer to your question: “Why are we eating their shit?”
Because we’re isolated – and alone. The battle is thus futile – even if the effort is honorable.
What we need to work out, somehow, is a way to even up the odds. It’ll never be a fair fight – but at least we’d stand a chance.
As an example: Inundating these “safety” checkpoints with passive resistors. Imagine dozens of cars – filled with people such as us -descending at once on such a checkpoint and refusing to submit. And recording the event – to be released far and wide, via YouTube and so on.
It could be the spark that ignites a movement….
And we desperately need grand jurors who are fully aware of what a grand jury is all about. A grand jury is probably the most powerful weapon in the People’s Arsenal.
There is plenty of information on the Internet concerning the Fifth Amendment Present Power. I urge my fellow citizens to take advantage of it.
The last thing that JDs and career office holders want the People to be aware of is Grand Jury Presentment Power.
Let every office holder be constantly aware that a Fully Informed Grand Jury is always watching.
Considering people won’t rebel even under the worst tyrants, saying “safety checkpoints might be the spark” is laughable.
Since when do desperate people fight back? If you’re half-starved you make for a poor fighter. You may no longer care if you die but you don’t have the strength overpower well-fed soldier. Seriously, people were literal starving to death under Stalin and Mao yet no one fought back.
Haha! Got it one: why incessantly complain and do nothing while the evil ones are constantly encroach over your lives? Why aren’t Libertarians all moving to New Hampshire where they can make a stand?
“Haha!” yourself Gil. Why do you incessantly show up at this site and attempt to engage in a battle of the wits when you yet remain unarmed? Why aren’t Aussies like you moving to the United States (not that we want anyone like you to come here) where we have retained the right to keep and bear arms and can still effectively make a stand if it comes to that? And by the way, you still haven’t told us what you do for living. What is your profession Gil?
because Gill is more than likely one of those liberal / labor pussies that thinks Australia is great country to live in……
here bullet proof vests are known as a offensive weapon ! of course the uniformed gestapo can only have them ( and the criminals )
I don’t think body armor is classified as an offensive weapon anywhere in the USSA…yet. I know a lot of cops frown on civilians owning them and it seems I’ve read they are restricted in some jurisdictions (as well as police band radio scanners). The tax feeders don’t want anything between their bullet and a potential witness who might remain alive long enough to confuse the jury with their side of the story…
It’s a cunning combination of factors Tinsley.
* K-12, plus college; 16 years of hard-core prison-camp indoctrination, where learning is made so odious they vow never to engage in it again
* While being exposed to fluoride–proven to reduce IQ, while damaging the pineal gland…the “third eye” of mythology, perhaps our link to the numinous
* And having (at current rates) 72 different “vaccines”, which are in fact just carriers for potent neurotoxins–aluminum, mercury, squalene, and untold contaminating viruses
* While eating foods nearly devoid of nutritional content; stripped of essential trace minerals by being grown in tired soil, fertilized with chemicals carrying toxic heavy metals.
* Continuing on to the rest of their lives, where they’re told to eat “plenty of whole grains!!” as though that’s a recipe for health. And at all costs, avoid that saturated fat! And cholesterol! They’ll kill ya! Turns out, it’s not just wrong, it’s the exact opposite of right. But eating loads of carbohydrate and starving their brains of essential fat and B-vitamins has one useful side effect if you’re a tyrant; it renders them docile and slothful.
* And let’s enter old age, or premature senescence, and start a nice regimen of statins. No, they don’t in fact prolong life at all, but they’ll do a lovely number on your brain, which 50% fat–much of it cholesterol–by dry weight. Guess what happens when you deprive it of cholesterol? Yes ten points to the man in the corner, it malfunctions.
Meanwhile these already-damaged brains are fed an intellectual diet of propaganda, subliminals, predictive programming, and Overton-shifting.
It’s a miracle anyone manages to function at all.
For the ones who become depressed–knowing something’s wrong but not quite putting their fingers on it–there are SSRI’s (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft*, Celexa etc). They make them “feel” better–by short-circuiting the exquisite circuitry we use to discern reality. Sometimes, they just go completely psychotic; most of the school shootings are perpetrated by people on SSRI’s…look it up.
What will it take to throw it off? Pretty much what’s happening now. People ARE waking up; they’re refusing vaccines, they’re eating organic, they’re doubting their doctor/pharmaceutical company rep.
They’re turning off dinosaur media; last week I read CNN’s viewership is at an all-time low. Those media are dying, and their iron grip on the dialogue is weakening.
We’re at a turning; most people are still Stage I: Denial. But many are at Anger, and surprisingly many are right through and ready to take action.
That’s us.
Keep talking. Talk to everyone. I make a damn fool of myself everywhere I go; the grocery store, the auto mechanic, work, neighbors. I’m sure some of my neighbors blow me off as the likeable crank; but every time something I’ve said resonates with something they see, they wake up a little more.
* on a humorous note, check out this hilarious spoof on a Zoloft commercial
Thank you for your post. I get to thinking I’m the only one “making a damn fool of myself everywhere I go”, but I see that I’m not alone! I think most people are so fearful and timid. Sheesh. I can’t even get a “hello” from folks walking around the block in my own neighborhood. So much is so gray, it sure is good to see some brilliant, living color. Your comment made my day.
Thanks, Peej – good to have you with us!
The greatest threat to American liberty today is a combination of two forms of socialism. (1) The desire among those in government to interfere in nearly every aspect of our lives; and (2) the lack of concern on the part of many Americans that this is happening. There are far too few who are rebelling against this anschluss of the parentalist-paternalist movement. Soon they will eviscerate every right and distinction we formerly possessed above rank savages and slaves.
Most people behave and think just like everyone else. These people do not fear the state imposing their way on everyone else. They won’t find their lives altered much if any because they conform already.
Today I read the story of the horrible things that happened to a woman who stopped to take a photograph of a display model helicopter on the side of the road outside an airport for her ‘support the troops’ website. More and more these things are happening to people who think all these laws would never be used on them. They are finding themselves to be the ‘bad people’ for the first time in their lives.
This woman was beyond naive. She had 13 grand in cash in purse. She had a rifle from target practice in the car…. it just goes on and on. Article linked from: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/112577.html
While I do not wish this sort of thing on anyone it’s going to be the attacks on the ‘good people’ that has the best shot at waking the masses. Then again they’ll probably just read the biased/lying press releases in the media and believe them. But if it happens enough fast enough, then there will be enough personal knowledge to start cutting through the lies.
Exactly so. “The desire among those in government to interfere…” Americans used to have NO DESIRE to interfere in other peoples affairs, no matter what their job was. To have that kind of desire tells a lot about one’s moral character, and basically, we see the results of the lack of it. And the other huge threat is right on, too. “The lack of concern…” Americans used to care about each other, which also tells a lot about one’s moral character. When people ask, “What happen to America?” I can’t help but ask, “What happened to Americans?” Who are we anymore? I look around and see people with their noses in their electronics, glued to some sort of screen, and I don’t recognize them. We let ourselves be distracted by heartless, meaningless crap, and this kind of stuff is what we’re reaping, I guess.
Many americans have had the desire to interfere in other people’s lives. A fair number of those that established the colonies essentially got kicked out of the places they came from because they were control freaks.
Those people have never gone away. They have been manipulating since day one to have control.
Massive civil disobedience may work if employed in the very near future; if not, I would not want to be a tax feeder.
I think it may have to come to that. For example: A coordinated effort to have dozens of cars arrive at a “safety” checkpoint (they are often publicized in advance) and then refuse to comply. Turn off the ignition, put the transmission in Park and.. just sit there. All at once. Dozens of cars…. what will the oinkers do? Tazer everyone? Arrest them all? It would not look good on YouTube….
Eric, you live in Virginia, yes?
Do they have safety checkpoints in addition to sobriety checkpoints?
Yup – both. Ask Dom!
Oh yeah.. I’ve been thru a few already. Most right in the middle of the day! We are being conditioned to accept this as the new normal. Just like how we know if we don’t pay a ticket for a minor infraction we’ll lose our license and possibly go to jail.
Virginia is a suck ass state with respect to their traffic laws. Several yeara ago, I was issued a reckless driving ticket for driving 81 in a 70. I was the only car on the road and little piggy was hiding in the woods near spotsylvania and picked me off. He even informed me that he had the discretion to lower the ticket by 1 mph so that it would have just been a speeding ticket, but he wasn’t going to do so because the road conditions were wet(it had rained earlier in the day). So because of that sorry ass dickhole, I had to drive back 500 miles just to pay the fine because the reckless driving is a mandatory court appearance…no just mailing in the extortion money for that one. And wouldn’t you know that the day I had to drive back up there for my kangaroo court date, from the state line to that little craphole town I counted at least 6 cops hiding in the median woods “fishing” for more victims like me.
I was able to “negotiate” to get out of the reckless driving charge, but it still cost me $300…not to mention a wasted day of driving and a crapload of gas to get there and back.
My wife and I moved to NOVA about a year ago. Just yesterday morning, she got pulled over for going, get this, too slow! Apparently, she was in the left hand lane on Rt. 1, accelerating away from a stop light that had just turned green. Now, this was during the morning rush hour. The cop said she was going 40 in a 45 mph zone. Wow! Fortunately, she is pregnant and cries instead of flying off the handle and getting tazed for being noncompliant or something (like I would have been).
Kent,
You guys have my sympathies… I was imprisoned in NoVa for many years; high school and college.. then work. Finally escaped in 2004 and miss the place as much as I miss the crap I took this morning!
One of these days I just may take the bicycle through one of these checkpoints just to see what would happen… although usually self-preservation kicks in and I realize it is better to avoid all contact with government thugs.
Yep, you are right. Nothing good comes from testing it. That will be the day when you’ll say just the right thing to just the right thug to get your ass in a clinch.
We’d get arrested for obstructing justice!
No FIRST for “resisting arrest”, THEN for “obstructing justice”.
Just WTF do those two terms mean, anyway?
Now felony resisting arrest is when you put your arms up to shield your head from the billy-club.
By the way; I’ve examined how the Tazer works from their literature. There’s an initial “drive” pulse of 20 to 50 kilovolts; but the pulses then settle down to a few hundred or a few thousand volts (depending on the model) at very low amperage, with a cycle frequency of 19Hz.
Guess what? The resistance across the human chest is very high–many kilo-ohms.
It would be trivially simple to wear an undershirt woven with conductive fibers; there used to be skiing longjohns with silvery fibers woven into the fabric to reflect your IR back to you.
There are also EM-protective t-shirts that purport to form a Faraday cage to protect from ambient EM radiation–though without a ground, I fail to see how they work.
However, they are conductive. If their resistance is less than a k-ohm, you’ve got yourself tazer-proof clothing.
We’d also be charged with interfering with a police investigation. I’d like to see the tazer proof shirts.
A Faraday cage does not require grounding. The point is not to achieve an absolute voltage potential of zero, only to route the current from any voltage differentials through the cage, not through whatever is contained inside it.
Dom – Here’s a little write up on Thorshield, a Tazer proof fabric (with some additional hints at the end for field expedient Tazer resistance) http://www.spartancops.com/thorshield-taser-proof/ You’ll notice it’s restricted to Law Enforcement only at this time, although where’d I stick his / her electro-torture gadget, a Thorshield shirt wouldn’t help ’em.
I personally would prefer titanium chainmail under my street clothes if I though I was going to be the subject of electro-torture (or any other pain compliance protocol like paint ball guns with hard rubber balls in them). I think I’ll start a police supply store chain and call it “Sadists-R-Us”. “Our” tax money at work, you gotta love it…
I guess if they tazed you they’d expect you to drop and dance like a fish out of water. We’d need to be good actors. I’d imagined if you didn’t they’d just shoot your ass.
Well the tazers penetrate the skin so the resistance is basically nothing. (Under our skin were a big ionic solution) Also a farady cage wouldn’t necessarily help either. just wear something to keep the leads from touching you. If your shirt is conductive the leads will short and probably break the tazer
@Alex–
No, even when they penetrate the skin the resistance is in the K-ohms, depending how far apart they are.
Nah, they’d just pepper spray everyone (UC Davis), then call out the paddy wagon. They’d find something to charge everyone with…probably “failing to obey a lawful [sic.] order.”
(I do enjoy your pieces.)
The original intent of our system was to escape the rule by law and to replace it with the rule of law. The rule of law was originally defined as the limiting of law and the federal Gov to allow the maximum freedom. This was the stated reason my grandfather rcame to the US in the early 1800s
It seems that the Democrats are all Attorneys and the Republicans are businessmen and women. Now we have a group of people who only know how to control rather than allow the freedom required to get things done. Very few democrats have ever built anything other than a legal barrier or a union which limits productivity.
I do not mean to demean unions as they were clearly needed to correct serious problems in our country. There is however a point at which they step beyond reality. Books have been written on this subject.
The unions were born as a result of serious moral deficiencies in management and are now equally deficient in moral values.
This connected to political power leads to more corruption.
Need I say more?