The Vital Issue, Redux III

 This issue becomes more important with every election, especially in the United States post-Dobbs.  I've published this post twice before, here and here, but as it's fallen off the front page, and it's an election year, I think it's time to post it again.

The foremost issue in every election is this: should the strong kill the weak?

I say, NO. I say that our government should always prohibit the strong from killing the weak. If the government fails to protect the lives of ANYONE within its jurisdiction, it has failed us all. It has diminished our humanity. If the government draws a line to separate one group, which can be killed legally, from the rest, then be assured that the government can move that line at any time, to include any other group in the list of who can be killed, for any reason or no reason at all.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are brawnier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are angrier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have better weapons than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they outnumber their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more money than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more votes than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are of the preferred race and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are given legal privileges that their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are healthy and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are legally competent and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are photogenic and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have no genetic or developmental abnormalities and their victims do, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have been born and their victims have not, the strong should not kill the weak.

Believe it or not, this is NOT a settled question at this time. In the previous century, numerous governments have adopted a variety of positions on the issue.

All governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in SOME cases. But that is not the full story.

Some governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in all cases.

Some governments have sometimes merely inhibited the strong from killing the weak.

Some governments have sometimes permitted the strong to kill the weak.

Some governments have sometimes aided the strong in killing the weak.

And some governments have actually REQUIRED the strong to kill the weak.

If you think the last ended with the fall of the Third Reich and the liberation of their death and concentration camps, you are in error.  Both Stalin and Mao demanded that their political opponents be slain; in Mao's case, by their neighbors when enforcing the One Child Policy. 

You can escape that lowest tier here in the US if you're very careful to delve deeply into the coverage provided by your healthcare insurance company, and you have enough money to opt out.  Regardless of whether your plan covers abortion, if any of the plans offered by your insurer do, you are contributing to that coverage.  And certainly if your state's Medicaid coverage includes abortion, then your state government is helping the strong kill the weak.  This is why local elections areas or more important than national elections.

And when you vote, remember that the most important issue is whether your governments will prevent the strong from killing the weak.

Should the strong kill the weak?

I've discussed this issue before. 

The foremost issue in every election is this: should the strong kill the weak?

I say, NO. I say that our government should always prohibit the strong from killing the weak. If the government fails to protect the lives of ANYONE within its jurisdiction, it has failed us all. It has diminished our humanity. If the government draws a line to separate one group, which can be killed legally, from the rest, then be assured that the government can move that line at any time, to include any other group in the list of who can be killed, for any reason or no reason at all.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are brawnier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are angrier than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have better weapons than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they outnumber their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more money than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have more votes than their victims, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are of the preferred race and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are given legal privileges that their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are healthy and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are legally competent and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they are photogenic and their victims are not, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have no genetic or developmental abnormalities and their victims do, the strong should not kill the weak.

It doesn't matter if the killers are strong because they have been born and their victims have not, the strong should not kill the weak.

Believe it or not, this is NOT a settled question at this time. In the previous century, numerous governments have adopted a variety of positions on the issue.

All governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in SOME cases. But that is not the full story.

Some governments have prohibited the strong from killing the weak in all cases.

Some governments have sometimes merely inhibited the strong from killing the weak.

Some governments have sometimes permitted the strong to kill the weak.

Some governments have sometimes aided the strong in killing the weak.

And some governments have actually REQUIRED the strong to kill the weak.

If you think the last ended with the fall of the Third Reich and the liberation of their death and concentration camps, you are in error.  Both Stalin and Mao demanded that their political opponents be slain; in Mao's case, by their neighbors when enforcing the One Child Policy. 

You can escape that lowest tier here in the US if you're very careful to delve deeply into the coverage provided by your healthcare insurance company, and you have enough money to opt out.  Regardless of whether your plan covers abortion, if any of the plans offered by your insurer do, you are contributing to that coverage.  And certainly if your state's Medicaid coverage includes abortion, then your state government is helping the strong kill the weak.  This is why local elections areas or more important than national elections.

And when you vote, remember that the most important issue is whether your governments will prevent the strong from killing the weak.

Why Big Government is the Big Threat

A recent poll suggests that around 3/4 of Americans think Big Government is a bigger threat to the American way of life than Big Business or Big Labor. And they're right, if no other reason than because the threats posed by Big Business and Big Labor depend on using Big Government as their heavy. Whenever possible, Big Business and Big Labor buy favors from Big Government. Without Big Government, Big Business and Big Labor have a much harder time with competition.

For example, Patricia Woertz (CEO of Archer Daniels Midland) could hire privateers to blockade or sink sugar freighters from Australia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, leading American soda bottlers to use ADM’s corn syrup as a replacement. Or, she could hire lobbyists to drop $10k-$50k into the campaign chests of a few legislators on the House and Senate agriculture committees, and have them set legal import quotas, which has the exact same result, is a lot cheaper, and a lot more politically palatable. The congresscritters also get the public appreciation of American sugar cane and sugar beet farmers, who get to charge four times the world market price for their crops. And almost nobody ever notices when production of hard candy, which absolutely requires sugar, goes to Canada or Mexico, because they don’t have sugar import quotas.

Big Labor could send legbreakers to threaten poor, low-skilled workers who ask only for low wages, and the businesses that hire them, to keep those low-wage workers from competing for their jobs. Instead, they buy increases in the minimum wage with campaign contributions to legislators on Labor and Commerce committees, which has the same result (explanation here). It's also popular with union membership because their contracts specify wages not as $X/hr, but $(Minimum Wage + Y)/hr. As a side benefit, they can (falsely) claim that they are helping the poor, who find their jobs being automated out of existence because, once minimum wages rise high enough, it’s clearly cheaper to automate, or get customers to do the work, than hire the poor.

Big Labor and Big Business could not do these things without Big Government. Big Government is a cudgel that any pressure group, on any point in the political spectrum, can use to either extort an entitlement out of others, or regulate their competition out of business. If you want to cut down on extortion and increase competition, you have to cut down the size and scope of government. If there is any organization or pressure group that concerns you, your first priority should be to reduce the size and scope of government, because unless they can use the government to reach their ends, they cannot impose their will on you, and so they are no real threat.

Another PRISM post

Mozilla has launched an anti-PRISM campaign at StopWatching.Us. I signed their open letter with my real name. And I know that by admitting that, I'm giving the government a double-check means of determining my real identity. But I've always assumed that anything I say here can be traced back to me, given sufficiemt resources.

Claire Wolfe said at the close of the last century that it was too late to reform the US government, but too early to start shooting the bastards. I wonder if she's changed her mind about that latter part, yet.

I've long been critical of the US government, but I've never been seditious or proposed violence. Long before the government could cross any line past which I could have felt justified at opening fire on any of them, I became Catholic, and learned that martyrdom was the better response, both in its morality and in its effectiveness. If you shoot the bastards, they use that as an excuse for escalating their tyranny. If they martyr you, they cannot -- at least, not to themselves.

Obamacare: Bad law.

Ever since I first heard of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, I've been saying that it is a very bad law. Everything about it, from its length (over 2000 pages), to the secrecy in which it was passed (nobody had been given time to actually read final version of the bill when it was passed), to the naked vote-buying that went on, to the artificial emergency-crisis atmosphere used to rush it through Congress, to the well-documented (but little-known) nature of the man who demanded it, indicated that it was a very bad law.

Nothing has happened that might suggest I was mistaken.

Indeed, many things great and small strongly suggest that I was right. At the small end is the HHS mandate. I don't mean to diminish its tyranny or its unconstitutionality, but I recognize that it doesn't really involve a whole lot of money or people (yet). On the other, we have the Energy and Commerce Committee's Obamacare Burden Tracker, which tallies up Congressional Budget Office estimates of hours spent on compliance with Obamacare. Their current estimate: 127,602,371 hours. To borrow from them:

What could be done in 127,602,371 hours?

• Mount Rushmore, which took 14 years to build, could be constructed 1,040 times.
• Halley’s comet, seen from Earth once every 76 years, could be spotted 191 times.
• The Empire State building, which took 7 million hours to build, could be constructed 18 times.

Is 100% of the new regulatory burden wasted time? It's doubtful. But it is 100% cost, and I very much doubt it was factored into the original CBO estimate of how much the ACA would cost when it was being debated in Congress.  And 100% of that cost will come out of our pockets.  There is no such thing as a free lunch.

here's somebody who knows this stuff better than I do, taking it to pieces far better than I can. Salute to the Pittsford Perennialist.

Who We Should Occupy

Salute to John C. Wright, who had this on his blog:

I like this guy. He tells the truth, and he has his head on straight.

One of his points that I'd like to more strongly emphasize is that smaller businesses are crowded out by regulation, and megacorps are the natural adaptation of business to extreme regulation. Furthermore, a megacorp is always going to have an easier time ensuring that no regulations to onerous to survive will affect them, by buying legislators, sending its lackeys as moles into regulatory agencies, or both.

Another is that subsidy and bailouts are theft, not laissez faire or capitalism.

A third is that we in the US also have a central bank, and it's the Federal Reserve. And it is almost entirely outside the law.

Why Single Payer Is a Bad Idea

I've long opposed any government takeover of medicine. Harry Mount explains why here. There's an exception to the scenario he paints, of increased demand, reduced resources, longer lines, and surly service -- the politically connected will get moved to the head of the line, and treated with deference, because in a politically controlled system, the politically powerful are in charge.

Salute to Big Pulpit.

Lifeteen Has Some Awesome Stuff

For example, Why You Should Care About Religious Freedom

Fr. Mike trots out the Jewish Deli analogy, which I find to be a tad weak, but he also mentions that fully 1/6 of all hospitalized persons are treated in Catholic hospitals. And the HHS mandate will shut them down.

I suspect that they'll be seized shortly thereafter, or perhaps before; it wouldn't be too much of a legal stretch for Eric Holder's Justice Department to say that failure to provide contraceptives makes the hospital building and property complicit in crime, so that they can be sued (as in, Department of Justice v. 100 McGregor Street, Manchester, which happens to be the address of the Catholic Medical Center). While I have not written extensively about civil asset forfeiture on this blog, it's definitely on my mind from time to time, and ranks as one of the more naked forms of plunder by law practiced today.

Here's another: Gay, Catholic, and Doing Fine

And a third, which is truly excellent: What the Confessional is Like for a Priest

Right now, every page on Lifeteen redirects to a fundraising appeal page. If those redirects are still in effect when you get there, hit Alt-left arrow or the back button on your browser to get back to the pages I'm linking to.

A pithy quote

Salute to the Creative Minority Report Reader.  From USA Today:

In essence, the Obama administration's message to these Catholics, despite a cosmetic compromise, is akin to telling Austin's bohemians that they can dress like hipsters on the weekends so long as they behave like corporate shills Monday through Friday. 

I think this is one of the best encapsulations of what's being done to us with the HHS Mandate. Only, we're not being asked to sell out our beliefs, man, but to betray our God and Creator. 

Paying to Starve the Poor, part II

I've used this post title before, and I urge you to go read it. Salute to Mark Shea (see his commentary), who brought the following to my attention:

Ethanol Policy Not Producing Desired Results

Some takeaways: Ethanol policy benefit? $24/yr for a family using about 1100 gallons (4164 liters) a year, about 2.2 cents per gallon. Expenses?

[T]he United Nations’ FAO Food Price Index which shows that between Jan. 2007 and Sept. 2011, after adjusting for inflation, corn prices increased by 68 percent, cereals by 69 percent and dairy products by 46 percent.

One study (Hayes et al, 2009) the researchers cite quantifies how a $1 per bushel increase in corn prices impacts a wide variety of food products. The study shows, for example, that between 2005 and 2011 corn prices rose by $5 per bushel, beef rose 18.5 percent, pork 16 percent, poultry 17.5 percent, eggs 27.5 percent, milk 10.5 percent, cheese 9 percent, sugar and sweets 3.5 percent.

The researchers claim that not all these price increases are due to U.S. ethanol policies. However, even “if only one-fourth of this additional expenditure is attributable to ethanol, this would imply a loss to American consumers of $40 billion over the last 4 years.”

In case you're wondering, "cereals" means all grain crops, which make up the primary source of protein for most of the world's poor, who in many cases spend 50% of income (or more) on food. When food prices rise 69%, that means they must now spend 84.5% of income on food to maintain the same food intake. This is usually not a tenable position for them; perforce, they starve.

Is the 0.08% reduction in world greenhouse gas emissions worth it?

The Top 10, Plus Truth

Behold! The Top 10 Arguments For the Mandate, Refuted By Truth!
Salute to Frank Weathers of YIMCatholic, who consistently writes better stuff than I do.

EDIT: More truth,from The Crescat: Sex Is Not a Medical Emergency! Salute to Thomas L. McDonald of God and the Machine at Patheos.

A piece of truth

Salute to Mark Shea, the Anchoress, Frank Weathers of yimcatholic at patheos, etc. etc. etc.

Justice and Prison

I have thought for some time that our prison system was unjust. It turns out that it's also unneccessary. An article in the New Yorker addresses both the injustice of our prisons, and what reduces crime.

One problem is that our justice system is misnamed. It is a criminal prosecution system. Its interest is not in justice and common law, but in statues, regulations, and procedural correctness. Prosecutors do their best to ensure that exculpatory evidence is never introduced, and work assiduously to avoid jury trials (to save time and money), and juries are never told to consider justice in convicting and giving sentencing recommendations. Is this a prudent way for a just society to order their priorities? Are time and money more important than justice?

A more just punishment would involve restitution, not incarceration. Stealing should involve not just paying back what you stole, but being forbidden the opportunities you used to steal. Embezzlers should not be allowed to go back into positions where they have authority over money.

Crime is prevented by simple things like reducing opportunities to commit them. Dr. Ruwart pointed out almost 20 years ago that if you reward police for reducing crime, instead of convicting criminals, they will act to do so -- and save us money in the process.

Another simple way to reduce crime is not punishing people for owning or using a little weed. (No, I don't use or approve of weed. I'd rather have a drink myself, even though I can readily recognize that ethanol causes a lot more adverse medical outcomes, that can easily be a lot more serious.) Relegalizing opioids and cocaine can come later.

On so-called Piracy

Words mean things. Piracy means ship-to-ship armed robbery and hijacking on the high seas, even today; witness Somalian pirates. There is piracy in the Carribean sea as well. The act involves threats to people's lives and property.

Samizdat (from "same as that") was a practice used to escape censorship in the Soviet union -- to type out a verbatim copy of a banned book, generally on a manual typewriter. It is a much better word than piracy to describe modern methods of copyright infringment, which threaten only royalties, not anyone's lives or actual property. You can expect me to use it instead. I encourage you to do the same, even though those in the networks will not, because they are beholden to the labels and studios.

What SOPA and PIPA are meant to do

I just saw a headline that has put SOPA and PIPA into perspective: BTJunkie voluntarily closes file-sharing website (more from ZDNet, Loopy Gadgets, and the Guardian).

The goal of SOPA/PIPA is not to stop piracy.

It is nothing less than to put an end to user-generated content on the Web.

That's the real goal of MPAA and RIAA in all their censorship moves and DRM strategies -- to ensure they have a monopoly on distribution of entertainment media worldwide.

They want to eliminate every form of competition. They want to ensure that all independent entertainers are crushed, so that everyone who wants any sort of entertainment will have to come to them, cash in hand. They want to ensure that every musician will have to come to them, cap in hand, to sign away all of their rights and money, in order to make the move from street corner busker/ garage band/ small local club band to the big time. They want to ensure that nobody ever successfully distributes a film without the studios getting their piece of the action.

And this plays into the hands of a censorious government. Never forget that big government and big business are in bed together and feed each other. Big business wants an unfair advantage. Big government wants to control personal expression. An oppressive government cannot afford free expression; it's far too likely to express, in a way that people can easily see and share, that the government is oppressive and corrupt.

BTJunkie's self-takedown is not ONLY stifling piracy, is not ONLY stifling Linux ISO distribution (most Linux ISOs are distributed over bittorrent to save costs) ... I have no doubt that it is also stifling the efforts of many independent artists, without labels or studio contracts, to get some market share and mind share.

Sign Frank's Petition!

Frank Weathers, of YIMCatholic at Patheos, has created a petition to ask that the vile HHS mandate to require Catholic institutions to directly fund gravely evil acts in contradiction of religious liberty. Go and sign. Yes, you have to create an account. Be not afraid!!

Petition page here

Incidentally, Frank has yet another one of those Catholic blogs far superior to mine.

The Problem with Patents

Source: http://frugaldad.com

the obvious problem is that the Patent Office refuses to chuck even the most absurd applications, such as throwing a stick to play fetch with your dog, or the combover mentioned above.

Read This Book.

Salute to Fr. Gordon Macrae. Buy a copy for your pastor. Buy another for your bishop.

Occupy Wall Street

It turns out OWS has a real list of real demands. Naturally, domestic press either hasn't a clue or refuses to cover it, but (according to Naomi Wolf in the Guardian whose article you should read) the top three demands are (I quote):

1. [G]et the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process.
2. [R]eform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
3. [D]raft laws against the little-known loophole that currently allows members of Congress to pass legislation affecting Delaware-based corporations in which they themselves are investors.

These are none of them entirely bad ideas. I can deal with some sort of blunting of the Citizens United ruling, even though I think the good guys won. It certainly allows the richest people or groups to give the greatest exposure to their message, but without it, many worthwhile messages were completely stifled. I would far rather we had real freedom to campaign on whatever message we wanted, as long as we were telling the truth, but for as long as honesty is entirely optional and slander and libel are completely acceptable in campaign speech, we have to have something.

Repealing the Glass-Steagall Act was a buyout of Republicans by Citigroup; John Dingell (D-MI) said that it would result in banks "too big to fail" that would have to be bailed out. But then the anti-redlining regulations were added, to help Clinton in his dream of subsidizing the housing of people who were unlikely to pay for their own homes with the Community Reinvesting Act, by transferring all the risk from the banks to the federal government. That has ALSO helped to set us on our current train-wreck financial crisis. I would like to see a return of at least the conflict-of-interest regulation that the Glass-Steagall Act act imposed.

That third item? It has my FULL SUPPORT. What they are talking about there is plain, simple, pure plunder by law, also known as corruption.

Ms. Wolf also makes a pretty good case that the crackdowns were coordinated by the Department of Homeland Security (which department is a reason to spit upon the memory of the 2d Bush presidency if ever there was one). And as she has said, it's no wonder these people are having the $#!t kicked out of them at the behest of the federal government.

The Thinking Behind SOPA

This deserves wider attention:

Some things not addressed by the video:
ANYONE may accuse a site or host of providing pirated content. When this happens, the host has five days to rectify the situation, or their whole site goes down. And there is no due process to determine if the content is legal or infringing IP laws. What's more, there's no penalty for making a false accusation.

Do you see why this is so huge a stick with which to capriciously beat people completely off of the internet that even Microsoft opposes it in its current form? Currently, it might be enforced by removing entries from domain name servers. But when that fails to completely stop piracy, enforcement will require the active blocking of IP addresses. And when that fails to completely stop piracy, it will require deep packet scanning and a complete criminalizing of all encryption not handled by the NSA.