PROGRESS REPORT 7/26/10

1. Purpose of this memo

Here are my thoughts on the state of the nation and possible future plans for our movement. I am requesting your input on these ideas. Please let me know your thoughts.

2. Government failure

We have a huge prison population, huge debt, huge unemployment, unsuccessful lengthy wars, and bad foreign policy.

We are the number one prison state in the world. With less than 5% of the world’s population, we have 25% of the world’s prisoners. We are filling our prisons with people who own plants, vegetables, and flowers. Our prisons are hellholes.

We are in an economic collapse. The government gave over $1 trillion to the people responsible for the collapse. The government continues to pass legislation that cannot be financed. Our national debt is $13 trillion (about 90% of GDP and growing). The unemployment rate is at 9%.

Our government failed to cope with the environmental disasters caused by hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill by British Petroleum.

We are engaged in two lengthy and costly wars. We are sending our young adults to Iraq and Afghanistan to be killed, thus saving Osama Bin Laden the inconvenience of having to come to the U. S. for the killing. Our troops are demoralized because we are not supporting them sufficiently. In Iraq there have been more military deaths from suicide than from military action.

Our foreign policy is insane. We are catering to our enemies (Iran in particular) and alienating our allies. Israel is our staunchest and most reliable ally.

It is the frontline defense against Islamic expansion into Europe. However the Obama administration is going out of its way to alienate the Israelis. Turkey is a member of NATO and was the only Islamic country on good terms with Israel. It has now turned away from us and is siding with the other Islamic countries against us. It was responsible for the attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. North Korea and Iran snub their noses at us.

Read More…

h/t: http://www.lewrockwell.com/

http://www.slate.com/id/2245188

It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.

Before hospital staff realized how sick he was—the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom—the man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Today the US government continues to kill tens of thousands less directly through the so called war on drugs. From raids to bad black market heroin those in power systematically place those people in danger who they swore an oath to protect.

In my inbox today:

Dear ACLU Supporter,
Negotiations on the final health care bill pick up speed this week. As you may know, anti-choice forces in Congress have used this legislation as a vehicle for advancing their agenda.

We must make sure that the final bill will protect reproductive freedom, not put it in peril.

Tell Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg and Sen. Robert ‘Bob’ Menendez and Rep. Steven ‘Steve’ R. Rothman to protect women’s access to abortion in health care reform.

Health care reform should improve people’s lives. That’s why we have to make the most of our last opportunity to insist that health care reform should improve women’s health and lives — not interfere in their ability to get the health care they need.

Representative Bart Stupak and other architects of the severe restrictions on women’s health in both the House and Senate bills are campaigning hard, threatening to derail health care legislation altogether if anyone tampers with the severe restrictions they forced into both bills. Even our allies in Congress are feeling pressure. That’s why it’s so urgent that you take action today.

Both bills stigmatize abortion coverage and ignore the reality that abortion services are basic health care for women.

Tell your members of Congress that Stupak-style restrictions must not be part of any final legislation that goes to President Obama’s desk.

Anti-choice forces are working round-the-clock to keep severe abortion restrictions in the health care bill. We have to work just as hard to get those restrictions out.

Negotiations on a final bill are happening now.

Please act immediately to insist on health reforms that will protect reproductive freedom, not put it in peril.

Thank you for standing with us.

Sincerely,

Vania Leveille
ACLU Legislative Counsel

1. Women’s “reproductive freedom” is not in peril as a result of the upcoming bill.
2. I seriously doubt the bill will “interfere in their [the women] ability to get health care they need.” It will likely require them to pay for it explicitly.
3. Health care reform should improve people’s lives. I find it sad the ACLU is incapiple of recognizing that this or any similiar bill will do nothing of the sort. The health care problem stems from government intervention. Continuing the fascistic takeover of health care by corporations and the government is not the right solution. Reversing those interventions which create the problems are.
4. Abortion services are in no way a “basic health care” for women. According to a quick Google search there are 4.0945 abortions per 1,000 people in the United states. Of those 1,000, 508 are women (50.8% of population). Therefore, assuming no woman has more then one abortion, 4.0945/508 = .00806 or .8% of women “require” abortion services.

I appreciate some of the actions taken by the ACLU, including the NYCLU helping me with my arrest and upcoming court date, but things like this are completely contrary to any form of liberty I’m a subscriber of. The government has no role, morally or constitutionally,  in health care or insurance.

http://www.nytimes.com/…

Following the lead of foreign regulators, New York’s attorney general, Andrew M. Cuomo, filed a federal antitrust lawsuit Wednesday against Intel, the world’s largest chip maker.

The lawsuit charges that Intel violated state and federal laws by abusing its dominant position in the chip market to keep its main rival, Advanced Micro Devices, at bay. Intel has faced similar lawsuits in Asia and Europe, and in May the European Commission fined the company a record $1.45 billion for antitrust violations.

These cases have largely revolved around deals Intel had struck with computer makers and retailers that, regulators said, pressured them into picking the company’s microprocessors – which serve as the central chip inside personal computers and servers – instead of competing products from A.M.D.

“Rather than compete fairly, Intel used bribery and coercion to maintain a stranglehold on the market,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “Intel’s actions not only unfairly restricted potential competitors, but also hurt average consumers who were robbed of better products and lower prices.”

Let me see if I can follow this. The United States federal government creates artificial scarcity in the market by granting intellectual monopoly privileges to particular market actors. Then this artificially large company throws it’s weight around… which in a free market and even in a non-free market should be more or less legitimate. If they want to sell at no or negative profit to out *compete* their competitors for a time… so be it.

The former is the problem… not the latter.

I’m interested in seeing who they supposedly bribed… because Black’s law dictionary defines bribery as dealing with government / public officials. A private sector individual can’t bribe another private sector individual. There is nothing wrong with paying another for keeping quiet or changing behavior. The latter is exactly what trade is.

Again… the government created this “problem.” The solution is less government intervention in the marketplace, not more. End government enforcement of intellectual property laws.

http://online.wsj.com/…

Japanese technology giants Hitachi Ltd. and Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday that, like Sony Corp., their optical disk drive operations in the U.S. received subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice in a widening investigation into potential antitrust violations.

According to a person familiar with the inquiry, the Justice Department started a criminal antitrust probe into the market for optical disk drives in recent months, investigating disk-drive makers for possible price-fixing, bid-rigging and allocation of markets. Optical disk drives are used in everyday consumer products like DVD and Blu-ray disk players, as well as in personal computers.

The investigation comes on the heels of a successful Justice Department investigation into price-fixing in the market for liquid crystal displays used in computers, cell phones and televisions.

That probe snared five companies that paid more than $600 million in combined criminal fines in 2008 and 2009.

That’s $600m+ that customers and investors will get to eat in this indirect taxation. The companies here, even if they were colluding to keep prices up, did nothing wrong. The drives are theirs. They can charge whatever the hell they like for them. If you don’t think it’s a good trade… don’t make it. The only way they are able to keep such a cartel going for an extended period of time is due to government intervention in the first place in the form of intellectual property monopoly privileges and all the perks provided to corporations which limit competition.

And how is a cartel much different from a worker’s union? They join together to increase bargaining power with employers in order to raise the collective compensation for their product… labor. This alleged cartel is made up of multiple businesses joined together to increase their bargaining power with the consumer in order to raise the collective compensation for their product… a optical drive.

In a freer market just about any cartel of size would quickly fall apart due to the overwhelming incentives offered to those who would lower prices. In all the well known supposed anti-trust situations throughout US history the market broke the near monopolies and cartels long before the government got involved. In fact often it was the trusts that supported the regulations ultimately because it reduced competition and created government backed cartels. Railroads, oil, electricity, telephone, banking… all made cartels by the government.