Category: Politics

Guns, Property, and Religion

Everyday-Freethought / / Politics, Religion, Texas

A bill was filed with the Texas Legislature called the Teacher’s Protection Act. You can find the text here. The basic idea is to limit liability for teachers in self-defense situations.

First off, I thought that people already have a right to self-defense, regardless of who or where they are. According to the article, lawyers at the Association of Texas Professional Educators feel the same way.

But what is interesting about this one is that it allows “deadly force”. That phrase is used several times. I am guessing this means guns. I guess it’s not enough to be a pro-gun legislator in Texas. You have to be so pro-gun you have to file redundant bills.

It does say that “force or deadly force” can be used by the teacher to defend themselves or other people. What is interesting is there is also a provision for using force to protect school property. Not defense while ON the property, but defense OF the property. I guess putting that in the same section as defending actual human beings was not enough.

Back in the 1990s, Whoopi Goldberg had a talk show that was on late at night. One of her guests was George Carlin, and he said something that has stuck with me all these years: Democrats care about peoples’ rights, Republicans care about property rights.

Republicans seem to want to take that as far as they can. Some of them probably want to go back to the 1850s.

This bill was mentioned on The Immoral Minority blog. There is one paragraph in the comments that I think sums up a lot of the religious people in this country:

You righties mock the Islamists, yet you do the same things: glorify weapons of death, glorify those who use them, teach the usage of weapons of death to children, and by your ideology teach your people to hate the ‘other’ – thus ensuring that eventually, the ‘other’ is obliterated by your weapons of death. All because you, just like the Islamists, are totally lacking in any positive, socially transformative, ideas that are uplifting to your fellow man, including those with whom you disagree. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ is anathema to you, just as it is anathema to the Islamists. Your ideology is ‘obliterate your neighbor’, the same ideology that they have.

Image from Wikimedia,  assumed allowed under Fair Use.

SSDD In Texas

Everyday-Freethought / / Politics, Texas

We have a new governor and new legislature here in Texas. Mostly Republican, largely Tea Party. The current group of wingnuts said the last group was not conservative enough. Granted, the last group said the group before them was not conservative enough.

I think a lot of conservatives are pathological. Nothing is ever conservative enough for them. News flash: If nothing is conservative enough, maybe the problem is you.

A few writers on the Texas Tribune Tribcast were wondering how much more conservative can some of the policies get, especially with abortion. I write this in jest, but it may come to pass: Perhaps there will be a menstruation fee, since that is a potential fetus leaving a woman’s body. If they are willing to lie about the timelines for fetal pain and fetal heartbeat, what would stop them from saying life begins at ovulation?

Governor Goodhair is leaving the scene. He was a state representative for six years, then Ag Commissioner from 1991 to 1999, Lt Gov for about a year, and was the longest-serving governor in Texas history for 14 years. What is it with conservatives who spend a long time in government, all the while saying government is the problem? (And Republicans think the answer to bad government by Republicans is to elect more Republicans.)

We might see less “crony capitalism” here in Texas. Perry started the Texas Emerging Technology Fund and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, which seem to steer a lot of money towards Perry’s contributors. He also started the Texas Enterprise Fund, which unlike the other two does not have a reputation for being a slush fund for his friends, but does play a part in bringing business to Texas. All three have not always been closely monitored to ensure that companies were creating as many jobs as they claimed they would. Perry is one of those conservatives who think the government should stay out of the free market when it comes to clean air and water, but not when it comes to giving money to people and companies that do not really need it.

If Texas is such a great place to do business, why does the state have to bribe them to come here?

Perry is also famous (or infamous) for going to states with Democratic governors and telling companies based in those states to come to Texas. In all seriousness, why did he never go to states with Republican governors? If you really think that Texas has a better model that all 49 of the other states, then why not say so in all 49 of them? For one thing, you might inadvertently inspire companies in those blue states to look at other red states, and not come to Texas. And why is it that Perry would ask people from more educated states like California and Illinois to come to Texas, but he never went to Mississippi or Alabama? Does Perry want people from more educated states, or does he need them to come here? Whose model is really being validated here?

In other words, Perry is practicing corporate socialism: It works until other states run out of educated workers.

And then there is our new governor, Greg Abbott. Mr Stuff For Me, But None For Thee. He is in a wheelchair because a tree fell on him. He is rich because he sued the landowner and landscaping company and they paid him about $14,000 a month for several years. And he has been against accomadations for handicapped people at public facilities, and all for tort reform. I wonder what would have happened if Greg Abbott’s policies had been in place when the tree fell on him. But I am sure there is some convoluted legal argument about why it’s okay for him but not for you.

While he was still AG, his office ruled that chemical plants did not have to file reports about what compounds they had at their sites. The reasoning was that terrorists might use that information. But then Abbott said if anybody wanted that information they could just ask the chemical companies. If I can just ask for it, why can’t a terrorist just ask for it?

It is hard to believe that this is happening after the disaster in West, Texas. There is a town called Athens that almost had a similar disaster a few months ago (see here and here). Abbott said all you need to do as a homeowner is drive around your town to see if there are any potential risks.

This sounds like the typical conservative idea that companies need to be coddled and shielded from any liability or responsibility for their actions, and all the burden is on citizens. I think that companies should file that information with the government, and it should be available to citizens. If a company is putting people at risk, the burden should be on the company to tell people. Conservatives talk about responsibility, but they always seem to shift it to the people least able to bear it.

Image from Wikimedia, assumed allowed under Fair Use.

Conversation With A Libertarian

Everyday-Freethought / / Misc, Politics

I was at a conference in Minneapolis recently. I talked to a lot of people. One guy said he was a libertarian. He seemed like a nice fellow. He may be a guy who can say he is a “true” libertarian.

A lot of times, people who call themselves “libertarian” are using that term to put lipstick on a pig. Frequently they are racist or homophobic, or really just don’t like paying other people a day’s wage for a day’s work. There was a good article on Pando pointing out that a lot of people think of themselves as “libertarian” without realizing that other people call themselves “libertarian” and have some pretty nasty ideas.

So this guy said he was into Bitcoin. I just kept nodding as he kept talking. But after a few minutes I thought this guy might be sincere about libertarianism and freedom.

He worked for another crypto currency and got paid in Bitcoin (using a three-day moving average). He was involved in a Meetup in the Bay Area about Bitcoin. Two of the other organizers were on the far left politically. He reported his Bitcoin income to the IRS.

He even said that Bitcoin may not replace fiat currency, but complement it. He also said that Bitcoin itself might be replaced by something else in the future. A lot of Bitcoiners (like a lot of gold nutjobs) think that all we have to do is go to Bitcoin and everything will be wonderful. Just press this magic red button one time, set the dial right there, and everything will be okay. The fact is if you change the rules, then people just find new ways to cheat. Plus they seem oblivious to the idea that changing society in their image might hurt other people, even if other people think society is just fine. A lot of Bitcoiners sound like the Underpants Gnomes from South Park: 1. Dislodge fiat currency. 2. ???? 3. Utopia. What is step 2? No idea. So for a supporter of Bitcoin to say that Bitcoin might not be the final answer is surprising.

He also talked about how Bitcoin can be used in Africa. Apparently cel phone minutes are used as a form of currency. He pointed out that the banking system in many African countries is not that great, and that Bitcoin can do some good there. (The conference was a few weeks ago, and I honestly have forgotten some of what he has said.)

A lot of glibertarians are pretty racist (see the Pando article I linked to above). So here was a guy who actually thought that he was doing something to help people in poor countries. He seemed pretty sincere about it.

I am still skeptical of libertarianism in general. But I will say this encounter opened my eyes a bit.

Image from Wikipedia, assumed allowed under Fair Use.

More Thoughts On Snowden

Everyday-Freethought / / Politics

I have had a few more thoughts on Edward BenedictArnoldovich Snowden a few weeks ago.

He said that he thought about exposing the NSA spying when Obama was elected, but decided to wait hoping that Obama would change things. Once again, either this guy is lying, or he is really really dumb.

There were plenty of other issues on Obama’s mind when he was elected: The stimulus, Gitmo, health care. The NSA was not on my mind, and not too many people were talking about it. Maybe if someone had brought it to his attention, things would have been different.

Plus, if you truly are sincere about getting the government to do things differently, then the best time to bring something to the public’s attention when we have a new president. Particularly when the presidency changes parties.

So why did he wait? Perhaps he was lying when he said he hoped Obama would change the NSA, and did this to make the US look bad (which I bet suits Russia just fine). Perhaps he is just not that bright.

Plus, as many commenters at Little Green Footballs have pointed out, before these leaks, the stuff inside the NSA stayed inside the NSA. The only way Snowden got some of it out was by convincing other people at the NSA to give him their passwords. But now these docs are outside the confines of the NSA because of Snowden.

Also, I and others have noted that if his intended destination really was Latin America, why didn’t he just go to Latin America from the beginning? It seems to be working out for Glenn Greenwald.

Image of Snowden’s role model from Wikipedia, assumed allowed under Fair Use.

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More Thoughts On Snowden

Everyday-Freethought / / Politics

So our good friend Edward BenedictArnoldovich Snowden gave an interview to NBC in which he stated that he raised concerns within the NSA. Glenn Griftwald said this was an important revelation.

Then NSA released an email in which Snowden asked a question about whether executive orders supercede federal statutes. Granted, before this the NSA said there was no paper trail. Perhaps they were looking for something substantive. When the email turned out to be underwhelming, Greenwald had nothing more to say on it. Did he know about the supposed paper trail?

As many commenters at Little Green Footballs pointed out, this email was sent after Edward I-Love-My-Sugar-Vladdy Snowden had already been in contact with Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Snowden and Greenwald said there are more emails that the NSA has not released. Many commenters pointed out (as I did) that it seemed odd that Snowden and Greenwald have not released those emails themselves. I think Snowden did not keep those emails. If these people were smart, they would have released those pretty early. I know that 1.5 million documents is a lot to go through, but I would guess something that corroborates your story would be at the front of the list. (See Note 1 below.)

Snowden says he was trained as a spy. Didn’t they cover that in spy school?

I have also looked at a few lists of the documents. Yes, there is a LOT of spying on Americans. But there are also a lot of examples of the USA spying on foreign countries, their leaders and their citizens. I really don’t like that, but I really don’t think people in other countries have any rights under the US Constitution.

Plus some of the documents were looking at the activities of Iran, Russia and China. I really have no issues with the US spying on them. At all. Anything that makes China or Russia stronger relative to US/NATO is a bad thing in my opinion.

The UK has said that some criminals have gone off the radar thanks to the Snowden leaks. He has released info on spying by the US, UK, Canada, Australia, France, Sweden and the Netherlands. Why haven’t Snowden/Greenwald/Wikileaks shined a light on China and Russia? I do not have high expectations for China or Russia as beacons of freedom or democracy. It just seems odd that Snowden/Greenwald/Wikileaks say they are advancing freedom, yet their actions all seem to benefit China and Russia.

Snowden may not be a Russian spy, but the Russians have said they have had their eye on him since his time in Switzerland. That is interesting, because people who think that he is a Russian spy think he became one in Switzerland. So if he is not a spy, then perhaps Russia has been using him all this time.

Did Snowden keep the paper trail in which he raised concerns? Did Greenwald lose the files? Why didn’t Snowden only take files about NSA surveillance on Americans? Did not know how to only get those files? Or did he not care?

Are Snowden, Greenwald and Wikileaks stupid and incompetent? Or just apathetic and evil? Is one better or worse than the other?

I really hate it when people who don’t know what they are doing tell me they are looking out for me freedom. I’ll take my chances before trusting idiots.

Image of Snowden’s other role model from Wikipedia, assumed allowed under Fair Use.

Note 1: 2015-02-21_16.41.25: I would hardly call a question about legal supremacy “raising concerns”. Yes, he raised some concerns, but not the sort he raised after he defected. Plus, I wonder this email chain they mention ever existed. It seems odd that he steals thousands of files, yet forgets the one that would prove he’s not a spy.

Obama Takes on False Equivalence

Everyday-Freethought / / Ambient Echo, Politics

I have written a few times about false equivalence, which I have called the “both sides fallacy” (see here, here, here, here, here and here). It is also called the balance fallacy or false balance.

We see it when people talk about the inability of government to solve our problems, or pass any meaningful legislation. “Both parties are to blame”. Democrats have been willing (sometimes I think too willing) to compromise, while Republicans have not. And our so-called “liberal media” has been either perpetuating or going along with the “both sides” meme.

Now, President Obama is calling out the media in speeches. There is an article about it in the Washington Post. He lists issues that Republicans have not been willing to discuss, and legislation they have torpedoed. You can’t blame both parties for Congress being broken when one party wants it to be broken. You cannot blame government for being ineffective when a lot of people in it do not want it to be effective.

The article was also mentioned in The Immoral Minority, Salon and a site I had not heard of until now called Driftglass. I will have to look at this Driftglass site. He (or she) says he was talking about this for a while, as I have.

Go read them. There are some pretty good quotes from Obama on the topic.

Image from Hollywood PQ, assumed allowed under Fair Use

 

“Both Sides” Fallacy Crumbles Again

Everyday-Freethought / / Delayed Reaction, Politics

One thing that has been in the news over the past few weeks is the Bundy standoff: A rancher in Nevada is freeloading off of federal land. He has not paid grazing fees. His armed militia thinks the feds are acting like tyrants. I always thought a tyrant would haul people off in secret in the middle of the night, not fight them in court for a couple of decades.

At first, a lot of Republicans and Libertarians flocked to his side, saying Bundy was a “true patriot”, and a “real American”.

Then he decided to tell what he knows about the Negro.

First off: What is it with conservatives telling us what they know about other people? I have heard a lot of christians make statements about atheists and why people are atheists and what atheists think, and I have heard a lot of Republicans and conservatives make statements about what liberals think and why we think it. And they are almost always wrong. Yet these same people get very upset when anyone talks about them or their motivations. So much for consistency.

Anyway, he said that maybe blacks were better off as slaves. Then a lot of the people who supported him said they didn’t support him. Some of them said they thought he was still correct in his land dispute. He is not. But it’s hard to distance yourself from someone when you say they are the best thing since slice bread.

Then there is Donald Sterling. A guy who is has a half-black, half-Mexican mistress, owns a basketball team, yet hates black people. He got in trouble because he told his mistress he did not want her bringing any black people to an NBA game.

First off, if you do not like black people, perhaps you should find another sport to be involved in.

A lot of conservatives tried to say that Sterling was a Democrat since he donated to a few Democrats in the past 20 years. Then it turned out he is a registered Republican.

Why do people keep trying this “both sides” nonsense? Maybe this is not quite the same as the usual “both sides” stories I have commented on.

As I started writing this piece, it occurred to me there is another interesting parallel: The Sterling case is another example of conservatives trying to define liberals, and failing badly again in the process. Democrats were not lining up in support of this guy. And nobody was forcing anyone to speak out in support of Cliven Bundy.

Image from Wikimedia, assumed allowed under Fair Use

 

Thoughts On Glibertarians

Everyday-Freethought / / Misc, Politics

I have a file about thoughts on libertarians and juicy comments from other websites that is getting rather large. So I am cleaning house and writing down some thoughts on “glibertarians” that have been kicking around in my head.

Glibertarians are very vocal about the ills of government, yet they seem blind to anything done wrong by corporations. Look at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The operators skimped on maintenance, thinking they were going to save a few million, and it wound up costing them a few billion. Yet many glibs (like Rand Paul) tried to blame it all on the government. That somehow the government forced them to cut corners. That is BS. They chose to cut corners.

And you have to be pretty stupid to defend someone who destroys their own money-maker. As BP did. (“Why spend millions when we can spend billions?”) As a company in West, Texas did. Sometimes people in the private sector make bad decisions all on their own. And other people outside the government were negatively affected. I know in Glibertarian Fantasy Land that bad things only come from government. But that is not reality. They are suspicious of Big Government. Why do Big Corporations get a pass?

Besides, many times it is the companies themselves that interfere with the regulatory process. It’s called the revolving door. A lot of gliberarians always seem to put the blame on the government. BP got the regulations loosened, yet somehow it’s still all Obama’s fault. Glibs seem to think that if only we did not have that pesky government making rules, everything would be okay.

As we saw in West, Texas, and recently in Charleston, West Virginia. In both of these cases, yes, there were regulation on the books, but they were loosed and not enforced. For all practical purposes, there was no regulation. Yet bad things still happened. Bad things happened to people outside of these companies. What is the glibertarian answer for that? Less regulation than none? When a chemical company poisons your river, you cannot expect a rival chemical firm to take care of things. I have still not heard of Peter Schiff or the staff of LewRockwell.com drinking and bathing in water from the Elk River.

I think a lot of glibs do not care about freedom. Maybe they care about their own, but do they care about other peoples? If you only care about your own, and you do not care about others’, then you do not care about freedom. This is one of the criticisms of the Free State Project. Maybe the rest of society does not want the sort of changes the glibs want. It’s wrong for government to tell them what to do, but they think it’s okay to tell everybody else what to do.

We saw this with the recent Newsweek story about the identity of the creator of BitCoin. I admit I did not read that story. I did read comments on it on Reddit. It does sound like the reporter did some dumb things if that guy is not THE Satoshi Nakamoto. But there were a lot of commenters who seemed offended by the very idea of finding out Nakamoto’s identity. How dare you try to look at the man behind the curtain. A big chunk of the Bitcult wants to completely redefine money. If you are going to do that, then yes I will push back. If fiat currencies do go away, there is a good chance someone could get hosed. Who are you to mess up other people’s lives? Who do you think you are that you can change society and think that nobody can even ask questions? (Also pointed out here.) Don’t tell me I don’t get it. Don’t tell me I’m a statist. Prove your ideas work before you do anything that changes my life.

Glibertarians go on and on about how many people are too dependent on “the state”. They say people should be more self-reliant. I actually agree with that. But they seem to have no interest in showing people how to become more self-reliant. People are good at getting by. I don’t think people are as good at actually succeeding. Most glibs who claim to have done it all themselves are straight white males in the US. As Warren Buffett has said, if he had been born in Bangladesh, his life would be very different.

They have been complaining about Medicare since it was signed. Yet have they done anything to reduce health care costs in this country? If you want to be healthy, you need to do four things: Do not drink alcohol at all, do not smoke or injest drugs, eat a healthy diet, and exercise. Have glibertarians helped people to do any of those things? People in yoga tend to follow all those rules. Why aren’t glibertarians pushing yoga? That may sound facetious, but it is a serious suggestion. It would help society more than going on and on about the gold standard, or the Federal Reserve. If you want people to rely less on the state, then teach them how to thrive in the society that we have today. A lot of people do not know how to read a bank statement. A lot of people do not track their spending. Going on and on about gold will not help people pay the bills.

And pulling the plug is not the answer. The safety net has been intentionally frayed in this country, yet most people are not better off because of it.

A lot of these guys seem to live in their own little bubble. They have their think tanks and their web sites, but are they really engaging the rest of society? How can you change society if you are ignoring it? I honestly think that completely unrestrained capitalism leads to feudalism. We tried that. I think it’s safe to say that the rest of us are not interested.

I think a big chunk of glibertarians are run-of-the-mill authoritarian Rethuglicans. Over the past few decades, I have noticed that when the brand of the Grand Oil Party takes a hit, all of a sudden a lot more people say they are libertarians. One day I looked at every Wikipedia article for the state legislators for all 50 states. They gave a party breakdown. Not one was from any branch of the Libertarian Party. There are some who are on local school or sanitation councils. Stand back!! It is ironic that they like to think of themselves as can-do alpha achievers, yet they cannot win elections.

Some like to point to Gary Johnson, partially due to his position on the drug war. He came to that position in his second term as governor of New Mexico. That is a term-limited office. So he magically took this courageous stand after he did not have to face re-election. How convenient. And his anti-drug stance was not a big deal in his presidential campaign. Did you honestly think he had a chance?

And I do not understand how the Libertarian Party can claim to know anything about liberty or freedom after selecting Bob Barr as their nominee in 2008. Theocracy is not freedom.

There does seem to be some overlap between theocrats, neo-Confederates and libertarians. Rand Paul has spent more time talking about religion in the past few years. Libertarians like to think they are not Republicans, and Republicans like to think they are not crazy, but after a while they all sound the same.

Glibertarians eventually sound like apologists for the wealthy. They say they are all for freedom of association, yet they hate unions. They hate anything that would help the unwashed masses make something of their lives.

One thing that has really turned me off to glibertarians is climate change. There are some (like Penn Jillette) who are pretty good at destroying creationists: Yes, there IS scientific consensus on evolution. Then they turn around and commit the same fallacies on climate change. I think the main reason is that most of the solutions proposed so far have involved government intervention. But instead of offering a private sector solution or admitting that this is a problem their world view cannot solve, they deny the problem. This is another example of the taxicab fallacy. They love science when it gives them good stuff, but not when it tells them there are problems we have to deal with.

The irony is there is a solution that the private sector could push: Thorium-based nuclear power. But why let cheap, abundant energy get in the way of ideology?

Image from Wikipedia, original source U.S. Geological Survey, assumed allowed under Fair Use

Neil deGrasse Tyson On Science Deniers

Everyday-Freethought / / Ambient Echo, Politics, Religion, Science

Crooks and Liars embedded a video with Neil deGrasse Tyson on the place of science in our society. It’s a good interview.

I mention it here because he talks about the taxicab fallacy. He does  not use that term, but I think he expresses the basic idea.

The Immoral Minority had a post with another good NdT quote. There is a difference between scientific claims and political claims.

Just yesterday I listened to an episode of the Green News Report in which they covered the climate change “debate” between Bill Nye and Marsha Blackburn. Blackburn kept saying there is no scientific consensus on climate change. There is.

98% of climate scientists say it is happening and caused by humans. It is not a scientific controversy. A scientific controversy is when a sizable proportion of scientists in a field have not been able to make a determination. I do not know what the threshold is to stop saying a thesis is under debate, but I am guessing that it is lower than 98%.

A thesis might conflict with your political ideology. Or your religion. It might hurt your profit margin. It might inconvenience you. But all of those are different than scientific controversies.

Not everyone in this world believes in any sort of god or spirit. And not all who do are christian. And since there are so many denominations, obviously there is a lot of disagreement within christianity. So why don’t conservatives apply the same “there is no agreement” logic to their religion?

Image from Wikimedia, assumed allowed under Fair Use

Thoughts On Military Service

Everyday-Freethought / / Misc, Politics

I am cleaning house. Here is something I found in a text file that I posted on a forum. I posted that I don’t think people who never served are not allowed to have an opinion on the military. It is a repeat of some of the thoughts in “Military Opinions.”

When I said that

It’s a volunteer military, and I’m helping to pay for it. Why do some people think you have to “serve”?

I was not knocking those who served.

But I don’t think that not serving means I cannot have an opinion on the military. Why protect my freedom if I can’t have freedom of thought?

We spend as much on the military as the rest of the world combined. Do we really need to do this?

We have spent billions on a war in Iraq that was based on lies, and was not actually declared by Congress per the Constitution. Am I unpatriotic pointing this out?

There have been a lot of weapon systems that came in late and way over budget. Some were junked without ever being used. Why do a lot of people think that a strong military means giving military contractors a blank check no questions asked?

I have found that veterans usually do not mind me asking questions. Middle age conservatives who were never in the military and think the answer to all our problems is to bomb someone (and then turn around and ask “Why do they hate our freedom?” when things go wrong somewhere) usually do get upset. And I think a lot of them feel guilty.

Obviously, if nobody joined the military, there would be problems. But since it is a volunteer military, nobody (at an individual level) is required to join. And if someone else feels guilty for not joining, that is not my problem.

Image from Wikipedia, assumed allowed under Fair Use