The Immorality of voting...and more
A fundraiser for this site and for ifeminists: the audio of the 46-minute lecture "The Immorality of Voting" (mp3) given at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in February. The talk also covers practical and political reasons that underlie nonvoting. If you enjoy or benefit from the presentation, please make a paypal donation at the button on the upper left-hand corner of this site. Permission is not granted to reproduce any of the material in any manner; should you wish to do so, please contact wendy AT wendymcelroy DOT com. Similarly, should you wish to donate by mail, please email.
Friday 25 July 2008
U.S. child labor laws are child abuse
By Wendy McElroy
When I was sixteen, I ran away from home and lived on the streets for as short a period of time as I could manage. I did not turn to prostitution or to drugs; I was lucky. Not in avoiding paid sex and substances -- these were deliberate choices. I was lucky to be sixteen and, so, able to legally support myself. If I had been two months younger, child labor laws would have forced me to beg or do far worse in order to survive.
People call me "an exception." They baldly state that most kids on the street would never choose low-paid honest jobs over well-paid criminal ones. How do they know? Government does not permit a comparison to exist. At sixteen, I decided that 'profits' are not all monetary -- but this was something I knew at fifteen and fourteen as well. I knew that prostitution and drugs were violent, disease-prone worlds in which I had no future. Even if only a minority of under-aged runaways would make the same choice, how can anyone in good conscience deny them that opportunity?
Another common comment is that I should have sought the assistance of a governmental agency. There are at least two things wrong with this advice. First, runaways are on the streets because authority figures in their lives have betrayed them. Most of them will not willingly relinquish control to yet another authority. Second, there is an assumption that government protects children, yet this is the same government that denies them the right to their own labor. History frowns upon the belief that government protects children's rights.
This news item from the Memphis Commercial Appeal: Police director sues for critical bloggers' names. The article opens,
Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin and the city of Memphis have filed a lawsuit to learn who operates a blog harshly critical of Godwin and his department. The lawsuit asks AOL to produce all information related to the identity of an e-mail address linked to MPD Enforcer 2.0, a blog popular with police officers that has been extremely critical of police leadership at 201 Poplar. "In what could be a landmark case of privacy and the 1st Amendment," the anonymous bloggers write on the site, "Godwin has illegally used his position and the City of Memphis as a ram to ruin the Constitution of the United States.
Rumor has it that the blog (MPD Enforcer 2.0) is authored primarily by a Memphis police officer, who is whistleblowing on his own department. According to the Memphis Flyer, "MPD Enforcer 2.0 [is] an anonymous website geared toward and run by current and former members of the Memphis Police Department. The anonymous Google Blogspot site has, for the last four months, served as a sort of online water cooler where Memphis' uniformed patrol officers can voice their anonymous discontent with the leadership of MPD, whoM they collectively refer to as "the 12th Floor."
Godwin insists, “There’s no attempt to try to squash, you know, whistleblowers or that kind of thing...There’s some serious issues here that I think will surface as it moves forward.” What serious issues? Who knows? Godwin is not only using taxpayer money to out his critic(s) but also has sealed his complaint. Personally, I think the issue Godwin takes most seriously is captured by the poll at the top left-hand side of MPD Enforcer 2.0: Do you think Godwin should be fired over his antics? -- yes or no.
19th century individualist anarchism on Children’s Rights
The most recent addition to this site's archive is the essay "19th century individualist anarchism on Children’s Rights" which constitutes Chapter 5 of my book The Debates of Liberty.
Excerpt: The key question around which issues of children’s “rights” and parental responsibility revolved was “What obligation, if any, does a parent (or a third party) have toward an infant who is too young to form contracts?” After all, according to philosophical egoism, rights and obligations arose only from the act of contracting. In the absence of contracts, no one had a rightful claim against anyone else in society, not even the claim to be left unmolested by others. What legal status would such an Anarchist society assign to infants who were unable to contract?
Exclusive to this blog and ifeminists.net from esteemed commentator Tony Zizza on the media fury now surrounding Michael Savage.
"Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out." --Michael Savage, Syndicated Radio Talk Show Host of The Savage Nation, 7/16/08
Love him or hate him, Michael Savage sure knows how to get a conversation started.
U.S. lawmakers reached agreement on a rescue plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that the House may vote on tomorrow, Representative Barney Frank said.
Under a modified version of proposals made by the Bush administration, the Treasury Department would gain authority to inject capital into the two largest U.S. mortgage finance companies, through loans and equity investments.
...The Treasury would be barred from providing aid that would cause a breach in the federal debt ceiling under the agreement, a constraint aimed at limiting any taxpayer losses. The debt limit would be raised to $10.6 trillion from the current $9.815 trillion.
So, they need to bump the debt ceiling up by almost $800 billion to finance the Fannie/Freddie bailout? I guess that's their idea of "limiting taxpayer losses."
Brad - Wednesday 23 July 2008 - 11:28:35 - Permalink
Say what?
I was reading an online article entitled Document forensics expert: Obama "birth certificate" a "horrible forgery" in the news magazine the Israel Insider when I stumbled. The article discussed the ongoing controversy over whether Obama was born on non-US soil and, so, ineligible to run for President. It opened, Barack Obama may be on a world tour surrounded by a fawning media, but Sunday an expert in electronic document forensics released a detailed report on the purported birth certificate -- actually a "Certification of Live Birth" or COLB -- claimed as genuine by his campaign. The expert concludes with 100% certainty that it is a crudely forged fake: "a horribly forgery," according to the analysis published on the popular right-wing Atlas Shrugs blog.
Clicking through to the Atlas Shrugs blog revealed the headline ATLAS EXCLUSIVE: FINAL REPORT ON OBAMA BIRTH CERTIFICATE FORGERY CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN. Near the end of the extensive analysis, the reader is pointed to a long list of earlier, similar pieces, which include [T]he [birth] certificate is still a horrible forgery", Mystery, Clarification and Obfuscation of Obama's Birth Certificate Forgery, Atlas Tech Expert Declares Obama Birth Certificate, Who died and made him the final word on Obama's, The "Missing" Obama Birth Certificate Seal, SUCH A LIAR: OBAMA'S FAKE BIRTH CERTIFICATE and, RELEASE OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE!
My stumble? Why is this campaign being led by the Atlas Shrugs site? I hope this is an aberration within the Objectivism and not an indication of how, well, stupid the general Objectivist movement has become over Obama. (Stupid is the word Reason Magazine uses.) There are so many excellent reasons to lambast Obama that it just cheapens their opposition if this is all they come up with.
For a well-reasoned counter to the forgery charges, click here.
The latest addition to the site archive is the essay "Trial by Jury" which constitutes Chapter 7 of my book The Debates of Liberty: An Overview of Individualist Anarchism, 1881-1908. It can be accessed either through clicking on articles in the above toolbar and, then, clicking on Individualist Anarchism -- Theory. Or click here.
Excerpt: Nineteenth-century Philosophical Anarchism was not an expression of utopianism or a belief in the millennium: it did not seek to establish an ideal society through the perfection of man. Instead, as Victor Yarros explained, ”The anarchists, as anarchists, work directly, not for a perfect social state, but for a perfect political system. A perfect social state is a state totally free from sin or crime or folly; a perfect political system is merely a system in which justice is observed, in which nothing is punished but crime and nobody coerced but the invader.” (1)Philosophical Anarchism sought both to eliminate the State and to establish in its place voluntary alternatives, such as private insurance and defense associations. Thus, its twin goals were the destruction of authority and the construction of a voluntary social system. (2)
They explored trial by jury with respect to both of these goals.
I had an interesting customer service experience yesterday. I had called United Airlines to try to get credit for a purchase at one of their Mileage Plus partners. It seems that, despite what their web site would have you believe, you don't get credit for restaurant purchases unless you first sign up for their Mileage Plus Dining card. I don't need the 10 or 20 points, but I did want the purchase to be recorded so that my accumulated points don't expire in two months. After fifteen minutes with a carefully unhelpful customer service person, I started asking if there was someone who could adjust my account. Several variations on the following: "Is there anyone who can make this adjustment?" "No sir." "Can I talk to anyone else?" "You can call back and get a different customer service representative." Stonewalled.
Finally, I said the magic word: "Can I talk to a supervisor?"
"Thank you! I was waiting for you to ask that sir. Please stay on the line; I'll be glad to transfer your call."
It would appear that, regardless of how many times I asked to talk to "someone else", or someone with authority to adjust my account, the United customer service people are trained to not get a supervisor involved...unless the customer explicitly asks for one. A lesson I will remember.
Oh, the supervisor couldn't adjust my account either. I finally had to call Customer Relations -- which is distinct from Customer Service -- to get my credit. (Plus a bonus credit, I think just to get rid of me.)
Yeah! I'm pleased to announce that the discussion forum affiliated with this site now has over 500 active members. You are most cordially invited to browse or join the fun.
Lee K. writes, "We know of course that electronic voting machines without a paper trail are fundamentally insecure, but a whistleblower has come out saying that Diebold targeted Democratic districts with software patches only applied to those districts."
The news item Lee forwards reads, in part, A leading cyber-security expert and former adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) says he has fresh evidence regarding election fraud on Diebold electronic voting machines during the 2002 Georgia gubernatorial and senatorial elections. Stephen Spoonamore is the founder and until recently the CEO of Cybrinth LLC, an information technology policy and security firm that serves Fortune 100 companies. At a little noticed press conference in Columbus, Ohio Thursday, he discussed his investigation of a computer patch that was applied to Diebold Election Systems voting machines in Georgia right before that state's November 2002 election....
[T]he whistleblower -- who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation -- said that he became suspicious of Diebold's actions in Georgia for two reasons. The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds....The whistleblower said another flag went up when it became apparent that the patch installed by Urosevich had failed to fix a problem with the computer clock, which employees from Diebold and the Georgia Secretary of State's office had been told the patch was designed specifically to address.
The "fully informed jury" strategy attempts to wedge the jury process as an obstacle between oppressive law and individual freedom. The strategy is based on the doctrine of jury nullification by which a juror can reject the law. That is, a juror can refuse to convict a defendant despite instructions from a judge if he believes either that the law is unjust or that its application is unjust. In essence, the jury renders a verdict on the law itself and not merely on the facts of a case.
Jury nullification has been established in common law since 1670 when an English jury refused to convict William Penn for the crime of preaching Quakerism. They were imprisoned for doing so. In a legal precedent, the English high court ruled that juries must be free to reach their own decisions without fear of punishment by the court. In 1735, jury nullification was affirmed in America when publisher John Peter Zenger was tried for printing "seditious libel" without first receiving the government's approval. The judge instructed the jury that no facts were in question since Zenger admitted the sedition. All that remained was the legality of his act and such "issues of law" were matters for the court to determine. The jurors were instructed to find Zenger guilty. Within ten minutes, they declared him not guilty.
Since then, the right and power of a jury to de facto overturn a law has been the subject of debate and inconsistent application. Advocates of individual rights tend to embrace jury nullification as a key aspect of trial by jury. 19th century individualists shared this tendency, with Lysander Spooner's treatise Trial by Jury often considered to be the definitive word. The first chapter of this work is entitled "The Right of Juries to Judge the Justice of Laws."
In wake of Obama's howls of outrage over the satirical New Yorker cover that depicted he and Michelle as terrorists -- a depiction that was actually a criticism of Obama detractors -- Andy Borowitz has passed along 5 jokes that have been officially approved by Obama's campaign. Comedians are invited to use them for free...
Barack Obama and a kangaroo pull up to a gas station. The gas station attendant takes one look at the kangaroo and says, “You know, we don’t get many kangaroos here.” Barack Obama replies, “At these prices, I’m not surprised. That’s why we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”
A traveling salesman knocks on the door of a farmhouse, and much to his surprise, Barack Obama answers the door. The salesman says, “I was expecting the farmer’s daughter.” Barack Obama replies, “She’s not here. The farm was foreclosed on because of subprime loans that are making a mockery of the American dream.”
A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?” Barack Obama replies, “His jockey just lost his health insurance, which should be the right of all Americans.”
Q: What’s black and white and red all over? A: The Barack Obama issue of New Yorker magazine, which should be embarrassed after publishing such a tasteless and offensive cover, which I reject and denounce.
A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says, “This joke isn’t going to work because there’s no Muslim in this boat.”
Either that, or he thinks that his audience is. (I suspect the latter.) I quote from his self-serving plan:
Building wind facilities in the corridor that stretches from the Texas panhandle to North Dakota could produce 20% of the electricity for the United States at a cost of $1 trillion. It would take another $200 billion to build the capacity to transmit that energy to cities and towns.
That's a lot of money, but it's a one-time cost.
Bzzzt. Wrong. We have some of those windmills near us, and I was surprised to learn that they have a lifespan of only 20 years. (That's less than the life of a nuclear plant.) So you'd better be budgeting $1 trillion up front, and $50 billion a year (neglecting interest and inflation) for replacements. Not counting maintenance; and I don't know how much to budget for maintaining the transmission lines. (And not to mention, as others have done, the wee little problem of scattering these things throughout tornado country.)
Q: What kind of financier says that engineering projects are a "one-time cost"?
A: One who is trying to bamboozle the public into voting big federal bucks for technologies (wind power and natural gas) in which he is heavily invested.
Incidentally, T.B., $700 billion a year for oil is not "the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind." That distinction belongs to the U.S. Federal Budget.
P.S. This is not to say that I'm opposed to either wind power or natural gas. I'm just opposed to flim-flam and rent-seeking.
