Category Archives: Freedom

The benefits of socialized medicine

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I say “medicine” but it applies to anything socialism touches. It’s just that with medicine we have more vivid and frequent examples to chose from.


Via an email from friend Kris an escapee from Australia here in the U.S., Full hospitals turning patients away in Brisbane:



emergency rooms went into meltdown yesterday as major hospitals turned away patients because they were full.


Six hospitals around the city issued capacity alerts as a flood of high priority patients threatened to overwhelm services stretched to the limits, The Courier-Mail reports.

The chaos left stressed ambulance officers trying to care for people in their vans.


…


“Today is out of control, our departments are in complete meltdown,” the nurse said. “What is scary is that there is no good reason for it – it isn’t a terribly hot day, it isn’t flu season, there is no outbreak of disease, we just don’t have enough resources.”

Ambulance union spokesman Kroy Day said the lack of hospital resources meant it was “only a matter of time before someone dies in a van”.

He warned that having multiple hospitals on capacity alerts meant paramedics could be left caring for patients in their vans for up to four hours.

“If this is what we are seeing on a mild summer’s day, I hate to imagine the trouble we’ll be in when flu season rolls around,” he said.

When asked about the RBWH being on bypass, Health Minister Stephen Robertson blamed a record amount of elective surgery patients.


Kris reports, “Regular occurrence in Perth at certain times of the week, or whenever it gets too hot (it never gets too cold in Perth).”


In Britain this has been a complaint for many years. People wait in the emergency room for many hours before being seen by a doctor. The politicians then required the hospitals to report on how many hours people had to wait.  The hospitals then started refusing to let the ambulances bring the patients into the hospitals until they were ready for them. This improved the numbers because the clock didn’t start ticking until the patient entered the door. The ambulances sometimes wait in the parking lot for hours with the engines running to provide temperature control. This not only threatens the life of the patient waiting for a doctor it also ties up the ambulance such that it can’t transport another patient in need of immediate care.


The basics of the problem is that when the central committee (politicians) allocate resources rather than the free market they do a much poorer job. They are further from the problem that needs to be solved and cannot respond as quickly. In a free market someone realizes they can make a profit whenever the demand starts to exceed the supply and the most successful will meet the demand quickly and for the least total cost.


Via friend Jim, who spent some time in eastern block countries during the mid 80s, I heard reports of lines for bread, shoes, toothpaste, toilet paper,  and almost every common commodity you can think of. Another friend reported to me that light bulbs were rationed out to government offices and critical businesses. Hence people would bring in their burned out bulbs from their homes and swap them with the new ones in public buildings and businesses.


And the above doesn’t even address the frosty stares I get from my physical therapist wife when I bring up more U.S. government involvement in health care. We already have too much government involvement in health care. Don’t let the Obama administration give us ambulances waiting in the parking lot too.

Gun licensing is a “literacy test”

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In his opinion piece, Literacy test for gun ownership a threat to civil rights, Dave Workman (of Gun Week and SAF) explains how testing before you can exercise a right worked out for blacks a few decades back. The parallels to gun ownership should be useful in our public opinion campaign for gun rights.

 

I also like to bring up registration of Jews and/or homosexuals when someone suggests registration of gun owners.

 

Although some bloggers have occasionally flattered me by saying I first started this meme with my little talk at the first Gun Blogger Rendezvous I can’t take the credit. As I pointed out in my 2005 post CCRKBA Blast Bigotry I first picked it up from Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman (the author of the opinion piece referenced above) in the late 90s.

 

However, in the present day I probably do push the meme more than almost anyone else. The response I get is similar to that for Just One Question; refusal to address the issue and a loud pronouncement of “That’s ridiculous!” But Heller decision last spring makes the meme all the more powerful. The Supreme Court said the right to keep and bear arms is a specific enumerated right. And that is very powerful language. I puts the right to keep and bear arms on the same level as the most sacred rights in this country. What can the justification be to require government licensing, testing, and registration of other specific enumerated rights? Can freedom of speech and religion be licensed and only allowed to those that have registered with the government duplicate copies of their fingerprints and passed a test? Or can you only get a trial by a jury of your peers if you have a permit? Must you wait weeks, submit to training, and have your permit to have an abortion available to the general public via the public records system?

 

Jeff Soyer and Sebastian have their take on this opinion piece as well.

Quote of the day–William S. Lind

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American and other foreign troops in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan are learning more than how to make IEDs and how effective they can be. They are learning by direct observation how a place works when the state disappears.


…


They will see statelessness as a field of opportunity where people who are clever and ruthless can rise fast and far. They look upon themselves as that kind of people. They will also have learned it is possible to fight the state, and how to do so. The effectiveness of IEDs is part of that lesson; so are the power and rewards that come to members of militias and gangs. In their own minds, and perhaps in reality, they will have found a new world in which they can hope to thrive.


William S. Lind
Director for the Center for Cultural Conservatism for the Free Congress Foundation.
February 3, 2009
On War #290: Blowback Revisited
[Via John Robb (be sure to read the comments).


Great. Just what we need. The economy is crashing and governments (Iceland and essentially Mexico) are falling so gangs and thugs start making things worse.–Joe]

This makes me feel safer

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From Alan Korwin:



I especially liked the roof-turret mounted, bullet-proof-camera equipped, fully remote controlled, drum fed, suppressed machine gun with 360-degree sweep and elevation control now available for law enforcement vehicles.



Fully mechanized roof-mounted machine gun for police vehicles.
It rotates, elevates and exterminates.


Just the sort of “Hope and Change” one might expect under a socialist regime.


I really need to do some more AP testing this weekend.

A bill to build the camps for us

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I received a forwarded email from Boomershoot participant Joey last night:



Rep. Alcee L. Hastings, D-Fla., has introduced to the House of Representatives a new bill, H.R. 645, calling for the secretary of homeland security to establish no fewer than six national emergency centers for corralling civilians on military installations.


The proposed bill, which has received little mainstream media attention, appears designed to create the type of detention center that those concerned about use of the military in domestic affairs fear could be used as concentration camps for political dissidents, such as occurred in Nazi Germany.


The bill also appears to expand the president’s emergency power.


In a sense, this is true. But as pointed out in Liberal Fascism, in the U.S. Fascism comes with a smiley face. Here is some text from the bill:



(b) Purpose of National Emergency Centers- The purpose of a national emergency center shall be to use existing infrastructure–



(1) to provide temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster;

(2) to provide centralized locations for the purposes of training and ensuring the coordination of Federal, State, and local first responders;

(3) to provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations; and

(4) to meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security


So, yes, these centers could be used as concentration camps (“other appropriate needs”). But it will be for your own good and the good of society if they actually use them. Shared values and all that you see.

Just so you know

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From our friend in Israel;



Friends:

 

Considering the number of Kassam and Grad rockets and the increasing number of mortar rounds being fired into Israel by Hamas in Gaza, I’ll keep the “Gaza War” group designation for a while longer.  As a practical matter Israel gained nothing but the world’s condemnation for its recent attempt to stop the terrorist fire.

 

The election rhetoric here is twilight-zone material.  The folks in power speechify as if they were the party in opposition.  They cry about how much change there needs to be.  Hell you are the government.  You should have done long ago what you attack (who?) for not having done.  How dumb do you think the voters are?  Obviously you think they are even dumber than I think they are. 

 

GO STEELERS!

 

Israel and the U.S. do have a lot in common.

 

And being as Israel isn’t doing anything about it right now, it isn’t “news”.

 

How hard is it to understand that since you’re going to be condemned either way, you may as well do the right thing?  The Republican Party leadership, for instance, continues to fail in that regard, though we can hope.

 

The War against the German national socialists and Imperial Japanese wasn’t won through decades of “ceasefires” for example.  It was won and they became allies after they were defeated.  Republicans; are you listening?

Details of SWAT raid against the mayors home

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This happened some time ago. But the Washington Post has a very detailed story on what happened. If you like dogs bring lots of tissues to soak up some of the tears.


After all the emotion (I’m not saying this is a bad thing) is filtered out here are the nuggets I found interesting:



After the detective left, Cheye studied the document. There was nothing anywhere to indicate that Scarlata had asked the judge who signed it for permission to break his door down for a no-knock search. He hadn’t presented the judge with evidence that anyone in the household was armed and dangerous. He’d basically said that police had intercepted a box of drugs addressed to Trinity, delivered the box and watched as it was taken inside.


…


Americans have defended their right to privacy and the sanctity of their homes since Revolutionaries denounced British soldiers entering homes and businesses with impunity to search for contraband rum and tea and generate taxes for the British Crown. The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable government searches and seizures. But civil libertarians argue that this constitutional protection has been seriously eroded in recent decades, largely as an unintended consequence of the nation’s war on drugs.


…


He’s read the court’s decision in one 2006 case, Hudson v. Michigan, more than once. In Hudson, the court found that even when police make a clearly illegal no-knock raid, the evidence they seize can still be used against a defendant at trial.


“In other words, police can do what they did to us with impunity” Cheye concluded. “There are no consequences, not for them.”


Thanks to reader Chet for the email pointing to this. He also asks:



Question to ponder: What is the proper defense against this sort of thing (other than getting rid of the war on drugs and the swat teams)?


I expect that if you grab a gun, you will likely be shot by overwhelming force. And you will be presumed guilty especially if they find cash, ammo, or other weapons on your property.


The gun trainers I know give the advice to say nothing, physically cooperate, and ease your anger thinking about what you are going to do with all the money you get from the lawsuit.


There are some people being pro-active by setting up sting operations where they have a house set up with lots of cameras and then turn on lots of lights to generate a abnormally high electric bill. When the cops show up with flash-bangs and guns blazing the cameras are rolling and they find nothing but public humiliation and a lawsuit waiting for them. The only thing I would add to that is that I would make sure the video was streaming to servers in other states and, where jurisdictions allowed it, I might be inclined to add a few of those “bad-guy” paper targets and some flash-bangs of my own to the mix.

Quote of the day–Brian Doherty

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In the face of an administration that undoubtedly only respects gun rights to the extent that its supporters have the political power to harm it, gun rights forces do need to keep their powder dry; perhaps even excessively stocked. Paranoids may not always have real and effective enemies, but in politics, as in life, paranoia can keep you safe.


Brian Doherty
January 30, 2009
The President Is Not a Gun Slinger: Why the 2nd Amendment is safe under President Obama—for now
[H/T to SayUncle. The way I look at it the only way you can have too many guns or an excess of ammo and explosives is if starts cutting into ability to shelter yourself or your supply of medicine, water, food, and sex.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Jeffery Rosen

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This summer, I talked to security experts on both sides of the political spectrum, and had several conversations with Chertoff, in an effort to answer the following question: Is DHS achieving its mission of making us safer? My reluctant conclusion is that, although Chertoff has performed impressively in an impossible job, the department is hard to justify with any rational analysis of costs and benefits. On the contrary, it’s arguably one of the most expensive marketing ventures in political history–an enterprise that seeks to make us feel safer instead of actually making us safer. The best argument for DHS is that the illusion of safety may itself provide tangible psychological and economic benefits: If people feel less afraid, they may be more likely to fly on planes. But even if conceived on these terms–as a more-than-$40-billion-dollar-a-year pacifier–the department is hard to defend, since there’s no good evidence that it has, in fact, calmed Americans down rather than making us more nervous.


Jeffery Rosen
December 24, 2008
Man-Made Disaster—Six years on, the Department of Homeland Security is still a catastrophe.
[$40 Billion a year pacifer? Yup. That sounds about right for government work.


H/T to Bruce Schneier.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Alan Gura

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I think it’s time people took liberty seriously.


Alan Gura
Lead attorney in District of Columbia v. Heller
June 2008 interview with Nick Gillespie of reason.tv.
[Based on the results of the most recent election I have to conclude people have not taken liberty seriously and furthermore it may be that we have past the time where it will be possible to convince people to take liberty seriously. Appearances are that most people believe government is the solution to the problems created by government. That’s very scary stuff.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Jeffrey A. Lamken

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Properly read, the Second Amendment prevents unreasonable federal encroachment on the ability of the States to maintain, arm, and call forth their militias. It does not handicap the States’ exercise of their police powers to regulate dangerous instrumentalities, including firearms, to fulfill their equally central role of protecting the lives, liberty, and property of their citizens.


Jeffrey A. Lamken
January 2008
Brief supporting petitioners of amici curiae American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, Ceasefire NJ, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, Methodist Federation for Social Action, Clifton Kirkpatrick in his capacity as the stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Educational Fund to stop Gun Violence, Freedom States Alliance, American Jewish Congress, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Gray Panthers, Gunfreekids.org, Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, Illinoisvictims.org, Iowans for the Prevention of Gun Violence, Jenna Foundation for Nonviolence, inc., Karla Zimmerman Memorial Foundation, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, National Council of Jewish Women, New England Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, DC Statehood Green Party, North Carolinians Against Gun Violence Education Fund, Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence, Renée Olumbuni Rondeau Peace Foundation, Root (Reaching Out to Others Together) Inc., Union for Reform Judaism, Virginia Center for Public Safety, Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort, and certain individual victims and families of victims of gun violence.
[Wrong. You lose. First clue–people have rights. States have powers. The words say, “…the right of the people…” Words have meanings and in a document as important the constitution of a nation each of those words were debated and very carefully chosen by very smart people who said exactly what they wanted to say. The first clue for people reading Lamken that he was full of it should be that you don’t protect the liberty of a citizen by taking a liberty away.–Joe]

I don’t even recognize his name

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Some might ask if I know this guy who is sort of a neighbor of mine:



A 65-year-old Spokane man has been ordered held in custody on federal charges of illegally possessing automatic weapons and illegally storing explosives in a Bellevue commercial storage shed while agents investigate how he came to possess a huge military-grade arsenal that included grenade launchers, machine guns and plastic explosives.


Ronald Struve, heavyset and bearded, appeared in Seattle before U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler on Tuesday after being extradited from Spokane, where he was arrested Jan. 7 during a raid by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF).


In four searches in Bellevue and Spokane, agents seized 37 machine guns, 12 silencers, two grenade launchers, more than 60 high-explosive grenades, several pounds of military-grade C-4 plastic explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition.


…


One box contained 54 M406 high-explosive grenade rounds — 40-millimeter shells that can be launched from a shoulder-fired weapon to distances of 300 yards or more, according to military specification.


Its explosion creates a “kill radius” of up to 16 feet from the point of impact and injuries dozens of yards beyond that.


Agents also found several other anti-personnel grenades, including a Korean War-era “Chicom” stick grenade.


In another box, agents found six blocks of C-4 plastic explosives.


Agents counted 32 apparent machine guns, including M-14s, M-16s, and several “Sten guns,” a mass-produced submachine gun known for its high rate of fire — upward of 500 rounds per minute.


They also found nine silencers and the parts for several others, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition and various other military hardware.


“All of the military explosive items seized are considered contraband and cannot be possessed by anyone other than the military,” Wallace wrote in a search warrant. “The majority of the items seized appeared to be stolen military explosive materials.”


Spokane isn’t that far away from my home in Moscow and I think I could literally throw a rock from the front door of my office in Redmond and have it land in Bellevue. But this guy has never appeared on my radar of “people of the gun” in the circles I run in.


He shouldn’t have been storing the stuff in an ordinary storage unit or be in possession of stolen property. That’s just wrong and he should “pay the price” for that. But other than that he’s being charged with a victimless crime. Had he purchased those items on the open market (as they should be) and had he stored them in a proper manner all would have been fine.


So, for the most part, all this effort and money being spent on investigation and prosecution is because the government has repressive laws on the books. Sort of like laws against sex toys. Except sex toys aren’t constitutionally protected like “arms” are. [Updated with the following sentence.] Except while protected in general by the constitution, sex toys aren’t a specifically enumerated constitution right like “arms” are.

Big brother wants to read your mind

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This is actually old news but I just ran across it reading an old Bruce Schneier post. Here is the story from last September in New Scientist:



Last year, New Scientist revealed that the US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect “hostile thoughts” in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works.

Project Hostile Intent as it was called aimed to help security staff choose who to pull over for a gently probing interview – or more.

Commentators slated the idea that sensors could spot people up to no good from their pulse rate, breathing, skin temperature, or fleeting facial expressions. One likened it to the “pre-crime” units that predict criminal behaviour in the movie Minority Report.


FOXNews has more.


Basically they are doing remote lie detector type measurement without the subject being aware they are being scanned and implying intent from these measurements. Given that lie detectors aren’t particularly reliable I don’t think this will be very effective either. But still, one has to ask, “At what point does it become an unwarranted search and will the courts care?”

Quote of the day–Sarah Brady

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The Brady Law is still working to block handgun sales to convicted felons, domestic abusers, the mentally ill and other prohibited purchasers, according to a report released today by the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. In 1997 alone, 69,000 people who were prohibited by law from buying handguns were denied access to these lethal weapons due to background checks. In the four years since the Brady Law was implemented, an estimated 242,000 ineligible purchasers have been stopped from buying handguns.

 

Sarah Brady
June 21, 1998
Sarah Brady Statement on Justice Dept. Report on Brady Law Success
[I find it exceedingly telling that the Brady’s measure their success in terms of the number of people denied the purchase of a firearm. I contend the only valid measurement of the success of a restriction on firearms is whether the average person is made safer by that restriction. In other words the Brady measure ignores safety and celebrates the blocking of people from exercising a specific enumerated civil right.–Joe]

Peter vs. Paul– Politics of the Nags

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When it comes to turning off lights around the house, my wife is a nag (not as a member of the National Association of Gals, but one who incessantly nitpicks on her own).  “You’re wasting electricity” she will say, approximately thirty eight thousand times per day (give or take).  Similarly, the political nags (not NAGs) are ordering us to use CF lights instead of the tungsten filament jobs, saying we’re destroying the very planet with our light bulbs.


If we cast aside all arguments about rights and liberty (and if we have a chance to toy with other people as a means of boosting our self esteem, why wouldn’t we?) there is the issue of home heating during the cooler months.  I gathered my family together, and explained this to them in terms anyone can understand;


If you have a 100 Watt light going full time inside a heated living space, that’s 100 fewer Watts, on average, that the home heating system has to put out. You have shifted 100 Watts of your energy use from the heater to the light bulb.  Your total usage is exactly the same.  Same goes if you leave the refrigerator open a little longer, or the television on all night.  If you’re heating that space anyway, it makes no significant difference.


Say I have a 10 KW electric furnace.  I could hook up 100 light bulbs, each rated at 100 Watts, through a relay to my thermostat (assuming I had the proper wiring) thereby taking all the heating load off the furnace and placing it on the light bulbs.  Will my heating bill change?  Maybe, and maybe not.  It would depend on the distribution of the lights within the house, the quality of the insulation on my furnace duct work in the cold space under the house, and a few other minor variables.  Maybe I’d save a few pennies, and maybe I’d loose a few pennies.  If you have a gas furnace the situation is still the same– you’re just trading back and forth between gas and electricity, but your total energy usage is going to be about the same.


The situation is completely different in the summer of course.  The waste heat from your TV, fridge, etc., is of no use to you.  If you’re running an air conditioner, anything else in your house that produces heat is causing the AC to work harder.


In both cases, insulation, windows, door seals, and the structure’s orientation and exposure to the sun will overwhelm the other issues.


So we can stop nitpicking each other.

Another step closer to Incorporation

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David has the details on what he declares a Win For Our Side!

Make porn not war

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I have to wonder if we started dropping these devices from airplanes by the millions into certain mid-Eastern countries if we couldn’t eradicate radical Islam within a generation:



One end of the canister-type devices sized to fit easily in one’s lap is made of soft ‘Haptic’ synthetic material akin to that used for nipples of baby bottles.

The faux-flesh wall is slotted to allow the insertion of a body part of a man’s choosing.

RealTouch devices connect to computers with USB cables and synchronise with adult movies streamed online so the inner workings replicate what a fellow might be feeling were he to be the man in the film.

‘You watch the action on a screen and a signal is sent to the box to simulate what is happening,’ Mr Drysdale said.


Rich men in some Islamic countries have many wives unbalancing the normal male/female ratio of approximately 50/50. Sex outside of marriage is forbidden. And women who defy (or are even suspected of defying) this are severally punished. Hence significant numbers of young men have no good sexual outlet. Their religion promises those that die in Jihad go to heaven with 72 virgins for eternity. This is a powerful motivator for many men of warrior age to seek battle. If we could significantly reduce or eliminate this motivation there would be less violent conflict with these radicals.

Quote of the day–Edward Abbey

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One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.


Edward Abbey
[I would present some specific examples but I think the generics of “government” and “central committee” should be sufficient inspiration for you to generate your own lists.–Joe]

Quote of the day–Dom De Vitto

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The long-standing Sci-Fi prophecy of intelligent machines rising up to enslave and destroy the human race has disappeared from modern culture.


As far as I can tell, this coincided with the release of MS-DOS.


Dom De Vitto
January 28, 2008 12:42 PM
Comment to Ethics of Autonomous Military Robots
[I was reminded of this after reading Phelps comment to this post of mine.–Joe]

Herding cats?

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I would like to think Howard Nemerov will have better luck with this than the NRA, GOA, and others do:



I am building a national network to ensure the survival of our civil right of self-defense. Our mission is to contact our congressional representatives at least once a month with a short fact-bite explaining why this civil right is so vital to the preservation of all other rights, as well as the survival of our nation as the international torch-bearer of Liberty.


Initially, we will create and support a minimum of 20,000 activists in each state. One million people contacting their representatives each month will make even the most rabid anti-rights advocate hesitate, because they know that each of you represents an even larger number of votes, and getting re-elected is the goal of most representatives: of the 435 seats in Congress in 2008, 400 incumbents were running for re-election (92% of all available seats).


You will receive a sample talking point each month, or you can say whatever you think will make the best point with your representative.


I tried doing something on a much, much smaller scale and was very disappointed. I had about 15 people on an email list that were “very committed” to the gun rights issue and agreed to help influence the Washington State legislature on the gun issue. I sent out about a half dozen different requests for them to contact their representatives over the course of about a year. I later asked them in person if they had responded as I had requested. There were only about 10 TOTAL contacts that resulted from my requests.


My conclusion was liberty minded people are not easily herded like sheep. That they value their liberty may also mean they will not be easily persuaded to do as someone else asks.


As others have said, it’s like herding cats.


Hence, my conclusion is that Mr. Nemerov had better have some trick up his sleeve that many others have failed to figure out and/or execute successfully on.