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Yeah, let’s do that

May 2, 2015

Here’s recent e-mail from Chip Mellor at the Institute for Justice.

IJ’s fight to end civil forfeiture continues with a new lawsuit on behalf of Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural North Carolina who had $107,702 seized last summer by the IRS. Despite a policy change by the IRS last fall indicating that they would no longer pursue such cases, the DOJ filed a civil forfeiture complaint in December against Lyndon to forfeit his cash without even accusing him of a crime.

After Lyndon’s case was brought up in congressional testimony this past February, the U.S. Attorney in charge of Lyndon’s case told Lyndon’s lawyer, “Whoever made [the document] public may serve their own interest but will not help this particular case. Your client needs to resolve this or litigate it. But publicity about it doesn’t help. It just ratchets up feelings in the agency. My offer is to return 50% of the money. The offer is good until March 30th COB.”

Lyndon, however, is unwilling to give the government a single penny of his hard-earned money and teamed up with IJ to get his money back. You can read more about the lawsuit in the New York Times article[…]

The NYT article is fairly short and worth your time.

And here’s a video IJ produced about this case.

So, yeah, let’s "ratchet up feelings in the agency." That sounds like an excellent idea to me… just in a different manner than Steve West (the U.S. Attorney quoted above) has in mind. Maybe a 50%, across-the-board staff reduction at the IRS would do it? Then we could look at DOJ too?

The gall of a government lawyer saying, basically, "shut up before we get really ticked off" piques my ire. It’s a stereotypical lawyer’s line, isn’t it? What do you call 5000 dead lawyers at the bottom of the ocean?

And the idea of a government attorney haggling over $50,000 gives you some idea of how much "justice" is going down at the Department of Justice. That’s a whopping 0.0000157 of the $3,176,000,000 Congress enacted for the 2015 US Budget. No reflection on Mr. McLellan’s business, but it’s like the Mafia shaking down kids with lemonade stands. (Except the thugs’d have too much pride, I think.)

That 0.0000157 is impressive! They only need 63,520 more cases like this one to pay for this year’s Federal spending. Hey, don’t laugh… you could be next.

I think someone needs to quit his government job and go find a real one. Maybe one where he’s not biting the hand that feeds him.

More seriously, Congress needs to call its damned dogs and put a clear and definite end to civil forfeiture.

Update 5/14
More e-mail today from Mr. Mellor:

Less than two weeks after IJ announced its involvement in a civil forfeiture action against Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural North Carolina whose entire bank account of more than $100,000 was seized by the IRS, the government has admitted defeat and dropped its case against Lyndon. This means he will get back all the money he worked so hard to earn.

The case has made national headlines, including The New York Times, Drudge, Fox News, Forbes, Vox, and MSN.com. You can read early coverage of the dismissal in the Raleigh News & Observer piece below.

All the best,
Chip

Raleigh News & Observer
Prosecutors drop IRS seizure case against Fairmont convenience store owner
By Anne Blythe
May 14, 2015

Lyndon McLellan, a convenience store owner in rural Robeson County, became an emblem for the many ways that IRS seizure and civil forfeiture laws have dogged run-of-the-mill business owners who operate with cash.

For nearly a year, the 50-year-old Fairmont man has been fighting the federal government to recover the $107,702.66 seized from his business account without any allegations of crime.

On Wednesday, nearly two weeks after The New York Times profiled his struggle with the government, McLellan received a welcome call from his lawyer.

U.S. Attorney Thomas Walker, the top federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of North Carolina, had dismissed the case that since July had blocked his access to his money.

Thank goodness for the IJ. I don’t know many more practical ways of spending your money to fight government overreach than by donating to IJ.

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Hear, hear! (3)

April 26, 2015

Daniel Hannan (member of the European Parliament) writes:

It’s time to introduce a voluntary fame tax

I’ve just come across an utterly brilliant idea for tax reform, one that would elevate and improve our public discourse. It comes from my friend James Hannam, who is standing for election as a councillor in Kent, and for whom I went canvassing over the weekend in the gorgeous village of Sissinghurst. […]

James’s suggestion is as follows. The sorts of people who get recruited by political causes as celebrity supporters – television personalities, comedians and the like – should have to pay a special “fame levy” of around 20 per cent of their income. This tax would reflect the fact that they get paid to do really cool things, and are at the same time asked to opine about politics without the bother of getting themselves elected to anything.

It would, however, be voluntary. All the celebrities would need to do, to avoid the toll, is sign a public declaration to the effect that they wanted to opt out.

They’d be free to sign or not to sign. Either way, the rest of us would know whether or not to take them seriously when they assured us that they “wouldn’t mind paying a bit more tax” in order to “make society fairer”.

H.T. Jeff G

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Economics humor

April 26, 2015

I know… sounds like an oxymoron, doesn’t it?

Via CoyoteBlog

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The battle over unions in Wisconsin

April 26, 2015

Here’s a recent article in National Review about an on-going political battle in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin’s Shame: ‘I Thought It Was a Home Invasion’

Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 — also called the “Wisconsin Budget Repair Bill,” it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking.

She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram.

She wasn’t dressed, but she started to run toward the door, her body in full view of the police. Some yelled at her to grab some clothes, others yelled for her to open the door.

“I was so afraid,” she says. “I did not know what to do.” She grabbed some clothes, opened the door, and dressed right in front of the police. The dogs were still frantic.

“I begged and begged, ‘Please don’t shoot my dogs, please don’t shoot my dogs, just don’t shoot my dogs.’ I couldn’t get them to stop barking, and I couldn’t get them outside quick enough. I saw a gun and barking dogs. I was scared and knew this was a bad mix.”

She got the dogs safely out of the house, just as multiple armed agents rushed inside. Some even barged into the bathroom, where her partner was in the shower. The officer or agent in charge demanded that Cindy sit on the couch, but she wanted to get up and get a cup of coffee.

“I told him this was my house and I could do what I wanted.” Wrong thing to say. “This made the agent in charge furious. He towered over me with his finger in my face and yelled like a drill sergeant that I either do it his way or he would handcuff me.”

They wouldn’t let her speak to a lawyer. She looked outside and saw a person who appeared to be a reporter. Someone had tipped him off. […]

Most Americans have never heard of these raids, or of the lengthy criminal investigations of Wisconsin conservatives. For good reason. Bound by comprehensive secrecy orders, conservatives were left to suffer in silence as leaks ruined their reputations, as neighbors, looking through windows and dismayed at the massive police presence, the lights shining down on targets’ homes, wondered, no doubt, What on earth did that family do? […]

Largely hidden from the public eye, this traumatic process, however, is now heading toward a legal climax, with two key rulings expected in the late spring or early summer. The first ruling, from the Wisconsin supreme court, could halt the investigations for good, in part by declaring that the “misconduct” being investigated isn’t misconduct at all but the simple exercise of First Amendment rights.

The second ruling, from the United States Supreme Court, could grant review on a federal lawsuit brought by Wisconsin political activist Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth, the first conservatives to challenge the investigations head-on. If the Court grants review, it could not only halt the investigations but also begin the process of holding accountable those public officials who have so abused their powers.

But no matter the outcome of these court hearings, the damage has been done. In the words of Mr. O’Keefe, “The process is the punishment.”

I’ve read a couple of accounts of this affair over the last few years and my impressions are:

First, that those in favor of strong public sector unions in Wisconsin are using their official powers to try to silence those who would limit the power of public sector unions (teachers, police and the like). Since I agree that the power of public sector unions often needs to be curbed, I’ve supported Governor Walker.

Because there’s something wrong with a system where legally-required union dues can be used by union leadership to support politicians who, in turn, are the people the unions negotiate their contracts with. Just look at one example of what’s happened in California when a situation like that is written into law.

My second impression, though, is that the worm has turned. The rise of unions was no walk in the park and the story of how unions came to be is filled with examples of those who opposed them using the force of the State against them. (Of course, most of those early struggles weren’t on behalf of public sector workers.)

All of which brings me back to my usual position: if we don’t want events like these to happen, we need to limit the State’s power so that those who would abuse that power can’t. It sounds as though Wisconsin needs to work on its law for John Doe investigations.

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Bad forensics

April 25, 2015

Here’s an article from the Washington Post about problems with forensic hair analysis. Many folks have been pointing out the pseudo-scientific nature of hair analysis, bite-mark analysis, and the like. for some time now. It’s good to see it getting more attention.

FBI admits flaws in hair analysis over decades

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions. […]

The State is not always or necessarily your protector.

H.T. Paul

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You can’t blame the wreck on the train

March 21, 2015

It looks like the Venezuelan government is still fighting that toilet paper conspiracy, among others.

Fetch me my lance, Sancho!

Venezuela To Start Fingerprinting Supermarket Shoppers

Back in August, when we wrote about the latest instance of trouble in Maduro’s socialist paradise, we cautioned that as a result of the economic collapse in the Latin American nation (and this was even before the plunge in crude made the “paradise” into the 9th circle of hell), Venezuelans soon may need to have their fingerprints scanned before they can buy bread and other staples. This unprecedented step was proposed after Maduro had the brilliant idea of proposing mandatory grocery fingerprinting system to combat food shortages. He said then that “the program will stop people from buying too much of a single item”, but did not say when it would take effect. […]

Unfortunately for the struggling Venezuelan population, the time has arrived and as AP reported over the weekend, Venezuela “will begin installing 20,000 fingerprint scanners at supermarkets nationwide in a bid to stamp out hoarding and panic buying” as of this moment. […]

On Saturday, President Nicolas Maduro said that seven large private retail chains had voluntarily agreed to install the scanners.

Last month the owners of several chains of supermarkets and drugstores were arrested for allegedly artificially creating long queues by not opening enough tills.

It gets better: Maduro also accused Colombian food smugglers of buying up price-controlled goods in state-run supermarkets along the border.

For the first time in recent history the economists who say the effort is bound to fail, are right. They blame Venezuela’s rigid price controls that discourage local manufacturing and the recent slide in world oil prices that has further diminished the supply of dollars available to import everything from milk to cars.

As BBC further adds, in January the hashtag #AnaquelesVaciosEnVenezuela (“Empty shelves in Venezuela”) became a worldwide Twitter trend, with over 200,000 tweets as Venezuelans tweeted pictures of empty supermarket shelves around the country.

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Living free and dying

February 22, 2015

I suppose I wasn’t the only kid who daydreamed about being a hobo, at least among people of similar age and background. I recall reading stories that included hobo characters or which were about hobos and their foot-loose way of life was attractive to a boy living under his parents’ and schoool’s discipline.

So I enjoyed this short documentary about modern day hobos in the U.S. Watching it reminded me that I’d still like to travel across the country by train just to see what’s out there, away from the Interstates and the airports.

Are there hobos in other countries? I don’t know. There are migrant workers, surely; I wonder if they have a tradition of riding freight trains between jobs.

Thinking about hobos reminded me of Hard Times, Studs Turkel’s oral history of the Great Depression. (It’s a good book to read, if you haven’t.) That site has links to audio of the interviews he conducted while writing the book.

Here’s an interview with a former hobo named Frank Czerwonka and another with a fellow named Louis Banks.

Stories about hobos led me to thinking about songs about them. Here’s Jimmie Rodger’s Hobo’s Meditation. I particularly like the cover of this song by Parton, Ronstandt, and Harris on their album Trio.

And I can’t bring up hobo songs without mentioning Roger Miller’s King of the Road, of course. Years ago, I heard a local musician perform this and he described it as ‘flawless’.

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More unnecessary spending

February 21, 2015

I spotted this Jeep in west St. Louis county recently and found the sign pretty funny. After the obvious “Jeeps are awesome” angle, I took it as a joke about libertarians. But I thought it was amusing nonetheless.

At the very least, it might make people think about government spending. And maybe some thoughtful ones will think about who builds roads and how they’re financed.

Paved-roads

Mark Major at The Outlaw Urbanist used the sticker as a starting for point for an editorial. (I haven’t read the whole piece so have no opinion about it.)

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Manifest Destiny updated

November 30, 2014

Here’s a very nicely done clip quoting Carl Sagan about space exploration. If you watch, do so in full-screen mode.

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Net Neutrality? Follow the money.

November 15, 2014

The debate over Net Neutrality reminds me of the time 20 years back when voice-over-IP (VoIP) was just becoming A New Thing. What I remember most is the Pie-in-the-Sky attitude that many folks had about VoIP. It opened up a lot of alternatives for carrying voice calls and there was this attitude of "We’re free of the Phone Company now!"

But we weren’t free of reality. Somebody still had to finance the infrastructure no matter whether you were switching circuits on a T1 line or you were routing packets over a TCP/IP connection. Somebody had to pay for the copper, or for the fiber, or for the radio towers. The Follow-The-Money rule still applied.

I think something very similar is happening today in the debate over Net Neutrality. Subscribers want unlimited access to whatever source they choose for a flat fee. They’re thinking, "We’re free of the Phone company/Cable company now!" Meanwhile, ISPs want to be paid based on the traffic they have to carry since the Internet is no more an unlimited resource for video than it was for voice calls. Somebody still has to pay for the copper… etc.

Netflix and (Google’s) YouTube accounted for half of peak-time traffic at the end of last year. As of last May, Netflix accounted for over 1/3 of downstream bandwidth by itself. Maybe you’ve said good-bye to your cable company, but you’ll never say good-bye to the need to finance the infrastructure.

9 questions about network neutrality you were too embarrassed to ask.

So I liked Coyote’s post this week looking at the bottom line for Net Neutrality. If you’re interested in the topic, read the whole thing.

Net Neutrality is Not Neutrality, It is Actually the Opposite. It’s Corporate Welfare for Netflix and Google
November 12, 2014, 12:24 pm

Net Neutrality is one of those Orwellian words that mean exactly the opposite of what they sound like. There is a battle that goes on in the marketplace in virtually every communication medium between content creators and content deliverers. We can certainly see this in cable TV, as media companies and the cable companies that deliver their product occasionally have battles that break out in public. But one could argue similar things go on even in, say, shipping, where magazine publishers push for special postal rates and Amazon negotiates special bulk UPS rates. […]

What “net neutrality” actually means is that certain people, including apparently the President, want to tip the balance in this negotiation towards the content creators (no surprise given Hollywood’s support for Democrats). Netflix, for example, takes a huge amount of bandwidth that costs ISP’s a lot of money to provide. But Netflix doesn’t want the ISP’s to be be able to charge for this extra bandwidth Netflix uses – Netflix wants to get all the benefit of taking up the lion’s share of ISP bandwidth investments without having to pay for it. Net Neutrality is corporate welfare for content creators. […]

Don’t believe me? Well, AT&T and Verizon have halted their fiber rollout. Google has not, but Google is really increasingly on the content creation side. And that is one strategy for dealing with this problem of the government tilting the power balance in a vertical supply chain: vertical integration.

Postscript: There are folks out there who always feel better as a consumer if their services are heavily regulated by the Government. Well, the Internet is currently largely unregulated, but the cable TV industry is heavily regulated. Which one are you more satisfied with?

And I also ran across an interview with Mark Cuban this week. He had similar thoughts. (My emphasis below.)

Mark Cuban On Obama’s Plan For The Internet: ‘The Government Will F— The Internet Up’

Mark Cuban is not a fan of President Obama’s plan for the internet.

He’s been bashing plans to regulate the internet, and questioning other people who support it.

Over email we asked him about the potential for small companies to be stifled by internet providers.

His reponse: “I’m more concerned the government will f— it up.”

Obama thinks the internet should be reclassified to be considered a utility like telephone lines. This would allow it be regulated, and protect consumers and companies that rely on the internet. […]

The fear is that internet providers like Comcast are going to prioritize the traffic of certain companies over the traffic of other companies. In this scenario, it’s harder for a young company to take on older, more monied companies.

Cuban thinks this is an idiotic concern. We asked him if he was worried that internet providers would hurt startups.

“Hell no,” he said. “Since when have incumbent companies been the mainstays for multiple generations?”

He believes that startups blow up older companies despite an unregulated internet that allows internet providers to prioritize certain traffic streams.

Overall, he thinks the current debate is too narrow and short sighted.

“There will be so much competition from all the enhancements to wireless that incumbent ISPs will have to spent their time fighting cord cutting,” he said. […]

As Coyote and Cuban point out, what it comes down to is how this industry grows and who should be trusted to regulate it.

It’s an easy call in my opinion. No matter how limited my choices for ISPs, I can find a better ISP easier than I can find a better FCC. I remember the days before telephone deregulation.

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Smoke ’em if you got ’em

November 15, 2014

I’ve been smoking for 45 years (nearly as long as I’ve been paying FICA, now that I think about it). And I get the externalities of smoking, so I don’t feel aggrieved when people or organizations prohibit smoking on their property. No problem: I’ll respect their air and grounds.

I’ve got tenants who are heavy smokers and, yep, that house has a definite stink to it. We’ll need a few gallons of KILZ when they move out. Again, no problem. It’s their home and we knew they smoked when they signed the lease. The clean-up is a very minor cost, all things considered.

What I do have a problem with, though, is when the Nicotine Nazis get their hands on the levers of power and start proposing regulations like the one described below. Banning tobacco sales is just another form of Prohibition, after all, and we know how well prohibitions work.

What we learn from history is that we never learn from history (said whomever you want to credit with that adage).

Raucous hearing on tobacco sales in Westminster halted

WESTMINSTER — An unruly public hearing on a proposal to prohibit the sale of tobacco products came to a sudden and rowdy halt Wednesday evening after shouting and clapping opponents of the ban repeatedly refused the chairwoman’s request to come to order.

The ban, proposed by the Board of Health in this Central Massachusetts town, would be the first of its kind in the state. It has led to angry reactions from residents who worry that it will hurt the local economy and allow government too much discretion in controlling private conduct.

“This is about freedom; it’s my body and it’s my choice to smoke,” said Nate Johnson, 32, a Westminster farmer and auto body worker. He was puffing on a cigarette at a rally before the hearing where opponents held signs saying “It’s not about tobacco — it’s about control” and “Smoke ’em if you got them.” […]

The ban would cover sales of products containing tobacco or nicotine, including cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and electronic cigarettes, which use batteries to heat nicotine-laced liquid, producing a vapor that is inhaled.

The proposal, made public Oct. 27, touched off an intense reaction from opponents. More than 1,000 of the town’s 7,400 residents signed a petition against the ban.

I was tickled to read about the residents of Westminster raising hell about this proposal. Evidently there were even non-smokers upset about the proposal — as they should have been since it’s the kind of idea that reminds you of Mark Twain’s comment about school board members.

whats-next-in-westminster-massCJ GUNTHER/EPA

“What’s next?” is a very good question. It’s one we ought to be asking ourselves about practically everything the government plans or does.

And just as a matter of curiosity, doesn’t it strike anyone else as curious that several states are now allowing the sale of marijuana to be smoked – Massachusetts itself may allow it – and this Board of Health wants to ban the sale of tobacco?

Here’s some commentary about a topic related to my question above. It’s from Kevin Williamson at National Review (1/28/15).

A Lifestyle So Good, It’s Mandatory

California has effectively decriminalized marijuana (possession of less than an ounce is a civil matter roughly equivalent to a speeding ticket — a rarely written speeding ticket), and the state has a medical (ahem) marijuana program that is, for the moment, largely unregulated. At the same time, the state is launching a progressive jihad against “vaping,” the use of so-called e-cigarettes that deliver nicotine in the form of vapor. The state public-health department says that this is justified by the presence of certain carcinogens — benzene, formaldehyde, nickel, and lead—in e-cigarette vapor. But by California’s own account, all of those chemicals are present in marijuana smoke, too, along with 29 other carcinogens.

If that seems inconsistent to you, you are thinking about it the wrong way: For all of its scientific pretensions and empirical posturing, progressivism is not about evidence, and at its heart it is not even about public policy at all: It is about aesthetics.

The goal of progressivism is not to make the world rational; it’s to make the world Portland.

Vaping is, from the point of view of your average organic-quinoa and hot-yoga enthusiast, a lowlife thing. It is not the same thing as smoking, but it looks too much like smoking for their tastes. Indeed, California cites the possibility of vaping’s “re-normalizing smoking behavior” as a principal cause of concern. Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the California Department of Public Health, says that vaping should be treated like “other important outbreaks or epidemics.”

But epidemics of what? Prole tastes?

In addition to regularly writing incisive opinion pieces, Mr. Williamson was also a cell phone vigilante a couple of years ago.

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"Don’t be evil" my aching back

November 11, 2014

I’m taking this report at face value. Assuming it’s correct, this is an amazing show of chutzpah. What do you think that solar plant is, Google, a sports stadium maybe? (My emphasis below.)

World’s largest solar plant applying for federal grant to pay off federal loan

Struggling solar thermal plant seeks huge taxpayer bailout

After already receiving a controversial $1.6 billion construction loan from U.S. taxpayers, the wealthy investors of a California solar power plant now want a $539 million federal grant to pay off their federal loan.

“This is an attempt by very large cash generating companies that have billions on their balance sheet to get a federal bailout, i.e. a bailout from us – the taxpayer for their pet project,” said Reason Foundation VP of Research Julian Morris. “It’s actually rather obscene.”

The Ivanpah solar electric generating plant is owned by Google and renewable energy giant NRG, which are responsible for paying off their federal loan. If approved by the U.S. Treasury, the two corporations will not use their own money, but taxpayer cash to pay off 30 percent of the cost of their plant, but taxpayers will receive none of the millions in revenues the plant will generate over the next 30 years.

Can we get the government out of the habit of picking "winners" and let the market decide what projects get financed? It’s time for some of that Separation of Market and State that I go on about.

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He’s all about political advantage

November 10, 2014

On the one hand, I have to admire Mr. Gruber’s candor. And I agree with his analysis of the games that were played to pass PPACA.

If Mr. Gruber chooses to attribute the PPACA’s passage to the ‘the stupidity of the American voter’ rather than attributing it to intentional obfuscation by Congress — as he should — well, that’s his choice I suppose.

A lot of sharp folks were calling BS on the proposed law but its sponsors refused to speak straight to its faults: they were all working the politically expedient angles. Thanks, Pelosi.

On the other hand, this is exactly the kind of "enlightened despotism" that we need to guard against. When a government gets to the point that some parts of it start to bend its own rules to fool other parts — gaming the CBO score in this particular case — then it’s too messed up to trust.

What particularly galls me about this clip is Gruber’s saying that PPACA was designed so that it could not be regarded as a tax. But when the Supreme Court ruled on it, the Chief Justice based his argument supporting PPACA on calling it a tax and on Congress’ authority to levy taxes.

So we’re damned if they do call it a tax – and we’re damned if they don’t. What a deal.

Posted in Fear your government, Health care debacle, US government, US health care | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

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Hear, hear! (2)

November 8, 2014

Here’s a Reason TV interview with Jason Brennan, a professor of philosophy at Georgetown, about his new book Why Not Capitalism?

It’s an interesting interview. Maybe I’ll buy his book.

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An interesting view from the other side

November 8, 2014

This is a Google translation of an article at a Russian site. (I don’t vouch for the quality of the translation though I think the meaning’s pretty clear.)

In Moscow, an exhibition of cartoons about Putin patriotic

The exhibition “No filter”, where more than 100 author’s drawings in the format of graphic cartoons dedicated to Russian President Vladimir Putin and opened in Moscow today. Organizers of the exhibition – “Young Guard” United Russia “, together with the patriotic artists and well-known graphic designers. The exhibition takes place at the design factory “Bottle”.

Putin-Obama

As you can see, President Obama isn’t treated with much consideration – and that’s true of many of the cartoons in the site’s slideshow.

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When wolves returned to Yellowstone

November 6, 2014

This article’s about a year old; I just came across it a couple of weeks ago. It sounds to me like the root problem was failing to keep the deer population under control. (I’m guessing they didn’t allow humans to hunt the deer in Yellowstone, so the wolves may now be doing something no one was doing earlier.)

But it’s a nicely done clip and makes a good point about nature’s balance.

When They Brought These Wolves Into The Park, They Had No Idea This Would Happen

In 1995, wolves were re-introduced into the Yellowstone National Park, after being wolf-free for 70 years. What naturalists and biologist never imagined, was that the most remarkable thing would take place. Mother Nature knows what she’s doing if we just leave her alone.

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All your phone are belong to us

November 2, 2014

Paul sends links to two stories about a judge in Virginia who rules that fingerprint locks on phones aren’t protected by the Fifth Amendment but password locks are. He adds, "This is why NOT to use a fingerprint lock on your phone."

From The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog:

Judge Rules Suspect Can Be Required To Unlock Phone With Fingerprint

A Virginia Circuit Court judge ruled Tuesday that police officers cannot force criminal suspects to divulge cellphone passwords, but they can force them to unlock the phone with a fingerprint scanner.

If applied by other courts, the ruling could become important as more device makers incorporate fingerprint readers that can be used as alternatives to passwords. Apple introduced the technology last year in its iPhone 5S and Samsung included it in its Galaxy S5.

When those phones arrived, lawyers said users might be required to unlock the phones with their fingerprints. More recently, Apple and Google said they had changed the encryption scheme on the newest phones using their operating systems so that law enforcement can’t retrieve the data. FBI Director James Comey criticized the companies, saying were allowing users to “place themselves above the law.”

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives people the right to avoid self-incrimination. That includes divulging secret passwords, Judge Steven C. Frucci ruled. But providing fingerprints and other biometric information is considered outside the protection of the Fifth Amendment, the judge said.

And from MacRumors:

Court Rules Police Can Force Users to Unlock iPhones With Fingerprints, But Not Passcodes

A Circuit Court judge in Virginia has ruled that fingerprints are not protected by the Fifth Amendment, a decision that has clear privacy implications for fingerprint-protected devices like newer iPhones and iPads.

According to Judge Steven C. Fucci, while a criminal defendant can’t be compelled to hand over a passcode to police officers for the purpose of unlocking a cellular device, law enforcement officials can compel a defendant to give up a fingerprint.

The Fifth Amendment states that “no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,” which protects memorized information like passwords and passcodes, but it does not extend to fingerprints in the eyes of the law, as speculated by Wired last year.

Judge Steven C. Frucci ruled this week that giving police a fingerprint is akin to providing a DNA or handwriting sample or an actual key, which the law permits. A pass code, though, requires the defendant to divulge knowledge, which the law protects against, according to Frucci’s written opinion. […]

If Baust’s phone is an iPhone that’s equipped with Touch ID, it’s very likely that it will be passcode locked at this point and thus protected by law. Touch ID requires a passcode after 48 hours of disuse, a restart, or three failed fingerprint entry attempts, and the device has probably been in police custody for quite some time. It is unclear if the judge’s ruling will have an impact on future cases involving cellular devices protected with fingerprint sensors, as it could be overturned by an appeal or a higher court.

If you’re worried about your phone being searched, you should encrypt it.

How to Encrypt Your Android Phone and Why You Might Want To

Some recent legal rulings have suggested that encryption can protect against warantless searches. The California Supreme Court has ruled that police officers can lawfully search your cell phone without a warrant if it’s taken from you during arrest – but they would require a warrant if it was encrypted. A Canadian court has also ruled that phones can be searched without a warrant as long as they’re unencrypted.

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What are they thinking? (2)

November 1, 2014

What are those silly oil producers and speculators thinking? They’re driving the price down again.

Yes, Virginia, there is a global market in oil. And since oil is about as fungible as any good can be, its price isn’t controlled by the US President, or the US Congress, or even the big US oil companies.

I don’t know the cause of the decrease in oil prices recently but I strongly suspect the increase in US oil production, which is at a 30+ year high, has something to do with it.

In fact, if the global price of oil drops very much more, it’ll be so low that some fracking operations may be operating at a loss.

And removing those fracking sources may cause an upward price adjustment as supply contracts. You can look it up.

Someone said once about US stock market prices, "I believe they will fluctuate." And so will the price of oil, no matter what the politicians may say or do in their misguided attempts to control it — or to demonize the people producing and selling it.

Video via Carpe Diem

Update (1/25/15):

Here’s some follow-up on my original remark (3 months ago) about fracking operations shutting down due to falling oil prices. This article at Business Insider appeared last Friday, Jan. 23rd.

The Number Of US Oil Rigs Has Dropped Almost 20% From Its October High

The Baker Hughes US oil and gas rig count is out, and it shows yet another weekly decline.

In the wake of tumbling oil prices, Baker Hughes, the $25 billion oil services company that publishes out the weekly rig count, announced Tuesday that they would be laying off 7,000 employees over the next few months.

BHP, an Australian mining giant, also said this week that they would shut down 40% of their US shale drilling rigs by the end of their fiscal year.

the-number-of-us-oil-rigs

I expect oil & gasoline prices to rise again in the coming year, perhaps in a few months.

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The same old same old

October 26, 2014

Via Instapundit, I came across this article by Kevin Williams at NRO. He talks about several other cases in addition to Joseph Adams’.

Meet the New Serfs: You
Accountability is only for the little people.

The New Haven SWAT team must have been pretty amped up: It was midnight, and they were getting ready to bust down the door of a man wanted on charges involving weapons violations, robbery — and murder. They were not sure how many people were in the house, or how they’d react. After a volley of flash grenades that set fire to the carpet and a sofa, they moved in, guns drawn. A minute later, they had their man zip-tied on the floor.

If only they’d double-checked the address first.

Bobby Griffin Jr. was wanted on murder charges. His next-door neighbor on Peck Street, Joseph Adams, wasn’t. But that didn’t stop the SWAT team from knocking down his door, setting his home on fire, roughing him up, keeping him tied up in his underwear for nearly three hours, and treating the New Haven man, who is gay, to a nance show as officers taunted him with flamboyantly effeminate mannerisms. […]

And when Mr. Adams showed up at the New Haven police department the next day to fill out paperwork requesting that the authorities reimburse him for the wanton destruction of his property — never mind the gross violation of his rights — the story turned Kafkaesque, as interactions with American government agencies at all levels tend to do. The police — who that same night had managed to take in the murder suspect next door without the use of flash grenades or other theatrics after his mother suggested that they were probably there for her son — denied having any record of the incident at Mr. Adams’s home ever having happened. […]

In a sane world, the New Haven authorities would have shown up at Adams’s house with a check, flowers, and an apology, and a certificate exempting him from taxes for the rest of his life. In this world, people in his situation get treated by the government like they are the ones who have screwed up. And of course they’d say they had no record of the episode — getting information about your situation from any government agency, especially from one that is persecuting you, requires an agonizing effort.

In the same vein, here’s an interesting essay by Frank Serpico at Politico. (Tip o’ the hat to Paul.) Mr. Serpico describes a lot of the corruption and egregious violence he saw during his career as a policeman. He ends his essay with a list of recommendations for reining in out-of-control police forces, the most important one being independent review boards.

The Police Are Still Out of Control
I should know.

In the opening scene of the 1973 movie “Serpico,” I am shot in the face—or to be more accurate, the character of Frank Serpico, played by Al Pacino, is shot in the face. Even today it’s very difficult for me to watch those scenes, which depict in a very realistic and terrifying way what actually happened to me on Feb. 3, 1971. I had recently been transferred to the Narcotics division of the New York City Police Department, and we were moving in on a drug dealer on the fourth floor of a walk-up tenement in a Hispanic section of Brooklyn. The police officer backing me up instructed me (since I spoke Spanish) to just get the apartment door open “and leave the rest to us.”

One officer was standing to my left on the landing no more than eight feet away, with his gun drawn; the other officer was to my right rear on the stairwell, also with his gun drawn. When the door opened, I pushed my way in and snapped the chain. The suspect slammed the door closed on me, wedging in my head and right shoulder and arm. I couldn’t move, but I aimed my snub-nose Smith & Wesson revolver at the perp (the movie version unfortunately goes a little Hollywood here, and has Pacino struggling and failing to raise a much-larger 9-millimeter automatic). From behind me no help came. At that moment my anger got the better of me. I made the almost fatal mistake of taking my eye off the perp and screaming to the officer on my left: “What the hell you waiting for? Give me a hand!” I turned back to face a gun blast in my face. I had cocked my weapon and fired back at him almost in the same instant, probably as reflex action, striking him. (He was later captured.)

When I regained consciousness, I was on my back in a pool of blood trying to assess the damage from the gunshot wound in my cheek. Was this a case of small entry, big exit, as often happens with bullets? Was the back of my head missing? I heard a voice saying, “Don’ worry, you be all right, you be all right,” and when I opened my eyes I saw an old Hispanic man looking down at me like Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan. My “backup” was nowhere in sight. They hadn’t even called for assistance—I never heard the famed “Code 1013,” meaning “Officer Down.” They didn’t call an ambulance either, I later learned; the old man did. One patrol car responded to investigate, and realizing I was a narcotics officer rushed me to a nearby hospital (one of the officers who drove me that night said, “If I knew it was him, I would have left him there to bleed to death,” I learned later). […]

Posted in City government, Fear your government | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

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LEAP’s Top Ten

October 17, 2014

A nicely done post (with good graphics). RTWT – it won’t take long.

10 Shocking Reasons To End The Drug War

This is not your ordinary Top 10 Buzzfeed list. Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of law enforcement officials opposed to the war on drugs, created this list to show why the War on Drugs has been one of the most disastrous policies in American history. From mass incarceration and tremendous loss of life to billions of dollars seized from citizens every year, drug prohibition is a colossal failure. We need you to share this list to help get the word out. Help grow the number of people in this country and around the globe demanding legalization, regulation and control.

andy-griffith-2014

Via Carpe Diem

Posted in Libertarianism, War on Drugs | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

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