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More guns are not the answer

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It is a given that politicians will say foolish things. Last week, perhaps one of the most foolish arose in the aftermath of the tragedy of the Martin Place siege.

Introducing Senator David Leyonhjelm. The NSW senator entered Federal Parliament at the last election as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party. He is something of a rarity in Australian politics in that he espouses libertarianism. It would have seemed to him, we assume, that his comments were a logical extension of this philosophy.

However, whichever philosophy one adopts, it must exist in the real world, and in the real world, say, a busy cafe in Sydney's CBD, there are boundaries.

After two innocent people Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson died during the siege (in which the hostage-taker and gunman Man Haron Monis also died), Senator Leyonhjelm said he believed Australia was a "nation of victims" because of the restrictive nature of the gun laws.

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He told the ABC: "What happened in that cafe would have been most unlikely to have occurred in Florida, Texas, or Vermont, or Alaska in America, or perhaps even in Switzerland as well." It would have been probable, "statistically speaking", that some of the victims if the siege had occurred in those places would have had guns on them. They would have been able to defend themselves. Gun versus gun.

The senator argued that recent legislation on tougher security measures against terrorism had no effect in preventing the Martin Place siege. "We've got tougher laws . . . they did nothing to prevent this bloke committing evil acts in the name of Islamism. They didn't prevent him from getting a gun." Obviously, this is true. However, the senator finishes his point with this: "It's just not acceptable that we are all disarmed victims."

There are many questions that need to be answered as to how Monis, given his background and record, slipped through the cracks. Calls are growing for an independent and open examination of all matters pertaining to Monis and the conduct of security and police agencies before and during the siege. This should be established, for the sake of the victims.

However, the answer is not the arming of the citizenry. The LDP considers "the right to own firearms for sport, hunting, collecting andself-defence(our italics) as fundamental to a free society, irrespective of how many choose to do so. It does not believe governments have a general right to limit the ownership of firearms."

After the Port Arthur massacre in 1996 in which 35 people died and 23 were wounded, then prime minister John Howard greatly tightened gun laws, so much so that the senator had to give up six semi-automatic rifles. He also gave up his membership of the Liberal Party.

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More guns are not the answer

Colorado vows to defend pot law against states' challenge

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Originally published December 18, 2014 at 2:03 PM | Page modified December 19, 2014 at 12:52 AM

Colorado's top law enforcement official promises to vigorously defend the state's historic law legalizing marijuana after Nebraska and Oklahoma asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional, saying the drug is freely flowing into neighboring states.

The two states filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to prevent Colorado from enforcing the measure known as Amendment 64, which was approved by voters in 2012 and allows recreational marijuana for adults over 21. The complaint says the measure runs afoul of federal law and therefore violates the Constitution's supremacy clause, which says federal laws trump state laws.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said the lawsuit was without merit.

"Because neighboring states have expressed concern about Colorado-grown marijuana coming into their states, we are not entirely surprised by this action," he said. "However, it appears the plaintiffs' primary grievance stems from non-enforcement of federal laws regarding marijuana, as opposed to choices made by the voters of Colorado."

The lawsuit says Colorado marijuana flows into neighboring states undermining their efforts to enforce their anti-marijuana laws.

"This contraband has been heavily trafficked into our state," Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said at a news conference in Lincoln. "While Colorado reaps millions from the sale of pot, Nebraska taxpayers have to bear the cost."

Colorado has raised more than $60 million in taxes, licenses and fees from medical and recreational marijuana, which has been sold in stores since January.

The lawsuit says the sales have strained Nebraska and Oklahoma's finances and legal systems. Police are spending more time and money making arrests, housing inmates, impounding vehicles, seizing drugs and handling other problems related to Colorado pot.

Bruning, a Republican, blamed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for failing to enforce the federal law's ban on drugs in Colorado.

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Colorado vows to defend pot law against states' challenge

2 states challenge Colorado marijuana legalization

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Originally published December 18, 2014 at 2:03 PM | Page modified December 19, 2014 at 12:27 AM

Colorado's top law enforcement official promises to vigorously defend the state's historic law legalizing marijuana after Nebraska and Oklahoma asked the U.S. Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional, saying the drug is freely flowing into neighboring states.

The two states filed a lawsuit seeking a court order to prevent Colorado from enforcing the measure known as Amendment 64, which was approved by voters in 2012 and allows recreational marijuana for adults over 21. The complaint says the measure runs afoul of federal law and therefore violates the Constitution's supremacy clause, which says federal laws trump state laws.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said the lawsuit was without merit.

"Because neighboring states have expressed concern about Colorado-grown marijuana coming into their states, we are not entirely surprised by this action," he said. "However, it appears the plaintiffs' primary grievance stems from non-enforcement of federal laws regarding marijuana, as opposed to choices made by the voters of Colorado."

The lawsuit says Colorado marijuana flows into neighboring states undermining their efforts to enforce their anti-marijuana laws.

"This contraband has been heavily trafficked into our state," Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said at a news conference in Lincoln. "While Colorado reaps millions from the sale of pot, Nebraska taxpayers have to bear the cost."

Colorado has raised more than $60 million in taxes, licenses and fees from medical and recreational marijuana, which has been sold in stores since January.

The lawsuit says the sales have strained Nebraska and Oklahoma's finances and legal systems. Police are spending more time and money making arrests, housing inmates, impounding vehicles, seizing drugs and handling other problems related to Colorado pot.

Bruning, a Republican, blamed U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for failing to enforce the federal law's ban on drugs in Colorado.

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2 states challenge Colorado marijuana legalization

Post Sydney siege idea over gun laws is absurd

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If the government cannot protect individual Australians from evil acts of the sort that occurred at Sydney's Martin Place on Monday, then it ought not to stand in the way of a rational discussion about the practical right to self-defence, Senate crossbencher David Leyonhjelm said on Thursday. The liberalisation of Australia's gun laws, for that is what Senator Leyonhjelm desires, is of a piece with his neo-classical libertarianism, but the timing of his proposition is awful, and its logic absurd.

In the still confused aftermath of the siege, many questions have been raised about how Man Haron Monis came to be in possession of a shotgun. Prime Minister Tony Abbott presumably better briefed than most about Monis' personal details and history said on Wednesday that Monis had a NSW firearms licence (despite being charged with a number of serious criminal and sexual offence charges) and that gun control laws might need to be changed as a result. NSW Police swiftly rebutted the suggestion that Monis was a licensed firearm owner. Ergo, he must have acquired the gun illegally.

For someone as determined as Monis, that would not have been difficult. The number of firearms stolen and never recovered in Australia is thought to number in the tens, possibly hundreds of thousands. Moreover, significant numbers of guns are smuggled into the country illegally each year, ensuring a plentiful black-market supply for professional criminals and the criminally minded.

Police forces and gun control organisations have on occasion highlighted the growing incidence of gun-related crime (particularly in cities such as Sydney) and the need for greater controls. But resistance to such efforts is well organised and effective, not least because of the lobbying of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia and the Shooters and Fishers Party.

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It would not be doing Senator Leyonhjelm a disservice to suggest that he aspires to nothing less than the complete rollback of the national firearms agreement enacted after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. He has repeatedly claimed that those reforms of which a one-off compulsory buyback of automatic and semi-automatic weapons was the most prominent aspect have not noticeably improved public safety in Australia, and that he has statistics to prove it. But lobbying for a reversion to previous state-based firearms laws is one thing pushing for a discussion of US-style laws permitting the carrying of concealed weapons in public places, quite another. Not surprisingly, many people have questioned the basis for SenatorLeyonhjelm's thinking.

Not all US states allow their citizens to carry concealed weapons, and those that do (such as Florida) do not boast noticeably safer streets or neighbourhoods than those that don't. George Zimmerman, a native of Sanford in Florida, packed a gun for "protection" of life and property, which he used to fatally shoot an unarmed teenager he "suspected" of being an immediate threat to his personal safety. Under Florida's "stand your ground" law, moreover, Zimmerman was found to have acted lawfully.

As for Senator Leyonhjelm's contention, in effect, that the Martin Place siege would not have occurred had armed citizens been present, the supporting evidence is not strong. No right-thinking person, even one trained to shoot at individuals rather than targets, would lightly challenge a dangerous and armed individual like Monis. Nor, given the likelihood of accidental shooting, would police encourage such behaviour.

That the easy availability of guns tends to increase levels of homicide, suicide and unintentional injuries and deaths, has been pretty well established, but even the likes of Senator Leyonhjelm continue to dispute it with questionable statistics. The evidence that easy access to military-style automatic weapons results in mass shootings is near irrefutable, however. Australia has had no such atrocity since 1996, though Senator Leyonhjelm continues to lament the loss of his right to own weapons designed, not for hunting or target-shooting, but for killing people.

Senator Leyonhjelm's fascination with US-style small government and rugged individualism is understandable. Nowhere is the libertarian creed espoused by the likes of John Locke and Thomas Paine taken more seriously or given greater prominence. But in its attitude to guns, the US is hardly a paragon worth emulating here.

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Post Sydney siege idea over gun laws is absurd

Post Sydney siege idea by David Leyonhjelm over gun laws idea is absurd

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If the government cannot protect individual Australians from evil acts of the sort that occurred at Sydney's Martin Place on Monday, then it ought not to stand in the way of a rational discussion about the practical right to self-defence, Senate crossbencher David Leyonhjelm said on Thursday. The liberalisation of Australia's gun laws, for that is what Senator Leyonhjelm desires, is of a piece with his neo-classical libertarianism, but the timing of his proposition is awful, and its logic absurd.

In the still confused aftermath of the siege, many questions have been raised about how Man Haron Monis came to be in possession of a shotgun. Prime Minister Tony Abbott presumably better briefed than most about Monis' personal details and history said on Wednesday that Monis had a NSW firearms licence (despite being charged with a number of serious criminal and sexual offence charges) and that gun control laws might need to be changed as a result. NSW Police swiftly rebutted the suggestion that Monis was a licensed firearm owner. Ergo, he must have acquired the gun illegally.

For someone as determined as Monis, that would not have been difficult. The number of firearms stolen and never recovered in Australia is thought to number in the tens, possibly hundreds of thousands. Moreover, significant numbers of guns are smuggled into the country illegally each year, ensuring a plentiful black-market supply for professional criminals and the criminally minded.

Police forces and gun control organisations have on occasion highlighted the growing incidence of gun-related crime (particularly in cities such as Sydney) and the need for greater controls. But resistance to such efforts is well organised and effective, not least because of the lobbying of the Sporting Shooters Association of Australia and the Shooters and Fishers Party.

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It would not be doing Senator Leyonhjelm a disservice to suggest that he aspires to nothing less than the complete rollback of the national firearms agreement enacted after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. He has repeatedly claimed that those reforms of which a one-off compulsory buyback of automatic and semi-automatic weapons was the most prominent aspect have not noticeably improved public safety in Australia, and that he has statistics to prove it. But lobbying for a reversion to previous state-based firearms laws is one thing pushing for a discussion of US-style laws permitting the carrying of concealed weapons in public places, quite another. Not surprisingly, many people have questioned the basis for SenatorLeyonhjelm's thinking.

Not all US states allow their citizens to carry concealed weapons, and those that do (such as Florida) do not boast noticeably safer streets or neighbourhoods than those that don't. George Zimmerman, a native of Sanford in Florida, packed a gun for "protection" of life and property, which he used to fatally shoot an unarmed teenager he "suspected" of being an immediate threat to his personal safety. Under Florida's "stand your ground" law, moreover, Zimmerman was found to have acted lawfully.

As for Senator Leyonhjelm's contention, in effect, that the Martin Place siege would not have occurred had armed citizens been present, the supporting evidence is not strong. No right-thinking person, even one trained to shoot at individuals rather than targets, would lightly challenge a dangerous and armed individual like Monis. Nor, given the likelihood of accidental shooting, would police encourage such behaviour.

That the easy availability of guns tends to increase levels of homicide, suicide and unintentional injuries and deaths, has been pretty well established, but even the likes of Senator Leyonhjelm continue to dispute it with questionable statistics. The evidence that easy access to military-style automatic weapons results in mass shootings is near irrefutable, however. Australia has had no such atrocity since 1996, though Senator Leyonhjelm continues to lament the loss of his right to own weapons designed, not for hunting or target-shooting, but for killing people.

Senator Leyonhjelm's fascination with US-style small government and rugged individualism is understandable. Nowhere is the libertarian creed espoused by the likes of John Locke and Thomas Paine taken more seriously or given greater prominence. But in its attitude to guns, the US is hardly a paragon worth emulating here.

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Post Sydney siege idea by David Leyonhjelm over gun laws idea is absurd

What Americans Really Think About Torture

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Dec 16, 2014 8:56am

By MICHAEL FALCONE (@michaelpfalcone)

NOTABLES

THE ROUNDTABLE

ABCs RICK KLEIN: CIA 1, Senate Democrats 0? The new ABC News/Washington Post poll suggests that the firestorm started by the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA tactics is already settling down if it wasnt settled down from the start. The poll out Tuesday morning finds a near-majority (49 percent) convinced that the CIA did engage in torture. A larger portion of voters (59 percent) say it was justified, while 53 percent say it produced valuable information. That puts the public on the opposite side of the Senate Democrats who prepared and long pushed for the reports release, in the hopes of having the national debate the nation didnt or couldnt in the scary and secretive aftermath of 9/11. Its not just former Vice President Dick Cheney who remembers 9/11 as the date that changed everything, up to and including what we should or could be doing to terrorism suspects. The most startling number in the poll may be one that looks forward: Only 2 in 10 Americans say they would flatly rule out torture in future cases.

ABCs SHUSHANNAH WALSHE: Hillary Clinton appeared with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg yesterday bringing attention to an initiative to help improve the tracking of data about women and girls worldwide. The project, Data2x, is a joint venture of the Clinton Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the United Nations Foundation. There was no 2016 or political talk at the event, instead Clinton stressed her longtime focus on improving the lives of women and girls around the globe, something we are sure to hear if she does make a run official. She said the data must be combed through in order to build a case strong enough to convince skeptics based on hard data and clear eyed analysis that creating opportunities for women and girls across the globe, directly supports everyones security and prosperity and therefore should be an enduring part of our diplomacy and development work. Bloomberg introduced the possible presidential candidate calling her a great Secretary of State, a great senator for New York and the billionaire even joked to the crowd: If my mother and father knew that I was on a first-name basis with Hillary Clinton, it would be a very big deal.

WHAT WERE WATCHING

LIBERTARIAN TAKEOVER: THADDEUS MCCOTTER PREDICTS A NEW WORLD ORDER FOR GOP. Former Republican presidential candidate Thaddeus McCotter is not himself a libertarian, but the former Michigan congressman predicts an approaching libertarian takeover of the Grand Old Party. At least, thats the premise of his new book, Liberty Risen: The Ultimate Triumph of Libertarian-Republicans. The reality is you want to conserve whats best but you want to go forward, you want to go forward from the industrial era to the Internet age, McCotter told ABCs RICK KLEIN Yahoo News JON WARD, hosts of Top Line in a recent interview. Government has to be reorganized for the future. Though he sees the march toward libertarianism as inevitable with the rise of the millennial generation, which he sees as forcing change within the party, he qualifies that this trend is gradual and has been going on for quite some time. http://yhoo.it/1zlF6NW

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What Americans Really Think About Torture

Debate Argument: Libertarianism | Debate.org

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My main argument will be an example.

Imagine there is a lake with 20 fish in it. There are 4 fishermen. They have two years to catch the fish in the lake. The first year the fish will be worth 1 dollar each, the second year it will be 2 dollars. What do you think will happen? The first year the lake will be untouched. The second year the four fishermen will try to catch as much fish as fast as they can, leaving the lake completely empty. The fisherman with the most starting money, the biggest boat and the most advanced equipment will catch 15 fish, leaving the remaining 5 to the lesser fishermen. The rich fisherman is now even richer, while the other 3 are left with nothing.

Now compare this with a new scenario. The same 4 fishermen but now each has his own little pond with 4 fish in it, belonging to them. There will be 4 fish left in the lake. The first year, when the fish are worth 1 dollar, one might grab a few, and the second year the fish might be gone. But after that, each fishermen has 4 fish of his own to sell. Each fisherman now has 8 dollars, one or more might have caught the remaining 4 so they have more. But now each fisherman has 8 dollars to buy food for his family.

The first scenario is libertarianism. The scenario where the government doesn't care about the economy. Here the fisherman with the most advanced equipment will take everything and the remaining three will starve. The second scenario is what you might call a socialist state, where the wealth is divided but there's still room for competition.

If you apply these scenarios to a larger scale you will see the huge differences. The first scenario would be the US of A. Notice how the differences in wealth are huge because of lack of government interference. The second scenario would be Holland for example. Where the government plays a role in the economy to make sure everybody gets a slice.

Compare these two scenarios yourself and decide which one you would like to live in as an average citizen.

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Debate Argument: Libertarianism | Debate.org

Libertarianism – Freedom Circle

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Articles Clint Eastwood announces: I'm a "libertarian", Libertarian Party News, 18 Feb 1997 Related Topics: Dave Barry, Clint Eastwood, Penn Jillette, John B. Larroquette, Russell Means, Dennis Miller, P.J. O'Rourke, Camille Paglia, John Stossel Libertarian Party press release based on Eastwood's response to a Playboy interview question: "How would you characterize yourself politically?"

"Eastwood joins a growing number of individuals in the entertainment industry who have identified themselves as libertarians. Included on that list are TV star John Laroquette, humorist Dave Barry, author P.J. O'Rourke, movie actor Russell Means, magician Jillette Penn, author Camille Paglia, TV reporter John Stossell, and comedian Dennis Miller."

"... I think we have to be happy with the term libertarian, while knowing that politics tends to taint all word usage issues. What is a libertarian? It is a person who believes in the absolute right of private property ownership. All else follows from that one proposition."

"Raised as a Catholic, I could not reconcile the concept of ending tax-supported welfare with Christ's admonition to love our neighbors. In considering this dilemma, I suddenly became aware of a pivotal point: although refusing to help others might not be very loving, pointing guns at our neighbors to force them to help those in need was even less so."

"Who were the exploiters? All who lived forcibly off of the industrious classes. ... Thus political and economic history is the record of conflict between producers, no matter their station, and the parasitic political classes, both inside and outside the formal state. Or to use terms of a later subscriber to this view, John Bright, it was a clash between the tax-payers and tax-eaters."

"Left and Right did not refer merely to which side of the assembly one sat on or one's attitude toward the regime. ... The Left understood that historically the state was the most powerful engine of exploitation ... Libertarians also showed their Left colors by opposing imperialism, war, and the accompanying violations of civil liberties ..."

"... we must inquire whether libertarian concerns are really divisible into, on the one hand, a concern with duties (deontology), for example, respecting individual rights, and on the other, a concern with practical consequences. ... I'm hardly alone in my uneasiness with this separation of concerns into the moral and the practical. In my camp is no less a personage than Adam Smith."

"The libertarian insight expressed so succinctly by Randolph Bourne 'War is the health of the State' has never been more relevant, and war revisionism - that is, the revision of the 'official' (i.e. government-approved) version of events leading up to the war is essential in understanding both the methods and motives of our rulers."

"Libertarianism has a long and glorious tradition, not the least of which is the principled anti-imperialist legacy of Leonard Read, Frank Chodorov, Murray Rothbard, and a long list of others. It is due to the durability of this tradition, which Doherty celebrates in his book, that libertarians have every reason to face the future with growing confidence."

"Thus, libertarianism is a commitment to eschew aggressive force; it is not a specific lifestyle because lifestyles result from the many peaceful choices people make after eschewing force. What a peaceful person chooses to do may be of great moral importance. ... Past the point of eschewing violence, however, his behavior is irrelevant to the question of libertarianism."

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Libertarianism - Freedom Circle

GOPs new fracking hypocrisy: What a Texas battle reveals about Republican dogma

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Amid last months Republican sweep of the 2014 midterm elections, there were some notable progressive victories. Marijuana decriminalization, gun control laws and minimum wage increases all passed on various states ballots. But perhaps the most inspiring initiative voters put into law was a ban on fracking in Denton, Texas. Unfortunately, Texas politicians, bureaucrats and business interests are pledging to fight, repeal and/or ignore it.

Texas Railroad Commission chairwoman Christi Craddick, who is responsible for oil and gas regulation which, in Texas, apparently means doing as little regulating as possible said, Its my job to give permits, not Dentons Were going to continue permitting up there because thats my job. Jerry Patterson, commissioner of the Texas General Land Office,wrote a lettersaying, While we applaud the citys efforts to promote the welfare of its citizens, we must make sure it is done in a manner consistent with existing state laws the Legislature has made regulation of underground mineral estates and the methods for producing them a matter of State agency regulation.

Residents of Denton made it clear, by a stern59-41 percent vote, that they do not want fracking in their town. Texas Republicans are telling them they have no right to such a declaration because the state that perennial foe of every right-wing principle is the only entity with a say-so in the matter.

Meanwhile,Texas is in perpetual conflict with the federal governmentover voting laws, healthcare and, particularly, environmental regulations. In 2013, former Texas attorney general and current Gov.-elect Greg Abbott boasted that hesued the Obama administration 25 timesfor perceived overreaches. Now, that cadre of state-hating Republicans is using Big Government to step on the little people of Denton. The hypocrisy might make you fall over backward, but the right-wing position all along has never been about individual freedom not unless that individual is trying to make a buck, anyway. Far from eroding the state, the Republican agenda is to build a very strong state that can be used to intervene in public policy on behalf of corporate interests.

With272 active wells in the cityand another 212 just outside the city limits, Denton residents ought to know as much as anyone about fracking. Yet another leading member of the Texas Railroad Commission, David Porter nominally a public servant and not a P.R. representative for the oil and gas industry suggests, Denton voters fell prey to scare tactics and mischaracterizations of the truth in passing the hydraulic fracturing ban. Such a dismissive attitude of a resounding victory at the ballot box is bad enough, but its downright silly in light of the overwhelmingpro-fracking propagandaDenton residents were subjected to. The main opponents of the ban, energy giants Chevron, Chesapeake Energy and XTO Energy (a subsidiary of Exxon), outspent the pro-ban group, Frack Free Denton, by almost 10-to-1 and still lost. Far from being the prey of scare tactics, Denton residents haveplenty of good reasonsto want fracking out of their town.

Fracking the process of shooting a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the earth to jostle natural gas loose from shale formations is well known to cause a myriad of environmental problems, most notablyair and water pollution. Dentons air is tied with Houstons as themost polluted in Texas, making it among the most polluted in the nation and well exceeding the limits set forth by the Clean Air Act. Thehealth effectsof exposure to thebevy of chemicalsused in, and released into the environment as a result of, fracking are only just beginning to be documented. Fracking has even been implicated ina rise in earthquakeswhere heavy fracking takes place. Property values around fracking sites are known toplummet. And just to tie all those concerns together, under current regulatory standards, fracking is allowed a mere1,200 feet awayfrom residential areas and, in many cases, goes on even closer.

Commissioner Craddick defended frackers, saying, Most of them are active in their communities where theyre doing business and trying to give some dollars back. Its a weak enough statement on its own, but even that minimal claim is dubious. Craddick herself asserts (in fact, its a key component of her argument) that Denton residents dont own the minerals underneath their homes and town,so we know they arent getting any money directly from their extraction. Adam Briggle, a University of North Texas assistant professor specializing in bioethics and a leader in Frack Free Denton, argues thatfrackings contribution to Dentons local economy is minimal, if not actually detrimental: Royalties paid to the City of Denton account for less than 1 percent of the city budget. Taxes from wells amount to only about 0.5 percent of all city property tax revenues. The biggest beneficiaries from fracking in Denton are out-of-town companies and absentee mineral owners.

When conservatives rail against government, what theyre really opposed to is democracy, and their swiftness to use state power against democratic action in Denton exemplifies this. They hold up the free market, a nebulous, pseudo-religious construct, as the only legitimate arbiter of right and wrong. But the most important part of living in a free market is the freedom of people to shape that market. In theory, this is done through responsible consumer choices, but the market doesnt always provide alternatives. Our transportation and energy infrastructure makes it almost impossible for millions of Americans not to patronize certain industries, particularly the oil industry. If people cant use their spending power to tell the market they want something else, they ought to be able to send that message with their vote.

Market action isnt sufficient to enact the widespread infrastructural changes that are morally incumbent as environmental degradation and climate change worsen. Elected representatives arent going to do it; most of them arein bedwith thefossil fuel industry. And the fossil fuel industry isnt going to do it when it can rely on state Republicans in direct violation of the very free market principles theyre so fond of espousing to keep itheavily subsidizedand come to its aid with legislative intervention whenever its threatened. With the system so corrupt and gridlocked, direct democracy of the kind used in Denton is the only way to make a change.

The fracking ban doesnt come close to addressing all the planets environmental needs, but more issues like it coming under the scrutiny of public referendum will get us where we need to go a lot faster than the free market or state officials ever could. Residents in Denton came together to make a decision in their communitys best interest and exercised their right to self-governance. They scored an important, inspiring victory for the environment and for their town. We can only hope that the Big Government Republicans of Texas and the industry titans they serve dont take it away from them.

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GOPs new fracking hypocrisy: What a Texas battle reveals about Republican dogma

Authority crisis roils America: Police abuse, torture and authoritarianism run amok

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There is so much thats horrifying about whats now simply called the torture report, the redacted summary of the Senate Intelligence Committees investigation into years of unforgivable CIA abuse post-9/11. But one thing that recurs disturbingly often is anal rape imagery: examples of rectal feeding, of rectal exams that used excessive force, and at least one instance, according to the report, of threatened sodomy with a broomstick.

Am I the only one who thought about Abner Louima, the Haitian immigrant who was not just threatened but actually sodomized with a broomstick by the New York Police Departments Justin Volpe in 1997? The torture reports release, in the wake of grand juries failing to indict police officers who killed unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and right here in New York, where Louima was tortured, reminds us of the danger of unaccountable state power.

Yet an undercurrent of authoritarianism in American culture and a particular American deference to authority figures who are supposed to protect us threatens to let it go unchecked.

To be fair, many Americans are horrified by the torture reports revelations. And many Americans believe police officers should be held accountable when they use excessive force and harm or kill Americans, of any race. But theres a disturbing impulse evident lately, to excuse abuses of power on the part of those who are charged with protecting us, whether cops or the post-9/11 CIA. I dont care what we did! former Bush flack Nicolle Wallace shrieked on Morning Joe Monday. And she spoke for too many Americans. (Though not for her former boss Sen. John McCain.)

I watched the debate over the torture report unfurl all day Tuesday, online, in print and on television. All the coverage focused on a few questions: whether Sen. Dianne Feinstein is right that torture didnt work; whether the report might produce blowback by our enemies; whether the CIA is being scapegoated for Bush administration decisions. There was shockingly little emphasis on the fact that torture is illegal and a war crime, banned by the Geneva Conventions, a U.N. Convention against torture ratified under a supportive Ronald Reagan, and by Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113C of theU.S.Code.

So much in the torture report should appall Americans, above and beyond the many details of depravity. CIA officials lied about who they had in custody. They lied about what they were doing. They destroyed evidence. They tortured two of their own informants. At least 20 percent of the people they detained, as examined by investigators, were held wrongfully. They paid $81 million to two psychologists who knew nothing about al-Qaida, terrorism or the war against them. They didnt fully brief President Bush until April 2006, after 38 of 39 detainees had already been interrogated.

This should be an issue that unites civil libertarians on the left and the right as should excessive force by police but the authoritarian impulse is stronger on the right. Libertarianism also seems overwhelmed by the prevailing resentment of President Obama, and the changing America that he represents. Still, its amazing: Even as wingnuts deride Obama as a fascist and a tyrant, they applaud excessive force by police officers and CIA officials.

Its also amazing that its taken two years to get a redacted executive summary of the torture report released. Lets remember that were merely talking about sharing information about the Senates investigation into torture, not about indicting or punishing anyone. At least grand juries considered whether to indict Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo in the killings of Mike Brown and Eric Garner. There has been no such process regarding CIA torturers.

Which is not to say the grand jury process in Ferguson or Staten Island delivered justice to those mens families. Nor have the families of John Crawford and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, African-Americans killed by police while holding toy guns, even gotten a fair and clear accounting of how their sons died. Young black men are 21 times more likely to be shot by police than white men, yetwhite peoples confidence in police fairness, and doubts about cops racial bias, have never been higher, while African-Americans is understandably at a record low.

Thankfully Abner Louimas attackers were punished; Volpe is serving 30 years in prison, and Louima won a settlement of $8.7 million the largest police brutality settlement in New York history at the time. The Louima rape happened to take place under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who has emerged as the chief defender of cops who kill in the last two weeks. Giulianis career is an example of how the authoritarian impulse in American politics often prevails.

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Authority crisis roils America: Police abuse, torture and authoritarianism run amok

EB56 Daniel Krawisz: Nakamoto Institute, Bitcoin & Libertarianism, The Problem with Appcoins – Video

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EB56 Daniel Krawisz: Nakamoto Institute, Bitcoin Libertarianism, The Problem with Appcoins
We are joined by Daniel Krawisz, the Director of Research at the Satoshi Nakamoto Institute. Daniel co-founded that organization last year with Michael Goldstein and Pierre Rochard to educate...

By: Epicenter Bitcoin

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EB56 Daniel Krawisz: Nakamoto Institute, Bitcoin & Libertarianism, The Problem with Appcoins - Video

Conversation with John Tomasi – Free Market Fairness and Libertarianism (Skyperadio Ep. 9) – Video

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Conversation with John Tomasi - Free Market Fairness and Libertarianism (Skyperadio Ep. 9)
Prof. John Tomasi (Brown University), the author of "Free Market Fairness", in conversation with Otto Lehto. Is social justice compatible with free market id...

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Conversation with John Tomasi - Free Market Fairness and Libertarianism (Skyperadio Ep. 9) - Video

Downton Abbey's Dirty Secret

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Season five of the smash hit British period drama, Downton Abby, begins in six weeks. The series continues the fictional story of the aristocratic Crawley family and the familys friends, relatives and servants set in and around the Downton Abbey estate. The series recounts the day-to-day lives impacted by all the great events of the early twentieth century from the sinking of the Titanic through the aftermath of World War I and beyond.

A key general theme is the vast disparity in wealth between the aristocratic family and the lowly servant class. The irony is that the people in the aristocratic family and their servants seem oddly equal in terms of both abilities and flaws. The series is not an indictment of the aristocracy, which is why the left hates it. For example, Salon recently published a hit piece on the show. The show depicts a group of actual monsters in a manner thats explicitly loving, the article opines. [W]hen the facts get in the way, theyre disposed of. Downton Abbey is a show about how the world was straightforwardly better when an entrenched class system ruled.

Actual monsters? The idea that there are no decent people in an aristocracy is just nonsense and so is the idea that the show depicts the characters unrealistically. In truth the Crawley family is portrayed as vulnerable, somewhat inept, increasingly irrelevant, and often forced to adapt to change against its collective will.

Other commentators have seized on this realism. For example, Jerry Bowyers of Forbes finds the show reasonable and realistic, and that the aristocrats are flawed but admirable. He even concludes that the show portrays an anti-class-warfare message, which is another reason the left hates it and the masses love it. John Tamnys exploration of series creator Julian Fellowess ideology reveals an insightful and complex thinker and one that points us in the direction of libertarianism rather than conservatism, which also helps explain the shows great popularity.

The plot is largely driven by secrets. One episode might be based around a servant who has a secret on another servant. Another episode might be based on one member of the aristocratic family having a secret about another family member or friend. The juiciest secrets are often secrets held by a servant about one of the family members. However, the dirtiest secret about Downton Abbey is not fictional and has never been told before. The secret reveals the true nature of the state, whether it be aristocratic, democratic, or dictatorial.

The actual setting for the show is Highclere Castle, which is used for exterior and interior shots of Downton Abbey. Highclere is the estate of George Herbert, the 8th Earl of Carnarvon (third creation) and his wife Fiona Aitken.

The dirtiest secrets of the real-life Downton Abbeys of the world can be better understood with an examination of the 1st Earl of Carnarvon (second creation) James Brydges, and how such aristocracies came to be in the first place.

The first true economist, Richard Cantillon, described during Brydgess era (i.e., the early 1700s), the nature of human society thusly:

[I]f a prince at the head of an army has conquered a country, he will distribute the lands among his officers or favorites according to their merit or his pleasure. He will then establish laws to vest the property in them and their descendants.

This pretty much explains how the original English aristocracy came into being and how James Brydges became the 1st Earl of Carnarvon. Brydges was born into a low-level aristocratic family and became a Member of Parliament, largely through bribery, around age 25. He then used this position to impress and curry favor with the ruling political elite. His political influence continued to grow and he soon was appointed Commissioner of the Admiralty.

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Downton Abbey's Dirty Secret


  1. Libertarianism