Kevin Carson at C4SS:

In my opinion the best way to change the laws, in practical terms, is through counter-institution building and through counter-economic activity outside the state’s control:  in other words, to render the laws so irrelevant and unenforceable, by our efforts outside the state, that even the state must make concessions to reality.

Yes.

It seems to me that statism will ultimately end, not as the result of any sudden and dramatic failure, but as the cumulative effect of a long series of little things.  The costs of enculturing individuals to the state’s view of the world, and of dissuading a large enough majority of people from disobeying when they’re pretty sure they’re not being watched, will result in a death of a thousand cuts.  More and more of the state’s activities, from the perspective of those running things, will just cost more (in terms not only of money but of just plain mental aggravation) than they’re worth.  IOW, the decay of ideological hegemony and the decreased feasibility of enforcement will do to the state what file-sharing is doing to the RIAA.

Yes!

The most cost-effective “political” effort is simply making people understand that they don’t need anyone’s permission to be free.  Start telling them right now that the law is unenforceable, and disseminating knowledge as widely as possible on the most effective ways of breaking it.  Publicize examples of ways we can live our lives the way we want, with institutions of our own making, under the radar of the state’s enforcement apparatus:   local currency systems, free clinics, ways to protect squatter communities from harrassment, and so on.  Educational efforts to undermine the state’s moral legitimacy, educational campaigns to demonstrate the unenforceability of the law, and efforts to develop and circulate means of circumventing state control, are all things best done on a stigmergic basis.

A thousand times “Yes!”

The second episode of Max Keiser’s new show on Russia Today: “‘Keiser Report’ is a no holds barred look at the shocking scandals behind the global financial headlines. From the collusion between Wall Street and Capitol Hill to the latest banking crime wave, from bogus government economic statistics to rigged stock markets, nothing escapes the eye of Max Keiser, a former stockbroker, inventor of the virtual specialist technology and co-founder of the Hollywood Stock Exchange. With the help of Keiser’s co-host, Stacy Herbert, and guests from around the world, ‘Keiser Report’ tells you what is really going on in the global economy.” – 26 Nov 09 (26:19):

In this episode:

• Goldman Sachs’ extraordinary bailout to lending ratio and their going to bat against the ‘populist outrage’ against Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner
• Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake on H.R. 1207, the Paul-Grayson ‘Audit the Fed’ bill
• The war profiteers of the corrupt U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan occupations with ‘zero oversight’ of the military industrial complex’ and the Obama Administration’s planned escalation in Afghanistan to ‘handle the money laundering’
• Ullrich Fichtner of Der Spiegel on Iraq, Afghanistan and A.I.G.

In Washington state today, 4 cops were shot to death while sitting in a coffee shop.  I must admit, that my first thought was to blog about the possibility that this was a response by an individual to some abuse on the part of the police, but a bit of quick research suggested that in this case, that probably isn’t true (or if it is, the shooter had a long history of violent crime, so even if there was abuse by the police, it probably wasn’t the root cause).

The media frenzy has already begun, so instead, I would like to take this opportunity to do some “what-if” and think about how this event would be handled if some of the details were different.

Imagine if the 4 people who were killed lived in a housing project in New York City, and the shooters were cops. Chances are, it wouldn’t even make the news. Things like that are just too common to bother reporting – especially in the New York City slums.

Imagine if all of the people involved were just “normal” people (white, middle class). We’d probably get a bit of a human interest story, and that would be it. Maybe a minute or two of coverage in the morning news.

Imagine if all of the people involved were those same poor folks in the New York City slums. You probably wouldn’t hear anything about it, but it if you did, it would be blamed on drugs or gangs (regardless of the reason).

None of this should be any real surprise. Nobody really cares if some scum in a housing project gets whacked. Sure, if it was a cute kid, the networks may play for a bit of the tear-jerker ratings, but beyond that, it just doesn’t matter. When some middle class action takes place, it hits a bit closer to home, but hey, that was all the way over in Washington. It couldn’t happen here, and it doesn’t really make any difference to our lives.

So why is it so different when its a cop? The press has been displaying a disturbing trend in this regard – there seems to be some pervasive belief that cops are special, and deserve special attention. this is very disturbing. Cops are people – no different from any one else. When we act like a cop is more important than ‘regular’ people, we start down the road to creating a police force that is treated differently from the regular people. We give them special attention, special powers, and immunity from regular rules. history has consistently demonstrated that this is a one-way road. And the road ends with a police state, absolute police authority, and a complete lack of rights for the “regular people”. OK, so we’re not there yet, but we’re definitely heading down that road. (How many of you live in states where the sentences for killing a cop is more severe than the sentence for killing a non-cop? Check you state laws. You’d be surprised how many there are.)

So hey, all you news whores: how about reporting that 4 PEOPLE were killed. The fact that they were cops is irrelevant unless they were killed BECAUSE they were cops. Oh yeah, and start reporting the other cases of senseless killings too.

Sarah Palin on Sarah Palin –
Unfiltered by a Hostile Media

As chief executive of America’s largest state, Sarah Palin had built a record as a reformer who pushed through changes other politicians only talked about — while beating the political “good ol’ boys club” at their own game. As John McCain’s running mate, Palin ruffled a few more Establishment feathers — while building a huge, grassroots conservative following that would survive her vice presidential candidacy.

All that’s made her a lot of enemies — among Democrats and Republicans — willing to say almost anything about Sarah Palin in order to put a halt to her political career.

Now, Sarah Palin tells her own story, in her own words — unfiltered by a hostile media.

In Going Rogue, Sarah Palin paints an intimate portrait of growing up in the wilds of Alaska; meeting her lifelong love; her decision to enter politics; the importance of faith and family; and the unique joys and trials of life as a high-profile working mother. Palin also opens up for the first time about the 2008 presidential race, providing a rare, mom’s-eye view of high-stakes national politics — from patriots dedicated to “Country First,” to slick politicos bent on winning at the cost of conservative principle (and losing as a result). Some of the many revelations in Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue:

• How her priorities in life were set early: faith (she would read Scripture each night before bed), hunting, current events and sports (she even dreamed of being a broadcaster alongside Howard Cosell)
• Her decision to enter politics: how, and why, it happened
• How, as Alaska governor, Palin built a record as a reformer who cast aside politics-as-usual and pushed through changes other politicians only talked about: energy independence, ethics reform, and the biggest private sector infrastructure project in U.S. history
• How Palin rewrote the official campaign statement about her daughter Bristol’s pregnancy — only to watch in horror as a TV news anchor read the original statement, which seemed to glamorize Bristol’s unplanned pregnancy
• How McCain campaign aides limited her access to the media — leading to unfounded allegations that she was avoiding reporters — and also denied Palin the chance to speak on election night
• How the idea to meet with Katie Couric came from a McCain aide (and Couric pal) who told Palin that Couric liked and admired her, and the interview would help boost Couric’s sagging ratings and self-esteem
• Sarah Palin’s vision of a way forward for America — and her unfailing hope in the greatest nation on earth

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• Foxes In the Henhouse — Question: What do you call a teacher who encouraged a 15-year-old boy to continue to have sex with a man he met in a bus station bathroom… who bragged about his own teenage alcohol and drug abuse… and who forcefully advocates “Queering Elementary Education” (the title of a book he contributed to) ? Answer: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar”! And he’s just one of many corrupt — and corrupting — Obama appointees. HUMAN EVENTS smokes them out one by one, week after week.
• Sharia in the White House — If Muslim terrorists succeed in their stated goal of imposing Islamic “sharia” law throughout the West — including in the U.S. — they’ll have President Obama partly to thank. His advisor on Muslim affairs, Dalia Mogahed, defended sharia — which encourages wife-beating and allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, among other things — on a TV show hosted by a member of a known terrorist group dedicated to destroying all non-Islamic governments.
• There the Media Go Again — Racists. Neo-Nazis. Nutcases. And that’s just the printable things the mainstream media said about conservative participants in this summer’s Tea Parties and town hall protests. From CNN and MSNBC to the Big Three networks to Time and Newsweek, HUMAN EVENTS chronicled the media’s biased “coverage” as it spewed forth — then assembled the most outrageous violations of journalistic ethics in a full-page spread.
• Vote for Obama, Win a Stimulus! — Obama’s $787 billion “stimulus” package was supposed to be doled out equally to localities across America, without regard to politics — right? Guess again. As HUMAN EVENTS revealed, each of the “blue” counties that supported Obama during the 2008 election received about $69 in stimulus spending per person — while the “red” counties that voted for John McCain got $34 per person. Liberals don’t call that vote-buying — but we do.
• Muzzling the Watchdogs — First, the White House fired inspector general Gerald Walpin for blowing the whistle on the misuse of AmeriCorps funds by Sacramento mayor (and Obama crony) Kevin Johnson. Then, they silenced the author of an EPA report that was skeptical of White House claims about global warming. Then they “retired” inspector general Fred Weiderhold after he met with Amtrak officials about allegations of financial skullduggery. The liberal media are letting them get away with it, of course — but HUMAN EVENTS is reporting it all, week after week.
• Take a Chill Pill, Al — As Al Gore and his disciples get their knickers in a twist over so-called “global warming,” Mother Nature refuses to cooperate. This year, Earth’s temperatures continued a chilling trend that began 11 years ago — and HUMAN EVENTS provided all the “inconvenient” facts and figures showing that there has been no significant warming since 1995… no warming at all since 1998… and a pronounced cooling in the past few years. So, no need for economy-killing “cap-and-trade” bills or elaborate new energy regulations — just let the cold times roll!
• Liberal Astroturf — Health Care for America Now (HCAN) calls itself a nationwide coalition of “grassroots” Americans who support healthcare reform. But if you look at HCAN’s funding, it comes from the same few leftist billionaires, union bosses, and “community organizers” pushing socialized medicine. And like many other phony “grassroots” organizations subsidized by Big Nanny special interests, HCAN is headquartered right on K St., in the middle of Beltway lobby land. HUMAN EVENTS smokes them all out, reveals their hidden agenda, and exposes the big money and special interests behind them.
• Go to Prison, Join the Jihad — Two of the four Muslims who were arrested recently for plotting to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down an airplane converted to Islam while in prison (both had been Baptists). And they’re just the tip of the iceberg: As HUMAN EVENTS has been reporting for years, Islamic jihad groups have long targeted prisons as key centers for recruitment — and Obama’s proposal to bring Guantanamo inmates to U.S. prisons will only play right into the jihad’s plans.
• The Far Left’s Propaganda Machine — Never heard of Fenton Communications? It’s time you did. It’s the powerhouse propaganda machine that helped Moveon.org smear a four-star general, promotes endless environmental scares, does PR for Venezuela’s socialist strongman Hugo Chavez, and brags it can place its left-wing themes in the nation’s leading newspapers. HUMAN EVENTS revealed Fenton’s connections to the press, liberal lawmakers, pressure groups and trial lawyers.

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Kevin Carson at the Center for a Stateless Society on the perpetual tyranny necessary for a ‘war on drugs’.

29 Nov 09 | C4SS

Let’s do a little thought experiment.

Never mind, for the moment, the question of the Drug War’s moral legitimacy.  Never mind whether the government has the right to prevent mentally sound grownups from deciding what substances to put in their own bodies, or what substances to buy from and sell to others.

Let’s just consider, as a practical question, what effectively enforcing the drug laws actually requires.

Imagine a government trying to enforce the drug laws, if the common law “search and seizure” protections, found in the Fourth Amendment and analogous provisions of the state constitutions, were enforced according to the plain meaning of their language.  That means the government couldn’t use “no reasonable expectation of privacy” exceptions to nullify the Fourth Amendment for the purposes of helicopter infrared snooping or footborne trespassing on people’s land, traffic checkpoints, and drug-sniffing dogs.  There would be no more “no knock” warrants.  There would be no such thing as roving wiretaps or “Know Your Customer” laws.

Imagine the government trying to enforce the drug laws, if it were held to the plain meaning of the “due process” clause of the Fifth Amendment and analogous state constitutional safeguards.  Can you imagine the consternation in police forces, if they had to file criminal charges and secure a conviction from a jury before they could seize your property?

Imagine how hard it would be for government to enforce drug laws, if courts automatically threw out evidence obtained from sting operations and entrapment in which undercover police actively solicited violations of the law.

Imagine how hard it would be to enforce drug laws, if the courts automatically threw out all “evidence” obtained in a manner that violated the alleged spirit of the law.  No more evidence—or perjured testimony—obtained by threatening jailhouse snitches or offering them more lenient treatment.  There would also be no guilty pleas based on “plea bargain” blackmail enforced by the manufacture of as many obviously spurious charges as possible; like “loser pays” rules in civil suits, this practice has the effect of artificially skewing the incentives so that the underdog has as much as possible to lose, and the big guy has little or nothing to lose.  Imagine, as well, the effect of eliminating all the informal harassment and muscling cops do on their turf on a daily basis, to intimidate people into cooperating with them.

Imagine the cumulative effect of all these changes on the Drug War.  I think it’s pretty obvious that without all the forms of lawlessness described above, the Drug War would be a dead letter.

And all the things I’ve described should be utterly loathsome and repugnant, to anyone who believes in principles like the due process rights of the accused.

It follows that the Drug War would be a moot point, in a society where the Bill of Rights actually served as a significant restraint on the powers of police and prosecutors, and due process rights of the accused had any real meaning.

Never mind whether the drug laws themselves are compatible with a free society;  without the enforcement tools of a virtually unlimited police state, they are unenforceable.

You could have the substantive drug laws of Turkey or Singapore—death penalty and all—and with common law due process and search and seizure rights vigorously enforced, the drug laws would be toothless.  The only people ever busted for drug production, sales, possession or use would be the most careless and stupid.  Among those smart enough to take the most basic precautions, the risk of getting caught would be infinitesimal and the drug laws held in utter contempt.  Every once in a while, some TV show does a “stupid criminals” bit with a news snippet about some brain-damaged hippie who leaves a sack of hash brownies on the steps of the police station, and then responds to a helpful “Lost and Found” ad placed by the cops on the local radio station.

The thing is, if cops were bound by the laws they claimed to enforce, such Darwin Awards fodder would be the only people ever arrested.

If you want the Drug War, you must sacrifice the Bill of Rights and the due process rights of the accused, and submit to a police state in which you have no rights or protections whatsoever.  There are no other choices.  It’s that simple.

This has broader implications. The market liberal notion of a written constitution as law that the state allegedly must submit to is ultimately just a temporary placeholder for the anarchist understanding of law being able to be derived independently of the state. This creates standards which the state ought to be held accountable to. Such accountability would result in its abolition.

Kevin Carson is a research associate at the Center for a Stateless Society, contemporary mutualist author and individualist anarchist whose written work includes Studies in Mutualist Political Economy and Organization Theory: An Individualist Anarchist Perspective. Mr. Carson has also written for a variety of internet-based journals and blogs, including Just Things, The Art of the Possible, the P2P Foundation and his own Mutualist Blog.

Has anyone noticed that Rick Perry has suddenly become the darling of conservatives?

Let me back up. Has anyone noticed how utterly screwed up the Republican Party is in this primary process? Has anyone noticed how so many “conservatives” have gotten behind Rick Perry? Has anyone noticed how people have conveniently forgotten his record of betraying conservatives? Has everyone really just forgotten, just like that?

I want to emphasize, off the bat, that I do not support Kay Bailey Hutchison. She is undoubtedly a horrible candidate to be governor of Texas, and I can see no reason to support a pro-abortion woman who voted for the first bailout, or to paraphrase George Bush, “destroy capitalism to save it.” Laugh Out Loud. I haven’t seen any real conservatives supporting her candidacy, but if they do they’re just selling themselves out.

Where I’m going is that Rick Perry is not much better than Kay, and regardless, certainly isn’t the sort of guy that Texas Republicans, if they really have woken up to the folly of overarching government, should support. Yet, somehow, much of the “conservative” wing of the Texas GOP (which is the majority) has thrown its support behind Rick Perry without much qualification. This is an error which, if not pointed out, threatens the very basis of our integrity as a party.

Where to begin? If re-elected, Governor Perry will have served for 14 years as governor. Remember back in, oh I don’t know, 1994… when Republicans were running for Congress with three-term limitations? When we believed in term limits and tried to get that passed through the federal legislature? When Republicans said that politicians need to stay in office for only so long, because the longer they stay in office the more corrupt they become? When we believed in the grassroots guy getting elected to office on the basis of his or her beliefs?

But let’s not forget a few policy matters, in addition to the problem of longevity in office.

Remember the Gross Margins Tax of 2006?

If you don’t own a business as I do, you might not. In fact, I had a guy in my shop the other day telling me to my face that Rick Perry didn’t raise taxes as governor. This is something that the Perry campaign, and many within the Republican Party, either don’t know the facts on or are intentionally deceiving us about. The fact is, in 2006 Rick Perry pushed through the house the Gross Margins Tax, a new tax on business that was intended to replace the corporate franchise tax and lower property taxes by funding schools differently.

You might hear from conservatives that this was just a case of switching some taxes to another kind of taxes, or something like that. Pure gobblety-gook. The fact is that the Gross Margins Tax replaced a tax, the corporate franchise tax, which many small businesses did not have to pay. The increase in taxes is only confirmed by the fact that after the Gross Margins Tax was enacted, the state collected almost 50% more in business tax revenues. The increased tax was supposed to be offset by decreases in property taxes for school districts, and they declined slightly, but the overall property tax burden actually increased.

Therefore, a NEW BUSINESS TAX in addition to HIGHER PROPERTY TAXES have resulted in a significant increase in state revenue, and the taxation burden on small businesses in Texas has increased under Governor Perry.

Remember the Trans-Texas Corridor?

If you are an average Texan, you most certainly do. But if you have bought into the Perry delusion, you are likely trying your best to forget it if you haven’t already. Well, allow me to remind you.

Throughout the earliest part Rick Perry’s tenure as governor, his transportation department worked hard on figuring out how to make transportation in Texas more efficient, cost-efficient, and advanced.

Somehow, they arrived at the conclusion to build a web of enormous quarter-mile-wide toll roads throughout the state of Texas. Not only would these toll roads be enormous (and a destroyer of hundreds of square miles of farmland), under the original plan there weren’t even exit ramps. The TTC would be built over all existed roads and highways and you could travel from Houston to San Antonio without ever getting off of the toll road. If you think I’m kidding, look at the original plan, or rent a documentary called “Truth Be Tolled.”

I believe in free trade. But come on, you have to keep in mind when doing a project like this that you will be hurting ordinary Texans. Therefore it would perhaps make sense to offer some of the jobs involved in creating these damn roads to Texans. But not so. Partnership Cintra-Zachry, a partnership between Spanish toll-road developer (and operator, which means an outflow in revenues) Cintra and Texas’ Zachry Construction, was to create the entire thing. MOST of the money is going to Cintra, who will operate the roads.

Need an example of that? Look at State Highway 130, a toll road component of TTC that is already being built. This road between Seguin and Taylor, TX would cost $1.3 billion to build under a 2006 agreement with TxDOT. TxDOT will only be receiving between about 5 and 50% of the toll revenues depending on the success of the venture, and Cintra-Zachry’s own plan shows the expected revenue at close to $15 billion over 50 years.

What does this all mean? Governor Perry supported an international toll-road developer cleaning up by building toll roads in our state, toll roads which TxDOT would only see a fraction of the revenue of, and which in the process would use eminent domain to sweep up family farms.

There’s a reason, after all, that the vast majority of Texans consistently opposed the plan.

Remember Perry’s Mandatory HPV Vaccination of 2007?

In 2007 Governor Perry wanted to make Texas the first state to mandate the vaccine Gardasil for sixth-grade girls to prevent the sexually transmitted HPV virus which leads to cervical cancer.

This was one of the many “huh?” moments of the Perry administration, where he thought it would just be a great idea to go right over the heads of parents and force kids to be vaccinated by the government. Besides the obvious state intrusion, there also is the issue of the State of Texas essentially trying to protect kids from sexually transmitted diseases, something that goes against the entire regime of sexual health in Texas schools.

Whether or not you agree or disagree with the idea of the state doing that, it is an unprecedented and bizarre way to shift sexual education. “Hey there little girl, here’s a vaccine!”

The vaccine, furthermore, comes from Merck, the pharmaceutical giant. Merck had a track record, around the time this plan was announced, of sending high-priced lobbyists into the State Capitol building.

Although parents can always choose to immunize their kids, that’s their choice, not the government’s, to make. Rick Perry clearly doesn’t follow that logic.

All in all, I’m truly shocked to see so many Republican “conservatives” flocking to Rick Perry as if he is the reborn Texas Ronald Reagan. Give me a break, here is a guy for whom many conservatives have had an enormous amount of criticism over the past ten years. And yet we are somehow supposed to just get in line behind the guy who “isn’t Kay Bailey Hutchison.” Why? Because he’s handsome? Because he has a fine head of hair? Because he has been lucky in having a phenomenal Texas Legislature to deliver him an austere budget to sign each and every session? Because he’s an Aggie? C’mon.

When are we going to stop settling for mediocre Republicans? When are we going to demand Republican leaders who understand that the government is tyrannical and inherently corrupt, that taxes must be as low as possible, that we cannot bail out companies, that we can’t take people’s property, that we can’t force people to accept federal or state health mandates? In other words, when are we going to demand that Republican elected officials follow the damn platform? That’s my question.

I understand why many Perry supporters say that Kay Bailey is worse. She is. But compare Rick Perry to the Republican Platform, hell, compare him even to the (currently) minor candidate Debra Medina. Is he a conservative Republican to be proud of, to vote for, to support for 14 years in the governor’s mansion?

The answer seems to be an unequivocal “no.”

Listen to Frank Turner. Great folk rock artist singing for freedom.

http://www.we7.com/track/Sons-Of-Liberty?trackId=3203453&m=0

New Libertarian Manifesto

Click it, save it, read it, live it, change the world, simple as that.

Not sure what the heck they’re talking about? visit Agorism.info for more, well, info.

But have no fear, this sexy blog is not forgotten! If any of y’all are personally familiar with me, you’ll know I’ve been really busy lately. But, while I may not have been blogging, you’ll be happy to know that I’ve been busy promoting liberty. I have begun broadcasting once a week from 10pm-12am on wednesday nights. I broadcast with rick caldwell, and you can listen at Ifaq.us we’ve got about 9 shows under our belts so far (we did an annex of our 8th show because of massive content overflow). So far it has been an exceptional expierence and has grown much more quickly than I would have expected. I’ve also registered Thenewactivist.org, although I have not yet fixed it up like it needs to be. (actually, right now, it’s a picture of a hot japanese girl and a bunch of random test pages).  But yeah, thats what I’ve been up to, and most of why I’ve been gone for so long.

The Economist has an interview with Radley Balko of Reason, Hit and Run, and The Agitator. The latter is the first blog I found lo those many years ago, and one of the few blogs I read every day. Radley has also been an engaging guest on the Ron Smith show on WBAL in Baltimore.

Anyway, his thoughts on the militarization of the police and on the Libertarian movement are interesting (and quite nicely mirror my own). This is a good read.

That said, I think there’s reason for some optimism for libertarians. The generations raised on the internet will be more educated, aware, and informed than any before them, and I think that has instilled in them some naturally libertarian instincts, particularly when it comes to issues like government transparency, accountability, censorship, and police power. Perhaps I’m a bit pollyanna-ish, but it’s at least possible that once the Obama administration proves just as inept, corrupt, and hopeless as the Bush administration, the younger people who flocked to Obama will start to understand that the problem isn’t who’s running government, it’s that government power itself corrupts–and that we’re better off keeping as much of our lives as possible off limits to the whims of politicians instead of this repeating cycle of putting all of our hope into the idea that someday, the right politicians will finally get elected.

The last sentence is so important, and really is the reason for optimism, that at some point all these smart people will stop thinking ‘their guy’ can take government power and make it all right (see the irony in healthcare). Trust me, you are not going to be happy when Sarah Palin is running your healthcare.

If you don’t already, I highly recommend reading both Hit and Run and The Agitator.

While always accurate, Sexual Intelligence is nevertheless often critical, snide, and cranky. In a world full of sexual ignorance, bizarre impulses, and fear-based, wacky public policy, we roll our digital eyes here a lot.

This Thanksgiving holiday let’s take a break. Today let’s give thanks for some of what’s wonderful in the world of sex.

* Sex toys

Sex toys are humanity’s answer to the question “just how long can someone move their hand in the same direction at the same speed without getting bored or injured?”

Marshall McLuhan would be proud: just as the telephone is an extension of the voice, and the car an extension of the foot, sex toys are an extension of the hand. And of the penis, vulva, and mouth, as the case may be.

There’s little recession in this industry; even if your 401k is now a 201k, you can still buzz or probe yourself happy.

Toys are mainstream now, as even Amazon.com carries dozens of them—from the “Pink Fantasy G-Spot Magic Wand Vibrator Dildo” to the “Smartballs Kegel Exerciser” to the “Horny Girl Next Door Realistic Pussy Male Masturbator.” Every person and couple should have a bunch.

* Contraception

Most adults love little [choose one or more:] (munchkins) (rugrats) (screaming bundles of scary impulses). But there’s a limit to how many of these weapons of mass destruction one wants to love. I suggest the number of hands a person has is a good clue to the number of children one should parent in a lifetime.

Enter Captain Contracept! There are styles for everyone: hormonal, mechanical, vegetarian, you name it. And for gentlemen who have finished the quest for biological immortality, science has a special gift for you: vasectomy. It only takes an hour, then you get the weekend off, then back to work. You’re wise to hold off ejaculating for a week, and then you’re shooting blanks for the next half-century. Yes cowboy, you still shoot—wet, warm, voluminous loads of blanks.

The only people who can honestly condemn birth control as “unnatural interference in God’s order” are those who shun other modern comforts like electricity and gossip. But even the Amish have begun taking advantage of contraceptive wisdom.

* Pornography

I’ve been in countries where pornography is simply illegal. You don’t want to live there.

Trust me, you’d rather live in a country where people are free to make their own entertainment choices, even if you find them baffling or repulsive (American Idol, anyone?).

Pornography paid to build the internet. Pornography made The Sopranos, David Mamet, and The Daily Show possible. Pornography is the sexual outlet for a lot of lonely people who are not going to meet Mr. Good Enough or Ms. Right for a long time. Or ever.

Pornography has many, many, many, many faults (is that enough acknowledgment?). It is also one of the few places you can get an honest look at America’s subconscious. And what you find there is simply human: childish curiosity, adolescent yearning, adult confusion, an overwhelming interest in sexual body parts, fluids, power dynamics, and yes, feelings. Healthy human sexuality has a noble, wholesome, loving side.

That same healthy human sexuality has a dark, aggressive side. Pornography shows it all, complete with big smiles, happy orgasms, pretend coercion, lame music, and stupid dialogue (“ooh, is that for me?!). But pornography doesn’t show anything that isn’t common human fantasy.

I’ve counseled patients who felt deep, deep shame for watching pornography. I’ve also counseled terrified or enraged patients who believe that their partner’s watching porn is infidelity, rejection, or perversion. You don’t want to live like that.

* Lubricants

Spit will only get you so far.

So a special salute here to lube—the magic stuff that makes sex more comfortable for people of all ages and persuasions.

I still have patients who resist using it, saying they don’t “need” it, as if it’s some medicine for losers. No. To the extent that sex is about friction, lube helps you custom-design the friction. The slippery stuff in lube helps turn the geekiest guy into Fred Astaire, the clumsiest woman into Ginger Rogers.

If you don’t know who they are, the second thing you should do is sign up for Netflix. The first thing you should do is get some lube.

* Female Sexual Desire

Plenty of Americans remember the days when Good Girls Didn’t Say Yes.

Unfortunately, even today, many women across the globe can’t say yes even if they want to. Single women in Muslim countries; patriotic women in war-time Vietnam; African women struggling with clitoridectomy—these women have learned bitter lessons about an enthusiastic yes.

The great uber-gift of legitimizing female sexual desire is the way it allows sexuality to be a form of intimacy between two people. When female sexual desire is considered abnormal or slutty or threatening to her partner, she has to hide it or her (male) partner needs to control it. This is the case around the world, where men pursue and women submit or dissemble.

When two people can acknowledge and celebrate a woman’s sexual interest, they can be themselves and connect physically. She doesn’t have to manipulate her partner or spend her life unable to speak for herself.

A great accomplishment of modern America is that we have established a moral code that isn’t based primarily on the number of sex partners a woman has, or when she has them. Women are now free to be unethical independent of their sexuality—by bribery, say, or theft or child neglect. Yes, judging women on their public behavior rather than their private sexual choices is a big advance in civilization.

* * *

Finally, let’s enjoy today by taking the perspective that all those erotophobic activities we hate—laws and customs limiting sexual expression, narratives of sexual danger, efforts to trivialize sexual knowledge—are essentially compliments to those working for a world of sexual justice and responsible erotic expression.

If those forces of fear, hatred, and sexual denial weren’t afraid of the continuing and inevitable success of our work creating a sexually progressive world, they wouldn’t be fighting us so hard.

Oh, I give thanks for one more thing: for all my readers, who encourage me with email, suggestions for articles, financial contributions and book purchases. Your affection and support are very, very important to me. On more nights than you might imagine, you make the difference between me working and me…well, me not working.

Short Url: http://bit.ly/4JvM9D

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The grand-kiddos are here and as usual, they helped me put up the tree. Here’s a pic…

After the break is a short essay I wrote for my American Government Class on Corporate Welfare. The limitations on length did not allow me to fully explore the concepts as I would have liked. However, I find myself only really writing nowadays when I’m motivated by grades. Hopefully, now that I have this start I will more easily find the time to expand on the ideas contained within. I always appreciate suggested sources and helpful comments. Enjoy!

Corporations are firms or companies (private, publicly traded, for profit, and/or non-profit) that agree to be regulated by certain rules, corporate law, that regulates the relationships and interactions of corporate management, shareholders/owners, employees, creditors and the government. Companies agree to these rules because they provided limited liabilities to all actual persons who are a part of the corporation by creating an artificial “person hood” status for the corporation and limiting the liabilities to that entity. The government also uses its state power to protect, from competition through tariffs and regulation, and subsidize these entities. In return, the government is able to manipulate the economy through few points, they can regulate the significantly fewer large corporations easier than they could coordinate and regulate different stores on every corner, and they will be working with voluntary and cooperative participants who want the continued benefits of state power. Understanding “corporate welfare” is a bit more complex since no one wants to claim to support such measures but nearly all political parties and platforms do in some form or another. In fact, the entire concept of the “corporation” is a form of corporate welfare, or redistributing wealth or interfering in the market on behalf of companies or firms. Support for corporate welfare is never described as such but almost the entire political class does support it in its more overt forms or it’s more subtle indirect forms. Libertarians, on the other hand, oppose all forms of corporate welfare when they are not being negligent or inconsistent with their principles.

The left supports several types of corporate welfare. The recent “Kelo” case involving eminent domain gave private lands to corporate interests and was decided by liberal judges. Also, many of the regulations that are supposedly done to restrict corporate actions are supported by the corporations themselves because it makes it more difficult for new competitors to enter the market. Roderick T. Long in an essay written for the Cato Institute, “Corporations versus the Market” wrote that , “the ability of colossal firms to exploit economies of scale is also limited in a free market…unless the state enables them to socialize these costs by immunizing them from competition- e.g., by imposing fees, licensure requirements, capitalisation requirements, and other regulatory burdens that disproportionately impact newer, poorer entrants as opposed to richer, more established firms.” (1)

The right also supports several types of corporate welfare, but they may be more dangerous since they shroud their policies in the cloak of the free market. For example, they advocate tax breaks for certain businesses or industries but “when a firm is exempted from taxes to which its competitors are subject, it becomes the beneficiary of state coercion directed against others, and to that extent owes its success to government intervention rather than market forces.” (1) The right’s use of privatization is often of a similar nature. In free market terminology privatization would be the removal of government and its influence from an industry but the right often uses it to mean a transfer of monopoly status over an industry to some contracted firm or corporation. Thus the monopoly status is maintained and the governments involvement and influence is still present.

The right and left both justify the more overt types of corporate welfare that they end up supporting, such as TARP and the bailouts of the auto and financial industry, as necessary evils. However, necessary evil is a contradiction as if something is necessary than it must be good and not evil. Here we can apply one of Ayn Rand’s famous quotes “Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.” (2) In this case, either the bailouts were necessary and good, having a positive effect, while the principle that labeled them evil must be ill founded or the principle that makes such bailouts evil is correct and they were not in fact necessary. The contradiction should force us to check the two premises “necessary” and “evil” and see which one is wrong.

Libertarians, and the position I support, holds that all corporate welfare is wrong. The current “conflation” of corporatism and capitalism is especially dangerous since it rallies and multiplies the opponents of free markets who somehow see them tied to pro-corporate policies and also allows statist policies to be sold under the mantle of the free market. The current failures of “capitalism” and the “free market” are really only failures of the current system which is often labeled capitalism but is only one step away from socialism. In socialism, the state owns industry but in our current system, often labeled capitalism, the states of privatized profits and socialized costs in exchange for regulation and influencing willing participants and created corporatism which should not be confused with real capitalism or free markets.

1. http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/11/10/roderick-long/corporations-versus-the-market-or-whip-conflation-now/
2. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/ayn_rand.html/ The quote is also found in her novel, “Atlas Shrugged.”

Another good article I read while doing my research, but did not have room to include in my post was:
http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=22594/ An article in FrontPageMag.com

If the Twentieth Century proved anything, it is that the single greatest danger to human life are the thugs of the centralized political State, who extinguished more than 170 million souls during the bloodiest rampage in recorded history. By any rational standard, modern States are the last and greatest remaining predators – and that the danger has not abated with the demise of communism and fascism. All Western democracies currently face vast and accelerating escalations of State power and centralized control over economic and civic life. In almost all Western democracies, the State chooses:

• where children go to school, and how they will be educated
• the interest rate citizens can borrow at
• the value of currency
• how employees can be hired and fired
• how more than 50% of their citizens’ time and money are disposed of
• who a citizen’s doctor is
• what kinds of medical procedures can be received – and when
• when to go to war
• who can live in the country
• just to touch on a few.

Most of these amazing intrusions into personal liberty have occurred over the past 90 years, since the introduction of the income tax. They have been accepted by a population helpless to challenge the endless expansions of State power – and yet, even though most citizens have received endless pro-State propaganda in government schools, a growing rebellion is brewing. State predations are now so intrusive that they have effectively arrested the forward momentum of society, which now hangs before a fall. Children are poorly educated, young people are unable to get ahead, couples with children fall ever-further into debt, and the elderly are finding State medical systems collapsing under the weight of their growing needs – and State debts continue to grow.

Thus, these early years of the twenty-first century are the end of an era, a collapse of mythology comparable to the fall of fascism, communism, monarchy, or political Christianity. The idea that the State is capable of solving social problems is now viewed with great skepticism – which foretells a coming change. As soon as skepticism is applied to the State, the State falls, since it fails at everything except increasing its power, and so can only survive on propaganda, which relies on unquestioning faith.

Yet while most people are comfortable with the idea of reducing the size and power of the State, they become distinctly uncomfortable with the idea of getting rid of it completely. To use a medical metaphor, if the State is a cancer, they prefer medicating it into an unstable remission, rather than eliminating it completely.

This can never work. A central lesson of history is that States are parasites which always expand until they destroy their host population. Because the State uses violence to achieve its ends – and there is no rational end to the expansion of violence – States grow until they destroy civilized interaction through the corruption of money, contracts, honesty, family, and self-reliance. As such, the cancerous metaphor is not misplaced. People who believe that the State can somehow be contained have not accepted the fact that no State in history has ever been contained.

Even the rare reductions are merely temporary. The United States was founded on the principle of limited government; it took little more than a century for the State to break the bonds of the Constitution, implement the income tax, take control of the money supply and the educational system, and begin its catastrophic expansion. There is no example in history of a State being permanently reduced in size. All that happens during a tax or civil revolt is that the State retrenches, figures out what it did wrong, and plans its expansion again. Or provokes a war, which silences all but fringe dissenters.

Given these well-known historical facts, why do still people believe that such a deadly predator can be tamed? Surely it can only be because they consider a slow strangulation in the grip of an expanding State somehow better than the quick death of a society bereft of a State.

Why, then, do most people believe that a society will crumble without a coercive and monopolistic social agency at its core? There are a number of answers to this question, but generally they tend to revolve around three central points:

dispute resolution;
collective services; and,
pollution.
Dispute Resolution

The fact that people still cling to the belief that the State is required to resolve disputes is amazing, since modern courts are out of the reach of all but the most wealthy and patient, and are primarily used to shield the powerful from competition or criticism. In this writer’s experience, to take a dispute with a stockbroker to the court system would have cost more than a quarter of a million dollars and taken from five to ten years – however, a private mediator settled the matter within a few months for very little money. In the realm of marital dissolution, private mediators are commonplace. Unions use grievance processes, and a plethora of other specialists in dispute resolution have sprung up to fill in the void left by a ridiculously lengthy, expensive and incompetent State court system.

Thus the belief that the State is required for dispute resolution is obviously false, since the court apparatus is unavailable to the vast majority of the population, who resolve their disputes either privately or through agreed-upon mediators.

How can the free market deal with the problem of dispute resolution? Outside the realm of organized crime, very few people are comfortable with armed confrontations, and so generally prefer to delegate that task to others. Let’s assume that people’s need for such representatives produces Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs), which promise to resolve disputes on their behalf.

Thus, if Stan is hired by Bob, they both sign a document specifying which DRO they both accept as an authority in dispute resolution. If they disagree about something, and are unable to resolve it between themselves, they submit their case to the DRO, and agree to abide by that DRO’s decision.

So far so good. However, what if Stan decides he doesn’t want to abide by the DRO’s decision? Well, several options arise.

First of all, when Stan signed the DRO agreement, it is likely that he would have agreed to property confiscation if he did not abide by the DRO’s decision. Thus the DRO would be entirely within its right to go and remove property from Stan – by force if necessary – to pay for his side of the dispute.

It is at this point that people generally throw up their arms and dismiss the idea of DROs by claiming that society would descend into civil war within a few days.

Everyone, of course, realizes that civil war is a rather bad situation, and so it seems likely that the DROs would consider alternatives to armed combat.

What other options could be pursued? To take a current example, small debts which are not worth pursuing legally are still regularly paid off – and why? Because a group of companies produce credit ratings on individuals, and the inconvenience of a lowered credit rating is usually greater than the inconvenience of paying off a small debt. Thus, in the absence of any recourse to force, small debts are usually settled. This is one example of how desired behaviour can be elicited without pulling out a gun or kicking in a door.

Picture for a moment the infinite complexity of modern economic life. Most individuals bind themselves to dozens of contracts, from car loans and mortgages to cell phone contracts, gym membership, condo agreements and so on. To flourish in a free market, a man must honour his contracts. A reputation for honest dealing is the foundation of a successful economic life. Now, few DROs will want to represent a man who regularly breaks contracts, or associates with difficult and litigious people. (For instance, this writer once refrained from entering into a business partnership because the potential partner revealed that he had sued two previous partners.)

Thus if Stan refuses to abide by his DRO’s ruling, the DRO has to barely lift a finger to punish him. All the DRO has to do is report Stan’s non-compliance to the local contract-rating company, who will enter his name into a database of contract violators. Stan’s DRO will also probably drop him, or raise his rates considerably.

And so, from an economic standpoint, Stan has just shot himself in the foot. He is now universally known as a man who rejects legitimate DRO rulings that he agreed to accept in advance. What happens when he goes for his next job? What if he decides to eschew employment and start his own company, what happens when he applies for his first lease? Or tries to hire his first employee? Or rent a car, or buy an airline ticket? Or enter into a contract with his first customer? No, in almost every situation, Stan would be far better off to abide by the decision of the DRO. Whatever he has to pay, it is far cheaper than facing the barriers of existing without access to a DRO, or with a record of rejecting a legitimate ruling.

But let’s push the theory to the max, to see if it holds. To examine a worst-case scenario, imagine that Stan’s employer is an evil man who bribes the DRO to rule in his favour, and the DRO imposes an unconscionable fine – say, one million dollars – on Stan.

First of all, this is such an obvious problem that DROs, to get any business at all, would have to deal with this danger up front. An appeal process to a different DRO would have to be part of the contract. DROs would also rigorously vet their own employees for any unexplained income. And, of course, any DRO mediator who corrupted the process would receive perhaps the lowest contract rating on the planet, lose his job, and be liable for damages. He would lose everything, and be an economic pariah.

However, to go to the extreme, perhaps the worst has occurred and Stan has been unjustly fined a million dollars due to DRO corruption. Well, he has three alternatives. He can choose not to pay the fine, drop off the DRO map, and work for cash without contracts. Become part of the grey market, in other words. A perfectly respectable choice, if he has been treated unjustly.

However, if Stan is an intelligent and even vaguely entrepreneurial man, he will see the corruption of the DRO as a prime opportunity to start his own, competing DRO, and will write into its base contract clauses to ensure that what happened to him will never happen to anyone who signs on with his new DRO.

Stan’s third option is to appeal to the contract rating agency. Contract rating agencies need to be as accurate as possible, since they are attempting to assess real risk. If they believe that the DRO ruled unjustly against Stan, they will lower that DRO’s contract rating and restore Stan’s.

Thus it is inconceivable that violence would be required to enforce all but the most extreme contract violations, since all parties gain the most long-term value by acting honestly. This resolves the problem of instant descent into civil war.

Two other problems exist, however, which must be resolved before the DRO theory starts to becomes truly tenable.

The first is the challenge of reciprocity, or geography. If Bob has a contract with Jeff, and Jeff moves to a new location not covered by their mutual DRO, what happens? Again, this is such an obvious problem that it would be solved by any competent DRO. People who travel prefer cell phones with the greatest geographical coverage, and so cell phone companies have developed reciprocal agreements for charging competitors. Just as a person’s credit rating is available anywhere in the world, so their contract rating will also be available, and so there will be no place to hide from a broken contract save by going ‘off the grid’ completely, which would be economically crippling.

The second problem is the fear that a particular DRO will grow in size and stature to the point where it takes on all the features and properties of a new State.

This is a superstitious fear, because there is no historical example of a private company replacing a political State. While it is true that companies regularly use State coercion to enforce trading restrictions, high tariffs, cartels and other mercantilist tricks, surely this reinforces the danger of the State, not the inevitability of companies growing into States. All States destroy societies. No company has ever destroyed a society without the aid of the State. Thus the fear that a private company can somehow grow into a State is utterly unfounded in fact, experience, logic and history.

If society becomes frightened of a particular DRO, then it can simply stop doing business with it, which will cause it to collapse. If that DRO, as it collapses, somehow transforms itself from a group of secretaries, statisticians, accountants and contract lawyers into a ruthless domestic militia and successfully takes over society – and how unlikely is that! – then such a State will then be imposed on the general population. However, there are two problems even with this most unlikely scare scenario. First of all, if any DRO can take over society and impose itself as a new State, why only a DRO? Why not the Rotary Club? Why not a union? Why not the Mafia? The YMCA? The SPCA? Is society to then ban all groups with more than a hundred members? Clearly that is not a feasible solution, and so society must live with the risk of a brutal coup by ninja accountants as much as from any other group.

And, in the final analysis, if society is so terrified of a single group seizing a monopoly of political power, what does that say about the existing States? They have a monopoly of political power. If a DRO should never achieve this kind of control, why should existing States continue to wield theirs?

Collective Services

Roads, sewage, water and electricity and so on are also cited as reasons why a State must exist. How roads could be privately paid for remains such an impenetrable mystery that most people are willing to support the State – and so ensure the eventual and utter destruction of civil society – rather than cede that this problem just might solvable. There are many ways to pay for roads, such as electronic or cash tolls, GPS charges, roads maintained by the businesses they lead to, communal organizations and so on. And if none of those work? Why, then personal flying machines will hit the market!

The problem that a water company might build plumbing to a community, and then charge exorbitant fees for supplying it, is equally easy to counter. A truck could deliver bottled water, or the community could invest in a water tower, a competing company could build alternate pipes and so on. None of these problems touch the central rationale for a State. They are ex post facto justifications made to avoid the need for critical examination or, heaven forbid, political action. The argument that voluntary free-market monopolies are bad – and that the only way to combat them is to impose compulsory monopolies – is obviously foolish. If voluntary monopolies are bad, then how can coercive monopolies be better?

Due to countless examples of free market solutions to the problem of ‘carrier costs’, this argument no longer holds the kind of water it used to, so it must be elsewhere that people must turn to justify the continued existence of the State.

Pollution

This is perhaps the greatest problem faced by free-market theorists. It’s worth spending a little time on outlining the worst possible scenario, and see how a voluntary system could solve it. However, it’s important to first dispel the notion that the State currently deals effectively with pollution. Firstly, the most polluted resources on the planet are State-owned, because State personnel do not personally profit from retaining the value of State property (witness the destruction of the Canadian cod industry through blatant vote-buying). Secondly, the distribution of mineral, lumber and drilling rights is directly skewed towards bribery and corruption, because States rarely sell the land, but rather just the resource rights. A lumber company cannot buy woodlands from the State, just the right to harvest trees. Thus the State gets a renewable source of income, and can further coerce lumber companies by enforcing re-seeding. This, of course, tends to promote bribery, corruption and the creation of ‘fly-by-night’ lumber companies which strip the land bare, but vanish when it comes time to re-seed. Auctioning State land to a private market easily solves this problem, because a company which re-seeded would reap the greatest long-term profits from woodland, and so would be able to bid the most for the land.

Also, it should be remembered that, in the realm of air pollution, governments created the problem in the first place. In 19th century England, when industrial smokestacks began belching fumes into the orchards of apple farmers, the farmers took the factory-owners to court, citing the common-law tradition of restitution for property damage. Naturally, the capitalists had gotten to the State courts first, and had more money to bribe with, employed more voting workers, and contributed more tax revenue than the farmers – and so the farmers’ cases were thrown out of court. The judge argued that the ‘common good’ of the factories took precedence over the ‘private need’ of the farmers. The free market did not fail to solve the problem of air pollution – it was forcibly prevented from doing so through State corruption.

The State, then, is no friend of the environment – but how would the free market handle it? One egregious example often cited is a group of houses downwind from a new factory which works day and night to coat them in soot.

When a man buys a new house, isn’t it important to him to ensure that it won’t be subjected with someone else’s pollution? People’s desire for a clean and safe environment is so strong that it’s a clear invitation for enterprising capitalists to sweat bullets figuring out how to provide it.

Fortunately, since we have already talked about DROs and their role in a free market, the problem of air pollution can be solved quite easily.

If the aforementioned group of homeowners is afraid of pollution, the first thing they will do is buy pollution insurance, which is a natural response to a situation where costs cannot be predicted but consequences are dire. Let’s say that a homeowner named Achmed buys pollution insurance which pays him two million dollars if the air around or in his house becomes polluted in some predefined manner. In other words, as long as Achmed’s air remains clean, the insurance company makes money.

One day, a plot of land upwind of Achmed’s house comes up for sale. Naturally, his insurance company would be very interested in this, and would monitor the sale. If the purchaser is some private school, all is well (assuming Achmed has not bought an excess of noise pollution insurance!). If, however, the insurance company discovers that Sally’s House of Polluting Paint Production is interested in purchasing the plot of land, then it will likely spring into action, taking one of the following actions:

buying the land itself, then selling it to a non-polluting buyer;
getting assurances from Sally that her company will not pollute;
paying Sally to enter into a non-polluting contract.
If, however, someone at the insurance company is asleep at the wheel, and Sally buys the land and puts up her polluting factory, what happens then?

Well, then the insurance company is on the hook for $2M to Achmed (assuming for the moment that only Achmed bought pollution insurance). Thus, it can afford to pay Sally up to $2M to reduce her pollution and still be cash-positive. This payment could take many forms, from the installation of pollution-control equipment to a buy-out to a subsidy for under-production and so on.

If the $2M is not enough to solve the problem, then the insurance company pays Achmed the $2M and he goes and buys a new house in an unpolluted neighbourhood. However, this scenario is highly unlikely, since the insurance company would be unlikely to insure only one single person in a neighbourhood against air pollution – and a single person probably could not afford it!

So, that is the view from Achmed’s air-pollution insurance company. What about the view from Sally’s House of Polluting Paint Production? She, also, must be covered by a DRO in order to buy land, borrow money and hire employees. How does that DRO view her tendency to pollute?

Pollution brings damage claims against Sally, because pollution is by definition damage to persons or property. Thus Sally’s DRO would take a dim view of her polluting activities, since it would be on the hook for any property damage her factory causes. In fact, it would be most unlikely that Sally’s DRO would insure her against damages unless she were able to prove that she would be able to operate her factory without harming the property of those around her. And without access to a DRO, of course, she would be hard-pressed to start her factory, borrow money, hire employees etc.

It’s important to remember that DROs, much like cell phone companies and Internet providers, only prosper if they cooperate. Sally’s DRO only makes money if Sally does not pollute. Achmed’s insurer also only makes money if Sally does not pollute. Thus the two companies share a common goal, which fosters cooperation.

Finally, even if Achmed is not insured against air pollution, he can use his and/or Sally’s DRO to gain restitution for the damage her pollution is causing to his property. Both Sally and Achmed’s DROs would have reciprocity agreements, since Achmed wants to be protected against Sally’s actions, and Sally wants to be protected against Achmed’s actions. Because of this desire for mutual protection, they would choose DROs which had the widest reciprocity agreements.

Thus, in a truly free market, there are many levels and agencies actively working against pollution. Achmed’s insurer will be actively scanning the surroundings looking for polluters it can forestall. Sally will be unable to build her paint factory without proving that she will not pollute. Mutual or independent DROs will resolve any disputes regarding property damage caused by Sally’s pollution.

There are other benefits as well, which are almost unsolvable in the current system. Imagine that Sally’s smokestacks are so high that her air pollution sails over Achmed’s house and lands on Reginald’s house, a hundred miles away. Reginald then complains to his DRO that his property is being damaged. His DRO will examine the air contents and wind currents, then trace the pollution back to its source and resolve the dispute with Sally’s DRO. If the air pollution is particularly complicated, then Reginald’s DRO will place non-volatile compounds into Sally’s smokestacks and follow them to where they land. This can be used in a situation where a number of different factories may be contributing pollutants.

The problem of inter-country air pollution may seem to be a sticky one, but it’s easily solvable. Obviously, a Canadian living along the Canada/US border, for instance, will not choose a DRO which refuses to cover air pollution emanating from the US. Thus the DRO will have to have reciprocity agreements with the DROs across the border. If the US DROs refuse to have reciprocity agreements with the Canadian DROs – inconceivable, since the pollution can go both ways – then the Canadian DRO will simply start a US branch and compete.

The difference is that international DROs actually profit from cooperation, in a way that governments do not. For instance, a State government on the Canada/US border has little motivation to impose pollution costs on local factories, as long as the pollution generally goes north. For DROs, quite the opposite would be true.

Finally, one other advantage to DRO’s can be termed the ‘Scrabble-Challenge Benefit’. In Scrabble, an accuser loses his turn if he challenges another player’s word and the challenge fails. Given the costs of resolving disputes, DROs would be very careful to ensure that those bringing false accusations would be punished through their own premiums, their contract ratings and by also assuming the entire cost of the dispute. This would greatly reduce the number of frivolous lawsuits, to the great benefit of all.

The idea that society can only survive in the absence of a centralized State is the greatest lesson that the grisly years of the Twentieth Century can teach us. Our choice is not between the free market and the State, but between life and death. Whatever the risks involved in dissolving the central State, they are far less than the certain destruction which will result from its inevitable escalation. Like a cancer patient facing certain demise, we must open our minds reach for whatever medicine shows the most promise, and not wait until it is too late.

You can find out more about The Continental Congress 2009 at http://www.cc2009.us http://www.wethepeoplefoundation.org and http://www.givemeliberty.org

“A Technologist, Like Benjamin Franklin”

Before I left for Continental Congress, so much had already happened. In trying to recall that and give a reasonably brief account of that time, I remember a question that Mr. Kostic had asked quite a few days into the event on one of those late, late nights. He actually addressed it to Jeremy Doucet of Rhode Island by saying something to the effect of “you’re not one of those ‘everything happens for a reason’ people, are you?” Jeremy shifted his feet around in the hotel hallway outside of my room. I waited to give Mr. Doucet a few seconds to answer and it became clear that he had trouble floating a reply. Into the silence of that moment, my mind began to pour. Too much had happened, so much had yet to happen, and signs were clear from the moment I first contacted our state coordinator about CC2009 that I could not have been anywhere else for those twelve days. My head cocked to the side and I checked Jeremy for the response that was his if he would take it. I looked back at Mr. Kostic and I said in the trance-like voice I had known from so long ago as one who found rising to such challenges a way to expose a part of myself I couldn’t help but like, “I am.”

In Ohio, we were blessed with a dedicated and utterly likeable state coordinator. When I first was told about CC2009, I had seen her name on the state page and noticed that her listed address was in the city where I lived. I first offered help and then I came to realize just how busy she, like many others I am sure, had to have been back when the leaves first started to change colors and fall from the trees. I noticed a few days after that initial exchange of hurried emails that one could, in fact, nominate themselves. I had some reservations about that idea but the first candidate forum was a quick fifteen minute drive from my house. If nothing else, I thought, it would certainly be a learning experience. My life had been hectic for the last few years, having gone through a lengthy and bitter divorce. My activism was scant having attended a few rallies, my contacts were few although I boasted a solid politically-oriented presence on a few social networking sites, and my particular study of the Constitution was good among the general public but would be a bit less so in the crowd I wanted to be a part of. I wrote my “stump speech” about an hour before I gave it. Being one of those “everything happens for a reason” people, I should have known it would have more to do with my experience in St. Charles than I could have possibly imagined at the time.

My primary sell was two-fold; I had a good understanding of legal language and had written a few “bills” based on transitioning from large federal programs to state administration and I did so using primarily input from those I disagreed with. Our forum just happened to coincide with the G20 protests in Pittsburgh so I told a crowd of mostly self-identified tea-partiers and “912ers” that we needed to reach out to the people in Pittsburgh because we were, in essence, protesting the same thing in different ways. I believe cooperation in methods and information would be helpful to those who approach liberty from any end of the political spectrum. The other thing I emphasized was that I had project management experience and had turned around a computing help desk with an abysmal record by focusing on the empowerment of base-level employees and engaging customers. Additionally, I said, I brought the perspective of a technologist, like Benjamin Franklin, as many of our founders brought unique abilities and ideas to the first Continental Congress and those meetings that came after. If you talked to me for any length of time in St. Charles, I probably told you that story and said something like “I should have known that God would make me live up to a promise like that.”

A few conference calls and meetings later, I was Ohio’s second delegate largely on the strength of mail-in ballots which came from people I had never met face-to-face. I thank my friends on the internet in its various incarnations for entrusting me with that purpose and I hope I was able to deliver. On the morning of Wednesday, November the 11^th, I packed my bags along with two laptop computers, my desktop computer, and two extra monitors tightly into my convertible and drove the six hours to St. Charles.

“I came here to complain about taxes.”

I didn’t utter those words until the Saturday before we left but it’s certainly the best way to describe why I came to the Continental Congress. The other goal I had was to take full advantage of the scant time on the original agenda for what were described as “civic actions.” I arrived and quickly found Jim Davis, the lead delegate from Ohio. We talked about Ohio’s third delegate, Trisha Connell, who was en route and running a bit behind. While I was standing in line to register, we complained that the original 2PM deadline to be ready for the opening session was coming too quickly and it was moved to 3. I was in my suit and ready although I never managed to fully unpack and that stayed true for all twelve days. In truth, had Trisha arrived when we expected her to, I wouldn’t have pushed so hard for the first motion that passed at the Congress – to amend the prewritten rules to allow laptops during the proceedings. My plan was that when Trisha figured out where she was, I could look up directions and drive out to meet her. I lobbied the idea a bit at dinner and was first in line with the motion when the session resumed. It passed. It also changed CC2009, for better or worse. I had said in online discussions with delegates before the Congress that the people of Ohio couldn’t care less if I attached my name to something that came out of the event. I now jokingly refer to that motion as the “Dickerhoof Amendment to the Rules.” Trisha finally showed up the next morning but didn’t last the day.

I’m not going to spend much time talking about what a fiasco the first couple of days were. That subject will probably be covered in such detail as to make the reader engage in wonder at how anything was accomplished. Instead, I’ll just say that my first motion which was somewhat hotly contested at the time, ended up changing the Congress over those twelve days. When speaking about it with Charles Zoeller who ended up being the steady balance to my manic work in the Secretary’s chair, he had mixed feelings. I stated more or less and I would hope we came to some agreement on the idea that laptops should have either remained banned or been something of a requirement. People can find their own distraction in any environment but the disconnect of one generation from the next was at least initially amplified by the use of electronics. I recalled that Benjamin Franklin invented the bifocals to allow those with eye conditions to take part in reading and shaping the founding documents of this country. Would Franklin have remained quiet had bifocals been banned at that first Continental Congress? In remarking that there could not be one set of rules for the front table, decorated on that first day with a row of laptops, and the delegates who had already begun testing their ability to hide their devices, I was fulfilling the promise I had made to bring that technologist’s perspective. Besides, I had thought, there was no reason to use paper to print out the volumes of information I had on my machines. Love it or hate it, technology increased the efficiency and improved the weight of product that CC2009 passes on to America. It landed me on the stage a few days later and cost me the opportunity to complain too much about taxes.

The Super-Secret Admin Committee

After lunch on the second day, Richard Fry of Kansas informed me during a quick discussion on the impasses that were facing the delegates that he had been appointed the Chairman of the Administrative Processing Committee. He asked if I was interested and I said that I was and that the job before us reminded me quite a bit of the one I was paid for back home. I described it as “herding cats.” The idea was that a room full of liberty-minded people was a great thing for learning but that desire to be heard wasn’t necessarily a recipe for doing. We ducked out of the afternoon session and found a spot by the pool to begin talking about what could be done to make sure the Continental Congress would not remain in the same vicious stall that had marked the first three sessions and was intensifying as we met. I tried to emphasize that part of the problem was that pre-packaged instructions were being handed to delegates after lecture-style presentations with the hopes that they would stamp them and pass them on. I didn’t see that as a possibility. The other members of the committee and I tried to hash out a few ideas for speeding things up. My input was that the panic cost time, that the workload should be divided, and using a committee approach to separate instructions would allow us to use time between sessions by breaking the connection between presentation, discussion, and votes. “Storm to norm” is a pretty self-explanatory idea but Information Technology managers have it beaten thoroughly into our heads. As for the others, I will let them tell their own story.

After our meeting had gone on for quite a while, one of the delegates came to the meeting and sat down with us for a few minutes. I do not remember his name but he brought a very important message with him: things were deteriorating in the session and we were, in his estimation, the last best hope for fixing it. With that pronouncement, the members of the committee dedicated ourselves to producing the right recommendations, deadlines be damned, and we would stay up all night if we had to. All of us did. We had reached our own impasse in the committee when I realized that it was time to employ another lesson I had already learned in my life; that thinking visually does more to break down disagreements than hours of debate. I told the group I would return with a whiteboard and I left for the office. I asked Todd McGreevy for one of the two that was available in the office and for every dry-erase marker he had. I returned to the committee, illustrated my idea and then things just clicked. Jeff Lewis illustrated one of the most important lessons I have ever learned about this country simply by putting it on that board. His idea was that each committee report with separate instructions for the federal government, the states, and the people. He drew “WTP” on top, states under it, and congress under that. It immediately occurred to me that it was the first time I had seen the chain of command under the Constitution correctly described.

We had to do a bit of fighting to get our findings in front of President Badnarik and Vice-President Gonzales. It was worth it, in the long run. I didn’t stick around for our presentation but I had faith in Richard and the Jeffs (Lewis and Williams) to deliver it well and they did. Schaeffer Cox and I went on to a meeting of the People’s Action Caucus but awoke to the first session the next day to find our committee’s plan in action. We scrapped the entire idea of the agenda schedule outside of scheduled speakers, meals, and special events. I believe that if not for the work of that committee and the abundant use of technology at the Continental Congress, we may have returned a few instructions for Congress or the states and only because the dreaded “rubber stamp” would have fallen. A few days after that initial meeting, a woman I had befriended referred to the Committee on Administrative Processing as “they” and it was widely believed that we were secretively altering the course in St. Charles. I replied that “I am they” and that we had committed our plans so that civic actions, the goal we shared, wasn’t pushed to the side in a mad dash at the end of the Congress because we would have fallen so desperately behind the original agenda. I am grateful for the members of that committee and the work we did. Yes, we cost you all a great deal of sleep but fatigue in the defense of this nation is a badge of honor I wore from that day on. Where did I go from the committee meeting? I went to the second meeting of the People’s Action Caucus, of course.

Synergy

Many of us who gathered in St. Charles had the same fear; that we were intended as a rubber stamp on Bob Schulz’s agenda. Let me make it quite clear that I don’t blame Bob for that even if it was his explicit purpose from day one. The original event was supposed to be much longer than twelve days and the “pre-packaged” feel of the agenda we were given prior to arrival had more to do with expediency than ulterior motives. For reasons discussed in connection with the Admin Committee, it just wasn’t going to work. Besides, as I often reminded myself, it was a Continental “Congress” and not a “Conference.” At the end of a session on the first day, a speech by Dan Gonzales seemed to resonate with a number of us. We gathered around him when the session ended and a group of people who were individually terrible at remembering names tried to address each other. By foresight, perhaps, Schaeffer Cox of Alaska was born to parents who gave him a name that was easily distinguished from average American male tags and not so odd as to be hard to recall in a pinch. I engaged him in conversation. Those of who were primarily interested in things that citizens could do to combat the monster that government could become would form an unofficial sort of committee. Schaeffer took it from there. We didn’t have the name until much later that night after our first meeting, a trip to an empty ballroom, and a return to the hotel bar. We had a name, a mission statement, rules, and most importantly a purpose.

At the first meeting of the People’s Action Caucus, we got together and started feeling each other out. Most every one of the twenty-plus people that attended that first meeting were much better friends before we left St. Charles and our unity from the beginning fueled the belief that we could accomplish something amazing. We split off into two groups to discuss the agenda items for the next day and come up with resolutions for each. Schaeffer ran the meeting with order and the “salty cracker” approach he had described earlier on the floor. Both groups came up with something. Both groups had the mutual support of the other when they would bring their motions to the floor. We had strategy, justifications, and each other. The next day, we brought a statement of purpose and a resolution concerning “hard/honest money” to the floor. Both passed quickly and with little discussion of the language we had worked diligently to refine for that reason. As Jeff Williams said, we needed to start with a small victory. When I followed him to call the question and vote the statement through, I said only the Congress needed one. There was applause, there were congratulations, and at last we had a sense of what our contribution would be. Let it be stated “for the record” that we were identified as the young and “mavericks.” What we had really done was to take the knowledge and practice of our “wiser” members and translated it into the energy of the “hopeful.” We were proud and understandably so but should have recognized that pride rarely comes without a price.

A Visit from Bob Schulz

The People’s Action Caucus got back together that night. The first order of business was to pat ourselves on the back. We had done what everyone else at the Congress seemed incapable of doing; we brought our crafted our own resolutions carefully, we guaranteed each other support, we brought the motions to the floor, and then we got them passed. We had members that were sitting in on some of the committees that were formed that day and so thirteen of us met to discuss strategy, the next step, and what are “end game” was. I will admit that I used the word “hijack” quite a bit and it was a poor choice. Nonetheless, we had acknowledged our power so discussing what to do with it made sense. We talked and “brainstormed.” We discussed the agenda items for the next day. We carried on for about an hour when my state coordinator called to let me know our alternate, Steve McMasters, was on his way to replace Trisha who had checked out of the hotel that morning. I informed the group that Steve would make a great addition to the caucus. Things were going so well that it didn’t seem to register that Bob Schulz, the man whose dream the Continental Congress had been for so long came into the room to listen to our discussion. In my mind, pride was poison and it was telling me that Bob’s agenda simply didn’t matter anymore. I thought that CC2009 was our show to run for the remaining ten days. Bob was a great man and I knew this from having read extensively about him before taking two weeks’ vacation and spending all of my food money on gas to get to St. Charles. Selfishly, I had thought that it was now Bob’s turn to get on board with our agenda.

Judith Whitmore joined him not long after. I know this is something of a tease but it’s not my place to reveal what was said during that meeting. I heard some of the bravest statements in that room that I will likely ever hear. My heart goes out to each and every person who sat through the entire affair not the least of which were Bob and Judith. It was in that meeting that I recognized that I shared the desperation of being a young father and faced with the prospect of my son living under the tyranny of our supposedly “servant government,” I was too quick to forget what others had already sacrificed. For my own part, I will share what I remember most vividly saying to Bob and Judith who approached us first as if visitors in their own home. I recall as if I said it today that the words did not spend any more time in my head than it took to reach my tongue. I told Bob I had studied him exhaustively, that I found him to be a patriot of unquestionable character and deed, and that my purpose at CC2009 was to take his incredible knowledge and distribute it so that some of the hardships that he endured could be avoided by millions of Americans coming together to retake our country. Bob did something I could not have possibly expected when faced with such unbridled arrogance out of the mouth of a man who has still not contributed 1/1000 of what he has to the cause of liberty: he listened. I didn’t meet formally with the PAC after that night but we spread out and took our resolve in new directions. Many of us started to really listen and that is another turning point that the Continental Congress can count among its historic course.

The Secretary Knows Everything

My mother had often reminded me that secretaries often know more about how any company or organization works than anyone else in it and I would generally reply to her that such a statement was expected from those who did much but were repaid little. I am coming to realize at a much deeper level than I could have even a few years ago that my mother is always right. Just like the understandable concerns about the secrecy of the Admin Committee, I feel I need to explain how I came to become the Secretary so that the record will defend me when I cannot afford the time. On third day of CC2009, Jeremy Doucet approached me after I took a prolonged morning nap and managed to miss the first session. He informed me that he was now the “clerk” and was assisting the secretary who was elected as a non-delegate during the first session. He wanted to know if I would help him with computer issues as sort of a “deputy clerk.” I believe that God puts me where he needs me to be and the move just made sense. Despite the earlier adoption of amended rules that allowed laptops, the technology in the room was not being utilized to do much besides recording minutes and collecting finished documents after some editing on the floor. When I first sat on the stage, I turned to an online collaboration tool that had been made available to delegates but to that point had been largely used so that certain people could antagonize others on the internet in addition to in the hallways. I began to shape it so that it could display data on committees and that it was intuitive for distributing documents or getting them to the secretary and clerks to be printed, distributed, and edited. That was most of what I did on the first day.

 A little later, the secretary informed Jeremy and I that she was overwhelmed. She didn’t know what to expect but what was being asked of her was clearly more than she had signed on for. She “asked’ by telling us that she would like to leave and probably wouldn’t return if we would be willing to take over her duties. We agreed. That night, Jeremy and I discussed which of us might be Secretary and who would then be the Vice-Secretary. After we both figured out that neither of us wanted to be prime position, we decided that Co-Secretaries sounded better and fit with the principles of consensus and self-governance. The next morning, we started taking over every aspect of that job we were capable of. It seemed a poke in the eye that we had been “nominated” later and unanimously elected to the position that the parliamentarian had asked Charles Zoeller, a delegate from Kentucky, to take minutes as the acting secretary. As we came together, though, Charles was invaluable. His taking minutes freed us up to collect reports, get them printed, and distribute them so that the body had a reasonable, if not optimal, amount of time to read them. When Jeremy began following a different path toward the end of the Congress, Charles and I began to work in sync quite naturally. I had suggested that I could run two monitors more efficiently than most people could run one and that duty became mine. In terms of paper organization, I was a mess and Charles had himself together quite nicely. We later certified the reports, motions, amendments, and findings of the Continental Congress with surprising ease because my digital copies matched his paper records with few exceptions. Again, God had a way of making me live up to that Franklin comparison. I thank God for that opportunity.

I could write an entire book about what I learned from this experience, the power of the Secretary in a meeting such as CC2009, and the secrets that people may or may not wish to be aired. Certainly, I am again a tease. Most of what I learned I put on display in some form or another. If you saw me working, keep in mind you saw about one-fifth of what I was doing. Manipulating the screen was one thing but I was working behind the scenes to get feedback on what to fix next. I fix things for a living and I’ve found that simply asking people what they want or consider important is more valuable than spending my time guessing. I also learned that people can come together much more easily off-camera and face-to-face so, when I knew different groups or people were working on similar projects, I let them know to get together. I learned that the best way to be heard and really listened to was to let everyone else have their say, first. My speeches to the body became mostly procedural after I took the Secretary’s chair; urging people to focus first on their common ground, reminding CC2009 that the clock was ticking, or taking time to read a message called “fortune cookie” that was as true when I read it as it was weeks earlier when I had written it. When I finally spoke to advocate a position, the adoption of the preamble sub-committee’s work as read by Jeff Williams, the body came together. As for secrets, well, a secretary doesn’t reveal those as trust remains my most valuable currency.

The Evolution of a Revolution

I am eternally grateful to all those who stuck out those historic twelve days. To a great degree, what the Continental Congress achieves has much more to do with what happens next. Another point I had made in my candidate’s speech was that I wanted to find ways to reach out to different groups who might think we’re opposed to their efforts. I wrote a blog about how the real enemies of liberty use false divisions to keep Americans focused on guarding against each other while the thieves sneak in the back door to rob us of our treasure. Similarly, those divisions exist within Continental Congress and the false “left-right” paradigm we’ve all been fed for years. That lie is told with the help of distractions and inefficiencies that run through our communication and I believe at my core that things happen for a reason and I was meant to occupy the Secretary’s chair so that much work could be done in twelve days. Without that bit of history, perhaps we would not have enough material to win over some on the traditional “right” who would take offense to our condemnation of the Patriot Act and abuses of the War Powers clause. Perhaps we would have pushed to the side those two efforts and others that help us reach out to the traditional left who are willing to listen now that the blunt force of overreaching central government is revealed. I shudder to think that sixty or eighty percent of what we accomplished would have been a generous estimate of our abilities without freeing up the channels of information by utilizing our tools and by my being held to the promises I told Ohioans. My primary goal was to bring the collaborative approach to education and knowledge-sharing that I had developed in working for the state to a community of patriots. It became my slogan, of sorts, but I will reiterate it here for the record: I would measure the success of CC2009 by the idea that I wanted to leave St. Charles with ten times more work than I came with. That as the objective, I can gladly report that this is initially, at least, a smashing success. We have a public to win over and we have a good number of tools to do it with.

I had told others on the first few days of the Congress that it was my intention to write a book about the proceedings and that I would entitle it “the evolution of a revolution.” I thank Mr. Kostic for taking that task upon himself. I thank Bob Schulz for gathering us, Michael Badnarik for giving up the chance to speak eloquently more often for the mantle of the Presidency. I thank Dan Gonzales for using the position of the Vice-President to push willingly toward the goal of a finished product. I thank the PAC for making me feel welcome. I thank every delegate who stuck it out for being a part of this. I thank the Technology Sub-Committee for standing behind me. I thank the people of Ohio for sending me. To the God-fearing people who read this, let us thank God for such work as this. For those who do not know God, I thank God you’re on our side. Yes, I’m one of those “everything happens for a reason people” and I wouldn’t have changed a thing about those twelve days.

Be Advised: This is a hypothetical post. Obviously, there are bigger (literally bigger. Have you seen Trey? He’s huge.) fish to fry and we should keep our eyes on the race at hand. Doesn’t mean I can’t have a little fun!!!

It’s the year 2018, and as we’re all shocked that we got passed the hurdle that was the Mayan Calender, here we are anyway. We fly around in our cars and levitate with our Jet Packs and Al Gore has going clinically insane because he can’t understand why half the earth hasn’t caught fire yet. But, it’s been politics as usual in Washington. Deficits have been rising, wars are being ramped up and the economy still is in dyer need of help. The last two Presidents have done nothing to help the situations and the candidates we’ve brilliantly lined up for the upcoming 2020 elections look like, if possible, even worse options than what we’ve had. However, the good people of Kentucky have a different idea.

Rand Paul was elected to the US Senate way back in 2010. He seems more honest and more genuine than any politician anyone has ever met–because he is. His father Ron Paul, as Presidential Candidate, came off as a little different and wasn’t exactly a candidate people could warm to. Don’t get me wrong– when you actually sat down in listened to what he was saying, he made real sense. The problem was, most people didn’t make it that far.

Yet Ron’s offspring, Rand, is different. He’s an excellent speaker and captures audiences with his calm demeanor and way of explaining his ideas. He has an unique ability to reel in a base of libertarian minded independents and conservative republicans alike, which makes his especially dangerous. I expect, with the problems in the economy have only gotten worse during Rand’s tenure in the Senate despite his strong efforts to fix it, that the country will be in a state of panic. Candidates that represent the “status quo” will no longer be acceptable and citizens are going to look for a real, non-politician to stand up and say “What can I do to help fix this country?” It just so happens that’s exactly the platform Rand Paul is running on.

Rand is an attractive candidate and one with a real ability to win. His non-partisan approach makes his base very wide, but his real world solutions makes it deep. He’s able to dip into Republicans, Democrats and Libertarians alike and captivate them with his exceptional ability on the stump. He’s also willing to work harder than anyone to do what it takes to win. He doesn’t play attack politics, but knows when to call his opponents out. He has more experience (6 years in the Senate) than President Obama did when elected and is still a very youthful, energetic guy. He’s a nightmare for other candidates.

When you really sit down and think about it, it makes sense. When you listen to this dark-horse Senate candidate from Kentucky, does he not make more sense and provide more ideas than former Presidential Candidates, czars, Secretaries of whatever and even President Obama? I honestly think when 2018 rolls around, and liberal, out-of-control spending still hasn’t fixed this country (for the second time in a century), America will look to a true conservative not wanting to play politics, but get things done.

Am I crazy, or does the eight ball not seem to be pointing to a serious run–and I don’t mean a campaign with almost no chance of winning, like his fathers. I mean I think he can compete. And if President Obama’s magic czar doesn’t fix the economy and the Republicans don’t do it either, there going to turn to maybe the only level headed, conservative in the Senate–Rand Paul.