Happy Halloween! — no costumes in school, please.

Lots of people complain about their school administrators forbidding children from wearing costumes to school. Some children are permitted to wear costumes with strict limitations on themes or fabrication. For instance, they can only wear costumes that they made at school.

I understand these regulations. Many schools have children who can not afford to buy costumes. This makes the celebration an obvious demonstration of greedy one-up-manship that is not conducive to schooling.

To the parents that do not like these policies, I say: Too bad. Go to a different school or take your kids out of school all together.

A Victim of the PATRIOT Act Speaks

Nicholas Merrill’s recent article at the Washington Post demonstrates just how corrosive laws like the PATRIOT Act are:

Sometime in 2012, I will begin the ninth year of my life under an FBI gag order, which began when I received what is known as a national security letter at the small Internet service provider I owned. On that day in 2004 (the exact date is redacted from court papers, so I can’t reveal it), an FBI agent came to my office and handed me a letter. It demanded that I turn over information about one of my clients and forbade me from telling “any person” that the government had approached me.

…

In 2004, it wasn’t at all clear whether the FBI would charge me with a crime for telling the ACLU about the letter, or for telling the court clerk about it when I filed my lawsuit as “John Doe.” I was unable to tell my family, friends, colleagues or my company’s clients, and I had to lie about where I was going when I visited my attorneys. During that time my father was battling cancer and, in 2008, he succumbed to his illness. I was never able to tell him what I was going through.

Government agencies will always be able to dig up excuses as to why they don’t have to behave as if they function in a liberal democracy and why they don’t actually have to serve the very public they were created to serve. Instead, we will continue to see traces of these organizations doing everything they can to evade scrutiny as they insinuate themselves into our lives.

Peter Schiff: How to silence an economist…

Embarrassing! Listen to how they fumble the ball! Nobel Prize Laureates in Economics (Christopher Sims and Thomas Sargent) and can not answer any general questions about economics in the US, Europe or in Latin America.

Peter Schiff: How to silence an economist: Ask him a question about the economy.

Chris Hedges identifies who is conservative

After being badgered rudely by the idiotic Kevin O’Leary on CBC, Chris Hedges identifies who is conservative:

“Those who are protesting the rise of the corporate state are, in fact, on a political spectrum, the true conservatives because they are calling for the restoration of the rule of law.”

“This sounds like Fox News.”

At the end of the interview, the host thanks him for joining them and Hedges throws off his earphone with a final well-deserved jab: “It will be the last time.”

I rarely pay attention to the CBC but what a shame that their actors have alienated a very intelligent and responsible journalist.

Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain dismiss Occupy Wall Street protesters

Newt Gingrich always seemed like nothing but a loud mouth to me. Now, I know why he is not worth taking seriously:

“We have had a strain of hostility to free enterprise – and frankly, a strain of hostility to classic America – starting in our academic institutions and spreading across this country,” said Gingrich, who is also seeking the Republican nomination.

Herman Cain does not seem any brighter:

For his part, Cain also dubbed the protests anti-capitalist and said demonstrators would be better served targeting the White House.
“I don’t have a lot of patience for people who want to protest the success of somebody else,” Cain said.

Both clowns need basic lessons in economics and politics.

First of all, the Western economies are not free enterprise. If the economies were free enterprise, the parasitic 1% elite would be working with the rest of the 99% of the population instead of living off of government privilege. It is precisely the non-free enterprise machinations which are the cause of the economic instability and the unfair distribution of wealth. It is not “the success of somebody else” that is being targeted but rather it is the unfair success and the special privileges afforded to crony-capitalists that are being targeted.

Second, targeting the White House is probably the single most arrogant recommendation that any American politician can make. How the hell is anybody supposed do that? while going to work everyday to survive? and pay the taxes to fund the parasitic elite? That is the problem: nobody can make any positive change in the White House. Those two old birds could not do it themselves and they have a hell of a lot more time on their hands than the average person!

Californians want to identify GMO foods

There will be a ballot initiative in California with the hopes of making it mandatory for foods with Genetically Modified Organisms to be labelled as such.

CAVEAT: Personally, I do not care much one way or the other. I am not afraid of eating GMO foods. However, I have severe objections to the nature of their business model such that, if I had my druthers, the GMO market would not likely exit. In simple terms, I do not believe in patenting anything much less organisms but that is an argument for a different day.

Unlike the super-natural foods crowd, I doubt that the general public will care if this ballot initiative is adopted. People will pick up a package, read GMO on the label, compare prices and keep buying the same old junk. Initially, the mandatory labelling will have the opposite effect of a death blow. Rather than rejecting GMOs because of safety concerns, people will have less fear of GMOs after learning how much of them they have been eating all along!

Regardless of where you fall on the politics of this issue, I think it is only responsible to ask why it is that GMO labelling is not already happening voluntarily. If GMOs are a good thing, why not let it be known? I think the reason GMO labelling is not already pervasive is because the general public would be horrified to know that big business has such a stranglehold on the agricultural market. If there is going to be a death blow to the GMO industry, it will arise from the public revolting against so much control over nature and God’s bounty — not because people think GMOs are dangerous.

Safe Injection sites in Canada

As soon as it started, I thought Vancouver’s Insite was a modern day social horror and that anybody who promoted safe injection sites was on a twisted path to evil. I do not think that way anymore. However, there is something about safe injection sites that make my stomach churn. It just seems disturbed to help drug addicts inject themselves.

Let me be clear. I fully appreciate that drug abuse is first and foremost a health problem more than anything else followed by a safety problem. Lastly, drug abuse is a legal problem. I start off with this disclaimer because I firmly believe that the reason political camps lock horns over drug abuse policy is due to ignorance. A lot of people in the anti-drug camp have no idea how people get addicted to hard drugs.

I also want to be clear in stating that I believe in the decriminalization of all drugs without exception. There is no doubt in my mind that the police state creates the drug problem. Prohibition makes procurement of the drugs risky, expensive and thus profitable. The profitability and the danger of selling drugs would not exist if the police were not part of the drug market. This fact alone makes me shake my head at the conservatives. How can they be so blind? Their nonsense law and order attitude is the source of the problem — forget about the hypocrisy of dirty cops making matters worse.

Having said that, I hope it is obvious that I believe people should be free to do whatever they want and pay their own consequences. That includes activities that I personally believe are self-destructive. It is just not for me to tell them what to do with their own lives. For that reason alone, I have no qualms with supervized injection sites.

For all I know, these junkies could be looking to gradually wean themselves off of the addiction and a safe injection site can not possibly be worse than the alternative of doing it on the street. A safe injection site could be a gateway for a lonely addict to get help.

My thoughts on this matter made it to a blog post because of this:

In a news conference celebrating the Supreme Court decision to keep the drug-injection facility Insite open, renowned AIDS doctor Julio Montaner opened called for expansion of its services to include the distribution of heroin.

My jaw dropped at how bold this suggestion was but I agree with it. That is freedom. Why not distribute heroin? If people want to take drugs, let them take drugs.

I will be frank. I do not believe these supervised injection sites help much in the long run. I do not care much about the statistics. My gut tells me that supervized injection sites are just a low-responsibility make-work program pushed by people who work in our socialized health care industry. However, it is a step in the right direction to freedom. It is a move towards a free market, if ever we can sense one amid the thick putrifying stench of the state.

In fifty years from now, people will demand privately run opium dens and hookah bars because publicly operated injection sites will not be the best possible experience.

The only problem I see is the funding. I wonder if the conservatives would object to supervised injection sites if they were not funded by the tax-paying public?