watching the progressives.

watching the current legislative session in nevada is... painful. Yet, enlightening.

Currently, my state has democrat majorities in both houses and a democratic governor. Despite some vacancies because several democrats think campaign donations are personal paychecks (and there's another half dozen under investigation now. It's endemic. It's democrat. It's WHAT THEY DO)....

Well. We have the "eliminate the electoral vote of the state and vote "national majority" movement going on. There isn't even a HINT of debate on the democrat side, which is stupid.

And now we have a bill in committee to make it a felony to modify firearms in just about any fashion, including competition triggers and such.

Another bill, which I hope isn't going anywhere, to police social media as a justification to deny civil liberty (not just the second amendment, first and fourth as well. Fifth, too, actually)

The good news is that, if you pay attention, you have a CRYSTAL FUCKING CLEAR PICTURE of what progressives intend to do.

The bad news is, if you DON'T pay attention, if this goes national, .... there's going to be a lot of violently unhappy people.

--
Christof-

Elizabeth warren, part 666

Elizabeth Warren is among the worst potential presidents we have right now. Not the worst, but among them. For various and sundry reasons, but this is one of the cuter ones.

For all the time this ultra priveleged WASPy nouveau new englander has played games with using minority status for gain, she's also one of "THOSE" lawyers. She did a bit of home based work on will and real estate, but is almost purely an "academic lawyer". Which is a bigger condemnation to me that this stupid shite.

But here, for your enjoyment, sis the stupid shite. (if you cannot actually read breitbart because you have been programmed not to, try the boston globe or politico.)



https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/10/16/elizabeth-warren-was-celebrated-as-first-woman-of-color-at-harvard-law/

terrorism and normalization

After the terrorist attack sequence in New Zealand, I’ve been involved and and watched several conversations and news reports about the events.

the New Zealand government and US media have cooperated in a series of censorship events to prevent both the video [1] and the manifesto, as well as associated discussion, from being published or discussed.

I’ve been told, directly, that the new NZ “gun ban” coming into effect is the best available move as it is far simpler than preventing radicalization or eliminating opposing viewpoints.

I’ve been told than NZ has a “mass shooting problem” - notably because of the Gray shooting in 1990.

People are conflating a few WIDELY separated events with a mass shooting problem.

In 1990, in the wake of the WTC attacks, the United States decided that a large singular event was a problem. And thus, we got the Patriot Act and associated legislation. To many people, this was a serious over reaction and erosion of basic american rights and core identity.

NZ has had a fairly serious terrorist attack. equivalent to successful attacks in most SE Asian countries, France, or other western European nations. Their response will undoubtedly be at the same level of overreaction as the Patriot Act.

It should not be surprising that many of us look at the level of reaction, and the stated goals of the terrorists, and see some problems.

Some, displaying a total lack of respect for and knowledge of foreign culture and sovereignty, have already deduced that it is “too late” for the US, and that the level of reaction is necessary for NZ to protect from the Enemy. To “save” NZ from the right, gun owners, and the “opposition”. [2]

Look, even the US doesn’t actually have a mass shooting problem, and certainly not a significant terrorist problem. We have a media problem (one of the main reasons NZ just suffered a terrorist attack, in fact.) But most western European nations have significantly more mass shootings per capita than the US. (In fact, it’s a testament to how resilient we are that we in the US have so few considering the blatant attempts to split us into warring factions, the socio-economic problems, the incompatible cultural diversity issues, and other problems)

Comments are made about eliminating the arming of the enemy. I have a few dozen friends and acquaintances in NZ gun and veteran culture. Mostly from various forums I frequent about hobby gunsmithing, veteran interests, and military history.

I find the idea of directly treading on a very valuable and important subculture of a nation with a VERY strong tradition of “Kiwi can do” to be disturbing.

I find the excusing of it as “easier than” preventing radicalization to be… playing into the hands of the terrorist. openly.

A lot of the “conversations” going on surrounding this- from the US legislators blaming the NRA, to the attacks on candace owens, to attacking “the darkweb” or blaming Jordan Pterson, etc- are strengthening, or legitimizing some of the viewpoints of the terrorists.

The terrorists start with a basic claim that core western cultures, individual subcultures, ethnic cultures, and the broad overall “western cultural tradition” are under attack.

This is basic, indisputable, and core to political divisions in the West right now. Call it “colonialism” or “the patriarchy” or “christian civilization” or whatever- it’s definite that it is happening. Individual ethnic identities? Absolutely. Every attempt to legitimately maintain an ethnic identity by Europeans or Europena descendants is attacked and equated with “nazism”, “fascism”, and etc.

THIS IS A MAJOR PROBLEM

Because using the attack to make that worse, legitimizes the attackers. Censorship doesn’t help that. Because censorship does not and can not work in an internet civilization. All it does is make things worse.

The best thing to do is acknowledge and resist the utter evil of the terrorists. Yet, much of our media, vocal progressives, and activists seem hell bent on putting half of our population on the side of the terrorists.

Pray to your deities and ideologies that you are not successful

–
Christof-

[1] There are several good reason to watch the video, and several bad reasons. While I think “violence porn” is a sick idea, I also think people should be left to make their own decisions. In some sense, the video is a memorial to the victims, even.

[2] And, yes, that is how it is being phrased by many. There’s a serious problem with this. You have just put a significant portion of your population ON THE SIDE OF THE TERRORISTS.

Research funding, spinoffs, and "getting yours"

Spin offs. Among the people who have paid attention to our space program, "spin offs" is fairly large talking point. But I don't generally feel like the population as a whole knows much about them.

A Spin off is a technology, product set, or applicable knowledge that came out of the space program either as a side effect, or as a direct technological advancement. If you start looking into this- from radial tires and highway grooving to medical knowedge, telemetry, and treatement- from prosthetics to household appliances- almost no area of "middle class" life is untouched by the benefits of spin offs.

Few people realize the level of impact that the mass of spin offs have had on the United States. But many people are aware of the funding.

A common, almost "default" argument of many fiscal conservatives and libertarians is that government funded private research is bad- if the company gets intellectual property or an ability to make a profit off of the research. This is generally couched in terms that can be boiled down to "it's my tax money and I didn't get nothin, someone else made a profit!"

I'm going to argue that "didn't get nothin" is completely inaccurate.

This topic came up in a discussion of "global warming" and pollution. I am of the opinion that the latter is a much more important human issue than the variable maybes of the former.

I was presented with a set of options to reduce pollution based on getting rid of the internal combustion engine. What I was presented with was:

1: Supporting stronger aircare regulations.

2: reducing the number of freeways

3: Higher taxes on automobile and related transportation.

4: increased mileage requirements.

Note, specifically, that my goal is to GET RID of the IC engine. None of these solutions actually address that. All of the presented universe of "possible" solutions rely on government restriction or money gathering as a restrictive tax on use.

I have another answer, which I presented. Research.

The response was to suggest "bounty prizes" for specific targeted goals. I don't really think that's an option.  I like the bounties and prize money, but it doesn't have the same impact as the type of funding and results of the 40s through the 60s.

In a bounty system, you have a direct target and less opportunity to make use of spin offs. You also have to fund the research in the hopes of winning the bounty (which isn't really that high in any of the cases I've seen)

What we had at one point- what people complain about as in the opening lines of this essay- was essentially "free money if you have an idea or a lab."

Yeah, there were some paperwork requirements and tracking issues, pork barrels and corporate pushiness. But, it boiled down to "free money if you have an idea or lab- and the oomph to do some paperwork and make a case"

What's the difference? ZERO RISK RESEARCH. You didn't have to justify- to your board, your wife, or your kids' dinners- spending 75% of your annual profits on a research project. You didn't have to shut down a pension plan to do research funding. You didn't have to (and in many cases were not PERMITTED to) outsource a lab to cut costs.

Zero. Risk. Research. With functionally unlimited amounts of money available.

What did we get out of it? Contrary to the common argument that companies made profit off the government and we got nothing- we got spin offs. And jobs, pensions, growth in income, technology, overall standard of living, and national wealth like nothing history has ever seen.

We went through an era of almost complete technological dominance and increasing wealth.

Yeah, private individuals got patents, corporate "entities" got patents, people and companies made money off of the research. And we got...

Rich.

(yes, we had some downsides, but they are identifiable and manageable.)

My answer to the pollution problem? Make the internal combustion engine economically stupid.

How? I don't know. I suggest we throw TRUCKLOADS of money into research and see what happens. Let's do a bailout on our technological dominance instead of banks.

Will you "get yours"? probably. The economic spin off effects are pretty amazing.

Fair playing fields.

In a recent discussion on- what else- the economy, I offered the opinion that we aren't really practicing socialism as such, nor "capitalism" (by any real defintion). A lot of our core issues on an individual level stem from a corporate-benefit state in partnership with a progressivist governmental system that seeks to control all non-business economic activity.

We, quite simply, don't have a fair playing field. Of course, I was asked what I consider to be a fair playing field.

Wow. Now, that's huge. I can't answer without also answering something about the direction we'd need to go to get a fair playing field.

But first- capitalism. In speaking of capitalism, at least one of the individuals involved defines capitalism in the Randian terms used by capitalism.org - 

  "Capitalism is a social system based on the principle of individual rights. Politically, it is the system of laissez-faire (freedom). Legally it is a system of objective laws (rule of law as opposed to rule of man). Economically, when such freedom is applied to the sphere of production its’ result is the free-market."

I don't use the word capitalism that way in most of my writing. Capitalism is an economic system. It's based on individual ownership and control of wealth generation, production, profit, and means.

(this is sometimes defined as private, especially by corporate "personhood" advocates and government program progressivists. My use of the word "individual" by no means eliminates groups of individuals, but avoids the false "private/government" issue.)

When our nation was founded, we put a fair amount of effort into the protection of individual rights- through the Constitution, Bill of Rights, the idea of representative democracy instead of direct democracy (mob rule), and restrictions on corporations. Yep- originally a corporate charter had to be approved by the community  was relatively local in scope, had a time limit, and other restrictions. Notably, people involved in the corporation were not absolved of personal responsibility, corporations could not own corporations, and could engage only in their chartered activities.

Some of the goals of these restrictions were to prevent undue accumulation of power into oligarchical groups, prevent anti-competitive activities against individuals, and ensure that corporations served the accepted goals of the local social compacts.

Oh, yeah, social compacts. One area where we often go wrong discussing capitalism and its variants such as our current LAWCAP system is that we tend to ignore that our nation was founded with an idea that we did, in fact, have social compacts. That locales and communities had duties, responsibilities to each other, and that this also applied to economic activities.

Currently, due to manipulation of the debates, the idea of social responsibilities and community interaction - and social compacts- is seen as "anti-capitalist" in many circles. 

This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, Adam Smith, one of the great formulators of capitalism, was very cognizant of the needs of communities and the benefits to communities and nations of a well regulated system of capitalist economics.

Adam Smith also had a lot of distrust for unregulated markets and businesses. "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

"Wherever there is great property, there is great inequality."

Smith also suggested that people should support the government in accordance with their means AND that the general population should not pay into the government for things that are of benefit only to a few. (apply THAT to the budget debates!)

Now, given the specifics of our Constitution these social compacts and communities can do many things, but aren't permitted to take things away. (there has been a change over time from the original interpetations of various states that "states can do anything" to "these are individuals liberties" in our thought and interpretation.)

***

Our current system, in allowing the growth of corporations and regulations that favor corporations over the individual, have twisted our "fair playing field"

We have also engaged, due to the early Progressive Movement of a bit over a hundred years ago, in manipulation of our citizenry to not accept responsibility for their lives. 

Responsibility, at the highest level, is a creative thing. It is a POWER, not a punishment. We have, systematically, through the movement of schooling into government hands, through the governmentalization (and privatization, which are related) of support systems and charity, through regulation of the individual, removed the positive aspects of responsibility from our populace and thoughts.

***

The idea of the social compact applying to our communities, our free associative groups (clubs, churches, fraternal orders, etc) *and* our *economic activities* has fallen out of favor. With full involvement and sovereign franchise of the individual, the social compact applies to both government and "private" activities and there is, beyond the guaranties of our liberties, no real distinction between "government" and "private" in the sense used by most modern people to discuss economics.

***

How does this lead us to thinking about a fair playing field?

Note that I'm not using the term "level playing field" - as humans are not lightbulbs to be interchanged anonymously and identically in any given area, the playing field can never be said to be level. It just isn't so.  The best you can do to level things is to have the community, the society at a fairly LOCAL level, engage in performing its duties to provide a better society than existed before. 

Fair as an adjective means - Having or exhibiting a disposition that is free of favoritism or bias, just to all parties,, equitable, being in accordance with relative merit, consistent with rules and ethics.

A fair playing field, then, is one in which no one is *deprived* through interference (I include coercive schooling and invasive programs that seek to control behavior or development in this), special interest lobbying, inequitable application of rules, rules designed to advantage a particular group, or other means- of their essential liberties and the concomitant opportunities that arise therefrom.

A fair playing field is one in which protections designed to enhance those opportunities, without special privileges*, and specially contrived to advantage the individual and family over the business group, are in place and enforced. 

A fair playing field is one in which there are no punishments, fines, special taxes, or other forms of redistribution levied against the individual and family for their activities.

A fair playing field is one which also recognizes, protects, and improves the social compact to greater secure the guarantees of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

Still working on HOW we do that :)

A post I saw mentioned, in passing, something that's terribly important about negativity.The example given was "Liberal view on the economy are wrong" without ever providing a thought on what is right.

  We are on the buildup to election time here in the US, and as it happens, I do think the Progressive democrat view on the economy is wrong. I also think the mainstream Republican ideas on economic fixes are wrong.

  I feel this comes from some basic misunderstandings in words, history, and goals.

  First- jobs. Jobs has come, in national political terms, to mean *almost exclusively* employment by a large entity capable of (and often required to) provide a secure wage, health care, retirement, vacation, and pay schedule following some metric of "fairness."

  I prefer to use other terms. Work, or wealth creation. You have to go back in history for a bit to figure out what we started with, what we ended up with, and what's potentially wrong with it.

  Originally, job in the sense we are looking for meant a temporary or set piece of work, or to let out for hire for a specific task.

  Our earlier American economic model was based around some central points- the yeoman (independent) farmer- the journeyman jobber, the master craftsman. While many people worked for another for their whole lives, the idea was that one had the ability to build skills, move employment, create wealth, and have an adequate opportunity to go independent.

  We have, yes, always had "cradle to grave" employment with a given family or individual in some instances. But the Industrial Age idea of career employment and retirement as a... right, guarantee, ideal- this has changed some views.

  A couple years ago I asked a friend who was having a hard time finding a "job" if she wanted a job or wanted to make money. It really was a definite reframing for her, and she's now a rapidly developing sheath artist. At this point, it's more or less up to her to make an adequate amount of money through effort, advertising, and service- the market is out there.

  This points out a key shift- from "initiative" to "dependence" - and I use the terms very loosely. These two words have meanings that are incorrect, but are useful for the moment.

  I see the progressive side of the democratic party as attempting to ensure fair *results*- and dependency.

  I see the mainstream republican party as trying to fix the economy by increasing the power and profit potential of large corporations- again, dependency.

  I have, in the past, gone into the history of corporations in the US and how and why the idea of a corporation now is so different from the idea of a corporation in the late 18th century. They are very different.

  Second - goals.

  The goal, as I see it, is to increase the ability of the *citizens* to *generate* prosperity. That requires an environment allowing, protecting, and encouraging independent action, work (which doesn't necessarily mean corporate employment), to innovate and generate wealth.

  The presented goals by both parties are - essentially- involved in dependency and security. The Progressives have a century-plus old platform that includes the idea of a set of professional classes to take care of people, operate politically, and "manage" economics and society.

  While it's never stated, and often resisted- the result of this is dependency. And it goes strongly against the ... call it the Puritan Work Ethic that has been essential to our historical development.

  The republican "business" side of the aisle - also including the confused capitalists (more on that later)- insist that the goal is to create an ever improving environment for unregulated business. The result, proven historically, of this is "robber baron" capitalism, which again creates a dependency in the general public while creating a weird sort of aristocratic dependency among the corporate and political upper echelons on governmentally generated advantages- such as corporate personhood and special access rights to natural resources, and "tax haven" bidding wars among local governments.

  In neither case does the goal of *opportunity* for "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" shine.

  Third- capitalism.

  Oh, hades. The complications surrounding this word are insane. It's worthy of a separate post. Briefly- capitalism isn't a single thing, it's a set of definitions, types, scales, and implementations which vary all along among things such as individual opportunity, economic efficiency, corporate and aristocratic protection, denial of public access to resources.....Capitalism itself is often confused with our social work ethic, esprit, initiative. (tell that to a deep rock miner!)I'll get into that later.

But there are many people who think that my ability to have an independent business is somehow tied to protecting the "rights" of corporations- confused capitalists.

For now, there's more than enough post here to put anyone to sleep, so I will delve into capitalism again later.

timocracy

The assorted definitions of assorted political terms are amusing at times. The word for today is.... timocracy.

The primary definitions of timocracy are :

1. A state described by Plato as being governed by persons whose political power accrues through (primmarily military) honor and glory.

2. An Aristotelian system in which civic or political power increases with wealth.

Wellllllll, okay. sorta. Not that these definitions have conflict and that there are several modern alternative usages.

Let's break it down to "governance by worth"

Disregarding, for the moment, the national party system we inherited from the post-Nixon reforms- and looking solely at grass roots political activism, consider this question:

Is traditional american party politics- republican and democrat- in local organisations, with local effort *required* to acheive position, power, influence- is this not, in a very essential way, timocracy in the sense that those attaining power have the worthiness of stepping forward and *trying*?