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What Putin Wants

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2022

The answer is “Yes”, it does. In fact, Russia has become the biggest obstacle to Washington’s ambitious plan to project power across Central Asia in order to capitalize off the region’s explosive growth. Putin has foiled that strategy by strengthening the Russian economy and rebuilding the nations defenses. Keep in mind, the globalist plan for Russia was to create a fragmented, federalized system that opened its vast resources to foreign exploitation while weakening the center of political power in Moscow. Here’s how foreign policy expert Zbigniew Brzezinski summed it up in an article titled “A Geostrategy for Eurasia”:

By Mike Whitney
The Unz Review

“I’m convinced that we have reached the decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security. And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, Munich Security Conference, 2007

How much do you know about the crisis in Ukraine? See if you can answer these 7 questions.

Question 1– Does the Biden administration’s push to bring Ukraine into NATO violate agreements the US has signed previously?

1–Yes

2–No

The answer is “Yes”. In Istanbul (1999) and in Astana (2010), the US and the other 56 countries in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) signed documents “that contained interrelated principles to ensure the indivisibility of security.”

What does that mean?

It means that parties to the agreement must refrain from any action that could affect the security interests of the other members. It means that parties cannot put military bases and missile sites in locations that pose a threat to other members. It means that parties must refrain from using their respective territories to carry out or assist armed aggression against other members. It means that parties are prohibited from acting in a manner that runs counter to the principles laid out in the treaty. It means that Ukraine cannot become a member of NATO if its membership poses a threat to Russian security.

Is any of this hard to understand?

No, it is perfectly clear.

So, when NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg claims that “every nation has the right to choose its own security arrangements”, he is being deliberately misleading. Stoltenberg knows that both NATO and the United States agreed that they “would NOT strengthen their own security at the expense of the security of others.” He also knows that NATO and the US are legally obligated to act in accordance with the agreements they signed in the past.

Naturally, Russia is challenging Washington on this matter. Here’s what Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in a press conference last week:

“Today, we are sending an official request to our colleagues in the countries of the Alliance and the OSCE via the Foreign Ministry with a pressing request to explain how they intend to fulfill the commitment not to strengthen their security at the expense of security of the others… This will really undermine relations with the Russian Federation as it will be a gross violation of obligations taken by the presidents of the US and other member states of the alliance.”

And here’s a similar quote from Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov on Tuesday:

“The United States concentrates on the right of states to choose alliances, enshrined in the declarations of the Istanbul (1999) and Astana (2010) OSCE Summits. At the same time, it ignores the fact that these particular documents condition this right on the obligation not to strengthen its security at the expense of the security of others. The main problem is that NATO countries are strengthening their security by weakening Russia. We do not agree with such an approach.” (Tass)

Bottom line: The US and NATO are shrugging off their obligations to achieve their geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly,
no one in the western media has reported on this issue even though there is incontrovertible evidence supporting the Russian position.

Question 2– The Biden administration has been pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to exaggerate the likelihood of a Russian invasion in order to fuel public hysteria and intensify Russia hatred?

1– True

2– False

This is “True”. On Thursday, senior Ukrainian officials told CNN that a call between Zelensky and Biden “did not go well.” They said Biden claimed “that a Russian attack may be imminent, saying that an invasion was now virtually certain.” Zelensky, however refuted the claim saying that the threat from Russia remains ‘dangerous but ambiguous,’ and “it is not certain that an attack will take place.”

“Do we have tanks on the streets?” Zelensky asked. “No. When you read media, you get the image that we have troops in the city, people fleeing … That’s not the case.”

The Ukrainian president also urged Biden to “calm down the messaging…. We do not see an escalation greater than” last year. He later added that “he was taking the danger in stride.”

Zelensky’s attempts to downplay the hyperbolic reports in the media, confirm that the current “crisis atmosphere” is largely an invention of the western media. In this way, the coverage is very similar to the fabricated “Russiagate” hoax.

Question 3– Ukraine has been in a state of crisis since the US-backed coup in 2014. Have the warring parties settled on a way to end the conflict?

1– Yes

2– No

The answer is “Yes”, they have. The Minsk Agreement was signed in February, 2015. Regrettably, the Ukrainian government has made no attempt to comply with the treaty’s terms.

“The signing was preceded by the summit of leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany who agreed to a package of measures to alleviate the war in the Donbas.” In other words, everyone agreed that these measures would end the fighting and bring the conflict to a close.

Both sides agreed to a ceasefire, a withdraw of troops and military equipment from the war-zone, and to recognize the de-facto autonomy (aka- “special status”) of the Donbass region. This would be followed by general disarmament and a reestablishing of Ukrainian control over its Russian border.

Over the years, Putin has called repeatedly for Minsk to be fully implemented, but Kiev has stubbornly refused. Even though the Ukrainian government has signed the agreement, they are determined to intensify hostilities and prolong the war.

On Wednesday, February 2, Ukrainian authorities once again demonstrated their opposition to the agreed settlement. According to reports in the Russian media:

“Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba …ruled out providing special status and veto power to Donbass…

“No Ukrainian region will have a right power for national state decisions. This is set in stone! There will be no special status, as Russia imagines it, no voting power,” he said.” (Tass News Service)

Keep in mind, there is no Minsk Agreement without the “special status” provision which amounts to de facto autonomy conferred on the Russian-speaking people of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Special status is the glue that holds the agreement together as it assures the people of those provinces that they won’t be arbitrarily and viciously persecuted by hostile elements in the government. So, when the Foreign Minister rules out special status, he is, in effect, removing the cornerstone upon which the entire treaty rests.

Was the Ukranian FM’s statement crafted by officials in the US State Department?

Probably. After all, a unified, prosperous Ukraine at peace with its neighbors does not jibe with Washington’s imperial ambitions. What the Biden​ administration wants is a splintered, bankrupt failed state riven by ethnic animosities that can be easily manipulated by political outsiders who see Ukraine as an essential part of their geopolitical strategy.

Washington does not seek an end to the hostilities. Washington wants to perpetuate the status quo.

Question 4– Did Putin expect the US and NATO to seriously address Russia’s security concerns?

See the rest here

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The Year of the Tiger Starts With a Sino-Russian Bang

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2022

Metaphorically, this may turn out to be the Year of two – sanctioned – Black Water Tigers, one Chinese, one Siberian. They will be harassed non-stop by the headless eagle, blind to its own irreversible decay and always resorting to the serial Hail Mary passes of the only “policy” it knows.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/03/the-year-of-tiger-starts-with-sino-russian-bang/

Pepe Escobar

The Year of the Black Water Tiger will start, for all practical purposes, with a Beijing bang this Friday, as Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, after a live meeting before the initial ceremony of the Winter Olympics, will issue a joint statement on international relations.

That will represent a crucial move in the Eurasia vs. NATOstan chessboard, as the Anglo-American axis is increasingly bogged down in Desperation Row: after all, “Russian aggression” stubbornly refuses to materialize.

After an interminable wait arguably due to the lack of functionaries properly equipped to write an intelligible letter, the US/NATO combo finally concocted a predictable, jargon-drenched bureaucratese non-response “response” to the Russian demands of security guarantees.

The contents were leaked to a Spanish newspaper, a full member of NATOstan media. The leaker, according to Brussels sources, may be in Kiev by now. The Pentagon, in damage control mode, rushed to assert, “We didn’t do it”. The State Dept. said, “it’s authentic.”

Even before the leak of the non-response “response”, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was forced to send messages to all NATO foreign ministers, including US Secretary Blinken, asking how they understand the principle of indivisibility of security – if they actually do.

Lavrov was extremely specific: “I am referring to our demands that everyone faithfully implement the agreements on the indivisibility of security that were reached within the OSCE in 1999 in Istanbul and in 2010 in Astana. These agreements provide not only for the freedom to choose alliances, but also make this freedom conditional on the need to avoid any steps that will strengthen the security of any state at the expense of infringing on the security of others.”

Lavrov hit the heart of the matter when he stressed, “our Western colleagues are not simply trying to ignore this key principle of international law agreed in the Euro-Atlantic space, but to completely forget it.”

Lavrov also made it very clear “we will not allow this topic to be ‘wrapped up’. We will insist on a honest conversation and an explanation of why the West does not want to fulfill its obligations at all or exclusively, selectively, and in its favor.”

Crucially, China fully supports Russian demands for security guarantees in Europe, and fully agrees that the security of one state cannot be ensured by inflicting damage on another state.

This is as serious as it gets: the US/NATO combo are bent on smashing two crucial treaties that directly concern European security, and they think they can get away with it because there is less than zero discussion about the content and its implications across NATOstan media.

Western public opinion remains absolutely clueless. The only narrative, hammered 24/7, is “Russian aggression” – by the way duly emphasized in NATO’s non-response “response”.

Wanna check our military-technical gear?

For the umpteenth time Moscow made it very clear it’s not going to make any concessions on the security demands just because the Empire of Chaos keeps threatening – what else – extra harsh sanctions, the sole imperial “policy” short of outright bombing.

See the rest here

© 2010 – 2022 | Strategic Culture Foundation | Republishing is welcomed with reference to Strategic Culture online journal www.strategic-culture.org.

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Leftists Have It Wrong on Rights

Posted by M. C. on February 7, 2022

Not even the crafters of the Bill of Rights believed that. A careful reading of the First Amendment reveals that it doesn’t purport to give any rights to anyone. Instead, the wording states that Congress (and implicitly the rest of the federal government) is prohibited from infringing on people’s right of free speech. 

Thus when the government enacts a law or adopts a measure that infringes on freedom of speech, leftists are relegated to saying, “We understand that you have given us this important privilege but please be nice and don’t infringe on it.” Libertarians, on the other hand, say, “You have no legitimate authority to do that and so stop it immediately or else we will alter you or abolish you!”

by Jacob G. Hornberger

One of the central defects among leftists (that is, “liberals,” progressives, socialists, or interventionists) is their wrong-headed view of the nature of people’s rights. Their belief on this issue is one of the distinguishing characteristics between leftists and libertarians.

Leftists believe that people’s rights come from the government or from the Constitution. As such, they view rights not so much as rights but rather more as government-granted privileges.

Libertarians, on the other hand, believe that people’s rights are endowed in them by nature and God and, therefore, that people’s rights preexist government and the Constitution. We hold that the main purpose of government is to serve as our servant whose job is to protect the exercise of our natural, God-given rights. 

A good example of this leftist mindset was recently expressed in a fundraising letter I received from a leftist group called the Daily Kos. The letter stated that freedom of speech is “one of those rights granted to us in Bill of Rights.” It went on to refer to “our First Amendment rights.”

Not even the crafters of the Bill of Rights believed that. A careful reading of the First Amendment reveals that it doesn’t purport to give any rights to anyone. Instead, the wording states that Congress (and implicitly the rest of the federal government) is prohibited from infringing on people’s right of free speech. 

In other words, unlike American leftists today, our American ancestors didn’t believe that people’s rights come from the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or from the government. They believed in what the Declaration of Independence stated — that man’s rights come from nature and God and that it is the responsibility of government to protect, not destroy, the exercise of such rights.

We are not just talking about a semantical difference here. The difference between how leftists and libertarians view the nature of rights has profound consequences. 

Given that leftists believe that their rights come from the government, they necessarily put themselves in a position of pleading, or perhaps even begging, that government go easy on them — that is, that government officials give them more latitude in exercising their “rights.” 

Thus, leftists view freedom as living on a leash — they just want the government to let them have a longer leash. What happens when the government begins reining in the leash? Leftists have no principled argument to make against what the government is doing. Since people’s rights come from government, leftists believe, then government can legitimately rein in the leash whenever it wants. 

Not so with libertarians. Unlike leftists, we are not relegated to pleading with or begging the government to treat us nicely. That’s because for us our rights don’t come from government. They preexist government. Government officials are nothing more than our servants whose job is to protect our rights. If they fail or refuse to do so — or if they use their power to destroy or infringe our rights — we have the right to alter or even abolish government and restore its rightful responsibility — the responsibility to behave as our servants whose job is to protect the exercise of our preexisting natural, God-given rights.

Thus when the government enacts a law or adopts a measure that infringes on freedom of speech, leftists are relegated to saying, “We understand that you have given us this important privilege but please be nice and don’t infringe on it.” Libertarians, on the other hand, say, “You have no legitimate authority to do that and so stop it immediately or else we will alter you or abolish you!”

The leftist view of the nature of rights is one reason why you can never count on leftists to protect our rights and liberties. Anyone who wants a genuine defense of our rights and liberties needs to join up with us libertarians. 

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Cruelty | Charles Joseph | The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast S4: E80

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2022

Canadian Residential School

Charles Joseph is a Kwakwaka’wakw artist known for his masks, totem poles, and canoes. His work can be found in homes and businesses worldwide, including mine. His “Residential School Totem” stands before the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts for “all Canadians, not just residential school survivors.” It represents Charles’ “reconciliation” and his “story is on the pole.”

Charles’ carving homepage https://charlesnativeart.ca

Facebook page https://facebook.com/charlesjosephnat…

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El Salvador President Asks if the Destruction of United States is Done Intentionally

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2022

https://humansarefree.com/2022/02/destruction-of-usa-done-intentionally.html

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele tweeted out on Monday wondering if there’s a deliberate plan to destroy the United States from within.

“Is there a deliberate plan to destroy the United States from within? Why are the authorities and some of the media not even commenting on this things? Why are they letting their beautiful cities rot?” President Bukele tweeted.

el salvador president asks if the destruction of united states is done intentionally

His comment was in response to a New York Post report on empty shelves at a Rite Aid store in New York City that will be closing soon due to shoplifters.

Is there a deliberate plan to destroy the United States from within?

Why are the authorities and some of the media not even commenting on this things?

Why are they letting their beautiful cities rot? https://t.co/whGKTEKN1J

— Nayib Bukele 🇸🇻 (@nayibbukele) January 31, 2022

America was once a great country but the left’s acceptance of crime, destruction of our cities, and attacks on the police have resulted in the most homicides in several US cities in 2021.

Democrat officials continue to allow looters to run wild and crime to skyrocket in New York and elsewhere.

After the criminals are caught and arrested, charges were reduced to a misdemeanor, and the thieves were back on the streets in less than 24 hours to steal again!

And thanks to Democrats and Joe Biden’s devastating policies, the US inflation measurement has reached its highest level in decades, since the early 1980’s.

Joe Biden is Not Incompetent – He is Doing Exactly What He Was Hired to Do: Collapse America.

Post Millenial reported:

“El Salvador president Nayib Bukele says that the destruction of American cities may well be part of a “deliberate plan.”

His remarks are reminiscent of observations made by other international observers who look upon America’s embrace of woke platitudes amid the country’s crumbling infrastructure and rule of law.

“Is there a deliberate plan to destroy the United States from within?” Bukele tweeted on Monday. “Why are the authorities and some of the media not even commenting on this things? Why are they letting their beautiful cities rot?”

Bukele, who gained international attention for making Bitcoin an official currency in his country of El Salvador, tweeted his remarks in response to a New York Post article highlighting empty shelves at a soon-to-be-shuttered Rite Aid store in New York City.

The store is one of many to be driven out of business since the start of the pandemic of unchecked shoplifting and organized looting. Across major US cities, prosecutors have refused to charge shoplifters, arguing that doing so disenfranchises people of color.”

By Jim Hoft, Guest writer

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A war with Russia would be unlike anything the US and NATO have ever experienced — RT Op-ed

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2022

This is what a war with Russia would look like. It would not be limited to Ukraine, but extend to battlefields in the Baltic states, Poland, Romania, and elsewhere. It would involve Russian strikes against NATO airfields, depots, and ports throughout the depth of Europe.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/548322-war-russia-us-nato/

Scott Ritter

is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

In a recent press conference held on the occasion of a visit to Moscow by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke about continued NATO expansion, and the potential consequences if Ukraine was to join the trans-Atlantic alliance.

“Their [NATO’s] main task is to contain the development of Russia,” Putin said. “Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could draw us into some kind of armed conflict and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked about in the United States today,” he noted. “Or they could draw Ukraine into NATO, set up strike weapons systems there and encourage some people to resolve the issue of Donbass or Crimea by force, and still draw us into an armed conflict.”

Putin continued, “Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and is stuffed with weapons and there are state-of-the-art missile systems just like in Poland and Romania. Who will stop it from unleashing operations in Crimea, let alone Donbass? Let us imagine that Ukraine is a NATO member and ventures such a combat operation. Do we have to fight with the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought anything about it? It seems not.”

But these words were dismissed by White House spokesperson Jen Psaki, who likened them to a fox “screaming from the top of the hen house that he’s scared of the chickens,” adding that any Russian expression of fear over Ukraine “should not be reported as a statement of fact.”

Psaki’s comments, however, are divorced from the reality of the situation. The principal goal of the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is what he terms the “de-occupation” of Crimea. While this goal has, in the past, been couched in terms of diplomacy – “[t]he synergy of our efforts must force Russia to negotiate the return of our peninsula,” Zelensky told the Crimea Platform, a Ukrainian forum focused on regaining control over Crimea – the reality is his strategy for return is a purely military one, in which Russia has been identified as a “military adversary”, and the accomplishment of which can only be achieved through NATO membership.

How Zelensky plans on accomplishing this goal using military means has not been spelled out. As an ostensibly defensive alliance, the odds are that NATO would not initiate any offensive military action to forcibly seize the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. Indeed, the terms of Ukraine’s membership, if granted, would need to include some language regarding the limits of NATO’s Article 5 – which relates to collective defense – when addressing the Crimea situation, or else a state of war would de facto exist upon Ukrainian accession.

The most likely scenario would involve Ukraine being rapidly brought under the ‘umbrella’ of NATO protection, with ‘battlegroups’ like those deployed into eastern Europe being formed on Ukrainian soil as a ‘trip-wire’ force, and modern air defenses combined with forward-deployed NATO aircraft put in place to secure Ukrainian airspace.

Once this umbrella has been established, Ukraine would feel emboldened to begin a hybrid conflict against what it terms the Russian occupation of Crimea, employing unconventional warfare capability it has acquired since 2015 at the hands of the CIA to initiate an insurgency designed specifically to “kill Russians.”

The idea that Russia would sit idly by while a guerilla war in Crimea was being implemented from Ukraine is ludicrous; if confronted with such a scenario, Russia would more than likely use its own unconventional capabilities in retaliation. Ukraine, of course, would cry foul, and NATO would be confronted with its mandatory obligation for collective defense under Article 5. In short, NATO would be at war with Russia.

See the rest here

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This medical data from the US DoD is explosive. Mainstream media has been ordered to ignore it.

Posted by M. C. on February 6, 2022

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/this-medical-data-from-the-us-dod?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo2MDA2NDY5NCwicG9zdF9pZCI6NDgyNDUyNTIsIl8iOiJGV2FLTiIsImlhdCI6MTY0NDA5MzM3NCwiZXhwIjoxNjQ0MDk2OTc0LCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNTQ4MzU0Iiwic3ViIjoicG9zdC1yZWFjdGlvbiJ9.IH4cGa-CWBtFUS1eN-4WbTM6KXPMe4sWEQgq4RyjFow

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San Jose’s Gun Tax Has Nothing to Do with Reducing Crime | Mises Wire

Posted by M. C. on February 5, 2022

Regardless of any laughable claims about reducing the burden on taxpayers, proponents know they will face legal challenges and that the taxpayer will have to pay for them. They know that the measure will do nothing about gun violence, as that is not the point. The point is to put extra burdens on gun owners and increase the powers of the state to disarm the public.

https://mises.org/wire/san-joses-gun-tax-has-nothing-do-reducing-crime

Tate Fegley

CNN touts San Jose as being “poised to take a step closer to first-in-the-nation gun ownership requirements.” At first, I had thought that the poorly worded headline must be mistaken, as there are cities, such as Kennesaw, GA, that have required residents own guns. In San Jose’s case, “gun ownership requirements” means paying an annual tax and being required to purchase insurance to exercise the right (privilege?) to own a firearm.

CNN also published an opinion piece by San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo defending the recently passed legislation, saying “gun owners should cover the costs of gun violence.” Why should individuals who played no role in the crimes of others be held responsible? I don’t know the answer, but it seems that holding criminals responsible for their own misdeeds is becoming increasingly unpopular in California governance.

Liccardo emphasizes the costs to taxpayers of gun violence, citing a report by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. What stands out to me from the report is that it seems that it is only entities dependent on taxpayer money that unabashedly publicize how crazily inefficient they are in order to argue for more resources. Estimates in the report are typically on the high end; e.g., even though the median time served for murder in the US was 13.4 years in 2016, the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform’s estimated cost for incarcerating a shooting suspect in California is based on twenty-five years of imprisonment, costing $81,203 per year. Other expenses include police response to a homicide—not including investigation, which is another $12,200—costing $4,480 and $2,500 to clean up the crime scene. And, for some reason, “gunshot surgery” on a dead victim costs $45,200. Liccardo expects anyone who goes plinking with a .22 rifle to help pay for that.

In defense of requiring gun owners to purchase insurance, Liccardo claims that it “incentivizes safe gun ownership, where risk-adjusted premiums might encourage owners to take gun-safety courses, use gun safes or install child-safety locks.” He compares it to auto insurance: “In the context of auto safety, insurers rewarding good driving or the use of airbags have reduced per-mile auto fatalities by 80% in five decades, saving 3.5 million lives.” As is often the case when looking at claims made by civilian disarmament advocates, they cite advocacy organizations that make it an involved process for the reader to determine the source and plausibility of those claims. Liccardo, in stating that incentives by insurance companies have reduced auto fatalities, links to a page run by the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, which links to an article by progressive outlet The Nation, which cites a report by Ralph Nader’s Center for Auto Safety.

By going down this rabbit hole, one sees that Liccardo is making things up. The author of the Center for Auto Safety report does not even mention insurance as a reason for why traffic fatalities went down. Liccardo’s comparison is based entirely on misdirection and obfuscation.

In trying to implement both annual taxes and insurance requirements, Liccardo is throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, as the memo on the proposed legislation fully anticipates legal challenges on multiple fronts. Liccardo seems to be running a play out of the Obamacare playbook (or, really, a play based on Justice John Roberts’s sophistic opinion that declared Obamacare’s individual mandate a tax, which should have invalidated it, since taxing bills are to originate in the House). The Obama administration’s argument was not that the penalty for violating the individual mandate is a tax, but that the federal government may force individuals to purchase insurance based on the Commerce Clause. In this case, Liccardo is covering both bases: the legislation has both an annual fee for gun owners (a tax) and a mandate to purchase insurance. Thus, if only one burden on gun owners is overturned, the other remains.

Another legal challenge the bill’s proponents expect to face is “the constitutionality of permanent seizure of the firearm as a consequence of noncompliance.” Liccardo is surprisingly candid that the goal is disarmament:

Skeptics will say that criminals won’t comply. They’re right; yet that’s an important feature of these proposals, not a defect. These ordinances create a legal mandate that provides police with a lawful means for seizing guns from non-law-abiding, dangerous people.

The response to every officer’s call for domestic violence in my city, for example, includes the question, “do you have any guns in the home?” If that gun owner lacks proof of payment or insurance, the police can seize the gun.

Of course, the penalty for failure to provide proof of insurance for one’s car is not impoundment (let alone permanent impoundment). We again see the intellectual dishonesty in comparing the legislation to regulation of automobiles.

Also dishonest is the common practice of citing particular mass shootings as the impetus for further restrictions on gun ownership without asking, let alone answering, the question of how such restrictions would have done anything about the mentioned shooting. In his opinion piece, Liccardo begins by mentioning the May 26, 2021, San Jose shooting that resulted in nine deaths, as well as the suicide of the shooter. Although he does not claim that the measure would have prevented this event, it is an awkward incident to mention if he is making a case about the fiscal impact of gun violence since the vast majority of the estimated cost per shooting is incarceration, which does not apply in this case. Clearly, the intended effect of mentioning this shooting is emotional manipulation, not to provide a useful illustration.

The emphasis on how much money the state spends in response to shootings is interesting in light of a relevant case decided by the Illinois Supreme Court in October 2021. The court decided that Cook County’s special taxes on retail sales of firearms and ammunition violated the Illinois Constitution’s uniformity clause because “the relationship between the tax classification and the use of the tax proceeds is not sufficiently tied to the stated objective of ameliorating” the costs of gun violence. The court decided that such a connection is necessary if Cook County is going to put a special tax on a fundamental right. However, the California Constitution does not recognize an individual’s right to bear arms, nor does it have a similar uniformity clause from what I can tell, so San Jose’s tax is unlikely to face a similar legal challenge, at least at the state level.

Regardless of any laughable claims about reducing the burden on taxpayers, proponents know they will face legal challenges and that the taxpayer will have to pay for them. They know that the measure will do nothing about gun violence, as that is not the point. The point is to put extra burdens on gun owners and increase the powers of the state to disarm the public.

Author:

Contact Tate Fegley

Tate Fegley is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh. Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.

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Should Minimum Wage Implementers be Jailed? – International Man

Posted by M. C. on February 5, 2022

Suppose I purchased a big powerful weapon with an indefinitely large amount of ammunition and had not only nine lives like a cat but millions of them. I then went to every potential employer of unskilled workers and made the following threat to them: employ any of these people, and I’ll shoot you. I also traveled to the inner cities and other places where unskilled workers are to be found and threatened to murder any of them who became employed.

https://internationalman.com/articles/should-minimum-wage-implementers-be-jailed/

by Walter Block

Notice the question posed above mentions implementers, not supporters. The latter consists of, what? 95% of the electorate? We can document that some 2/3 of the voters favor a minimum wage of $15. It is my estimate that virtually all voters favor this law at some level. That is, perhaps at most 5% of those who cast a ballot favor wiping this enactment entirely from the law books.

The former, in sharp contrast, consist of at most a few hundred people, perhaps 1000 at most. It would consist of all the senators and congressmen who passed this legislation, the judges who rule in its favor, the police who arrest those who violate it, and the jailers who incarcerate them.

Assume, arguendo if you must, that the effect of this legislation is not to raise anyone’s wage. Rather, it is to create unemployment for all those whose discounted marginal revenue productivity is less than the level stipulated by law. At present, federal law requires that at least $7.25 be paid to all employees. But there are some people, mainly young, minority group members, the mentally and physically disabled, whose productivity is less than that. If this law is boosted to $15, it is likely that far more people will be consigned to lives of permanent unemployment. The minimum wage is not akin to a rising floor, which raises pay scales. Rather, it resembles a hurdle over which the worker must “jump” with his productivity to obtain a job in the first place and keep it thereafter.

Remember, we are positing for the sake of argument that all of this is true and that arguments to the contrary are complete balderdash.

Assume now the entire absence of any minimum wage law (the first one in the U.S. was passed in 1938; before that, it just did not exist.) Suppose I purchased a big powerful weapon with an indefinitely large amount of ammunition and had not only nine lives like a cat but millions of them. I then went to every potential employer of unskilled workers and made the following threat to them: employ any of these people, and I’ll shoot you. I also traveled to the inner cities and other places where unskilled workers are to be found and threatened to murder any of them who became employed.

How would I be regarded? Obviously, under these assumptions, I would be a criminal. I need not ever have to pull any trigger. The mere threats that I made would render me a very serious law-breaker. I did not act in this way to benefit myself financially. I did not ask, nor demand of any of them, that they pay me a single penny. I just have a hatred for the economically “differently-abled,” and I want them to lead miserable unemployed lives. Ok, ok, I’m a bit of a weirdo, I admit it, but the economic analogy holds.

However, I am still a felon. I still had no right to assault businessmen and the unskilled in this despicable manner.

Now, let us return to the real world. Most of those who favor this legislation do so out of economic ignorance. They think this law will actually raise wages on more than a very temporary basis (when the law was last roughly doubled, from $.40 to $.75 in 1949, all elevators were manually operated; were these people fired the very next day? No. It takes a while to substitute automatic machinery for these workers).

If all supporters favor this malicious evil law, they are innocent of any crime; economic illiteracy is not criminal behavior. If they directly voted for this law, then, yes, they deserve a visit to the hoosegow, just as I did when I acted in a manner that brings about the very same result: forced joblessness for people at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Fortunately for such voters, we have secret ballots in this country, and people are innocent of a crime unless they are proven guilty; here, we can have no proof of their vicious behavior.

But not all ballots are secret. Those that occur in our legislatures are a matter of public record. And then there are judicial findings in favor of this law, which are equally available to all and sundry. I fail to see the relevant difference between what I did in that made-up scenario and what these people are guilty of. Oh, yes, I was a criminal, and they are certainly not, given our present laws. But that is not a relevant difference. That is not justice. These people should be made to pay for their crimes.

There is all the difference in the world between me wanting to jail implementers of minimum wage laws and lefties trying to imprison climate deniers. I favor free speech for supporters of this law but not for implementers. Ditto for Nazi or Communist supporters, not for those who impose these philosophies upon others.

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Biden Voters’ Remorse | Chronicles

Posted by M. C. on February 5, 2022

It was invented by those who willfully ignored what he said because they hated Trump or because they agreed with Biden’s proposals at the time that he made them. Those who supported him deserve our stern disapproval rather than inappropriate expressions of sympathy.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/biden-voters–remorse/1/

By Paul Gottfried

BIDEN_2

There seems to be a widespread belief that Joe Biden has exceeded the mandate for which he was elected. It seems we’re supposed to believe that those who voted for the Biden-Harris ticket craved moderation after Trump’s troubled and unsettling presidency. Writer and commentator Scott Jennings repeats this familiar narrative in a recent interview with CNN:

I never imagined how quickly this would all unfold. The person they sold on the campaign, the nice old, you know, moderate grandpa who just wanted to help everybody get along and compromise is not what we got over the last year.

He has no mandate really to do much of anything. It’s amazing that he got a couple of things done when the mandate was really pretty clear—50/50 Senate, a near 50/50 House and a pretty close presidential election. The mandate was simply replace Donald Trump and don’t do anything drastic or stupid.

Biden’s voters apparently just wanted a “moderate grandpa” who would lower the political temperature. Instead, they ended up with the agenda of the radical left “Squad” being carried out by a cognitively declining figurehead president. Those who mistakenly supported Biden are now suffering buyer’s remorse, and it would be unfair, we are led to believe, if we blamed these misled voters for what befell them after Biden’s election, the consequences of which they could not have foreseen.

Allow me to respectfully disagree. There were more than enough signs that Biden would derail the country when he was running against Trump; and those who voted for him are guilty of having ignored the evidence that Biden would be a far worse president than the person he replaced.

I long ago stopped believing that those who vote for catastrophic political candidates are simply the victims of bad choices. Such people get what they want—or what they think they want—and should be scolded for imposing their will on the rest of us. When I went with my parents to a restaurant as a child and ordered something that I didn’t like—usually against better advice—I was made to eat what I picked. It was my misjudgment, not the small print on the menu, which caused me to choose badly. We are now dealing with chronological adults who picked the wrong fare out of obstinacy or anger, but who still insist that it was someone else’s fault. 

Biden hardly ran as a moderate. His vice-presidential candidate openly expressed support for Black Lives Matter violence during the 2020 “Summer of Love,” and Biden’s staff were involved in bailing out the criminal participants in those riots. While preparing their separate presidential runs in 2019, both Biden and Harris came out in support of the race-hustling impostor Jussie Smollett. Each treated Smollett’s make-believe attack by Trump supporters in downtown Chicago at 2:00 am as evidence of raging racism and homophobia. 

The Biden/Harris Campaign also decried Kyle Rittenhouse as a racist for defending himself against armed assailants (who happened to be white) in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. Biden then expressed anger and concern at Rittenhouse’s acquittal in 2021 in much the same language he had used against him in the past. Never during or after his campaign did Biden stop appealing to his radical black and LGBT base.

“We have a lot to root out, but most of all the systematic racism that most of us whites don’t like to acknowledge even exists,” Biden said in a 2019 speech delivered for Al Sharpton and the National Action Network. Within one day of Biden’s taking office, Manhattan Institute fellow Heather Mac Donald notes in a Newsweek article that Biden pledged to fight systemic white racism with the assistance of all branches of the federal government and to give amnesty to illegals. Neither theme was new; both issues had furnished the incoming president with campaign rhetoric for many months.   

Moreover, Biden’s open-border policy, which voters are now complaining about, did not result from a post-election decision by the new president. It is exactly what he promised to do while on the campaign trail. He also promised in the spring of 2020 to close the Keystone XL oil pipeline bringing in oil exports from Canada. Thus, his action to do so immediately after he became president should not have surprised anyone who was paying any attention to national politics.

Biden was every bit as forthcoming about his presidential plans as Trump had been about his own, four years earlier. The idea that Biden hid his intentions when running for the presidency is utter nonsense. It was invented by those who willfully ignored what he said because they hated Trump or because they agreed with Biden’s proposals at the time that he made them. Those who supported him deserve our stern disapproval rather than inappropriate expressions of sympathy.

Paul Gottfried

Paul Gottfried is editor in chief of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is also the Raffensperger Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Elizabethtown College, where he taught for 25 years, a Guggenheim recipient, and a Yale Ph.D. He is the author of 13 books, most recently Fascism: Career of a Concept and Revisions and Dissents.

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