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You Too Can Have Your Own Desolate Wasteland

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In the Fallout game series the premise was nuclear war has rendered most urban zones a total wasteland.  Well, there’s another simpler method to create those urban wastelands.  There’s already one wasteland that exists right here in the US in fact.

Don’t believe me that Detroit is like a waste land, lets look at a picture from Detroit and Chernobyl:

And now for another picture:

Now which one is which folks?  Which picture was taken where?  One was taken in a disaster zone caused by failed socialist policies, the other was taken in a nuclear disaster zone.

Ready?  The first is from Detroit  the second is from Chernobyl.

This is what socialism brings to the people, a wasteland devoid of prosperity and growth.  Remember it the next time someone tells you government is the solution to the problem.

H/T to Kevin on the video.

Quote of the Day – Scott Greenfield(10/10/2012)

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Because of this, all the other safeguards of the criminal justice system kicked in, from due process to double jeopardy.  People at HuffPo and Boing Boing usually like these aspects of the law, except when they don’t. Then they become technicalities and produce injustice, because the outcome doesn’t comport with their sensibilities. Rape is one of the sacred cow crimes, and no law should get in the way of conviction.

It’s all about outcome?  As Ken at Popehat points out, people across the political spectrum pick their positions based on outcomes, just different ones.  It’s not about thinking, but feeling.  The law, however,isn’t about feeling.

(Emphasis mine.) Scott Greenfield – The Future Of Law and The Fool’s Utopia, Rape Edition
October 10, 2012

[I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  There is no correlation between the law and justice!  Seriously folks, realize this right here and now.  The point of the law is not just to convict the guilty but to protect the innocent from the power and wrath of the state.

In the end we hope that the law will give some form of justice.  However it is also up to the players within the system to aid in that outcome.  The prosecution in this case clearly screwed up and charged this person with the wrong crime.

Am I sad that this monster is getting away with the actual crime he did?  You bet your ass. Am I angry at the legal system and think it failed?  Yes and no.  I am angry at the prosecutor for doing a piss poor job, I am not however upset that the rest of the system worked as it should to protect the defendant.

The thing to understand is you cannot have your cake and eat it.  While one wants to both protect the innocent and convict the guilty, concessions must be made to protect the innocent.  In doing so the possibility for error can allow the guilty to go free.

This isn’t a bug folks, it’s a feature.  A feature that as Scott points out are more than happy to be cheered about by the same people who now condemn it when they feel it was wrong.

Popehat also put this quite well:

If we’re going to defend rights — if we’re not going to let them be chipped away, bit by bit, in cases involving rape or terrorism or anything else that engenders strong feelings — then we’re going to have to be ready to be called terrorist-sympathizers and un-American and even rape apologists by the likes of Antinous. But I can’t think of any earthly reason why we can’t inform these people that they’re full of shit.

Because folks, that’s how they do it.  They invoke emotion and claim necessity.  Some of us are patient, calm, and rational enough to think the whole problem through.  Most however would prefer we just “do something” because doing something is better than nothing.  Except sometimes doing nothing is actually the best thing to do because someone just screwed the pooch.

More power and depredation of rights is never a solution. -B]

 

SSCC #427 – DEA, BATFEieio

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The nation’s top drug and gun enforcement agencies do not track how often they give their informants permission to break the law on the government’s behalf.

U.S. Justice Department rules put strict limits on when and how agents at the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can authorize their informants — often drawn from the ranks of the criminals they are investigating — to commit a crime. But both the ATFand DEA acknowledged, in response to open-records requests and in written statements, that they do not track how often such permission is given.

(Emphasis mine.) When you see it written like that, it reads as the definition of a State Sponsored Criminal now doesn’t it?

State Sponsored Criminal #427: The Feds

Because if you want to get a crime, just ask the government for permission first.  If you have to sweeten the deal by squealing on your compatriots.  No honor among thieves you know.

 

Quote of the Day – Robb Allen(10/8/2012)

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My girls weren’t as into Sesame Street as I was as a kid, but they did enjoy it and I would gladly fork over a few bucks to keep them on the air if it was required. However, I’ll do it voluntarily. Put the tax man’s gun to my head and demand it and suddenly I’ve got no desire for the show to go on.

Robb Allen – Let them eat seed
October 8, 2012

[Honestly, go read the whole thing.  It’s amazing the number of people who don’t seem to understand that small numbers do accumulate to a big one.

Sesame Street gets a large amount of support from the public without forcible conscription from the government.  So pardon me if I don’t start crying at the idea of trying to lessen our burden of debt.

Folks, you need to realize something and the sooner the better. We’re broke.  We’re spending more than we’re bringing in and the debt isn’t just our’s, it’s our children’s.  Tell me, how would you like it if instead of getting an inheritance or rather nothing at all, your parents left you 15 years of mortgage payments for a house that was underwater?  Borrowing against your kids future isn’t fair, it isn’t ethical, it’s merely robbing your kids.  You’re signing checks in your kids name, not your own.

I’m became down right angry about when I became old enough to understand the national debt and discovered my share of it.  I hadn’t even started a job yet and there was debt in my name that I honestly never wanted to be a part of.

And for what?  So women like this can have a phone?  So that we can fund shows that could survive on their own through public funding?  So that I can pay for someone to survive that is too lazy to work?  So that ultimately I suffer an extra burden of supporting others and their personal morals so they can feel better about themselves?

Ever last little pet project needs to start being deleted.  You don’t need to just go and attack things that are a large single chunk, you need to cut all the small stuff that adds up.  A million here and a million there, eventually you’re talking very serious money.  It adds up to the tune now of over 16 trillion dollars, which makes the debt for every man woman and child $51,370.

Now the thing is, not everyone pays taxes.  If you’re a taxpayer, your debt burden is $141,142 dollars.  That’s right, our government has spent so much that you could buy a house for what you now owe from them writing checks in your name.

News flash for everyone, yes it’s going to hurt, yes it’s going to suck.  There maybe some things that don’t survive.  But the fact is, total economic collapse is going to be even more painful.  Eventually your bill has to come due, the question is, why is it so many keep on insisting on making it bigger.  Don’t answer that, I already know. -B]

Quote of the Day – Bitter(10/7/2012)

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Why is PBS lobbying so hard for taxpayer funds? I know they raise money effectively. I gave during a fundraiser to get @alfieboe tickets.

Bitter – Tweet
October 5, 2012

[The answer to this is actually really simple.  PBS while they could fund themselves through private means still wants “free” money from the government.  It makes things that much more cushy.

Government throwing funds at the economy to “stimulate” it, actually has the opposite effect and I will explain what I watched first hand.

Back when they did they started talking about the massive bailout almost immediately utilities put a halt to current projects.  Utilities plan projects years in advance and have the funds to do them.  They froze the projects because they could smell money on the table and ultimately they could use it to improve their bottom line.  When the stimulus was finally passed they then needed to file for the grants.  The way this worked most simply was a dollar for dollar matching scheme to help with equipment retrofits.

So all of that moved at a snails pace through the cogs of government bureaucratic paper. Meanwhile here in reality, planned projects have now been on hold for over 6 months, all because they could smell money on the table.  When funding finally did start rolling in, almost a year after it started to slow down, projects rates looked just like it did prior to the funding push.  What happened was a projects that it merely subsiding what was already planned.  This didn’t have the effect of creating jobs since it’s still the same crews doing the work.  The most entertaining thing though is overall the decrease in output will never be really made up.  Everything the utilities are doing was already planned, this didn’t magically create extra work.  All it did in the end was delay the inevitable.

How’s that for the government “stimulating” the economy?  Still think only the government is capable of solving problems?

This is why PBS is going off the deep end.  They see free money and they want some of it.  -B]

Been There, Done That

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I recognize this silence and mood, both from growing up and the recent unemployment in this house.

Found via Kevin

Fearless leader came out yesterday and said that unemployment drastically dropped.  Except that also included some new ways of calculating the numbers.  Except every way I’ve heard of them calculating the numbers is cooking the books.  My wife was "unemployed” for a year and a half, though she didn’t qualify to be counted amongst the unemployed even while trying to find a job.  It’s all done to provide political leverage.  But if we use the same method they’ve been using it provides us a decent window to see what the trend is like.

Shamelessly stolen from Joe, who took it from Tyler Durden,  tell me, can you spot the statistical outlier?

SeptemberChangeNSA20-24_2

Or how about seasonally adjusted:

SeptHistorical20-24_2

If you can’t make sense of the Seasonally Adjusted chart, let me give you a clue.  Which one of these has a swing month to month well beyond any other?  Can you spot it?  I knew you could!  The fact is, employment sucks and here’s a big clue for everyone, government cannot make it better.  Despite the smoke politicians blow up your ass about creating jobs, they can’t create jobs.  There are only two things that government regulations can do, make it more difficult to hire someone or remove money from the pocket of someone who would give you a job.  If anything when they throw money at something it actually tends to have the opposite effect since people want the free money.  More on that bit later.

Everyone keeps looking at the state as being the solution to their problem.  They keep asking what can my government do for me!?  Well if government had its way, it would make you their slave by making you dependent upon them.  From the looks of this lady, they’re succeeding. 

Quote of the Day – Spencer Ackerman(10/4/2012)

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The Department of Homeland Security compiled and disseminated the following information as part of a post-9/11 partnership with state and local law enforcement to prevent terrorism: DHS doesn’t appear to care how it spends its cash. The Senate inquiry determined that DHS was “unable to produce a complete and accurate tally of the expense of its support for fusion centers.” Its estimates range between $289 million and $1.4 billion. In other words, DHS doesn’t even know how much money it’s spent on what it calls a centerpiece of its counterterrorism strategy.

Spencer Ackerman – DHS Counterterror Centers Produce ‘a Bunch of Crap,’ Senate Finds
October 2, 2012

[Well, when you know and realize that the TSA, and by proxy it’s parent the DHS is a complete and utter security theater the above is kind of obvious.

Besides it’s not their money they’re spending, it’s our money, well at least the money earned by 53% of us. Why should they worry about how much they spend.  They can just tax us for more right? -B]

SSCC #420 – New Orleans

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Seriously I didn’t not plan for this in advance, the number and crime are purely coincidental.

Assistant city attorney Jason Cantrell was issued a summons after he dropped a joint while talking to a police officer in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court.

Cantrell, 43, was cited for simple drug possession and released under a city policy for low-level marijuana cases, according to police.  

Now while apparently the law was followed in this case, there is a reason I’m placing this under the criminal count.

Cantrell has practiced civil and criminal law in New Orleans for 17 years, including six as a public defender in Juvenile Court. In an ironic twist, the 43-year-old also worked as a drug court attorney.

(Emphasis mine.)  While it does seem that most of the work may have been on the defense side instead of the prosecution, he still was a city employee.  Charged with enforcing and upholding the law.

Now he has promptly resigned and the punishment matches what the rest of the public should see in that municipality if the article is to be believed.  Still, this fits perfectly with the, “Laws for thee, not for me” tag.

State Sponsored Criminal #420: Jason Cantrell

Because laws only apply to the lowly peons.  Those who work for the king are allowed to have any noun they want.

h/t Dave Hardy.