The Javelineer

If you are a citizen worker, your government hates you.

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano this week designated 11 new countries as eligible to participate in the H-2A and H-2B nonimmigrant visa programs, which allow U.S. employers to bring foreign nationals to the United States to fill temporary or seasonal jobs for which U.S. workers are not available.

The 11 newly designated countries—Croatia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ireland, Lithuania, The Netherlands, Nicaragua, Norway, Serbia, Slovakia and Uruguay—join 28 countries previously designated as eligible to participate in these programs.

The Cato Institute utterly refutes Obama’s policy proposals and his claims about the state of the Union. It’s thorough and devastating. And true.

(h/t insty)

Radley Balko writes about The Forfeiture Racket.

Municipalities have come to rely on confiscated property for revenue. Police and prosecutors use forfeiture proceeds to fund not only general operations but junkets, parties, and swank office equipment. A cottage industry has sprung up to offer law enforcement agencies instruction on how to take and keep property more efficiently. And in Indiana, where Anthony Smelley is still fighting to get his money back, forfeiture proceeds are enriching attorneys who don’t even hold public office, a practice that violates the U.S. Constitution [...]

Because the property itself is on trial, the owner has the status of a third-party claimant. Once the government has shown probable cause of a property’s “guilt,” the onus is on the owner to prove his innocence. The parents of a drug-dealing teenager, for instance, would have to show they had no knowledge the kid was using the family car to facilitate drug transactions. Homeowners have to show they were unaware that a resident was keeping drugs on the premises. Anyone holding cash in close proximity to illicit drugs may have to document that he earned the money legitimately.

When owners of seized property put up a legal fight (and the majority do not), the cases are almost always heard by judges, not juries. In some states forfeiture claimants don’t even have the right to a jury trial. But even in states where they do, owners tend to waive that right, because jury proceedings are longer and more expensive. Federal forfeiture claimants are technically guaranteed a jury trial under the Seventh Amendment, but can lose the right if they fail to reply in a timely manner to sometimes complicated government notices of seizure.

Unbelievable. The Constitution says you are innocent until proven guilty. Yet, it’s legal for police to take your property, and then make you prove your innocence to get it back. Sometimes police take your property intentionally to impoverish you and prevent you from proving your innocence.

That’s your police and prosecutors, people. Law enforcement in this country is a sick joke. We need to change the forfeiture laws. Now.

Kick it with Hayek. Look at that snitch, Keynes.

Sorry if that sounds like invective.
Prepare to get schooled in my Austrian perspective …

That ain’t no liquitity trap,
Just a broke banking system,
I’m done that’s a rap.

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. – John Maynard Keynes

The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F. A. Hayek

Related: Hayek explains why Milton Friedman is a methodological Keynesian. Monetarism is an example of the more general error of assuming that airy statistical aggregates are a substitute for actual individual judgements. We can agree with Friedman’s ends, but still disagree with his means.

Related: Hayek on so-called intellectuals.

The resistance against being guided by something they [the intellectuals] can’t understand [the free market] is understandable in an intellectual. Go back to theology. Descartes explicitly argued that we should not believe anything we did not understand. But his followers immediately claimed that we should not believe any rules that we do not understand. And the intellectual has this feeling that what is not comprehensible must be nonsense.

Related: Hayek fighting the planners. Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.

Related: Read the book, The Road To Serfdom. Watch a BBC documentary: Part 1, Part 2. Or, watch the surprisingly moving Road to Serfdom in Five Minutes. The line drawings express more than any movie could. But for crying out loud, take a Sunday off from watching football and read the damn book, you lazy ass. It’s one of the most important books written in the 20th century.

One video explains why the campaign fiance “reform” laws had to go.

(h/t insty)

Another video explains Obama’s philosophy with visual themes. Really well done.

(h/t RSM)

Policing is a good and necessary function in government. But the policing function is not the same thing as the police. In America, both policing and police are out of control. Policing laws and policies step on constitutional rights. Police have too much discretion and are rarely prosecuted for crimes as harshly as citizens.

In a later post, I’ll delve into policing. I will explain how the homeland security laws and agencies aren’t aimed at terrorists and enemies of the country. They’re aiming at us, the citizens.

In this post, I focus on police. Say the wrong thing to a cop, even innocently, and you’re in trouble. You might even get hurt. Everyone knows it. Innocent people fear the police. They aren’t protecting us anymore. They’re policing us, enforcing laws upon us. Police today act like an organized gang. And like other organized gangs, they protect their turf. Police agencies contain only a minority of sadists, but the bad cops are enabled by a majority of good cops who cover over the bad seeds. Maybe they’re not such good cops after all.

Watch The Largest Street Gang in America.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Part 4. This part shows how police abuse is covered up. The Police Complaint Center conducts undercover tests of police departments across the country. Watch this Fox video about how people are intimidated and harassed when filing reports of police abuse. The Police Complaint Center simply requests a form to file a complaint. They are routinely misdirected, lied to, assaulted, arrested, harassed, and denied the legal protection of the complaint process by armed thug police covering for other thug police. My fellow conservatives are often unaware of the powerful dissuasion – beatings, arrests, false charges – used by front line cops to prevent people from reporting abuse. The thin blue line once protected the citizenry, now it protects armed police thugs. Cops are startlingly ignorant of the spirit and letter of the law.

Part 5.

Part 6.

Lots of conservatives will think, “this guy is anti-cop,” or “he’s just a cop hater.” Not true. I want police to return to their original organization and purpose of community service, which is a very different from ‘law enforcement.’

Local policing has become overly federalized. Police everywhere are all moving towards a standard uniform. More and more police forces have federally funded SWAT teams. Policing today is much more militaristic than in previous decades.

As a conservative, remember that the Founders asked us to be perpetually suspicious of government power. Police are agents of the government. They are given wide discretion to beat, cage, and kill citizens. Police wield the ultimate power in our society. Conservatives who care for constitutional rights must jealously guard their rights when dealing with agents of the government – including police. It’s up to us.

To learn how to deal more safely with police, watch this video entitled Busted: A Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters.

Also, watch this law professor explain why you should always use your Fifth Amendment privilege. It’s entitled, In Praise of the Fifth Amendment Right to Not Be a Witness Against Yourself. The basic message: never talk to police.

Even if you are innocent, tell the truth, and your statements exculpate you – what you say to police can never help you but can definitely hurt you.

Memorize these two questions and three sentences.

• “Am I free to go?”
• “Is that a demand or a request?”
• “I do not consent to any search.”
• “I want to speak to a lawyer.”
• “I choose to remain silent.”

Related: Cops brutally beat violinist.

Related: Cops manhandle and arrest fan for cheering the wrong team.

Related: Man in diabetic seizure tased 11 times.

Related: Police brutalize quadriplegic. A cop throws him from his wheelchair and breaks his ribs. Other cops laugh.

Related: Cops beat 64 year old man.

Related: Cop tasers grandmother because she didn’t get her insurance card fast enough.

Examples of out of control police are abundant. Citizens must band together and insist on their rights. One way to get started is to visit Flex Your Rights. They have a new video with trial lawyer Billy Murphy to help people deal legally and effectively with the police.

It is perfectly legal for the police to deceive you. They can even lie about the law. Police have crafted clever and deceptive scripts that trick you into giving up your rights. Know your rights and use them. It’s the American way. It’s the conservative way. It’s the right way.

Whittle exposes the despicable Walter Duranty and the deplorable Walter Cronkite, and then ties it all together with the Frankfurt School and Obama’s ideology. It’s a typically adept presentation.

He even talks a bit about Cronkite’s dangerous ambition for world government. Conservatives are waking up.

(h/t insty)

There are those who doubt the existence of conspiracies. Enter Cass Sunstein, fascist.

Glen Greenwald reports,

Sunstein advocates that the Government’s stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into “chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups.”  He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called “independent” credible voices to bolster the Government’s messaging (on the ground that those who don’t believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government).   This program would target those advocating false “conspiracy theories,” which they define to mean: “an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role.”  Sunstein’s 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story’s Daniel Tencer.

There are two problems here. First, the idea that conspiracy theorists are ipso facto nuts. Second, Cass Sunstein is in the government now, and his ideas are dangerous as hell.

On the first matter, The government has staged attacks and led citizens to certain death to lead the nation to war. They also lied about it for decades.

The government intelligence agencies have planned to kill citizens to provoke wars. Some 9/11 commissioners and staffers suspected government deception. McCarthy was right, there really was a conspiracy in the intelligence agencies led by Soviet moles in the US government.

Pajamas TV reports that there very well may be an Islamist conspiracy, led by top intel officials in our intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Consider the contradiction. We have top conservative media reporting on government conspiracies, even as top conservative media deny the existence of government conspiracies. That’s more insane than the truther movement has ever been.

It’s like the people denying the existence of a movement for global government, even while the President of the UN calls for global government and the Copenhagen treaty mentions “global government” 24 times and “global tax” 21 times. Give me a freakin’ break.

There really have been conspiracies in the government to kill citizens. There’s nothing crazy about thinking it could happen again.

All conservatives should be very skeptical of government power, especially the power invested in a standing army, standing intelligence agencies, and federalized police forces. This view is well-backed by the Founder’s, the Constitution, by long American customs, and by prudence itself.

If you ever doubted it, just read Sunstein’s documents. He’s in government now. If he attempts to enact the things he wrote in that report, it’ll be treason.