There’s a school district in PA that has set new levels of OMFG for the Nazi like assholes that seem to be drawn to public school administration. It seems that they offered all of the 2300 students at the districts 2 high schools laptop computers. The details are discussed in the CNN article linked below. Apparently, some asshole Assistant Principal believed that this gave him the right to spy on his students. If I remember right he was suspended for “improper behavior” at home via the webcam on the laptop.

Since when does a school district have a right to determine behavior while a student is off-campus or away from school functions? At any rate they’re being sued. I can only hope that said Assistant Principal can be proven to have seen some of his female students in various states of undress so that when he goes to prison he can be labeled as a pedophile. I hear they’re really popular. And seriously, the very least that should happen is that this guy should go to prison. He’s lucky I’m not in charge because the motherfucker would be standing in front of a ditch trying his damnedest to stare down a firing squad right now if I was King.

Maybe, just maybe, schools should spend a little more time educating and a little less time worrying about any “improper behavior” that’s going on outside of their jurisdiction.

[Gizmodo] & [CNN]

AWESOME UPDATE: According to the Washington Post an FBI investigation has begun to determine if federal wiretapping or computer intrusion laws were violated. Have fun in prison, scumbag. Because you know the school district is going to roll all over you to get out of the way of this shitstorm.

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court overturned a century of electoral law by a 5-4 majority allowing unlimited spending by corporations, labor unions and other organizations. Until then corporations had been barred from spending funds on broadcast ads, campaign workers or billboards that urge the election or defeat of a federal candidate. They are still barred from contributing directly to a candidate’s campaign. BFD. If you think for a second there’s a functional difference between Exxon paying millions of dollars for TV ads that cast a negative light on a candidate who is opposed to, say, drilling in Yellowstone and Exxon contributing millions of dollars to his opponent so that he can do it I’d suggest you haven’t paid really close attention to the way campaigns work.

Part of the ill-considered decision rests on the feeling that corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals. The problem is that corporations are not individuals and money is not speech. But I’ll tell you what… as an individual I pay taxes on my gross income not on what’s left over after I pay all my bills. If corporations are now regular individuals, let’s level the playing field regarding taxes and let them support the government that is so clearly concerned about their speech rights in the same way you and I do-by paying taxes on their gross sales.

The other problem is that over the decades we (and by “we” I mean the government) has consistently loosened restrictions on the way corporations can behave.  As originally envisioned by the Founding Fathers, corporations were tightly controlled entities limited to certain specific time frames and activities. Now they are not and have become huge juggernauts. And we’ve seen what awesome stewards of the economy they are.

The good news is that I believe this moves us one step closer to the revolution when we (and by  “we” I mean the people) will bring down the vengeance that is so richly deserved.

LA Times has an article about the decision.

I read an article today by Mandy Locke in the News and Observer about Johnny Gaskins, a Raleigh defense attorney, who was convicted October 9th of the crime of depositing and paying taxes on legally earned income but doing it in quantities that were too small. Bullshit, you say?  In our retarded effort to keep people from doing things that they want to do the federal government has passed a whole series of laws that are designed to combat a problem that exists only if you’re a government bureaucrat or peddler of ‘legal drugs’.

This is the case here. The government makes, let’s say, pot illegal. People still want to smoke pot. Some enterprising capitalist will provide them with pot. Now, said capitalist has cash income for which he has no legal source. In order to catch this “criminal” who’s providing the exact same service as the convenience store on the corner (except that the pot industry doesn’t have enough high paid lobbyists lining the pockets of Congress), a law must be passed to catch people depositing the “illegal” income. Which they did. It’s illegal to deposit sums under $10,000 for the purposes of causing the bank to evade reporting you for depositing $10,000. Got that? Read it again.

So that’s what happened to Johnny Gaskins. At this point, a paranoid person would point out that he has built his career on defending persons engaged in drug trafficking (of the “illegal” sort). Therefore, this could be the government’s attempt to rid itself of somebody trying to stop them from eliminating RJ Reynolds/GlaxoSmithKline/Guiness UDV North America’s competition. I’m not that person because I generally think government employees are too stupid and lazy to engage in that kind of behavior. What it most likely is, is a bureaucrat blinding adhering to the letter of the law. Again, Johnny Gaskin’s “crime” is depositing money that he legally earned and paid taxes on but did it in insufficiently large quantities. Are you frightened yet?

There are times that I despair for the Republic because something like this can happen and the people aren’t in the streets asking why the government has any right to tell this man how he can deposit his money. The article seems to question why he would break the law or indicate that he might be mentally unstable from dealing with criminal defendants all these years. What if he just doesn’t think it’s any of the government’s fucking business how much he’s depositing.

Photo by Trevor DeVincenzi.

As we approach Election Day here in the States, Id just like to remind you that voting for them only encourages their current behavior. Obama will not bring real change; the Democrats will not bring real change; the Republicans will not bring real change – because they are all the same. Their differences are all smoke and mirrors – which is why they spend so much of their time name-calling. What will bring real change is the  blood of those who have taken our government from us running in the streets.

I know, it’s not a very anarcho-capitalist thing to say but even Murray Rothbard admitted that the American Revolution was justifiable.

“Revolutionary war is a war against the state apparatus, a war from below by the armed public. It doesn’t have to injure innocent civilians, and it usually doesn’t. It often does not involve taxes or conscription– if it does, it does so on a very small scale.” Murray Rothbard

Our country is run by corporate statists  and their lackeys. It’s time to take it back. I hope you’ll remember that come Election Day.

Normally, I’m pretty libertarian in my outlook but there are a couple of areas where I think government intervention is a pretty good idea. One of them happens to be public libraries. So it was with some concern that I read that the Free Library of Philadelphia will close on October 2nd. It’s exactly the sort of brinksmanship politicians play when they want to raise taxes in the face of public opposition. Tennessee legislators did it a few years ago when voters disapproved of a bond referendum or something. So they stopped funding school transportation.  It’s one of those times you wish that people would grab their guns and descend on the state capitol for a good ole revolution.

That may be  what’s going on here. Or, if Philadelphia or PA is in such bad economic shape that they really can’t afford to keep the libraries open,  I hope the voters of Pennsylvania remember over the course of the next several elections who put them in this situation.

Mostly it reminds me of why politicians can’t be trusted.

[Free Library of Philadelphia via Boing Boing]

So yesterday I wrote about cops speeding without their lights & sirens on and what do you think I saw today? Just to prove I’m right some State Trooper sgt in an unmarked car with license plate SHP-142 blew past me doing at least 70 in a 55 at 4:00 this afternoon on US-421S right by the Old Liberty Rd. Exit. So there.

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of cops driving in ways that are not exactly legal without having their lights on. I was under the impression that when they were exceeding the speed limit by, say, 20 mph they were supposed to be running with their lights on. But maybe that doesn’t apply when they’re racing to get to Krispy Kreme for a fresh batch of donuts.  Of course, since we all know that they’re superior drivers to the rest of us mere mortals maybe that makes it ok. I mean,seriously, isn’t it about time we stopped letting them get away with whatever the hell they want to do because they have “dangerous jobs”. Fuck, I have a dangerous job too. I’ve always kind of felt that cops and other officials that are in charge of the justice system who break the law should have their penalties doubled. What that would mean is we’d have to get rid of the whole “you wash my back, I’ll wash yours”. I’m just sayin’.

[Photo by detritus]

Joseph Carnevale, the traffic barrel monster creator who was arrested in June after Raleigh’s crack police force solved the case, had his day in court. The end result is 50 hours of community service and then the charges will go away. The president of Hamlett Associates plans on erecting the sculpture outside the corporate headquarters and taking Carnevale to lunch. Carnevale plans on doing his community service working with Habitat for Humanity. No word yet on what RPD plans on doing with all the time they’ve got to waste now. Hang out at Snoopy’s, perhaps?

There still hasn’t been any mention in the traditional press but it certainly seems that this whole thing came about  because of a joyless thug named K.L. Everett who wears a badge. As near as I can tell (since the traditional press won’t come right out and say it), he took it upon himself to decide a crime had been committed and set to work the huge bureaucratic machine that is Piggy Central. Hope you take a bullet and it kills you in a slow and painful way. I would say that I hope it paralyzes you but then you’d be paraded around as some sort of “hero”. If you’re dead you just go away and the earth is a slightly better place.

Here’s a link to a story in the N&O.

According to a new Harvard study, health insurers own $4.5 billion in tobacco company stock. Does that seem odd? David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study, calls it “the combined taxidermist and veterinarian approach: either way you get your dog back.” The Consumerist has a good write up on it.

One line I find particularly funny is at the end of the article: “It’s just another thing to keep in mind this summer as Congress debates whether we can continue trusting our private health insurers to look out for our best interests.” Debate? Seriously? Private health insurers have never looked out for our best interests anymore than GM or Microsoft or Kellogg’s has. They aren’t supposed to. They’re businesses and if you expect them to look out for anybody’s interests but their own you’re going to be really disappointed. What I find interesting is that they are so arrogant that they’re willing to hold them in their own name in the open.

If people (and by people I mean politicians) would stop endlessly ruminating over whether or not we should have socialized medicine and come to the realization that we already do, they could start doing something to fix the situation. Realistically, we have it already in the form of corporate syndicalist socialism (is he going to use the national socialist word, hmmmm?). Insurance companies have been making your medical decisions for at least a decade and probably more.  And that, my friends, is the essence of socialized medicine. It makes no difference at all whether the bureaucrat making the decision for your doctor gets a check that says US Treasury on the top of it or Prudential–it’s all the same thing. And healthcare in this country won’t get better until it’s fixed.

In this story at the N&O, Sarah Ovaska puts a slightly different spin on things. From her article it sounds like Hamlett Associates isn’t the bad guy. Apparently, some overzealous pig named K.L. Everett spotted the dangerous menace to society lurking on Hillsborough Street with his keen piggy eyes and had it dismantled and hauled away for investigation. OK, it probably didn’t happen that way since cops can’t do anything but write tickets on their own. He probably called his sargeant who called whatever fake military rank they use above that to indicate that this pig has a bigger dick than the other one. Then there was some kind of task force convened and so on until the swat team came down to take it apart.

Daniel Hall, the project manager for Hamlett Associates, claims he told Everett they weren’t interested in pressing charges and would like the monster back. So doesn’t that mean that RPD in the person of K.L. Everett really stole the barrels? Now, I’ll grant you that it’s possible that Hamlett Associates is spinning this story once word got out (Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing) but most of these projects are either Time and Materials or Cost Plus billing. Either way, it’s likely that Hamlett would have passed on the cost of the barrels to the State. I’m much more willing to believe that some joyless assholes overstepped their bounds in their quest for a world without sin or danger or variation from the norm.

This is what happens when you give people who grew up wanting to be bullies but didn’t have the balls guns and the authority of The State to back them up. One day we’ll be coming for you motherfuckers. And my smiling face will be one of the last things you see when we blindfold you in front of the ditch.

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