The Price of Liberty

Libertarian Commentary on the News, #12-45E

Posted on 2012-10-30 by TPOL Nathan

Politics 2012
Texas AG Tells Int’l Election Monitors to Butt Out
(CNSNews.com) Now, if he’d only tell the Washington DC “national” monitors to butt out, too. But perhaps we should ALL remember, “Do unto others as you wish them to do unto you,” the next time someone gets the bright idea of sending election monitors to Belarus or Zimbabwe or Gaza. The best election monitors are informed and powerful, armed and vigilant citizens.

Islamic wars: African front
Sudan: Regime claims Israeli airstrike to blame for arms factory fire
(UPI.com) “Four military planes attacked an arms factory in Khartoum where there was a huge fire overnight, a Sudanese minister said on Wednesday, blaming Israel for the air strike.” (10/24/12)

Nathan: This reminds me of stories from WW2 in which both Soviet and Nazi functionaries sometimes blamed enemy action for their own stupidity in doing things like letting factories burn down. Although it would surprise none of us if Israel DID launch the raid to take out a plant which was apparently making weapons for some Iranian operation (shows how hard up Iran is, if they are resorting to getting Sudan to manufacture things for them), it could very well be that microminiature- stealth-invisible Israeli warplanes (no doubt using Starfleet teleportation technology) started a fire in a trashcan where everyone put their cigarettes out – or whatever it is that Sudanese smoke during breaks.

Hoploclasts – Politics 2012
Gun Control Advocates Recommend New and Stronger Regulations
(CNSNews.com) Of course they are. That is why they are “gun control advocates.” Bloomberg with his new Super-PAC is upset that gun control laws are at their lowest ebb since the infamous Act of 1968 (but have a LONG way to go to come close to “liberty” anytime soon.

Stupid government nanny tricks – Politics 2012
Food Activists Name Only Dems As ‘Champions’ in ‘Non-Partisan’ Congressional Scorecard
(CNSNews.com) The joke is on us: I’ve seen nothing to indicate that the Democrats (or at least those who are Tranzis) care about essentials of “food security.” The bills used to rate the Congressmen and Senators and the position these “food activists” take on each bill are clearly based on the idea that more government control is better, that the US must dictate to the world in matters of food, that welfare is good and more welfare is better, and that ordinary people are too stupid and/or uneducated to choose for themselves what is good to grow or raise and eat.

The Tattletale State
Secret Service Asks Americans to Report Tweets That ‘Concern You’
(CNSNews.com) Ah, yes, stoolies ALWAYS wanted. Anything you say CAN and WILL be used against you. Another hammer for someone who doesn’t like you (or your sons or daughters or parents or cousins) to use to create problems for you. Once again I see the irony of the initials of the Secret Service being “SS.”

Islamic wars: Arab Street Revolt
Oil-Rich Gulf States Worry About Muslim Brotherhood Agenda
(CNSNews.com) “And it’s up against the wall, all you oilmen,” or so goes that old redneck song, and I guess that is what they are worried about. See, in the Arab world (with or without Islam), no matter how much they hate and fight and kill the ferengi or infidels or pagans or whatever, their real efforts are spent on killing each other. One reason that Mohammed (peanut butter und honig) tried to get them all interested in jihad against the unbelievers. Well, it only works some of the time.

Government-run, tax-funded schools
Indiana school: no more preachers in lunchroom
(Onenewsnow.com)Thanks to a potential lawsuit against an Indiana school district, a youth pastor will no longer be allowed to speak with students in the lunchroom.

Officials for Southwest Allen County Schools say the district no longer allows a local youth pastor [sic] to interact with students because of the legal threat. But Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel asserts that this kneejerk reaction is wrong.

Nathan: Does anyone else remember “release time” when schools let children out of “regular classes” one or two times a week for Bible classes taught by local preachers? And when ANYone in town was welcome to come visit the kids at lunch? How we have changed. That, of course, was a long ways back in the devolution of public schools into modern prison institutions. Get your children OUT of these places, people!

Nanny-state tyranny
Government Targets The Animal Breeders
(Sportsmen’s and Animal Owners’ Voting Alliance via Laissez Faire) APHIS proposes to revise the definition of “retail pet store” to bring more pet animals sold at retail under the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) licensing and regulations. APHIS will narrow the definition of retail pet store so that it means a place of business or residence that each buyer physically enters in order to personally observe the animals available for sale prior to purchase and/or to take custody of the animals after purchase. Under the proposed rule, no dog or other pet animal will be sold at retail without either public or APHIS oversight.

WHO WILL BE AFFECTED?
Anyone who sells the following animals to the public for use as pets: Dogs, cats, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, rats, mice, gophers, chinchilla, domestic ferrets, domestic farm animals, birds, and cold-blooded species.

APHIS plans to license and regulate these retail sellers unless they can meet the exemption requirements in the revised definition of retail pet store. A breeder may gain an exemption by selling only to buyers who physically enter the premises to observe the animals available for sale prior to purchasing them. A breeder can be exempt from regulation if income from sales (for listed species) is less than $500 a year; this does not include wild or exotic animals, dogs, or cats. Finally, a breeder may be exempt if he/she maintains a total of four (4) or fewer breeding female dogs, cats, and/or small exotic or wild mammals, such as hedgehogs, degus, spiny mice, prairie dogs, flying squirrels, and jerboas,and who sells only the offspring of these dogs, cats, or small exotic or wild mammals, which were born and raised on his/her premises and sold for pets.

LIVING WITH USDA LICENSING *** DOWNLOAD FILE IN PDF

Nathan: Thanks to the good folks at Laissez Faire for this one – but guys and gals, we missed the boat: the comment period closed on 15 AUG and the rules apparently will go into effect at any time. Is there NOTHING that this administration, that the federal government will not seek to regulate, tax, and mess with in the name of some higher power or justification? The answer is a resounding “NO.” The government is incredibly stupid, with a track record of failure in every endeavor, and dead broke, borrowing or printing money to the tune of more than a TRILLION a year, and yet they create more and more work for themselves. It doesn’t matter WHICH “massa” or “messiah” is elected in two weeks, we will NOT see this sort of garbage stop.

LF has it right in their commentary: Meanwhile, the market moves underground, same as with so many other sectors. Less transparency, less quality control, less information. In the future, you will be buying your puppies off a park bench, exchanging money for the content of a brown paper bag. It is the result of an invisible process of restriction that has been going on one hundred years and it is strangling the life out of society itself. Every step matters. Every step is evil. But this evil flies under the cover of night.

TSA Thugerry – Nazgul – Stupid juries
Mom Found Guilty of Disorderly Conduct After Refusing TSA Pat Down
(Freedom Outpost) Andrea Abbott, 42, of Clarksville, Tennessee was convicted of disorderly conduct in Nashville for berating Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers who attempted to pat down her teenage daughter and then refused to submit to the procedure herself at a Tennessee airport back in July 2011. Note for Breitbart writer Dana Loesch: This is what standing up against the tyranny of the TSA looks like, not going along with it. The jurors deliberated four house before reaching the verdict. The sentence could have resulted in Abbot facing thirty days in jail and a $50 fine. However, the judge placed her on a one year probation due to the fact that she has no criminal record.

Nathan: There is so much incredibly wrong with this, including a complacent and compliant jury that failed to do its job to preserve liberty, and as for the murderous rapist thugs at TSA, what do we expect? IS there any other answer than violent self-defense?

Mama’s Note: Of course there is another answer, at least for the short term. Stay away from the airports! That’s simple enough. If you would not walk down the streets of S. Central Los Angeles alone, unarmed, in the dark… why would you deliberately enter the den of these thugs, thieves and rapists? You actually might have a better chance of coming out of LA unharmed. And yes, I know that is inconvenient and disruptive to business, but at the very least one would think people would keep their children out of such a place.

The “messiah’s” minions – Murder most foul – Islamic wars: Arab street front
Former Obama Press Sec poohpoohs US killing of 16-year-old American
(Freedom Outpost) Former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about a 16-year-old American boy, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was killed by an American drone attack, authorized by Barack Obama, callously said that he “should have (had) a far more responsible father.”

Nathan: This is something that didn’t come out months ago, when al-Awlaki, the “American citizen” born in New Mexico to Islamist parents, was killed and then a few months later, the 16-year-old was killed. He probably WAS an enemy of the US, given who raised him, but the casual attitude of Gibbs is just reflecting that of the entire administration: they don’t care WHO they kill. The next story reports that they intend to keep on doing it.

Murder most foul – The “messiah’s” minions – World wars
Administration plans to continue kill lists indefinitely
(Washington Post) Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.” The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones. Although the matrix is a work in progress, the effort to create it reflects a reality setting in among the nation’s counterterrorism ranks: The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years.

Nathan: The killings will continue, and NOT just by the FedGov and NOT just overseas, as the next story (from Mama Liberty) shows

Murder most foul – Home front – Local tyranny
2 dead after flying trooper fires at vehicle
MCALLEN, Texas (AP) – Three people were found wounded, two fatally, in a vehicle that was fired upon by a Texas state trooper in a helicopter. The incident happened Thursday afternoon near the South Texas border with Mexico near the town of La Joya (HOY’-yah), about 70 miles northwest of Brownsville. Katherine Cesinger (SEHS’-ihn-jur) of the Texas Department of Public Safety says a DPS aircraft was helping a state game warden in a high-speed pursuit when the DPS officer on the aircraft opened fire. She says two people from the vehicle died, one was injured and six others were arrested. She called the shooting “an enforcement action” but declined to say whether police caused the deaths and injuries. She says the Texas Rangers are investigating and no other information was available.

Mama’s Note: It would seem the stakes are getting higher all the time… especially in border states. How many helicopters do police departments operate these days? This is starting to sound like Iraq or Afghanistan.

Imperial America (Part 1)

Posted on 2012-10-27 by TPOL Nathan

Liberty seems so fragile a thing, does it not?

We have it, gaining it at great cost. But think, piece by piece, year by year, it seems to slip away, or to decay into something as useful as a sucked-empty egg shell, pretty on the outside and with little but corruption within.

We have gotten so accustomed to this happening that we are scarcely aware it is happening. Yes, we see or hear about a friend, a neighbor, a family member, or some 10-second sensation on talk radio or the hourly news, but the long, slow, steady decline is hard to notice.

It is the same thing concerning our imperial status.

What’s that? Imperial America? What kind of weird thing is that? Americans have always FOUGHT empires, right? The British, the French, the German, the Austria, the Ottoman, the Japanese, the Soviet “evil empire,” and a few more? How can “WE” be an empire?

Good question, but one easily answered. Many of the AmerInd who inhabited this continent prior to European colonization were imperialists: of note are the Azteca, the Maya, the Iroquois Confederacy, and the great Confederacy of the Southeast, and very likely the Chaco Culture and others in the Southwest, and the Cahokia culture. Not all of these were empires for their entire existence, but they all had imperial characteristics.

The same thing was obvious with the first European explorers and settlers: they represented and were part of (or fleeing from) various empires. For example, the vast Hapsburg domains (not just Spain but much else in Europe), the French Bourbons, and of course the British: first the Tudors and then other royal houses, while in the fringes and niches of the big powers were the smaller imperial ventures: the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark. But the ultimate big winners in North America (despite a valiant showing and an indelible mark by France) were the United Kingdom and Spain. Those colonists along the largest part of the Eastern Seaboard, from Newfoundland through Nova Scotia and Massachusetts Bay to Chesapeake Bay and on down to Savannah were British: English and Welsh and Scots and Irish. They were proud members and junior partners in the great British Empire (version 1.o, as it turned out). Their blood was imperial blood, as great as that of Ancient Macedonia or Ancient Rome or Medieval Angevin or Bourbon or Hohenstaufen or Welf or other great imperial ventures and dynasties of Europe. They sought to expand the empire at the expense of Spain and France and the various AmerInd tribes and confederations that occupied the continent.

What we call the War of American Independence or the American Revolutionary War could equally be called a civil war: a war of secession from the Empire. A war which, unlike the Second American Revolutionary War, was won (or at least not lost) by the secessionists. Not hardly what we are taught in history, of course. But ridding themselves (officially) of a royal family and monarch did NOT change their imperial nature all that much: nor did the outbreeding to AmerInd, all of Europe, and a good chunk of Africa.

American imperialism swept across AND around a continent, assisted and encouraged the defeat of still more opposing imperial ventures (Spain, France, then Mexico and Brazil) and while much of North America was still unconquered, leaped the oceans as had Portugal and Spain and Britain and the Netherlands before us. (Long before the last AmerInd revolts and resistance was put down, the US or her surrogates had already laid claim and taken control of dozens of little out-of-the-way islands and ports, working in cooperation if not consultation with British interests, usually against Spanish and French efforts.)

The various squabbles between Brits and Americans (War of 1812, Jenkins’ Ear war, etc.) as well as internal American squabbles (slave revolts, the War between the States, etc.) were truly internal issues – more akin to bureaucratic infighting than much else.

Meanwhile France was virtually banished from the Americas, followed by Spain and Portugal and their New World successor empires, and then their successor states.

Too many people think that American imperialism did not develop until the late 19th century and the war against Spain. At that time, American imperialism WAS beginning a new phase, but it was at least two centuries old. Spain’s last pieces were swept from the New World gameboard, filibustering had been nationalized in the Western Hemisphere, and the American part of the Anglo-American Empire finally jumped nearly completely across the oceans – to the Philippines.

Too many people think that imperial powers must have a single center, but history does not teach us that: Ancient Israel, even before – but especially after the kingdoms divided, had Jerusalem and Samaria; Persia had Persopolis and Susa; for centuries the Roman Empire was ruled from Constantinople (modern Istanbul) and Roma (mostly). Both London and Washington have, and still are the centers of the modern Anglo-American Empire: a global empire still greater than any previous in history. That was even more obvious in the early 1900s.

Imperial dominance can come in many forms – and is often disguised. The French empire, for example, still exists in much of Africa, where France controls the economies of supposedly independent nations and frequently intervenes in their local affairs. Although the United Kingdom has pulled back from the same tactics itself, nevertheless it supports American interventions, and works through its Commonwealth surrogates: Australia and Canada in particular. And today, Anglo-American (or American-Anglo) control – dominance – exists in most of the world in some degree or another: including the European Union and even the Muslim world, as well as much of East Asia and South Asia. Official title and control are not necessary de facto control.

Like Rome, modern America has conveniently come up with various ways to conceal its imperial power and promote the de facto condition both at home and abroad. And like Rome, it is both hated and loved by those IN the empire as well as those running and supporting the empire.

In part II, I’ll look at what this means and has meant for the past 40 or so years, and could mean in the future.

Posted in Nathan's Rants, Uncategorized | Tagged Imperialism, Stupid | Leave a comment

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-45C

Posted on 2012-10-25 by TPOL Nathan

Crash of 2009 – Free enterprise
US may soon become world’s top oil producer
(online WSJ) “U.S. oil output is surging so fast that the United States could soon overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s biggest producer. Driven by high prices and new drilling methods, U.S. production of crude and other liquid hydrocarbons is on track to rise 7 percent this year to an average of 10.9 million barrels per day.” (10/23/12)

Nathan: Note that this is DESPITE the continued depression and DESPITE more and more federal (and state and local) restrictions on drilling and production and all the ancillary systems and actions necessary to take a barrel of crude oil from thousands of feet down and convert it to a useful product, sometimes thousands of miles away. And oddly enough, we are sending more and more of it overseas: more than many members of OPEC. Once more we see that free enterprise, even when crippled and abused and supporting an ever-heavier burden of government on its shoulders, is able to perform amazing things. But it COULD be better, as the story below reports:

Gas Prices Doubled, Obama Locks up National Reserve
(Investor’s Business Daily) In August, the Obama administration closed off 23.5 million acres of the most productive areas of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska…

Nathan: Alaska isn’t alone, of course: many states (especially Western states) have huge reserved tied up in Federal control. Is it any wonder Arizona has a new sovereignty item on its ballot this year?

The “messiah” – Crash of 2009 – Theft by government
Maker of Batteries Files for Bankruptcy
(New York Times) It is difficult for the Obama administration to explain the failure of electric car battery maker A123 Systems considering the similar fate other energy companies like Solyndra…

Nathan: Gutted, looted, and abandoned, no doubt. Seems like I recall that from some book plot. Atlas Shrugged, maybe? This administration has honed the techniques it learned from previous administrations and does a far more effective job of looting private business and the economy in general than those tinpot dictators in Africa and Latin America. Aren’t we proud?

Theft by government
U.S. Government’s Foreign Debt Now $47,495 Per Household
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: Gee, that isn’t too much: no more than HALF the average annual income. What are we worried about? Gunboat diplomacy to make us pay? If all these people in other countries are stupid enough to loan us all this money for us to use to build a military that dominates the world and threatens them constantly, who loses?

Mama’s Note: Not “us,” my friend… the psychopaths who inhabit the halls of government have done all this borrowing and it is not our obligation to pay any part of it. Let them take the bureaucrats and politicians. They might find a few coins if they hold them upside down and shake hard enough.

Politics 2012 – Culture wars: killing babies
Ann Romney: ‘Mitt Has Always Been a Pro-Life Person’
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: So let us take her at her word. What does that make the former governor of Massachusetts? A hypocrite – a murdering hypocrite.

Home front – Stupid government
Pentagon Will Not Classify Fort Hood Shootings as Terrorism — or Anything Else
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: What, not workplace violence? The man is a traitor (to his nation, his service, his comrades (and their families) and to his word – but not to his religion) and his actions were obviously in support of enemies which are themselves condemned as terrorists.

The “messiah’s” broken promises – Worldwide war
Obama Says Congress Needed to Close Gitmo
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: Funny, he doesn’t seem to need Congress to do all these other things that he just has an executive order drafted for. So why for Gitmo? One more lie and one more broken promise.

Politics 2012 – Media
Third-party presidential candidates rail against Obama and Romney at debate (VIDEO)
(Washington Post) CHICAGO — Away from the bright lights and fanfare of the just-completed presidential debates, four third-party White House hopefuls debated Tuesday night, coming from starkly different political perspectives, but uniting in agreement that neither Mitt Romney nor President Obama can solve the nation’s biggest problems.

Nathan: Funny, eh? No mention BEFORE the debate, just a sop to the millions of people who favor one of these candidates AFTER, when the real audience of such debates has no opportunity to see it. (Yeah, I know this debate is on YouTube and no doubt many other places, but there is a big difference between seeing a recording and viewing this sort of thing live.)

Theft by government
State-Local Tax Burdens Higher on Individuals Living in Blue States
(CNSNews.com)

Nathan: This is, at best an absurd generalization. Truth is, state and local taxes are too high – even from a minarchist point of view – in EVERY state and EVERY locality. Adding insult to injury, the money is wasted as often as not.

Stupid people
L’Aquila earthquake scientists sentenced to six years in jail
(Telegraph.co.uk‎ ) A group of scientists are facing six years in jail for manslaughter after providing “an incomplete, inept, unsuitable and criminally mistaken” assessment of risks posed by the devastating L’Aquila earthquake that killed more than 300 people. … On Monday, Judge Marco Billi announced the manslaughter sentence to a packed courtroom in a temporary building erected to hear the case in the still devastated city. He also ruled that the defendants should pay 7.8 million euros (£6.4 millions: $11.5 million) in damages, with two million euros to be paid immediately.

Nathan: I am as appalled as anyone about this – and see a lot of folks comparing it to the Galileo trial centuries ago. This conviction is criminal and evil, but most of the stories reporting get the verdict wrong: they were not convicted of not being able to predict the killer quake but of failing to do their assigned duties properly and of giving a false impression of safety. Even so, the manslaughter conviction is nuts!

But at the same time, let me interject a note of caution. These six scientists and the bureaucrat (supposedly an engineer) ARE guilty of incredible arrogance and are caught in a trap of their (and their colleagues’) making. The idea being that Science is nearing perfection and can AND SHOULD be trusted, even while they make a mockery of scientific process and have in essence turned it into a religion. Of course people will seek out scapegoats when those who are the most likely candidates present themselves (or seem to) as (nearly) infallible sages and keepers of all true knowledge. Wired has a good column on the subject. I don’t agree with all the conclusions or comments, but there is a lot worth pondering.

Posted in Commentary on the News | Tagged Crash of 2009, Home front, Politics 2012, Theft by government | Leave a comment

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-45B – Stupid People

Posted on 2012-10-24 by TPOL Nathan

Stupid people
Parched in the West but Shipping Water to China, Bale by Bale
(Wall Street Journal) Alfalfa is a water-guzzling crop, and the amount that was exported to China in 2012 is enough to supply the annual consumption of around 500,000 American families…

Shades of Prof. de la Paz in “The Moon is A Harsh Mistress” indeed. But unlike wheat from Luna, alfalfa from California to China is NOT going to destroy the environment or the economy or anything else. California’s problems with water will not be solved by saving a half-million families’ worth of water by NOT making China pay through the nose for alfalfa (as anyone knows, shipping the stuff thousands of miles is insane). What WOULD? Learning that green is not always necessary, and that using nuclear power to desalinize water does NOT make water radioactive. Too many people, too many lawns, too many fancy parks and all the rest – but if they are that stupid, then let them pay for the cost of building huge nuclear-powered distilling plants to provide their water so that they don’t drain the Colorado (or Mono Lake, or the Big Valley). Let markets work by stopping government subsidies of huge water projects! Of course, since California is apparently losing a quarter-million people a year, all that water won’t be needed in 5 or 6 years, anyway!

More Stupid people
9-year-old girl shot after relative mistakes her for skunk
(NBC News) A 9-year-old Pennsylvania girl was shot in the shoulder with a shotgun at a Halloween party Saturday evening by a relative who mistook her for a skunk, a Beaver County dispatcher confirmed to NBC News.

Mama Liberty: Know your target! Besides… who takes a shotgun to a halloween party?

Nathan: Well, a lot of us go armed to parties, but probably this was in the person’s home where they keep their arms. But more to the point, who is idiotic enough to shoot a skunk PERIOD except in a good safe area where the smell doesn’t get embedded in everything. And of course, as Mama Liberty said, KNOW your target. Shooting animals at night is a bad practice.

Mama’s Note: Well, of course we carry our arms, but I’ve not seen anyone ever take a shotgun to a party and it would have had to be handy for anyone to shoot in a situation like this, not something retrieved from a gun room or safe. As usual, the story is far more remarkable for the information that is not included than the actual facts conveyed, but I’d love to have a long, serious talk with this shooter in any case.

Her Majesty’s subjects – more stupid people
Scotland leads charge as Europe’s separatists push for change
(CNN) “Alex Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, is fond of saying that when the United Nations was first formed in 1945, it had just 50 members. Today, he adds, that figure has risen to almost 200. It’s a nice line, although in reality the emergence of a new nation remains relatively rare.” (10/19/12)

I am all for Scots’ independence from London – as much as I am for all Brits independence from London. Fond as I am of the monarchy, I believe its role is to restore and preserve the liberties of her “subjects” and to END the tyranny of Parliament, unelected bureaucracies, and do-gooder Tranzis who want to merge that storied isle into the morass of the Continent. I admit that it is sentiment speaking here, and that Brits deserve liberty as much as Americans or Schweizers or any other people. The problem is, 21st Century Scotland has been the most liberal and socialist of the British nations, and they are very likely to vote themselves an even MORE socialist “paradise” modeled more on Chavez’s Venezuela than traditional Scots liberties. They are selling themselves into slavery. Second problem is one that ALL the newly-independent or autonomous regions of Europe (Flanders, Wallonia, Catalonia, Padania, Scotland, etc.) face: they are declaring their freedom from the old national capitals but NOT from the enormous overreaching nanny-state called the European Union with its cancerous bureaucracy in Brussels and elsewhere. And by separating from their nation-states, they make it far more likely that Brussels will accelerate its tyranny. It is far more likely that Brussels will be willing and able to use “peacekeepers” (whether they wear UN blue or EU blue or NATO blue) in a “free Catalonia” than in a region of Spain, or in a “free Scotland” than in part of the United Kingdom. Unless they can be free both from their old capitals AND the EU, their independence is a farce.

Stupid people – Detroit insanity
Someone is shooting at motorists in Michigan; police hunt for suspect
(NBC News)WIXOM, Mich. — Police are teaming up to track down a suspect in 16 shootings near the Interstate 96 corridor outside of Detroit, NBC station WDIV reported.

Mama Liberty: I can’t understand why, but this just strikes me as very strange.

Nathan: More stupid people, obviously. Or at least one very stupid person. Of course, this IS Detroit, and recall that one of the baffling things about Muslim societies is that they seldom try to restrict ownership and carrying of firearms BUT that their usual idea of ANY celebration is to shoot guns everywhere and anywhere. And that their idea of training people to shoot is to say “Insha’Allah” (As God wills) without instantly facing Mecca while spraying automatic fire everywhere. (Remember, that is why Janissaries are so important to Muslim regimes: it is very difficult to teach someone that hitting a target with a firearm is not just a matter of “As God wills” or “If God wills”) So maybe this is some Muslim celebration? At least until SOMEONE gets a clear shot at this idiot.

Stupid people – No self-defense
Father dies shielding children from gunman who set home ablaze; boy killed
(NBC News) Updated at 6 p.m. ET: INGLEWOOD, Calif. — The man believed to be behind a shooting rampage and arson in Inglewood that left a father and his 4-year-old son dead and three other family members wounded was in the process of being evicted from his home, said a relative of one of the victims.

Mama Liberty: They died because victims most certainly can’t have a gun, of course.

Nathan: So he took it out on someone else? And since no one was armed and able to deal with it before the cops showed up after a 9-1-1 call, this happens. This is the kind of idiocy that one of the Nazgul demonstrated a few days ago with his stupid comments: “Cell phone with a predialed 911 at your bedside might be better …” (City-Data.com, 6 days ago) – Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, speaking at an event hosted by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence’s Legal Action …

This tragic incident in Southern California again demonstrates the stupidity of people like Stevens. How many more dead does it take?

Stupid people: Non-news – Politics 2012
Historic Presidential Debate – October 23
(dailypaul.com) This debate is the only 2012 Presidential debate where the top six Presidential candidates have been invited to participate. Confirmed candidates include: Gary Johnson, Libertarian Party | Jill Stein, Green Party | Virgil Goode, Constitution Party | Rocky Anderson, Justice Party

LOTS of stupidity here. First, the mainstream media for their games with the debates (by the way, thumbs-down again on the bits I heard about). Secondly, honestly, the people who shelled their money out to do this: who is going to pay the slightest attention? The vast majority of the several thousand people who will attend or watch this are those who have already decided whom they are voting for in a few weeks. The MSM will bury this right behind the classifieds. Far better to use the money to buy things to survive the mess ahead!

Posted in Commentary on the News | Tagged environism, Politics 2012, Stupid people | 1 Comment

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-45A – South Dakota politicians RIP

Posted on 2012-10-24 by TPOL Nathan

News of the week and Commentary from a Libertarian Point of View

This week is starting out with a definite downside for South Dakota, having lost two of her best-known sons in a matter of a few hours.

George S. McGovern, Democratic nominee who lost to Nixon in ’72, dies at 90
(Washington Post) George S. McGovern, the three-term senator from South Dakota who carried the Democratic Party’s liberal banner in the Vietnam War era, launched a star-crossed bid for the presidency in 1972, and energized many of the leading Democrats of the past generation, died Sunday at a hospice in Sioux Falls, S.D. He was 90.

His death was not unexpected. Like much of South Dakota politics, his were badly messed up. An article posted today hailed his late-life libertarian or conservative views, caused by trying to run a bed-and-breakfast back east after getting out of politics and learning at first hand how bad government is for business and people, but I don’t buy it. I never met or knew him, but I know a lot of his protégées, several of whom WERE also small businessmen (or women) but who have never given up their statist, liberal, and now Tranzi views of life and politics. His legacy is NOT a good one, not from the point of view of the liberty of South Dakota and the other forty-nine States.

But he is not the only loss to South Dakota this week.

Russell Means dies at 72; American Indian rights activist, actor
(Los Angeles Times‎) One of the leaders of the famed 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, Russell Means helped thrust the plight of Native …

Nathan: I heard of Russell’s death early this morning, and our esteemed publisher also sent me this link to share:
Russell Means is Dead
Russell C. Means, the charismatic Oglala Sioux who helped revive the
warrior image of the American Indian in the 1970s with guerrilla-tactic
protests that called attention to the nation’s history of injustices
against its indigenous peoples, died on Monday at his ranch in
Porcupine, S.D., on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He was 72.

Nathan: As I said, I learned about this on the 0800 news. He had claimed (last month) to have overcome throat cancer, but that apparently did for him. According to friends in Pine Ridge, he died about 0500 West River Time (Mountain Daylight Savings Time). Porcupine is in eastern Shannon County, the major part of Pine Ridge. His body will be cremated and ashes spread over the Black Hills (quite contrary to Lakota tradition). He looked really bad in pictures and a video last month, and despite his protestations, this is again not that much a surprise.

It is ironic that I was delayed in finishing the fourth part of my commentary on Steven Lendman’s article about Russell’s Republic of Lakotah. As a result, I did revise my Part 4 somewhat, but his death doesn’t change my opinion of his politics and his personal attributes.

Russell Means’ politics (like almost all South Dakota politics) was very confused. He ran for the LP nomination for President in 1987 (and lost to Ron Paul) and he endorsed Ron Paul this year for President, but I cannot consider him to be even a Minarchist based on his conversations and writings and his actions over his entire life. But he was a very intelligent man and enormously informed about the world and willing to take action in many ways. And I can say that he and his views (wrong though they often were) will be missed. Pine Ridge is a poorer place now. My prayers are with his tiospaye.

The cause of death was esophageal cancer that had spread recently to his tongue,
lymph nodes and lungs, said Glenn Morris, Mr. Means’s legal
representative. Told in the summer of 2011 that the cancer was
inoperable, Mr. Means had already resolved to shun mainstream medical
treatments in favor of herbal and other native remedies.

Mama’s Note: I met both Ron Paul and Russell Means 25 years ago during my time with the Calif. LP. Means impressed me as a forceful, typical politician and showman, while Ron Paul was simply a truly humble man with a passion for liberty – however much I disagree with some of his ideas that include the “constitution” as a path to freedom.

Posted in Commentary on the News, Nathan's Rants | Tagged Politics 2012 | Leave a comment

The Republic of Lakotah – Why? (Part 4)

Posted on 2012-10-24 by TPOL Nathan

This is the fourth part of my review of Stephen Lendman’s article about Russell Means’ re-proclamation of the “Republic of Lakota.”

As I was writing this, the unexpected (though not surprising) occurred: Russell Means (Oyate Wacinyapin) died at age 72 near Porcupine, Oglala Sioux Tribe (Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota) early this morning, from the cancer he said he had overcome. That makes this “re–proclamation” virtually his last public act.

It is Lakota tradition not to speak ill of the dead, and I shall not do so in this article. I shall, however, judge his ideas and his claims with righteousness and honesty, and call a spade a spade. As I pointed out in the first three parts of this review, I do not know (though I may suspect) whether the words are Lendman’s or Means’ but shall point out, to the best of my ability, the truth.

In Parts 1 and 2 , I looked at a recent article by Stephen Lendman. Part 3 mostly reviewed eight broad categories of claims made concerning conditions of the Lakota nations and other AmerInd nations today. As I pointed out, while there is some substance to many of these, their advocacy is damaged by the outright lies and more subtle exaggerations which the article (and many others) is filled with. Again, Lendman’s words are in plain text, and my comments are in italics.

“Lakotan struggle began with the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. They call it “fantasy” US history. France sold America 530 million Native land acres for $15 million. Lakotans owned part of it. They and other Native people weren’t consulted.”

Actually, the Lakota “struggle” began many, MANY years before that. (That is the subject for another article.) But the trials and tribulations of ALL the Akhota peoples were well-advanced LONG before there was a United States of America, or before any but a few hardy adventurers had ventured beyond the Atlantic Seaboard. As for who owned French Louisiana, THAT is a matter of some confusion. For example, it was French (government) explorers who “found” the Black Hills first, in 1742; but the Oglala did not even reach the Missouri River (from the East) until 1760. The Lakota did not “discover” the Black Hills until 1765, when Bull Bear raided the Cheyenne, Sutaio, and Kiowa who lived in, and claimed, the Black Hills and the sea of grass around it. They would not “own” them until they conquered and drove out these other tribes more than a decade later.

“They’ve been systematically ignored and violated. From 1778 – 1871, Washington negotiated 372 treaties. Their provisions were systematically spurned.”

That is what governments DO, people: they write and break treaties. Of course, the Lakota ancestors did a fair amount of treaty breaking themselves, but I admit that they are pikers compared to the Federal Government. Whether it was “systemic” or merely opportunistic is a matter of debate.

“America’s winning the West involved invading, encroaching, stealing, and occupying their lands. That’s how imperialism works. It’s the same everywhere.”

That is true – but it is NOT just “imperialism” – it is the history of humankind, from Nimrod through Cyrus and Alexander and Augustus and Mohammed and all the rest. But for every “name” there are ten thousand nameless invaders and encroachers and stealer and occupiers who were NOT “imperialists” but the usual tribesmen and adventurers and ne’er-do-wells and such. The color of their skin is irrelevant: yellow-skinned Nipponese and sons of the Middle Kingdom, black Zulus and Tutsis and swarthy Arabs and Turks and Spaniards and blonde or redheaded pale-skinned Celts and Norse and more: few of whom carried the flags of “imperial” rulers and more often than not brought DOWN empires. They cannot paint America being so blackened in this matter, when EVERY people has done this: including many of the nations and tribes of AmerInd or “Native Americans” – including the so-called Inca, the Aztec, the Anasazi, the Iroquois Leaque, and the great tribes of the Southeast (such as the Creek and Caddo Confederacies). Indeed, it is likely one or both of those (the Iroquois and Creek) may have been the reason that the Ahkota people started moving to the northwest in the 1400 or 1500s, well before Anglo-European pressures were present.

“Throughout the 19th century (and earlier), Washington engaged in military, legal, and political battles against Native Peoples. Their rights were contemptuously denied. They were displaced and exterminated. That’s how today’s America was created.”

Hmm. This is amusing, since Washington DC did not become the capital of the United States until 1800. Although there were a few battles between the young nation and the various AmerInd nations east of the Mississippi between 1776 (also the year that the Lakota finally defeated the Cheyenne and their allies and stole the Black Hills from them), most were a direct result of alliances between various tribes and the Americans and British and Spanish (plus a few holdovers from the French). It is, as I’ve already pointed out, a common situation in history: look at the Welsh, the Highlanders, the various tribes of Eire (Ireland), the Basque, the many lost tribes of modern Switzerland and the Balkans, the Maori and Abos, and the Canaanites, among others. By the way, it is impossible to count the treaties broken over the centuries.

There is no need or time to go through all of these treaties – suffice to say it was a travesty of diplomacy, not the least of which was that the United States created bogus “governments” to even have someone to “negotiate” and sign the treaties with. The same can be said of the so-called laws – the various Acts of Congress which ignored the Constitution, basic fundamentals of liberty, and simple dignity.

“The 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie was systematically violated. So were provisions of all other treaties. From 1866 – 1868, Washington let the Bozeman trail go through the ‘Heart of the Lakota Nation.'”

“It was a short cut to Montana’s gold fields. Military forts were built on stolen land along its route. Doing so violated 1851 treaty provisions. Battles ensued. Washington negotiated peace. The 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty followed. Native People thought they won. Victory was pyrrhic and illusory.”

“The Supreme Court’s 1883 ex parte Crow Dog decision made no difference. The Court recognized Lakotah freedom and independence. It ruled that tribes held exclusive jurisdiction over their internal affairs. It didn’t matter.”

“The transcontinental railroad facilitated development, land and resource theft.”

“In 1885, Congress passed the Major Crimes Act. It extended US jurisdiction into Lakota territory. The same year, the last of the great buffalo herds were exterminated. At one time, they numbered 60 million. Native People relied on them for food.”

“In 1887, Congress passed the General Allotment Act (the Dawes Act). It ended communal ownership of reservation lands. It distributed 160-acre “allotments” to individual Indians. Tribes lost millions of acres. Wealthy ranchers exploit them today.”

Quite a joke, that – “wealthy ranchers” by whose standards? Most American ranchers and farmers in the former Lakota lands – indeed, ALL of Russell Means’ Republic of Lakotah, are nearly as much on a reservation and with as little – indeed, LESS – liberty as their AmerInd neighbors and friends. Yes, there are some wealthy ranchers – just as there are some wealthy Lakota. (And sometimes they are the same people.)

“In 1888, Congress began prohibiting Indian Spiritual and Prayer Ceremonies. It was part of destroying Native culture. In 1891, a Commissioner of Indian Affairs was authorized. It was to assure Native People obeyed white man’s laws.”

More bogus history. While it may have had something to do with “obeying white-man’s laws,” the first Commissioner of Indian Affairs was actually appointed in 1832 – 59 years earlier. And the first AmerInd to be appointed commissioner was Ely Parker in 1869. (Ely was an engineer, a Seneca veteran of the War Between the States and a brigadier general in the Union Army. He was also an officer in the 2nd US Cavalry during the Indian Wars; and he married a Sackett. History is strange. Obviously, this little bit of information does not support the contentions of either Lendman or Means. I could not find any record of a Congressional ban on ceremonies in 1888, however; but it was about the same time that Congress once again prohibited Utah from statehood until the LDS Church (theoretically NOTHING to do with state government – wall of separation and all ) banned polygamy. “Native culture” wasn’t the only one being destroyed. (Oh, and by the way, Comanche chief Quanah Parker (a half-breed) continued to have at least five wives until his death in 1911 – long after Congress had forced the “Mormons” to give up plural wives – whose culture was being destroyed when?)

“Many more abuses followed. In Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903), the Supreme Court extralegally recognized near absolute plenary congressional power over Indian affairs.”

“It let US authorities steal tribal lands and resources freely. They did so on the pretext of fulfilling federal responsibilities.”

“Doing so abrogated fundamental indigenous rights unilaterally. The ruling was used to violate hundreds of treaties. Like other Native Peoples, Lakotans were grievously harmed.”

“Their sacred Black Hills were stolen. So were valued resources on them. Lakotans want back what’s rightfully theirs. Their ancestors thought the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty granted them victory. They were wrong.”

“Yet in 1904, even after Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, some believed the Treaty was ‘the only instance in the history of the United States where the government has gone to war and afterwards negotiated a peace conceding everything demanded by the enemy and exacting nothing in return.'”

“Until the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act, Native People got what no one had the right to deny them in the first place. In fact, rights afforded them nominally never existed in fact.”

Again, this is only part of the tale. There are many (like Ely Parker and Stand Watie and Quanah Parker (no relation to Ely) and tens of thousands who DID vote and own property and exercise all the other rights of American citizens. But to do so, they gave up the bribes and all the rest that Congress so “generously” bestowed on them in treaties and laws. Unlike too many, who allowed themselves to be cozened into selling their liberty. The 1924 Act is one of several early acts creating so-called “group” rights instead of individual rights. (By the way, it should also be pointed out that the FIRST “Native American” US Representative and Senator, Charles Curtis of Kansas (Kaw, Osage and Pottawatomie) was first elected to Congress in 1892 (and five more times), and was then elected at least three times to the Senate from Kansas BEFORE this 1924 act passed. But perhaps that helped him get elected as Vice President of the United States in 1928.

“The entire history of Native People in America reflects horrific struggles lost. From 1492 to today, they experienced promises made and broken. Disenfranchized [sic] people remain. Most are bereft of hope.”

To be expected, when they put their hope in government. At the same time, millions more are NOT enrolled (or don’t bother to tell people that they are) and able to live normal lives, fighting for their liberty along with the rest of us. It is those trapped on reservations or in Indian communities in the big urban areas (little more than extensions of reservations, whether we are talking Rapid City or Pierre or Minneapolis-Saint Paul or Denver or Los Angeles) that are MORE disenfranchised than the other 300 million of us. And we have ALL experienced horrific losses and broken promises: not just AmerInd or blacks or Asians but Southerners and Westerners and the sons and daughters of Volga Germans and Danes and Scots and more.

“On reservations or assimilated, they’re out of sight and mind. Once they lived peacefully on their own land. White settlers changed things. Western civilization destroyed their way of life. There’s nothing civilized about it.”

Now we are back in “Lo, the poor Indian” maudlin weeping. For most (not all, by any means, but especially for all the Ahkota and virtually all the Plains and most of the nomadic Southwestern tribes: Cheyenne, Blackfoot, Shoshone, Comanche, all the Apache, Kiowa, and many more, WARFARE was THE essential part of life: there was no “lived peacefully on their own land.” Centuries, if not millennia, of warfare, of fighting over hunting land and then grazing land, water, cropland, sacred lands, sources of stone and metal, are the heritage of AmerInd, as they are of Scots and Irish and English and German and Vietnamese and African Americans. White settlers changed a lot, but they did not introduce warfare to a peaceful and loving people. As for civilization – well, that too is what civilizations do: they destroy other cultures: the Romans destroyed Carthage – and its civilization. They destroyed Syria and Egypt and THEIR civilizations. They destroyed the Celts and the British and the proto-civilizations of Britain and Gaul and Iberia. Just as the Maya and the Aztec destroyed the tribes (nations) of most of MesoAmerica and their civilizations, and Chinese and Japanese did to Koreans and Taiwanese and Vietnamese, and Mongols and Muslims did the nations and civilizations of India. This is NOT new and NOT unique, however wrong it may be.

“They’re either ignored, mocked, or demonized in films and society. They’re called drunks, beasts, primitives, and savages. America always was a white supremacist society.”

Are we not here talking about the Media? Hollywood? Are they less to blame than Congress? Means has been part of THIS little niche of “civilization” for decades. But again, AmerInd are not alone: we can add MANY various groups of Americans and others who have been subject to this sort of thing – and MANY of them were predominantly or completely white: Southerners, German-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, LDS (Mormons), and on and on and on. America is a “supremist” society, but color is just one way of keeping count.

“Rich powerful elites run it. Native People and most others don’t matter. They’re systematically used and abused. They’re not served. It’s the American way.”

Aha! At last “most others” are mentioned. If we are to beat on America, we must then beat on the rest of the world even more. Can you name ONE NATION on this planet where there is not strong evidence that “rich powerful elites” are in charge? Where too many people, whether they are nine-year-old girls or two-month-old babies or eighty-year-old elders, are NOT used and abused?

Thus ends Lindman’s tirade, but I am not yet done with my rant.

Russell proposes a solution that history has shown is NOT a solution: to create another government, a government built on the same lies as the government it is seceding from. (Lies such as “treaty rights” and “group rights” and “the world owes me a living.”) He wants to do what a hundred different countries in Africa and Latin America did: throw off their “colonial oppressors” in favor of “homegrown” oppressors. Because Lakota land was once stolen, he thinks that the Creator has given him a right to steal the land of other people. Because Lakota were (and are) abused and neglected and mistreated and used, he figures that it is someone else’s turn to be abused: the 95% Non-Lakota and the 90% Non-AmerInd of his would-be Republic.

Lendman wants America’s evil to go away, and I think he may understand that when that happens, America’s good will ALSO go away. Too many nations have little BUT evil, and their good (which I shall presume to assume that all have something of) is not even close to balancing the evil. Even in the blood-soaked history of the United States, there was a lot of good. Compare it to the final defeat of Carthage, the subjugation of New Spain, conquest of the Russian steppes, or even the pacification of Ireland to see that the process and results could have been much worse. Consider the Final Solution of the 1940s or the Ugandan experiments of the 1970s. Or the Balkans of the 1990s. For that matter, consider the Modoc or the Seminole or the California coastal tribes as compared to the Lakota for examples of even more evil outcomes.

The Republic of Lakotah is stillborn. The only hope for such a nation is found in the complete collapse of the United States AND anything resembling a major power in the rest of the world, for otherwise, the Lakota are likely to exchange one elite for another – and one not constrained by “treaty rights.” Perhaps in a sufficiently protracted war between the states or civil war something (much MUCH smaller than Means’ dream) might find a niche, but Pine Ridge and Rosebud are neither the Alps nor the mountains of Ararat or the Himalayas. Indeed, they are better tank country than the North European Plain. And by even raising a peaceful flag of rebellion, Means may have sealed the death warrant for his people, by making it expedient to ensure that they do NOT try to rebel against whichever faction in the civil war holds the territory and surrounding area.

Sadly, Lendman and Means seem to belong to that group of people who are so smitten with the magic of words and legal actions that they believe someone will just roll over and play dead. Just as those who know that just the right words will save them from ever paying income tax, or get real silver for paper money at face value, or get rid of lawyers, they keep on coming up with more ideas that just don’t work.

It is really so much more simple than Lendman or Means imply. Liberty requires that those who enjoy it or want it must be able to defend themselves and their liberties, on an individual basis, in voluntary cooperation with others – not because they are all members of the same tribe by ancestry, or because they have the same skin color (not that THAT is an issue any more for any of the Lakota nations) or because their ancestors were slaves (or slavers) or spoke the same language. Liberty is given of God, but He expects man to defend it and take it back when it is stolen. But that defense has to be done in the right way, with honor and truth, and not with lies, taking freedom away from someone else. In that, perhaps, Russell Means has been most cruelly betrayed by that Western Civilization that he and Lendman so despise and condemn, because that is the false liberty of ancient Greece and Rome: that SOME people must be slaves so that others can be free.

It is time to look ahead to individual liberty and freedom and justice for all because we ARE free. I have no doubt that one day there may be a REAL “Republic of Lakota” (or better yet, “Oyate Wolakota Lakota” – United Lakota Nation) with little or no government except that of voluntary cooperation between free people regardless of heritage or any other characteristics – but it will come from people working together for liberty and not because some would-be messiahs claim that they represent the ancestors or anyone else with the intent of lording it over others and paying back past misdeeds.

Posted in Commentary on the News, Nathan's Rants | Tagged Culture wars, Home front, Lakota, Lendman, Means | Leave a comment

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-44B: This and that

Posted on 2012-10-21 by TPOL Nathan

America’s war on wildfires – a cretinous critique

Posted on 2012-10-21 by TPOL Nathan

This week, while doing work on Rosebud Indian Reservation, several projects got disrupted when 60-mile-an-hour winds took a grass fire and turned it into a raging inferno that threatened several small towns and destroyed the livelihood of ranchers. Hundreds of people, some from 200 miles away, responded to fight the fire, or at least prevent its destruction of the towns and more grass and timber. It was one of several fires which threatened various parts of the West in a later than usual fire season.

A few weeks ago, I found this Yahoo article: America’s war on wildfires

We Americans LOVE our ‘wars’ – on poverty (remember LBJ), on drugs (starting with Richard Milhous Nixon), on inflation (Jerry Ford), and right up to George W’s War on Terrorism.

So of COURSE we need a war on wildfires. And of COURSE, the FedGov is doing its usual marvelous job of WINNING that war – NOT. This Yahoo column talks about how the US is supposedly losing the war against wildfires (even though the vast majority are caused by man’s activities, and no one speaks of a “war on house fires” or a “war on oil spills” – At least not YET.) And of course, it is not just government action or inaction in actually working to “Prevent Forest Fire” or to respond to those that happen, but it is government inaction on banning us from breathing too much carbon dioxide or emitting too much methane (from another orifice) and thus saving the planet from the dreaded Manmade Global Warming that is to blame.

In the eyes of many libertarians (the minarchist kind) and a fair number of classical liberals and conservatives, the ONLY justification for government is that it is supposed to defend the people against threats: external invasion, internal crime, internal tyranny, stupid mistakes, and natural disasters. Not necessarily (or even) bail them out, but protect life and property against these threats: organize defense against them, set up procedures and ensure that people are trained and equipped and supplied to deal with them.

Based on that thought, immediately after organizing and deploying a navy to protect the sea lanes and shoreline against piracy and bully nations, an army and air force (militia, really) to protect the borders against invasion, having sheriffs and their deputies to assist in preventing and dealing with crime, and internal invasions and usurpation of power (with the ability to call on militia), most everything else falls into the category of “emergency preparedness and response.” Indeed, most of the sheriff’s duties fall into this category as well: planning for and dealing with such threats as storms (snow, tornado, hurricane, flash flood, etc.), earthquakes, and fires. Having government to HELP with these things is not having government TAKE OVER dealing with these things anymore than having the sheriff around means that we should not be prepared to defend our homes and businesses, on our own or in cooperation with our neighbors.

(Of course, we anarchists point out that the most efficient AND effective way for us to defend ourselves IS to be reasonably well armed, in voluntary cooperation with our neighbors and whomever we may wish to contract with for security and response. And that government just messes things up. The exact same concept applies to protecting ourselves against natural and manmade disasters, whether fire, flood, storm, chemical spills, or whatever.)

Anyone who knows the history of the fire service and emergency services in general (emergency medical service, or EMS, fire service (EFS or FS), hazardous materials response operations (HAZWOPER), and so forth knows that the organizations which provide these services originally were established as either voluntary organizations (much like local militias) OR as private companies contracted with related providers, insurance agencies, or directly to potential users. Just as local militias were eventually absorbed into state and then federal governments, most of these organizations have been absorbed as well. There are many different paths to this, but today the overwhelming majority of emergency services are government-run and (to some degree) tax-funded. And with most of these “government services,” the federal government has been increasingly involved, in funding and establishing standards and regulating and providing services and manpower directly and indirectly. At first, such funding actually bypassed the states, and then the state governments realized that they were missing the gravy train and added their own levels of bureaucracy.

There are two basic types of fire: structure fires (which may include fires in yards and fields and corrals and such), and wildfire. Wildfire includes grass and brush and forest fires. Although due to climate and man’s intervention, wildfire is most significant as a threat in the West and the lower Pacific Coast (due to low precipitation, mainly), it can happen almost anyplace, due to drought, build up of fuels, and stupid humans. Florida swamps and Georgia forests and Maine timberland, are good examples. But in the West, the situation with wildfires has grown steadily worse over a century-plus, due to several factors (of which “global warming” is NOT significant, if indeed a factor at all).

First is increased population and establishment of towns and cities. (Prior to 1874, no one cared if a mountain or valley or two in the Black Hills burned: few people lived in the Hills and could move themselves and their dwellings and possessions out of danger’s way relatively quickly.) Second was the misbegotten and foolish suppression of wildfires for decades. The “Smokey Bear” concept that ALL fire is bad and must be prevented or put out immediately. So the ecosystem was disrupted and billions and billions of tons of fuel built up – and not just in woodlands and forests, but in prairies and swamps and more. Third, as a result of the first two factors, the cost (physical and monetary) of fighting fires grew increasingly large. A tipi or wickiup or log cabin and its contents is a tragic loss when they burn, but the family and community could and did replace it relatively quickly from materials locally available. No so easy when it is a house and outbuildings or farmstead or business that is the result of decades of investment of earned capital, and the materials come from across the globe. Fourth was the FURTHER intervention of government beyond the Smokey Bear stuff, the skewing of the market by subsidies of insurance (as with floods), zoning and planning controls, environmental regulations, and – especially – refusal to sell the public lands off to private owners.

All this added up to the mess we have today. Thousands of square miles burn, inevitably taking houses here and barns there, and power and communications lines and even roads and bridges and fences and more. The cost of the fire damage is astronomical, and the cost of fighting the fires has exploded seemingly as rapidly as the fires.

Fire prevention and fighting efforts are generally supported (directly or indirectly) by the property owners. Since eighty acres of cultivated cropland presents (even in very dry areas) far less of a risk of fire than native grassland or timberland, and since the development of water supply systems and improved building techniques reduced the number and cost of structural fires in towns and elsewhere, this meant that the more developed an area was, the less per capita fire protection cost. BUT when much of the land is owned by entities that DON’T develop their land and leave it in tall grass or scrub or trees, AND suppress fire constantly, the ability to fight fires drops as the cost of doing so rises.

Even structure fires are often beyond the capability of local fire departments, and that goes ten times over for wildfires, whether in grass or brush or trees. For this reason, fire service has always had mutual aid between adjacent departments or districts or zones. This is no different from a defense unit of militia needing aid from an adjacent unit during a really bad time – or in the old days when a sheriff would ask a neighboring sheriff for some additional posse-members. There was also some pooling of resources, such as specialized equipment (ladder-trucks in rural or frontier areas, or foam trucks). Often businesses will provide specialized equipment for dealing with oil spills or derailments or at airports, usually related to their business in some ways. Again, this idea goes back many decades: mining companies bought and provided specialized mine rescue equipment to local volunteer fire companies. Before the days of mil levies supporting the fire service, the cost was divided out based in large part on the risk of fire faced by the property owners.

But we have (at least in the West and the Pacific coast) a BIG problem. Much of the land, especially in the areas with brush and forest, is owned by Uncle Sam. Yes, supposedly he pays “PILT” (Payments In Lieu of Taxes) to the counties, and other special districts, but it based on the average in the county and NOT on special circumstances, such as giant tenderboxes waiting for the match. So instead, Uncle Sam provides funding for purchasing of equipment and training, and all the other stuff. This doesn’t go to those who need it most: it goes to those who write the best grant applications – who can suck up best to Uncle. And like other grants, it comes with strings – must do this, can’t do that, have to provide this – whether it makes any sense or not. And when Congress wants to spend money for something else, the programs and the grants get cut, and the locals are left without resources. The locals are partly to blame because they didn’t think it through, but as we know FedGov agencies and Congress are VERY persuasive, and money speaks loudly. So the Emergency Services are left in the lurch, and a bad fire year makes much hay for those who say this is yet ANOTHER area in which state and federal governments MUST take over to “protect” us.

Isn’t it time we started recognizing that the LAST thing we want to do is have the federal government involved in ANYthing? You know, if I WERE a statist, I’d notice a couple of things: one, that people who own land in a community and don’t pay their taxes to support “necessary services” get the land seized for that failure to pay. Two, those landowners who don’t take care of their land and create risks and threats to others often end up losing their land, their money, and even their freedom when local codes are enforced.

Except… these tools are only applied to the relatively weak individuals and companies. Maybe it is time to start applying them to the worst neighbor of all for most western communities: the federal government.

Posted in Nathan's Rants | Tagged Stupid government tricks, wildfires | Leave a comment

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-44A: Hoploclasts and Environists

Posted on 2012-10-21 by TPOL Nathan

Due to travels and work (about 2,300 miles on the road) this week, I’ve had little chance to do the usual in-depth review of the news and provide comments in detail. However, here are some things that just cry out for comment.

First are a couple of quotes wandering around the internet. Several people sent these to me; I will thank Scott and Steve for them.

Our right to defend ourselves under attack
Chicago gun violence now to end – a quote and commentary

Won’t fix gang violence: “If we were to pursue a tax on something like guns and ammo, clearly that wouldn’t be popular with the [gun lobby] out there, and it may not generate $50 million, but … it is consistent with our commitment to pursuing violence reduction in the city and in the county.” –Kurt Summers, chief of staff to Cook County (Chicago) Board President Toni Preckwinkle (You can find this referenced in a Chicago Tribune opinion piece. )

Chicago’s city fathers (read, the nutcases in charge of one of the three most powerful and largest cities in the nation) this week decided on the major cause of gun violence in that city (Now #1 in the nation and climbing – if that is possible: “This year, 346 people have been killed in Chicago, up 31 percent from the same period last year, while shootings are up 8 percent citywide. The homicides have been concentrated mostly in the city’s South and West Sides, where gun violence has been rampant.”)

NATHAN: What is that cause? Guns don’t cost enough. So they raised taxes on them; or at least they are trying to do so. (Chicago Area Proposes First Local Tax on Guns, Bullets – WSJ.com) Never mind that most criminals don’t pay taxes on what they steal (but isn’t that obvious?), or that until Chicago DOES contract with OCP and put up that “Chicago Wall” around the city they so desperately want, with fifty versions of Checkpoint Charlie, that you can buy guns other places and bring them into the city. (Indeed, Walter Williams has proposed that California do the same, but with the intent of keeping the wealth of its celebrities and businesses from escaping to other states: A Modest Proposal). I am sure that the price of guns in Chicago, like that of drugs, will go up quite nicely. And Chicago’s crime rate will start dropping. Right after Dorothy and Toto get back home.

A second quote also piqued my interest, similarly found on line and provided by several friends.

Environists and Tranzi enemies of liberty
Outside the Constitution

Rule of men becomes tyranny: “What people don’t understand is sometimes we have to step outside the boundaries of the Constitution to get things done. Laws are made to protect corporations and we need laws that protect Mother Earth.” –environist Paula Hern on-line at the Washington Examiner.

NATHAN: Just in case you wondered what attitude a lot of these people have. They condemn christians who put God and God’s word ahead of the Constitution, but scratch not far under the surface and you find that religious fanatic (green, Gaea, etc.) that I’ve been talking about for years.

Are these people fascists? Some, yes: the classic definition of totalitarian/authoritarian partnership between government and corporations fits many. It is only SOME corporations that Hern and her ilk condemn: their organizations are all corporations and they enjoy the protections of the state (dubious as they sometimes are) well enough.

Indeed, we can see that these are Transnational Fascists or Socialists or Progressives: Tranzis. It is not just the United States Constitution that they work “outside of” but EVERY document, EVERY system, that is designed to try and protect the God-given rights of humans. This is a bizarre mix of tribalism (“those who are not of my immediate blood and group (clan, tribe, lineage, dynasty) are not really human, and I can do whatever I want to with them.”) and a lot of other things: paganism (transformed into earth-worship with big host new-age, feminist, darwinist things mixed in), and something that amounts to worship of the State. (The old LP’s overblown rhetoric about railing against the cult of the omnipotent state is seeming to be more and more just the plain truth.)

As I have said, before, the attitude of these people is that of the ancient dynasties of the pharaohs of Eygpt: they are godlike (and therefore the only REAL humans) and will tell the mere mortals what to do and how to do it because they deserve the highest standard of living technology and slavery can bring them: the rest of us are (at best) useful tools and a source of servants and raw materials. It is the philosophy of evil, of men making themselves gods and ends in darkness.

If we take them at face value and believe that they are doing these things because they really believe that the earth is sacred and we are destroying it, or for some bizarre love of the masses which must be saved, we are doomed to fail to defeat them. Just as the ancient kings of Mesopotamia and Egypt and Anatolia and Greece and Italy and India and China and Africa did it for the power and the wealth and their own vain glory, people like Hern exercise their greed and consider the rest of us no more than ants or cattle to be used.

Fortunately, as history has shown time and time again, resistance is NOT futile.

Posted in Commentary on the News, Nathan's Rants | Tagged environism, hoploclasts, Self defense | Leave a comment

The Republic of Lakotah – Who? (Part 3)

Posted on 2012-10-18 by TPOL Nathan

In Parts 1 and 2, I looked at a recent article by Stephen Lendman concerning a recent “re-proclamation” by Russell Means of the “Republic of Lakotah” and the various things wrong with both Lendman’s report and Means’ claims.

The article made a series of claims I want to look at now. Lakota, particularly the Oglala (of Pine Ridge) and Sicangu (Rosebud or Upper Brule) that I am personally most familiar with, are in very bad straits, but so are the Dakota and others. But misrepresentations on this scale do no LEGITIMATE cause any good.

Here I pick up in Lendman’s column:

He [Means] cited longstanding problems and grievances. They include land theft, resource plunder, poverty, unemployment, repression, and overall human depravation[sic]. All of it remains out of sight and mind.

The Republic of Lakota described ongoing genocide as follows:

I don’t know whether the claims made are Russell Means’ or Stephen Lendman’s or from someone else. It doesn’t matter: they are used to support Means’ agenda, and Lendman’s. Let us look at these.

(1) Mortality

Life expectancy for Lakota men is less than 44 years. It’s the lowest of all sovereign countries. It’s the highest in America. Infant mortality is threefold higher than the US average. Diseases are a major problem. “Cancer is now at epidemic proportions.”

Teenage suicide is150% higher than America’s average. One-fourth of Lakota children are fostered or adopted by non-Native people. Doing so destroys their identity and culture. Ward Churchill calls it killing the Indian, saving the man.

(1) Mortality: I do not disagree that many Lakota die young, that many diseases are epidemic, and that it is a serious problem. But cancer is epidemic in the entire nation. As is suicide. It is not germane. The statistics may be disputed because it is hard to track data, due to the dispersal of much of the population. On the rez, too many people die too young.

And today, to quote an Oglala Lakota friend, in South Dakota reservations, “death is a growth industry.” The WW2 generation is dying off, but so are the young people, and the baby-boomers. Only the high birth rate keeps the population growing. Disease, alcoholism, drugs, old age, and more kills people.

But the thing that needs to be asked is WHY? For 130 years, the Lakota have been living in a socialist paradise, and like ALL socialist paradises, it is a distopia – racism may be or have been a factor, but it is a smothering nanny government with “free” one-payer, one-provider health care that has resulted in this.

Teenage suicide? Why? Hopelessness, incest and other abuse, peer pressure, gangs, government-run education ALL can be identified as key causes: none are unique to Lakota but all lead to this. Nationally, teen suicide is way, way up: many have speculated on the causes. In any case, if the usual pampered and coddled teens are killing themselves in record numbers, is it any wonder that those seemingly trapped on reservations are doing so as well?

As for the one-quarter of Lakota children fostered outside the tribes? It is that or more, but the question is why?

First, it is because the average family on the rez IS dysfunctional: the father (if known and around) is a downwardly-spiraling alcoholic, the mother is nearly the same, without employment or prospects for a job; The other children are as much abusers as the parents and other relatives, and frequently victims of fetal alcohol syndrome. This is “normal.”

Second, the drive is ALWAYS to place a child with a family of the same tribe or a related tribe, but that is not possible when the only available families have the same problems as the home from which the child is “rescued.” I am not saying that every family is like that – but enough are. There are families with mothers and fathers and grandmothers (yes, and grandfathers), that all have jobs (or retirement income) and have nice houses: but they are often already supporting their own immediate blood relatives: nieces and nephews and cousins and sometimes grandchildren. They cannot take any more, whether the state or tribes pays for the support or not.

Third, many of the foster families ARE not enrolled in the tribe, but live on or near the reservation, and try to help the children keep (or gain) their cultural heritage, and honor their oyate and relatives and history of their people.

Fourth, there are a LOT of Lakota children: fully half the population on Pine Ridge is under 21: it is difficult to find enough homes in the Dakotas, which aren’t the biggest states in the land.

Fifth, many of the children are fostered when taken away from families that are NOT on the reservation, but instead have moved to cities like Rapid City or Sioux Falls or Denver or Omaha or Minneapolis. Again, why this situation? Government: federal and tribal (yes, and state, as well).

Sixth, fostering children ON the reservation does not remove them from most of the threats to them: the gangs in schools, the close-by relatives of dysfunctional families, and the peer pressures. All too often, the fostered children are so incredibly dysfunctional that their foster homes and the community in which they are fostered still must receive treatment as the most “at-risk” of any child in the community. Those issues take priority: cultural orientation and preservation take a backseat – especially when it seems obvious to many of the providers that it is the culture (that of 2012, NOT that of 1642 or 1776 or 1880) that has failed the child.

(2) Disease

Tuberculosis is 800% higher than America’s average. Cervical cancer is fivefold higher. Diabetes is eight times the national average. The Federal Commodity Food Program provides high-sugar foods. They contribute to poor health.

(2) Disease: Yes, which is one reason WHY mortality is so high, AND growing – and will continue to grow. Once more, they refuse to see the obvious: government is to blame. Why? First, the commodity foods are part of the treaty obligations of the US government, or at least that is assumed. But commodity foods are dairy and carbohydrates: grains – flour and rice and such. Not much meat. There are a lot of Lakota children (39% of the population of Shannon County), and most go to school. A school lunch of 750 calories of fruits and vegetables is NOT what a typical Lakota child needs, based on their genetic heritage. Why? Carbs were a very small part of a normal Lakota diet before the 1870s (about eight generations back): they were meat eaters, with a variety of wild fruits and vegetables to supplement, and a trade in coffee and corn for meal and such. But the government is getting by on the cheap: they are already paying for the commodities, and so that is what is provided. When food stamps (SNAP) are substituted for the actual commodities, people buy what is relatively cheap and filling – not healthy – and what they’ve been eating for the last century-plus. Although beef is raised locally, there isn’t a lot of meat-processing done locally. And these folks are products of government schools: they don’t know how to butcher a beef (or even a deer or elk) or how to grow a garden or even cook – same as the rest of the nation: microwave “cooking” of prepared foods. This comes as no surprise, and government – government-run schools, government welfare, government regulations – all are to blame.

(3) Poverty

Annual median income is $2,600 – $3,500. Poverty affects 97% of Lakotans. [I don’t know what a Lakotan is – if it is not a typo perhaps it is a jelly or cream-filled donut of some kind (just like “ein Berliner” is a jelly donut but “Berliner” is a citizen of that city). He means “Lakota.”] Many families can’t afford essentials most people take for granted. In winter, many use ovens for heat. Simple luxuries are unheard of. Life is hard, merciless, punishing, and unrelenting.

(3) Poverty. Yeah, there is a lot of it. Both numbers are exaggerated, however. There are a fair number of wealthy Lakota, even those living on the reservations. Many are well-paid civil servants (tribal and federal), there are teachers and professors, there are medical personnel and technicians. And some are successful in private business: contractors, store owners, managers, morticians, druggists, and all the other professions and jobs in any American city or town. I’d go with 90%, but not with 97%. And median income is low, but not THAT low: not when you count ALL kinds of income, including all the welfare freebies and such. And not even when you DO NOT count that: US Census says that per-capita CASH income is $7772/year in Shannon County (which is more than half of Pine Ridge Reservation and the OST), average for 2006 to 2010. That is only one-quarter of South Dakota’s average, but well over twice Lendman’s/Means’ bogus numbers.

If they use ovens for heat, then SOMEone is paying their electric or propane bill – and that is income. Yes, I know some who have – but this makes it sound like 97% are. And as for simple luxuries? That is in the eye of the beholder: television, videos, cars, cell phones, MP3 players, and many other things are present, even if not everyone has them. But I won’t argue that for a lot of people, life is “hard, merciless, punishing, and unrelenting.” In a recent interview of a dozen young (20-25 year old) Oglala workers, only THREE had a driver’s license. But for many of them it was because young as they were, they already had three or more DUI convictions. Life IS hard when you drug or drink yourself – or when you are born crippled because your parents did that.

And life is even harder when you are living in a socialist paradise that has, in essence, been a satellite of a major power for 130 years, with socialism and despotism the rule of the day: think East Germany but for three times as long!

(4) Unemployment

It’s 80% or higher. Government corruption, cronyism, and indifference destroy normal living opportunities.

(4) Unemployment. While certainly right about government, and about unemployment, the question that Lendman (and Means) don’t even ask is “how does government create this problem?” And once again, their stats don’t match, even if you find the US Census Bureau data suspect (as I do): Shannon County has 14,000 people, of which 1,800 are in private, non-farm employment. This apparently includes 385 “non-employer” establishments, which apparently means sole proprietors who have no official employees – just the owners. But this does NOT include public employees: according to city-data.com, 55% of all employment in Shannon County is GOVERNMENT – so if there are 1,800 (39%) private, then there are about 2,500 government employees, and that means 4,300 or so out of 14,000 – which is incredibly low (about 69%), but NOT 80%. (Of course, since government statistics are designed by current and past administrations to lie, virtually none of these unemployed COUNT against state or federal numbers, since they are not “in the workforce.”)

But, like for the Federal Executive Branch and Congress, the truth isn’t good enough for Lendman and Means: they have to lie about it. Of course, for those of us who think government is, in essence, (being polite here) a scam we are down to about 85% unemployment. And in some places, that is the case: Wounded Knee District with somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 residents, had exactly 41 private-sector jobs last year. Including ranchers.

And Lendman and Means are absolutely right that government corruption, crony-ism, and indifference are big factors, but what Lendman and Means propose is MORE government. They want to create a third-world country right here – not just LIKE a third-world but another one; where the corruption and crony-ism and indifference will be magnitudes greater.

(5) Housing

In winter, elderly people die from hypothermia. They freeze to death for lack of heat. One-third of homes lack clean water and sewage. About 40% have no electricity. About 60% of families have no telephone.

Another 60% of homes are infected with potentially fatal black molds. On average, 17 people reside in each household. Many have two to three rooms. Some homes built for six to eight people have up to 30 in them.

(5) Housing. Yes, these things happen. Here and in Chicago and Baltimore. These statistics are, at best, out-dated. Though still poor – dirt, grinding poor – by American standards, there are vast government bureaucracies which work (however inefficiently) to prevent and fix these things – and thereby add to the corruption and the crony-ism. Again, suspect Census data says that there are 3,628 housing units (as of 2011); numbers more likely to be accurate than actual population data. And there are supposedly 14,000 people. Let us say that there are really twice as many: 28,000 (I’d argue for a number of about 25,000 myself). That is just under 8 people per household: still a LOT of people, but far from “17.” Especially when 39% are under age 18.

Billions of dollars are spent to provide these services – and wasted, or at least foolishly spent. Example: Red Shirt is a village of the Oglala on the northwest corner of Pine Ridge Reservation, on the banks of the Cheyenne River. The water in that river flows to the Missouri and downstream where some of it is captured by a multimillion dollar pumping and treatment plant which pushes that water back up about 200 miles of the Mni Wiconi (Water of Life) Project to – among many other places, the several dozen homes of Red Shirt village and its school. Huge waste water treatment plants and hundreds of septic systems are built and replaced each year. Tribal governments (with federal dollars) provide free firewood, free propane, and subsidize electrical bills every year. Free cell phones (“Commod” or commodity cell phones) are provided to many of them, as cell phone towers are constructed in more and more places. There are certainly many overcrowded and jam-packed houses (reminding you of the stories of post-Revolutionary Russia), but hundreds are built each year. And the kids keep filling them.

Even if they have to use ovens, even if they are overcrowded, go to Mexico and see what they live in. Go to Kenya or Somalia or even Pakistan or Syria. Honduras or Panama.

But all these statistics make Means and Lendman look good: if it bleeds, it leads. The question that they don’t answer, because they don’t even ask, is WHY? Once more, the answer is government. And THEIR answer is MORE GOVERNMENT? Please.

(6) Drugs and Alcohol

Over half of adults battle addiction and disease. Alcoholism affects 90% of families. Two known methamphetamine labs operate. Authorities haven’t closed them.

(6) Drugs and alcohol. Just two meth labs? Give me a break: I suspect that in the nine South Dakota reservations alone (of which five are officially “Lakota”) there are at least a dozen. Of course, authorities have not been able to close the several dozen which exist in the rest of South Dakota either: the war on some drugs pushes ever more out into the rural areas, while technology makes these obsolete. But the meth labs have little to do with the addictions that plague the people.

Every family, Lakota or outlander or Anglo, on the reservations is affected by alcoholism and drug use – if not by the actual sellers and users, then by the side-effects. But alcohol and drugs are something that we ALWAYS have with us: every culture, every society, throughout history has had drugs and alcohol or something very much like it. But it is only societies under enormous stress that have this kind of addiction problem, either hidden or (as here) on the surface. Rome, Azteca, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, the Arab nations. While there are many causes of stress, the most common is tyranny – government is again the key problem here. For ten generations, starting in the 1850’s, the Lakota have been under direct pressure from the United States; for eight generations, from the 1880’s, the Lakota have been directly under the thumbs of worse than soldiers – government bureaucrats. The drinking and now the drugs are one of the methods of escape.

(7) Incarceration

Indian children imprisonment exceed whites by 40%. Native People comprise 2% of South Dakota’s population. They account for 21% of those imprisoned.

Indians have the second highest state prison incarceration rate in America. Most live on federal reservations. Less than 2% are where states have jurisdiction.

(7) Incarceration. Yes, there are a lot of AmerInd, not just Lakota and Nakota and Dakota, who are imprisoned. As there are a lot of blacks and hispanics and immigrants in prison. As there are a LOT of Americans in prison. Too many, and for too many BAD reasons. Some of those reasons (drug-related crime, for example) are stupid. It is and should be a sore point.

But again, Lendman (and Means, or wherever these “statistics” come from) aren’t content with the truth. No, they have to lie about it. Keeping in mind that Lendman and Means may be playing with the definition of “Native People” (discussed in Part 2), according to census data and other sources, 12% – TWELVE PERCENT – of South Dakotans are AmerInd: the vast majority of them enrolled members in one of the nine Ahkota tribes which have some or all their reservation in South Dakota. Not 2% but 12%. And that is if the census figures are actually not too low – which many of us think they are. It could be close to 20%. So for tribal members to account for 21% of the imprisoned population is really NOT that high, given all the problems on the reservations and the dysfunctional situation of so many Lakota and others.

They aren’t content with just one lie, though: they proceed to use “statistics” to whinge even more. MOST AmerInd do NOT live on Federal Reservations – like most Americans, they are living in cities and traveling outside the reservations. This 2% number (unless we are talking the Means-Lendman definition of who is “Native People”) is not supported by anything that I can find. Large numbers of Lakota live outside their five traditional reservations: they are found in larger cities (by my definition, not federal definition) like Rapid City and Sioux Falls and Pierre and Aberdeen and Omaha and Lincoln; and they are found in smaller towns near the Rez, like Valentine (NE) and Chadron (NE) and Murdo (SD) and elsewhere. Many crimes committed by AmerInd are committed in those areas, where all too often they are part of an underclass. And even on the reservation, with tribal courts or federal jurisdiction, there are a lot of things that aren’t crimes elsewhere: like bootlegging on the Pine Ridge Reservation, where alcohol is illegal.

Lendman and Means want us to believe the incarceration rate is due to racism. The truth is, a combination of factors, just as with blacks and hispanics, accounts for this. It doesn’t make it right – NO one belongs in jail for smoking pot. And the underlying truth is that government for the last 130+ years is to blame for the conditions that lead to criminal activities, conviction, and incarceration.

(8) Culture

It’s threatened with extinction. It’s federal policy to destroy it. Only 14% of Lakotans speak their language. It’s not shared inter-generationally.

The average fluent Lakotan speaker is 65 years old. In another generation or less, perhaps few or none will remain. Lakotan language skills aren’t allowed or taught in US government schools. Nor is much of anything about native history and culture. America wants it destroyed and forgotten.

(8) Culture. I agree that Lakota culture is threatened. I disagree that it is federal policy to destroy it. It WAS federal policy, once upon a time, but it hasn’t been for the last 30+ years: official OR unofficial. Indeed, tens of millions of dollars of money is spent by federal agencies to “preserve” the culture (although their idea of preservation is sometimes more akin to taxidermy than conservation). But the rest of the claims by Lendman (and I assume it is his claim, since we see that strange word “Lakotan” used again) are phony. The number of Lakota (that is, enrolled members of the five tribes) who speak Lakota has been growing for a generation or more, BECAUSE of efforts to preserve the language and to teach the young. It IS being “shared inter-generationally.” I’ve seen such classes and heard the results in young people from 5 to 25, in person. Fluency is, of course, a matter of opinion, but I know many Lakota who are in their 70s and 80s who do NOT speak more than a handful of words in “Injun” (a term used by one of those people – not MY word). But their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren DO.

It is absolutely FALSE that Lakota (NOT “Lakotan”) language skills and native culture and native history are NOT taught in “US government schools.” They are taught, DAILY, in schools (whether BIA Education or Tribal schools (supported mostly by US government dollars) or “Public” schools (supported by US government dollars AND local property taxes) on Pine Ridge, the Rosebud, Crow Creek Reservation, to my personal knowledge in the last ten years, and presumably in other schools on and near other reservations. I also know, personally, that both Navajo (Dineh) and Ute (Numu) language, culture, and history are taught in many schools (again, BIA, tribal, and public) in and around the Navajo, Ute Mountain, and Southern Ute Reservations. Yes, it was not the case decades ago, but this claim today is a bald-faced lie. Here are some pictures to show what I mean. These are at Rockyford School, where a major expansion of the school was dedicated by Shannon County School District (in August 2012), with guests including state and federal officials (one governor, one senator, and more bureaucrats than you can shake a fist at – I know, I was there because several close friends of mine were the engineers and architects that designed and built the place. The building was designed to encourage and promote Oglala Lakota culture in every way possible, and the teachers (regardless of race or cultural background) lay it one with a heavy trowel.

This grandiose entrance features traditional Lakota shapes and colors.

This is the Legends Room, where Lakota traditions (including Traditional Religion and Science) are taught.

My own son is a graduate of Shannon County Virtual High School, in 2010. He (we) are NOT Lakota, and he was one of seven graduates. But the Lakota customs and traditions followed in the ceremony were so intensive and dominant that many of the non-Lakota present, including in-laws of families with graduates, felt very out-of-place. But this is a “US Government” school. I’m not saying Means didn’t grow up in much worse conditions (vis-a-vis Lakota language and culture in schools) but it is NOT true today.

In summary, although the problems are real, the lies that Lendman and Means tell about the problems discredit them, and make it harder for legitimate representatives of the communities to do what could be done. It shows Lendman and Means up for the fakes that they are.

In Part Four, I’ll look at the rest of the article by Lendman, and wrap this all up.

Posted in Commentary on the News, Nathan's Rants | Tagged AmerInd, Fake News, Home front, Lakota, Lendman, Lies, Means | 1 Comment

The Price of Liberty

Libertarian Commentary on the News, #12-45E

Imperial America (Part 1)

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-45C

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-45B – Stupid People

Mama Liberty: They died because victims most certainly can’t have a gun, of course.

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-45A – South Dakota politicians RIP

The Republic of Lakotah – Why? (Part 4)

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-44B: This and that

America’s war on wildfires – a cretinous critique

Libertarian Commentary on the News #12-44A: Hoploclasts and Environists

The Republic of Lakotah – Who? (Part 3)

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