The Bundy “Militia” is a Joke

Published at 09:20 on 30 January 2016

Nothing proves this more than a recent quote from Ammon Bundy himself:

“This was never meant to be an armed standoff. Please do not make it about something it wasn’t supposed to be. Go home to your families.”

Oh, really now? Then why were people allowed — encouraged, even — to show up with firearms? Yes, yes — I know: You’re a big fan of the right to keep and bear arms. Well, guess what? Just because it’s your right to do something does not automatically make it a wise decision.

And it was not your right to occupy the Malheur NWR and:

  • Prevent Federal employees from doing their jobs,
  • Interfere with the freedom of other citizens to visit their public lands,
  • Vandalize government property,
  • Use government computer and Internet resources without permission, and
  • Steal government vehicles.

All of these things are quite illegal, in fact criminal, acts. You may not personally like the fact that the Federal government owns so much land, but the fact is that it does and that current law (upheld by court after court) allows it to.

All of this means that in choosing to engage in an illegal action, you chose to expose yourself to criminal charges. As such, it was your job to:

  • Research what those charges were likely to be,
  • Research what the consequences (punishments) would likely be,
  • Decide if you were willing to accept those consequences, and
  • Modify or call off the action if you were not.

This is all very basic stuff. Left-wing groups I’ve been involved with do this whenever they plan actions. (And committing a crime armed is a great way to enhance the charges and punishments you face for it.)

If you let people participate whose beliefs and goals did not mesh with your own, that is your fault. It was your responsibility to clearly state your goals and methods, and to screen those directly supporting you to ensure they agreed to those standards.

This is an instance of a general failure to communicate and plan which the comments of other participants that I’ve seen in the media makes most evident. (For example, many were surprised by your decision to depart for that forum in John Day, and didn’t even realize you had planned to until the moment your convoy left the refuge.)

That you failed in all of the above indicates just what a joke your “militia” is. You clowns couldn’t even properly organize a takeover of a bird refuge while it was closed during the winter holidays, yet you act as if you’re some sort of a military force? It is to laugh.

laugh

So the Occupation is Winding Down… Finally

Published at 07:22 on 28 January 2016

After sitting around and basically doing nothing for most of a month and watching the occupiers get increasingly destructive in recent days (bulldozing new roads through sensitive areas), action was finally taken by law enforcement.

It’s a pity that it’s lead to someone’s death, but the individual who died is on record as being one of the most militant in his rhetoric, going so far as to say that he’d die before he’d let anyone arrest him. Moreover, two of his fellow occupiers say that the way he got shot is by fleeing a traffic stop, encountering a roadblock soon afterwards, and confronting a law enforcement officer there.

This guy apparently got shot while armed and charging a cop. Trying to equate that to getting shot while unarmed and fleeing a cop is false equivalence, to say the least.

And there is not much equivalence to movements like Occupy Wall Street, either. That movement was unarmed and occupied public parks. It did not take over whole facilities while armed and prevent their operation.

Israel, not Congress, was Spied On

Published at 07:36 on 31 December 2015

So why did Obama “spy on Congress?” The short answer is he really didn’t.

He spied on Israel (for good reason; see the post immediately below), and in the process of spying on Israel caught Israeli officials communicating with Congressmen in an attempt to influence them to oppose the nuclear deal with Iran. In some cases, Israel passed classified information to Congress in an attempt to influence it.

So while this is a scandal involving a national leader, the scandalized national leader is Benjamin Netanyahu, not Barack Obama.

One of Jack London’s Greatest Hits

Published at 11:07 on 20 December 2015

Is his dystopian novel The Iron Heel, written over 100 years ago. Consider how concisely London lays out the inevitability of class struggle (and by implication the hypocrisy of those who denounce demands of anyone who’s not a capitalist for more):

“Are you discussing the ideal man?” Ernest asked, “–unselfish and godlike, and so few in numbers as to be practically non-existent, or are you discussing the common and ordinary average man?”

“The common and ordinary man,” was the answer.

“Who is weak and fallible, prone to error?”

Bishop Morehouse nodded.

“And petty and selfish?”

Again he nodded.

“Watch out!” Ernest warned. “I said ‘selfish.'”

“The average man IS selfish,” the Bishop affirmed valiantly.

“Wants all he can get?”

“Wants all he can get–true but deplorable.”

“Then I’ve got you.” Ernest’s jaw snapped like a trap. “Let me show you. Here is a man who works on the street railways.”

“He couldn’t work if it weren’t for capital,” the Bishop interrupted.

“True, and you will grant that capital would perish if there were no labor to earn the dividends.”

The Bishop was silent.

“Won’t you?” Ernest insisted.

The Bishop nodded.

“Then our statements cancel each other,” Ernest said in a matter-of-fact tone, “and we are where we were. Now to begin again. The workingmen on the street railway furnish the labor. The stockholders furnish the capital. By the joint effort of the workingmen and the capital, money is earned.* They divide between them this money that is earned. Capital’s share is called ‘dividends.’ Labor’s share is called ‘wages.'”

* In those days, groups of predatory individuals controlled all the means of transportation, and for the use of same levied toll upon the public.

“Very good,” the Bishop interposed. “And there is no reason that the division should not be amicable.”

“You have already forgotten what we had agreed upon,” Ernest replied. “We agreed that the average man is selfish. He is the man that is. You have gone up in the air and are arranging a division between the kind of men that ought to be but are not. But to return to the earth, the workingman, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. The capitalist, being selfish, wants all he can get in the division. When there is only so much of the same thing, and when two men want all they can get of the same thing, there is a conflict of interest between labor and capital. And it is an irreconcilable conflict. As long as workingmen and capitalists exist, they will continue to quarrel over the division. If you were in San Francisco this afternoon, you’d have to walk. There isn’t a street car running.”

The whole book is, by the way, now in the public domain and thus available for free.

Probably the first political work of London’s I encountered was What Life Means to Me, as a freshman or sophomore in college. It was I believe the first piece of socialist propaganda I had read which really resonated with me. (I had looked at Marx and found his prose mostly inscrutable; I still find his writing very heavy and difficult to parse.)

As an aside, in general, the writers who have the greatest influence on my beliefs have been not political theorists but authors of fiction who have also written political works, for the very reason that they do a better job of explaining things to those, like me, who are not academics in the field of political science.

Why the Polarization

Published at 07:45 on 5 December 2015

So, the other day I overheard on the ferry this guy, older than me and by all outer appearances quite educated, go on about how he sincerely believed Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who is set on destroying America.

How does one have a reasonable conversation with someone who believes such nutty things? Short answer: you can’t. So I didn’t even try.

If someone is running that much on deeply-felt gut beliefs that he or she will buy into some loopy theory for which there is absolutely no hard factual evidence, that individual is obviously in a mental space where facts and logic basically don’t matter anymore when it comes to the subject that belief falls into. As such, no basis exists anymore for having a reasonable discussion with someone who has differing political opinions.

Now switch to Congress. How does one achieve compromise is one side is dominated by individuals like that? Same answer: you can’t. For basically the same reason.

And that is why “gridlock” exists.

No, loopy theories don’t exclusively lie on one side of the political fence. When I was volunteering at a radical bookstore in Portland, one guy in the collective believed in a conspiracy involving shape-shifting aliens and several believed that 9/11 was all a vast, planned conspiracy by the Bush Administration.

But such beliefs are not equally spread across the spectrum, and it’s not the Left where they predominate. As an example, consider which of the two parties has denial of ample scientific evidence for human-caused global warming as a core part of its platform.

The political moderates’ dictum that all sides have an equally valid amount of input to offer is simply not a valid one; it is not always true. If you have an argument between one person who claims that 2 + 2 = 4, and another who insists 2 + 2 = 5, one does not obtain a correct answer by concluding therefore 2 + 2 = 4.5.

Regarding the Paris Attacks

Published at 08:45 on 14 November 2015

One simple sentence basically sums it all up:

The West is less morally superior than it pretends to be.

If you’re flying off the handle about that statement being a justification for what just happened, then you didn’t actually read what I just wrote. Go back and re-read the sentence. It’s actually very nuanced and sums up a lot in a few words.

For openers, it actually states that the West is in fact morally superior to ISIS. The wording is goes “…less morally superior than it pretends to be.” It does not go “…not morally superior,” “…morally equivalent to,” or “…morally inferior.”

It’s just that the actual level of moral superiority is significantly lower than the professed one.

For example, there is no rejection on either side over the principle of engaging in actions which cause civilian deaths. Drone strikes have been accomplishing the latter for decades. And doing so routinely; they’re remarkably imprecise. How can they be otherwise, given how they are conducted remotely? If all one is going on is a fleeting image from above of a fairly distant group of people, you’re going to be misjudging the nature of those people fairly often.

Sure, ISIS deliberately sets out to cause civilian deaths whereas in the drone strikes they happen incidentally as part of efforts targeted at combatants. But dead is dead, so rhetoric like “we value life and they don’t” is, well, B.S.

And the West, despite those somewhat higher standards, is the party that is far more heavily armed, and thus far more likely to inflict actual civilian death. Terrorism has killed far fewer civilians in recent decades than the war in Iraq did, for example.

Mind you, I’m very glad I live where I do and not someplace controlled by ISIS (or by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is just about as bad). But please, spare me the “we’re good, period and they’re evil, period” rhetoric.

Not a Surprise

Published at 11:50 on 17 September 2015

I expected Fed’s decision to leave interest rates as-is:

  1. There have been at best only limited signs of inflation. By contrast, there have in the last year been deflationary periods in the consumer price index.
  2. Inflation is easy to control (raise interest rates). Deflation is very difficult to control (you can’t cut rates to zero or below, because banks make money by lending money at a higher rate than they pay savers, which means a negative rate on deposits, which savers can beat by stuffing their money in a mattress and earning 0% interest). So rulers of any sort, central bankers included, tend to be more willing to risk inflation than deflation; it’s one of the reasons they never target zero inflation. Instead, they target a low inflation rate, just to err on the safe side of not having deflation.
  3. Some inflation is actually a good thing, as by making money lose value over time it punishes people who would stuff their money in a mattress as opposed to investing it in the economy, thus encouraging investment.
  4. Recent signs the bubble in China might be ready to pop. The Fed doesn’t want to be the straw that broke the camel’s back and caused a severe recession.

That final one provides a key to their near-term plans. The Fed is doubtless waiting to see if the China jitters blow over before making any decision on a rate hike.

They don’t want to flatly admit it, of course, because that would be admitting the problems in China are real and serious (as they are) which might itself provoke a recession. But they alluded to it by burying a revealing phrase in their press release:

To support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability, the Committee today reaffirmed its view that the current 0 to 1/4 percent target range for the federal funds rate remains appropriate. In determining how long to maintain this target range, the Committee will assess progress–both realized and expected–toward its objectives of maximum employment and 2 percent inflation. This assessment will take into account a wide range of information, including measures of labor market conditions, indicators of inflation pressures and inflation expectations, and readings on financial and international developments [emphasis added]. The Committee anticipates that it will be appropriate to raise the target range for the federal funds rate when it has seen some further improvement in the labor market and is reasonably confident that inflation will move back to its 2 percent objective over the medium term.

And if the Associated Press’s economic pundits are correct, this is in itself somewhat unusual (and thus particularly revealing):

It’s extremely rare for Fed officials in their statement to highlight the risks posed by foreign economies. This means that they’re carefully monitoring the aftershocks from a slowdown in China and other emerging markets, in addition to struggles by Europe to increase economic growth.

 

The Growing Irrelevance of Establishment Pundits

Published at 10:20 on 16 September 2015

Is amply illustrated by this article.

First, there is the equating of Trump (who has no political experience whatsoever, and who engages in largely fact-free xenophobic rhetoric) with Sanders and Corbyn (both of whom have decades of experience and whose policy proposals, though on one side of the political spectrum, are generally fact-based and definitely do refrain from stoking the flames of ethnic bigotry).

Second, there is a complete lack of investigation into any of the Establishment’s many failings, and how those (and not mere New Media attention) might be playing a role in the popularity of all three.

Trump, whatever his failings, is a free trade skeptic, and most of the free trade agreements pushed by that same Establishment consensus have failed to live up to their promises. Take NAFTA: it was supposed to reduce illegal immigration. Its skeptics pointed out that illegal immigration would probably increase. In this real-world experiment, it was the skeptics’ prediction and not the Establishment’s that was proven correct.

Both Sanders and Corbyn opposed the Iraq War fiasco. This was so self-evidently a blunder that outside the English-speaking world, even some prominent conservative leaders (such as Jacques Chirac) opposed it. As did some prominent centrists, like Senator Byrd (who was I believe the only Senator who had also been in office when LBJ pulled the Gulf of Tonkin snow job on Congress and led the nation into the Vietnam War based on lies).

Meanwhile, both the “New” Democrats and the “New” Labourites decided to be “practical” and “realistic” by supporting the war.

At the time, the best the Establishment could manage was : “Oh, isn’t this interesting: the anti-war crowd is playing the national security card by saying that going to war will end up actually undermining it; there’s a controversy about which course is best for national security. Let’s present both sides as equally plausible — even though the preponderance of evidence favors the skeptics — because, heavens, we wouldn’t want to be accused of ‘bias’ or anything.”

And then there’s the financial deregulation that paved the way for the Great Recession, something else that the self-professed “responsible” “New” Democrats and Labourites united with conservatives to enact over the opposition of the left wings of both their parties.

If the Establishment wants answers as to why it is getting less and less respect, it would be better served by taking a good long look in the mirror rather than playing pin-the-blame-on-the-Internet and sermonizing about ignorant peasants.