Property Includes Intellectual Property

Suppose you decide to make a huge personal sacrifice by taking a risky chance; forgoing all traditional means of earning a living; and instead dedicating five long years, tens of thousands of hours of your life, to the sole purpose of researching and writing a book about a subject that you believe millions of people will surely want to read.

Or suppose that you take a big gamble by investing your life savings, and the savings of thousands of other investors, in order to develop and manufacture a valuable new product which you believe will surely be sought after by millions of people all over the world.

Let’s say that through decades of hard work and many millions, perhaps even billions, of dollars your company finally discovered a medicinal cure for every kind of cancer and you want to bring your discovery to the market, recoup your huge investment in research and development and then earn a well deserved profit to compensate for all your risks and efforts.

It’s a no-brainer, right?

Few of us would go out on a limb and take the necessary risks to write new books, invent new products, or seek new medical cures if there were no legal means by which to exclusively own and protect the value of our hard won intellectual accomplishments, at least upon reasonable conditions and for a reasonable time.

Intellectual property is one of the cornerstones of modern civilization.

But there are lots of people amongst us, including a sizeable percentage of libertarians it seems, who sincerely believe that once your valuable intellectual property – your product or discovery -- is revealed to the public it becomes fair game for intellectual trolls, none of whom contributed or risked anything whatsoever into the process of creation and discovery of your works, to simply take it, copy it, manufacture it, and market it entirely for themselves and for their own profits without compensating you a nickel.

These “libertarians” argue incredulously, on the pages of RRND no less, that intellectual property protection is incompatible with liberty and freedom.

Why, they reason for example, should an author have the right to prevent a troll from using his own separate publishing resources, i.e., his own property, to print up and sell his own copies of your book? The author (you) shouldn’t be allowed to interfere with the troll’s private property, right? After all, it’s his printing press, his paper, his ink, etc. The troll should be able to profit from your book and you should be prevented from doing anything about it.

Why, they reason, should you, an inventor, have the right to prevent a troll from using his own property to produce and sell exact copies of your product? The inventor shouldn’t be allowed to tell a troll that he can’t use his own property, his own factory, his own supplies and materials any way he likes, right?

Why should the discoverer of a cure, who spent perhaps $billions just to get it approved by the FDA, have the legal right to prevent a troll from using his own resources to replicate and sell it at a much cheaper price because he has no investment whatsoever in the rigorous development and validation process of that cure?

Once such an idea, product or cure is reveled and released into the public domain, it immediately belongs to everyone, right? Anyone should be able to use your patented or copyrighted ideas – your intellectual property -- in any way they please, right? In fact there should be no such thing as patents or copyrights, right?

Wrong on all counts, I say.

Property includes intellectual property and there should be a legal means for owners to protect and exclusively profit from it upon reasonable conditions and for a reasonable period of time.

Intellectual property trolls who set about to profit unfairly from the patented or copyrighted property of others are no better than common thieves. They are either communists or socialists at heart which translates into thieves.

The originators of valuable new ideas, products, cures and other intellectual property have no moral, ethical, or legal obligation to simply turn their hard work and investments over to the intellectually lazy trolls who can hugely profit from them without taking any financial risks or making any original efforts.

But Rad Geek, one of several purported “libertarians,” who authors Rad Geek People’s Daily, according to several articles referenced in RRND, insists that Patents Kill.

“Intellectual property” restrictions are government-granted monopolies, he writes, …“which have nothing, actually, to do with property rights; … what they do is seize ordinary people’s property and hold it hostage to the license-holders’ demands for ransom ... they kill new products because they invade other people’s real property — meaning pens, paper, scanners, computers, DVD players, and so on — in the attempt to lock down ideas — which are, by nature, non-rivalrous (sic) resources; this amounts to nothing less than a systematic and ruthless intellectual enclosure movement against what is and ought to be the common property of all humanity.

Mr. Geek sounds a lot like a communist to me – not much at all  like a libertarian. This is the same kind of drivel we got from Mr. Marx and Mr. Lenin about private property.

Does the libertarian movement support a communist wing?

“Patents kill people,” Geek continues, because: “the pharmaceutical cartel can call up the armed bully-boys of almost every government in the world in order to enforce artificially high prices for their top money-makers; and that means that State violence is being used to prevent affordable, life-saving drugs from reaching the desperately poor of the world.”

“[Patent holders] … have no right to do that, and [they] sure don’t have the right to do it at the expense of innocent people’s lives. A free society needs a free culture. Patents kill and freedom save[s] people’s lives. This is as simple as it gets.”

“We are talking about grave and gathering threats to people’s lives here; can we get a little righteous indignation, please? Can we get a little principled radicalism instead of oh-so-moderate calls for “balance”?”
 

“The good news is that if you and a few million of your fellow citizens die in a global bird flu pandemic, you can rest assured that you will have caused a ‘PR disaster’ for the intellectual protectionists. They apparently aren’t going to suffer any moral qualms if they consign millions, especially among the world’s most vulnerable people, to their deaths in the pursuit of monopoly profits. But it may be bad for their business image. I am sure this would comfort you; If not for the fact that you were dead.”
 

“If we really care about “saving the world’s children from preventable deaths” and ‘realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation,’ we must end this murderous collusion between state and corporate power … We must smash the state and its deadly contradictions,” declares Mr. Geek.
 

Now, this is certainly a novel argument to say the least, (except, of course to mind of a communist).
 

The holders of drug patents, claims Mr. Geek, are killing people because they are reluctant to allow trolls to copy their formulas for free so they, the trolls, can sell the cures at much cheaper prices and still make humongous profits for themselves without having to invest a penny in any R&D or FDA validation procedures.
 

If you don’t give me your cure for free, or at a substantial financial loss to you, and I subsequently die, then you are a murderer, claims Mr. Geek. Next, I suppose we’ll have Mr. Geek calling drug manufacturers murders for not discovering cures in the first place. Their failure to discover and distribute cures for free renders them murderers.

By the same token, if you don’t use up all your own financial resources to help feed all the starving urchins in Africa, and some of them starve to death, well, then, you are a murderer, according to Mr. Geek’s moral and ethical code.

Can intellectual property rights be abused? Well, of course, I can think of some extreme examples, just as I can about abuses of tangible property rights. An owner of all the fresh water on a life boat adrift at sea with several other thirsty passengers aboard comes to mind. But such examples are surely not indictments against the concept of private property whether intellectual or otherwise.

Property includes intellectual property.

Stealing is the Purpose of Governments

Since the dawn of human civilization stealing values from the populace has been the essential purpose of governments.

The Pharaohs and Kings of ancient civilizations actually owned in the entirety all the lands under their dominion and control together will all the personal property including the pitiful human inhabitants who lived at the whim and mercy of their rulers.

In short, most ancient rulers together with the ruling class – their extended families -- simply stole all the property in the kingdom for their personal use, including the very lives and labor of the people, leaving only miserly scraps for most of their subjects with which to eke out a subsistence living.

Even today in communist hell holes like North Korea the dear leader and his small cadre of government thugs have essentially stolen everything in the country while leaving their people starving and in miserable poverty with no chance at any sort of decent existence.

Stealing valuables from the people is how governments stay in power. And that includes the once magnificent but now terminally corrupt and bloated government of the United States of America.

So it should come as no surprise to anyone that governments everywhere on the planet today are beginning to come apart at the seams after centuries of theft and political corruption at the expense of the people. It has happened again and again countless times over the last 10,000 years.

The recent financial crisis in Cyprus is one of the latest frightening examples of blatant government theft. Most of the socialistic European governments are fast approaching the financial breaking point in which they cannot seem to steal valuables from the people fast enough to avoid their own collapse.

In Cyprus the government is abandoning any pretence of respect for individual private property, honesty and integrity. The parasitical government thugs have closed all the banks in that small island nation and are now in the process of looting private money – in some cases up to 40% of the funds -- from innocent account holders, to help pay for a (EURO) $15.8 billion financial bailout for the purpose of putting off government bankruptcy.

"It's a precedent for all European countries. Their money in every bank is not safe," said lawyer Simos Angelides at an angry protest outside parliament in Cyprus' capital, Nicosia, where people chanted, "Thieves, thieves!"

"The damage is done," said Louise Cooper, who heads financial research firm CooperCity in London. "Europeans now know that their savings could be used to bail out banks."

This sets an ugly new precedent that is likely to spread throughout Europe and eventually to the United States if these governments don’t begin to bring unsustainable spending under control.

Until now, tax hikes and thefts from bond-holders have been how Europe's bailouts have been handled. But confiscating savings in banks and denying people access to their property without warning is something entirely different. That is bound to do great damage to peoples’ willingness to save, invest and build wealth.

Think again if you don’t believe this kind of government burglary could ever happen in the United States. Even now there are Washington politicians who are greedily contemplating the expropriation of the $19 trillion in Americans' private retirement savings accounts to pay for more big government spending and financial bailouts.

They’ve already done it with the Social Security Trust Fund. That’s been thoroughly looted leaving only a worthless IOU, so why not private pension funds? We are fast approaching the point where we’re forced to kiss individual freedom goodbye.

Without private property there is no freedom.

There are no longer any safe places in the word to keep your money. Even if you bury it in the back yard or under your mattress it will eventually become worthless from inflation brought on by the government printing presses.

In the midst of all this worldwide financial woe, including our own financial crises at home, we see that Joe Biden, the Vice President of the United States, and his entourage of government parasites just finished spending the unbelievable sum of $585,000 for a one-night stay in a Paris hotel. His one-night stay in London while on the same trip cost taxpayers nearly $460,000.

The costs "are in line with high-level travel across multiple administrations," explained an unnamed State Department official.

Then there’s President Obama who recently flew his Boeing 747 jumbo jet Air Force One on a four hours round trip to Chicago at a cost of $182,000 per flight hour, not including separate planes with his massive security detail, for a photo op and a 15-minute teleprompter speech about reducing the national appetite for oil.

With ridiculous government spending like that it becomes obvious once more that stealing is the purpose of governments.

Cop Crooks

Cops in America, especially New York City cops, are traditionally just as crooked as any other type of criminal,. When they’re not lying under oath, cheating, murdering and stealing on the job they’re busy violating constitutional rights and arresting innocent folks who happen to be in the wrong place at the right time.

I wouldn’t trust a New York cop to walk my dog.

Two New York City Police Department officers have recently confirmed in a court of law that their bosses are continuing the use of an arrest quota system even after the state legislature explicitly banned the practice in August of 2010.

The lawsuit was brought by New Yorkers who feel they’ve been unjustly ticketed, detained or arrested. Cops dispute that they’re running a quota system. They call the practice “performance goals” instead.

Officer Pedro Serrano, 43, said while giving testimony in the class action lawsuit against the NYPD he was labeled a “rat” for refusing to bring in the 20 citations and one arrest per month required of him. He also confirmed that the police union had accepted the quota system.

He testified that he became worried he would be “set up” and fired after discovering stickers on his locker and on a roster list labeling him a “rat.”

Another cop witness in the case, Officer Adhyl Polanco, testified that a representative of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association confirmed that the union trustees are okay with the quota requirement.

An audio tape played in the courtroom featured a police captain threatening to fire lower-ranked officers who do not enforce the quotas on beat cops.

So the entire New York City Police Department from management to rank and file officers to union representatives is rotten to the core with crooked cops who are out on the streets looking to fill their quotas of saps to ticket or arrest whether guilty or innocent of any wrongdoing.

And be careful; they’ll riddle your carcass with bullets if you make the slightest move for your cell phone.

They’re cop crooks.

Enslaved by Eggs

Few things irritate me more than bone headed statist politicians, having sworn solemn oaths to uphold the United States Constitution, introducing legislation and trying to pass laws that they know full well are patently unconstitutional.

It’s even worse on my nerves when those same politicians try to sanctimoniously force their personal religious beliefs down the throat of the entire nation with such laws.

And so it is that with great sadness I observe a once admired champion of liberty and constitutional rights -- Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) – fresh from his courageous filibuster protesting the use of killer drones on U.S. citizens, slumping from genuine political hero to worthless political hack.

That’s because last week he introduced draconian “fetal personhood” legislation in the U.S. Senate that would completely outlaw abortion in the United States. His Life at Conception Act declares that human life begins at conception, which thereby entitles fertilized eggs to the same legal status and constitutional rights as persons.

“The Life at Conception Act legislatively declares what most Americans believe and what science has long known – that human life begins at the moment of conception, and therefore is entitled to legal protection from that point forward,” Paul proclaimed. “The right to life is guaranteed to all Americans in the Declaration of Independence and ensuring this is upheld is the Constitutional duty of all Members of Congress.”

Of course, Senator Paul is entitled to believe anything he likes, which in this instance is his Christianity, but he is not entitled to use that religion to change the basic facts of biology which establish that life is a continuum; the “moment of conception” is merely one stage in the ongoing process; egg and sperm cells are human and both very much alive before fertilization.

If the U.S. Congress can get away with declaring by fiat that fertilized eggs are persons entitled to constitutional equal protection of the law, then it can just as easily and with the same justification declare that all human eggs and sperm cells enjoy the same constitutional rights. One religiously oriented absurdity leads to another.

Just as all religion at the core is extremely anti-liberty, Senator Paul and his National Pro-Life Alliance organization cohorts are demonstrating with this legislation their profoundly anti-liberty politics.

They know that when the unborn are endowed with the same constitutional rights as persons who have been born, the women impregnated with them and the men who impregnated them will become slaves to those fertilized eggs.

And they know that at the moment of conception the powerful forces of the state will be authorized to deprive them of their liberty in the name of the best interests of the eggs. Women’s bodies will be enslaved by their own eggs and men enslaved with an obligation to support the products of their own sperm whether they like it or not. The fertilized eggs will have the ability to enforce their constitutional rights utilizing the police powers of the state as a matter of law.

Naturally the state will become involved right from the moment of conception because there is a person inside that womb with constitutional rights requiring government protection and enforcement. Laws to monitor every woman’s menstrual cycle would become necessary so that every fertilized egg, i.e. person, would be discovered and accounted for immediately.

The pregnancy police would be authorized to make sure that each little person’s rights while inside mom are fully protected. Every miscarriage would naturally entail a mandatory autopsy and coroner’s inquest to determine whether or not a crime was committed.

Thirteen year-old girls who aborted their own pregnancies by any means would be charged with first degree premeditated murder. Doctors who assisted women with abortions would likewise be guilty of first degree murder and subject to the death penalty right along with their patients.

These are just a few of the draconian consequences which would certainly arise if fertilized eggs are declared persons as a matter of law from the moment of conception.

That’s why this type of “fetal personhood” proposed legislation or constitutional amendments have been soundly rejected by the voters in every state in which it has so far been introduced, including Mississippi, perhaps the most rabidly religious dominated state in the nation.

The common people of the United States, even those who are deeply religious have enough common sense to realize that personhood for fertilized eggs is absurd and would lead to a tangled nightmare of unintended consequences for liberty and freedom. Such legislation is profoundly anti-liberty.

Shame on you Rand Paul! You are no libertarian. You are no champion of freedom and the American way. You have shown your true colors as an extreme ultra-right-wing religious fanatic who wants to force your religious beliefs upon everyone. You personify the reasons why the Republican Party and its candidates are losers.

You seek to enslave human beings with their own eggs.

More American Compulsory Education Nightmares

Government goons are running amok today within the compulsory education classrooms of our United Statists of America. American children and parents are forced by the state to abide by a system of compulsory education in which the kids at school are treated like penitentiary inmates and their parents can do nothing about it.

Government violations of human and constitutional rights against school children have become so commonplace that the abuse no longer even seems unusual to the cowed populace. The kids are forced to attend and conform to the government line or be arbitrarily punished for the slightest deviation in what the state deems proper behavior and thinking.

A 15 year-old Utah middle school student was removed from classes after school administrator goons deemed that her hair color was distracting. They didn’t like the way it seemed to look purple and pink in the sunlight so they decided to punish her.

"They brought me into the office and told me (my hair) had to be changed by the next day," said the girl. "They told me I could finish my week's worth (of schoolwork) in the office so nobody could see me."

"When students are out of compliance with the dress code, we attempt to find a resolution. Students are welcome to return to class when the issue has been satisfactorily resolved." said the principal.

Of course, the issue isn’t resolved until the kid conforms to the statist line and looks exactly as they want her to look. The school district actually has rules dictating hair color. Administrators can simply decide that this or that color is too distracting and punish the kid over it.

Next I suppose it will be clothing colors. They force a child by law to attend school and thereby think they have the right to dictate her physical appearance.

A teacher in a suburban Chicago school district applied duct tape to an 11-year-old boy’s face for talking in class. She put an index card on the boy's mouth, then wrapped duct tape around his head. She finally let the boy remove the tape after 45 minutes only after realizing he was crying. Removing it caused welts on his face and tore out chunks of his hair. He was left with a bald spot on his face which appeared as though it had been whipped.

After this cruel assault and battery by a female government education thug, which also amounted to a blatant violation of his constitutional rights, he was subjected to continuous bullying from his peers.  Now the kid suffers anxiety attacks and nightmares since the incident. He’s showing signs of post-traumatic stress disorder.

A 13-year-old eighth-grader at a Texas school was sitting with his head tilted back and mouth open when the teacher walked by and poured pencil shavings into his mouth. His assailant is back on the job as a government goon following a short suspension.

I guess it’s OK to assault hapless adolescent students who are forced to attend government schools in the great state of Texas. That won’t get them fired.

Another Texas high school kid was punished by teachers in clear violation of her First Amendment constitutional rights for refusing to salute the Mexican flag, recite the Mexican pledge of allegiance, and sing the Mexican national anthem in her compulsory school room class.

She was given an alternative assignment on the Independence of Mexico. The teacher gave her a failing grade – and then required her to sit in class over a period of several days to listen to other students recite the Mexican pledge.

It’s bad enough to force kids to pledge allegiance to the American statist government. Now they’re apparently forcing them to pledge allegiance to foreign statist governments as well. This occurred, in spite of the fact that her school district has a policy that prohibits compelling students to recite the American Pledge of Allegiance.

An Arizona high school student was suspended from school for fashioning a picture of a gun and an American flag as the desktop background on his school-issued computer. District policy forbids the “sending or displaying offensive messages or pictures,” and accessing, sending, creating or forwarding pictures deemed “harassing, threatening, or illegal.”

In other words his school policy makes a mockery of the First Amendment; students officially retain no First Amendment rights at that school. If an administrative goon deems that a picture or message is offensive the kid is summarily punished.

But since when is the image of an American flag and a gun in the United States of America offensive, harassing, threatening or illegal? The flag is potentially more offensive than the gun in my opinion but there surely is nothing harassing, threatening or unlawful about either of them.

Both are protected by the Bill of Rights. Guns and American flags are both legal items the last time I checked. So his picture clearly did not violate his school’s arbitrary policy.

A 7-year-old Colorado second-grader found himself in big trouble with his statist elementary school masters while playing the game "Rescue the World" after he “tossed an imaginary grenade” during recess and uttered 'pshhh,' to indicate that the imaginary device detonated.

He apparently violated the school rule of no tolerance for weapons, whether real or imaginary. The school has a list of 'absolutes' that states no weapons, even if they're imaginary. The statist goons actually think they have the right to control their child captive’s thoughts.

I can’t believe I got “depended,” the kid told reporters.

The compulsory education statists have a neurotic hysterical no-tolerance phobia about imaginary weapons nowadays even though such thoughts in the minds of innocent little children could not possibly ever present a threat of any kind under any circumstances to anyone.

Another 7-year-old Maryland boy, who suffers from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, was suspended from school for biting his strawberry breakfast pop-tart into the shape of a mountain but which his teacher thought looked more like a gun. A letter was sent home with students explaining that "a student used food to make an inappropriate gesture."

The statist compulsory education police are afraid of imaginary pop tart weapons.

What could possibly be more ridiculous?

So naturally the politicians have to get in on the act. A Maryland state lawmaker introduced legislation that would prohibit schools from suspending students for seemingly harmless childish acts, such as playing games with fingers pointed like guns or chewing food into the shape of a firearm.

Republican Sen. J.B. Jennings told the Star Democrat that the bill would prevent minor incidents, such as the pastry 'gun' suspension, from being entered into a students' permanent academic record.

Was that really necessary?

Why don’t they all just resolve to uphold the United States Constitution?

It’s just one more American compulsory education nightmare.

Eroding the Fifth Amendment

If attorneys for James E. Holmes, the criminal defendant in the Aurora Colorado movie theater shootings recommend their client plead not-guilty by reason of insanity, his judge has said that he can be subjected to a “truth serum” injection and a polygraph examination as part of an evaluation to determine if he was legally insane at the time of the July 20 massacre.

Holmes will be administered a powerful drug to reduce his inhibitions in a procedure called a “narcoanalytic interview” while hooked up to a polygraph machine for the purpose of evaluating his credibility. Presumably, if he refuses to submit, he’ll not be allowed to claim insanity as a defense.

Obviously, anything he says while undergoing the interview will be taken down and used against him at his trial. In short, he must give up his right to remain silent, a fundamental constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights. That could very well have disastrous consequences for his defense.

I was trained to apply the legal courtroom standard that in a criminal case the prosecutor has the burden to prove each and every element of the alleged crime beyond a reasonable doubt, including the fact that the accused exhibited the necessary intent and mental capacity to know what he was doing and that what he was doing was wrong. The defendant has no obligation to prove anything.

This boils down to a legal requirement that a potentially insane accused is assigned the burden of proving that he’s not insane. It’s akin to compelling a mentally incompetent defendant to prove his or her own mental incompetence, something that is not likely given that the person is probably retarded or insane in the first place – one would have to be competent to accomplish that task.

Naturally this prospect has his defense attorneys up in arms. They've filed motions objecting to it before their client’s plea hearing on to multiple counts of murder and attempted murder. He is charged with killing 12 people and wounding 70 at a midnight showing of batman film “The Dark Knight Rises.”

If he actually is insane or mentally incapacitated it would be easy for his inquisitors using skillful cross-examination to manipulate the interview in such a way as to make things appear that he was perfectly sane and mentally competent at the time of the crime. That’s precisely why our centuries old justice system permits defendants to remain silent and make their accusers prove the case.

What is next in the evolution of American criminal law after forcing defendants to take truth serums and undergo polygraph examinations if they wish to plead not guilty?

Can you imagine an Orwellian process like this in which defendants in every criminal case are required to prove it if they plead not guilty? The Fifth Amendment would evaporate completely right before our eyes.

This situation illustrates the problem with the insanity defense in American jurisprudence.

What possible difference does it make whether or not a person was insane when considering the question of whether or not he committed the acts forming the basis of the crime?

Insanity or mental incapacity should not even enter the picture until the trial is over and the accused is found guilty. The jury should determine only whether the accused is the person who committed the crime. They aren’t psychiatrists.

If the verdict is not-guilty then the question of mental state need not ever be considered. If guilty, it should affect only the disposition of the sentence.

Throughout the process the defendant should retain the right to remain silent and his Fifth Amendment rights should be respected. If he’s found guilty the trial is over and the question becomes what to do with him.

In that situation Fifth Amendment rights do not apply.

There is simply no good reason to erode the Fifth Amendment during the accusatory phase of the proceedings.

It’s unconstitutional.

White House Tours Canceled While Obama’s on the Tour

One of the first casualties of the infamous sequester budget cuts was public tours of the White House. No more White House tours for the American commoners as of the beginning of this week until further notice due to cuts in Secret Service staffing.

You’ll hear no complaints from me over this one. Even though it is transparently obvious that this was done by the Obama Administration for the sole purpose of inciting the sheeple’s anger toward the Republican Party for its role in the sequester “crisis” – a million other bloated programs should have been cut first -- I’m happy that at least something was cut.

These free tours were costing the taxpayers upwards of $74,000 every week. Not just anyone could qualify for the privilege of touring the White House. The special perks were doled out exclusively by congressmen to their loyal constituents for the purpose of making political points. That’s how Washington works.

In all fairness, the privilege should have been open to all upon a first come first served paid basis, just like tours of national parks, so that taxpayer dollars would not be wasted on only a few lucky individuals. Were that the case the tours would not need to be cancelled.

"Canceling all self-guided White House tours is the latest shameless political stunt by the president, who is twisting basic government efficiency into an extreme consequence," Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ga., whined in a statement.

"The President and the first lady have throughout the time that they've been here made extraordinary efforts to make this the people's house, and it is extremely unfortunate that we have a situation like the sequester that compels the kinds of tradeoffs and decisions that this represents," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney explained with a straight face to the angry politicians now deprived of their free drops of pork gravy.

So Secret Service staffing was cut thereby eliminating the $74,000 per week White House tours while the entire Obama family continues its outrageous touring of the countryside unabated at a cost of many millions of taxpayer dollars and secret service hours per trip.

The agency said it needed to pull officers off the tours for more pressing assignments – little things like the president’s Florida golf outing with Tiger Woods.

Yes, that’s right; while the White House tours were being cut for the little people, President Obama was out on the PGA tour with Tiger Woods. Just that one presidential golf outing reportedly cost Americans more than $1million, which is enough to finance several months worth of White House tours.

Don’t forget first lady Michelle Obama's high-profile multi-city "Let's Move" initiative media appearances. You know, all the costs furnished to accommodate the first lady on events like her dance routine on Jimmy Fallon's show -- the highlight of a Feb. 22 media blitz in New York -- or her Feb. 27-28 visit to Mississippi, Missouri and her hometown of Chicago.

Those trips all required Secret Service details traveling with the first lady, as well as advance work by teams of agents on location.

Why wasn’t all that totally unnecessary crap cut?

How about the recent New York visit by 14-year-old Malia Obama, who was spotted dining with a group of friends at a New York restaurant shortly after President Obama signed off on the sequester? There were Secret Service agents in the restaurant, according to reports that said they stayed behind the group.

Why wasn’t that cut?

Cutting the White House tours was "mandatory" declared Jay Carney. But the presidential family’s tours continue as usual. They just could not find anywhere else to cut, certainly not the $102,000 salary of the chief of staff to the president's dog. It's that person's job to keep the dog out of the way during presidential parties.

The entertainment expenses of this president far exceed those of his predecessors, according to Richard Pollock of the Washington Examiner. "President Obama has spent far more lavishly on White House state dinners than previous chief executives, including nearly $1 million on a 2010 dinner for Mexico's president, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner."

One dinner: $969,793! It featured Beyonce and celebrity guest chef Rick Bayless, flown in from Chicago's Topolobampo restaurant. And it kept the three White House calligraphers busy, earning their combined $277,050-a-year salaries. Their job is to personalize White House invitations.

Operating Air Force One costs almost $180,000 an hour, yet the president uses it to fly out to attend an NCAA basketball tournament in Dayton, Ohio.

Why couldn’t he watch the game on TV like the rest of us poor slobs?

I’ll tell you why. It’s because the President of the United States and his royal family are not about to allow themselves to be affected in the slightest manner by the sequester cuts. Those cuts are supposed to affect only the little folks. Their over the top spending sprees are the last things that would ever be cut.

The White House tours are canceled while they’re out on the tour.

Why Should You Pay For Their Wrongdoing?

One of the major problems with the civil justice system in America is the fact that far too often the wrongdoer skates free while innocent parties are stuck with paying the damages. This injustice always happens when the wrongdoers are government operatives and the innocent parties are the hapless taxpayer which, of course, includes you.

Case in point:

Dona Ana County New Mexico announced recently that it reached a $15.5 million settlement to end the legal battle over the case of a man who was held in solitary confinement for two years without a trial and was so neglected that he took out his own tooth.

Former county inmate Stephen R. Slevin spent 22 months in the county jail after being arrested for drunken driving but was never convicted, according to his lawsuit. He ended up in solitary confinement after someone noted he was suicidal. He was so neglected he was left in his cell for months at a time, had untreated dental problems and toenails that grew so long they curled under his feet.

A lower court decision had upheld a $22 million jury verdict and judgment against the county, which was one of the largest federal civil rights judgments in history. The county appealed the award to the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which ordered mediation resulting in the final settlement.

This is certainly an egregious case of gross negligence and I’m not saying that Mr. Slevin should go without the reasonable and proper compensation he deserves Note, however, that the actual perpetrators of this outrageous wrongdoing were not part of the lawsuit, are not even mentioned in this article, and are skating completely free from any responsibility for their conduct.

When this plaintiff sued Dona Ana County New Mexico he was really suing the taxpayers of that government jurisdiction, and it is therefore the taxpayers who are on the hook for the entire &15.5 million; an amount which by the way is the palpably excessive result of juror anger and emotional outrage over what happened to this inmate.  

The county's board of commissioners said in a statement that it regrets the harm Slevin suffered while in custody between August 2005 and June 2007.

I’m sure they do regret it but as a matter of fact they are not the actual responsible parties either. "Over the past seven years, Dona Ana County has made significant improvements to detention center staffing, training, facilities and procedures," the county said. "Dona Ana County is committed to ensuring consistent and appropriate treatment of every detainee in its care."

"This settlement, although very large, does not give back to Mr. Slevin what was taken from him, but if it prevents others from enduring the pain and suffering he was subjected to, then the fight has been worthwhile," said Slevin’s attorney "I only hope they follow through on their promise to do better."

Oh, as much as I sympathize with him, I think there are plenty of low life’s among us who might be more than happy to endure what Mr. Slavin did for a payday of $15 million taxpayer dollars at the end of the rainbow. I’m sure that his attorney is overjoyed about it too since he’ll no doubt be collecting a third of the settlement – a whopping $5million plus from the taxpayer trough.

This county jail has an annual budget of $23.5 million, up from $12.7 million in 2006. Most of the money has gone toward improving staff, training and inmate access to care and services.

Where do you suppose the county jail gets that money for its annual budget?

From the taxpayers, that’s where -- from innocent people like you who did no harm to this man – they’re the ones who will suffer the consequences the real wrongdoers caused. Maybe the miscreants were fired from their county jobs; maybe not. In any case they are not on the hook for what they did. They’re going to skate free.

A proper civil justice system would punish these wrongdoers in proportion to the extent of their conduct. They deserve a taste of the medicine they administered to this wronged inmate. A few months of solitary confinement in the same jail would be fine for starters.

Following that they should never be allowed a position of public trust again for the rest of their miserable lives. They should be assigned menial jobs from which 25% of their pay should be withheld each month for the benefit of their victim until he is fully and fairly compensated or until they die, whichever shall occur first. Their debt to him should not be dischargeable in bankruptcy, and they should not be entitled to government welfare if they choose not to work.

That is how we can prevent incidents like this from happening in the future.

You should not be forced to pay for the wrongdoing of others.

Iraq Flushes US Toilet

The final report released by the Special Investigator General for Iraq Reconstruction concludes that, during the nine-year U.S. presence in Iraq,  at least $8 billion – or 13.3 percent of the $60 billion in US reconstruction spending – was wasted.

That report is wrong in my opinion. Its conclusion is off by at least 87.7%. The actual total wasted was 100% which means that the entire $60billion in so-called Iraq reconstruction costs has been flushed down the U.S. toilet.

Add it to the $billions upon $billions more spent on prosecuting the war and the total makes the current spending sequester cost savings look like pocket change.

Approximately $25 billion went to training and equipping the Iraqi security forces, while the remainder into a number of boondoggle development projects ranging from infrastructure construction to governance improvement programs.

The Iraqi reconstruction program constitutes the second-largest nation building effort ever undertaken by the US, superseded only by Afghanistan, where appropriations for reconstruction spending are nearing $100 billion.

I defy any politician to explain to us how the American taxpayer’s received a single dollars worth of value from that totally outrageous spending. All we got from it was more grief. Ten years and $60 billion in taxpayer funds later, Iraq is still so unstable and broken that even its leaders question whether US efforts to rebuild it were worth the cost.

Several Iraqis interviewed for the report now question the value of the money that was spent, saying even the money that can be accounted for was not spent wisely or in such a way that will bring about enduring changes in Iraq.

“There exists limited tangible evidence of any positive effects from the rebuilding program,” concludes the report. “It was a mistake to launch a huge number of programs across numerous geographic and infrastructure sectors rather than devote resources to a finite number of worthy and well-focused projects.”

What worthy and well focused projects?

What in blazes was the political logic behind the U.S. decision to oust Saddam Hussein and tear apart the entire national fabric of Iraq only to blow more precious dollars to rebuild it again?

It’s exactly the same logic behind the decision to oust the Taliban in Afghanistan and tear the entire Afghani national fabric apart only to rebuild it again.

And the people of Iraq and Afghanistan hate our American guts for it.

The size and scope of Iraqi reconstruction was largely a result of the eagerness of the US military and their civilian counterparts to launch a counterinsurgency. The strategy relied heavily on separating the local population from insurgents, and gaining locals' support by providing them with services and assistance.

Throughout both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, soldiers commonly used and use terms such as employing “money as a weapon.”

In his description of the second battle of Fallujah in 2004, US Marine Lieutenant Colonel Leonard DeFrancisci wrote in the Military Review that the Marines sought to undercut insurgent strength by using “a powerful weapon – money – to drive a wedge between the insurgents and the people and help win the second battle of Fallujah.”

Such thinking and strategies were prevalent throughout the Iraq war, with the US military often conducting programs such as microgrant initiatives, where US soldiers gave Iraqis cash with extremely limited oversight.

In other words, the idea was to give the Iraqis money and stuff as a powerful weapon so they would love us.

Does anyone think they love us?

In its final recommendations the report urges that future development spending be delayed until there is a reasonable amount of stability and that initial projects scale back their ambitions and scope. It also suggests oversight of projects starting at their inception.

How about that?

The folks who discovered that the spending was a waste are actually advocating continued spending into the sinkhole of Iraq.

We pitiful Americans are beginning to suffer greatly from the tremendous weight of the national deficit and debt upon our overburdened nation yet there are politicians and bureaucrats who still want to throw away good money in Iraq and Afghanistan – money that we will never see again and for which the American people will receive no benefit whatsoever.

Iraq continues to flush the U.S. toilet leaving the American taxpayers up to our eyeballs in shit.

Parasite Picnics

Never-mind the recent negative publicity about government parasites lavishing themselves with unnecessary and expensive perks, the culprits are still at it and going strong. They seem to think that an appointment to a government job entitles them to the same amenities as the President of the United States or perhaps the Queen of England.

The latest scandal involves the United States Attorney General and Federal Bureau of Investigation Director abusing their access to government property for personal profit.

Two high-tech luxury jets that the FBI had earlier convinced Congress were needed for the fight against global terrorism have instead been used by Attorney General Eric Holder and his predecessors, as well as FBI Director Robert Mueller, for their high-flying private personal travel.

They and their recent predecessors, including former Attorneys General Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales, have racked up nearly 700 "non-mission" trips between 2007 and 2011, at a whopping cost of $11.4 million, according to the Government Accountability Office.

“These luxury jets were supposedly needed for counter terrorism, but it turns out that they were used almost two-thirds of the time for jet-setting executive travel,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In November 2010, a personal trip taken by the attorney general to New York on the Gulf stream V, for example,  had an estimated flight cost of $15,894, but the reimbursement at the equivalent commercial fare was $420.80. The report said that for 88 of the trips, the attorney general reimbursed for a total amount of $47,000. The FBI director reimbursed roughly $4,500 for a total of 10 trips.

“I’m really interested in how the Attorney General can claim that federal law enforcement agents will be cut, knowing that over the last five years the Department has allowed for millions of dollars to be spent on personal travel. It’s ludicrous,” Sen. Grassley said.

This, in my opinion, makes the two highest law enforcement officers in the United States and their predecessor’s high stakes criminals whose conduct is far worse than that of any of the numerous felons they routinely arrest and prosecute for other nefarious crimes.

They’re literally stealing money from the American people for their own personal use. That is where the $millions of dollars for the so-called War on Terror are going; into the boated bellies of the fat-assed government parasites. They should be locked up in the penitentiary with the rest of the dangerous criminals doing hard labor and eating stale bread with tepid water for their crimes.

Meanwhile, the rest of the government parasites, oblivious to the rage of the common people over their wasteful spending habits, are still picnicking lavishly on the taxpayers tab with dozens of “big ticket” conferences costing $340 million.

That infamous 2010 Las Vegas bash, held by the General Services Administration, which had lawmakers fuming last year because it cost more than $800,000, wasn't that unusual after all. A new congressional report shows taxpayers picked up the tab for at least 894 conferences in 2012 -- to the tune of $340 million. Those figures only cover "big-ticket" conferences -- or those that cost $100,000 or more -- so the total figure is likely much higher.

The Defense Department alone, held nearly 300 conferences at a cost of $89 million. The Department of Veterans Affairs held 127 at a cost of $72.7 million; the Justice Department held 107 at a cost of $58.7 million; and the Department of Health and Human Services held 140, at a cost of $56.1 million.

Right now President Obama and the Congress are squealing like stuck pigs over the fact that sequestration has set in cutting a paltry $85 billion from future government growth, yet the legions of parasites feeding at the taxpayer’s trough continue wasting large amounts of cash just to satisfy their own personal criminal appetites for goodies.  

Sequestration is not going to stop them. It’s not even going to slow them down.

The parasite picnics are here to stay.