Statists take & don’t compensate

Statists love the government – they worship the state – but they hate the Constitution, individual freedom, especially the Bill of Rights. The hallmark of every statist is the attitude that they possess authority to deprive individuals of their rights to due process of law and to take private property for public use without just compensation.

The Fifth Amendment in the Bill of Rights constitutionally prohibits the schemes of the statists. It specifically provides that: “No person shall… be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Today, however, the statists controlling local governments everywhere are telling individuals that they don’t enjoy the right to rent their own property. They’re imposing restrictions on how and to whom individuals can lease their own real estate and refusing to compensate property owners for such unjust impositions.

Individuals are told by the statists that they can’t rent, and if they can’t rent they can’t sell either, because prospective buyers won’t buy what they can’t rent.  This leaves property owners deprived of their property rights without due process of law and without reasonable compensation.

The statist lawmakers in Ojai California, for example, have voted recently to make all rentals for less than 30 days illegal. Similar unjust restrictions have been imposed all over America from New York to San Francisco and several Minnesota cities in-between.

Winona, Minnesota resident Ethan Dean owned a three-bedroom home near Winona State University. While he was on his fourth mission in Afghanistan between 2011 and 2012, he arranged to rent his home to students of the university. “I started getting nasty notes from the government while I was in Iraq,” he explained. “The notes were from the city treasurer telling me that it was illegal to rent out my home. I had no idea what they were talking about.”

The statists told him that they had imposed a restriction on the number of homeowners who can rent out properties in specific neighborhoods. They called it the “30 Percent Rule” -- allowing only 30 percent of homes in a neighborhood to be rentals. Dean’s block was 78 percent rental properties when the ban was enacted, but his neighbor’s permits were apparently grandfathered in. “They told me I had to kick the kids out of my house, and if I didn’t, I’d be fined $450 a day,”

The restrictions prevented Dean from even selling his home, as any time a potential homebuyer expressed interest, they quickly backed out after learning the house was not rental-certified. “I couldn’t rent it, and I couldn’t come back and live in it. I was in Afghanistan serving our country.” He couldn’t keep up on his mortgage payments. So he lost his home to foreclosure.

Statists take and don’t compensate. 

Gun maker not proximate cause

I sympathize greatly with the parents and loved ones of the 27 murder victims who perished in the 2012 Newtown Connecticut Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings at the hands of Adam Lanza a mentally demented human being. But let there be no mistake about this occurrence – his homicidal conduct was the sole proximate, i.e. legal cause of their horrible deaths.  

Adam Lanza caused those deaths; he murdered those people. As it happened he did it with a gun, but he might just as well have committed the deed with a bomb, or a fire or with poison gas. It was solely his intent to kill and his homicidal conduct which proximately caused all the deaths. But for that intent and that conduct there would not have been any killing.

Those murders were not proximately, i.e. legally caused by the manufacturer of the gun any more than the manufacturer of gasoline would be considered a proximate legal causer had Lanza used that substance to accomplish his intended act. In short, the instrument of this crime was not a proximate legal cause of that crime.

Naturally, the loved ones of these victims want justice. Lanza committed suicide when the police arrived at the murder scene. That was their justice. No trial was necessary. The murderer is dead. But now the loved ones want money and Adam Lanza had no money. His mother, who purchased the gun legally, but neglected to keep it away from her demented son, had no money either, and Lanza murdered her too, albeit with a different gun.

The gun maker has money. The gun maker has deep pockets. There are lawyers out there who are willing to bring suit against entities with money and deep pockets even if those entities are not liable for the wrong because their conduct was not a proximate legal cause of the deaths.

The loved ones found attorneys who were willing to sue the gun maker. Their attorneys know full well that they ultimately cannot prove proximate cause in court. But they take the case anyway hoping that the gun maker will settle for a sum of money just to make the lawsuit go away.

The Plaintiff’s lawyers are suing Remington Arms, maker of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle that Lanza used to commit the crime. Defense lawyers for the manufacturer sought by motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that a federal law shields gun manufacturers from most lawsuits over criminal use of their products, and Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act after determining such lawsuits were an abuse of the legal system.

But Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis ruled that the federal law might not apply in this case if the Plaintiffs can prove that the gun was a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians. So she has allowed the lawsuit to go forward for now, advising the defense that they can bring another motion to dismiss later.

"We are thrilled that the gun companies' motion to dismiss was denied," declared a Plaintiff’s attorney. "The families look forward to continuing their fight in court."

Well, he might be thrilled now, but I predict he won’t be so thrilled later when the issue of whether there is sufficient evidence of proximate cause against the gun maker to allow a jury to consider the matter. There is not and therefore this case is destined to be dismissed. It’s a complete waste of time and money.

The murder’s intent and homicidal conduct was the sole proximate legal cause of those deaths. The gun maker was not a legal proximate cause. 

Kangaroo court in Phoenix: Epilogue

It was a kangaroo court at the Phoenix jailhouse last September as I posted then; and the presiding judge allowed the farcical proceedings to be televised to the whole world.

“We got him!” proclaimed Arizona Governor Doug Ducey after a police SWAT team swooped down to arrest 21-year-old Leslie Allen Merritt, branding him as the infamous “Phoenix freeway shooter.” His gun is “forensically linked” to the crimes the authorities insisted.  

So they all had their minds made up right there and then – the governor, the cops, the prosecutor, even the judge who threw fundamental due process of law right out the window. The defendant was guilty as sin and deserved to rot in jail for several months before his trial on $1million dollars bail.

They didn’t even bother to bring the accused to the courthouse. His bail hearing was conducted via closed circuit TV from the jail. Merritt was brought before the camera all alone, totally disheveled in appearance, dressed in prison garb, shackled in handcuffs and chains for the whole world to see. He was not provided with an attorney. His hair was a mess. He looked guilty. He was up against the powers of the State of Arizona alone.

“The state’s position is that the suspect presents a dramatic and profound threat to the community,” the prosecutor solemnly intoned. So the judge simply rubber stamped his $1million bail request, thereby setting an amount of bail which was clearly excessive in violation of the Eighth Amendment.

“All I have to say is that I’m the wrong guy…” Merritt meekly declared. “I could never afford that bond. “I got two kids.”  So this man has been languishing behind bars at the jailhouse in Phoenix for the last seven months. He was railroaded by a kangaroo court.

"With all due respect your honor, there's no evidence against him to show he's responsible for this," defense lawyer Jason Lamm told a different judge last Tuesday after demonstrating that the forensic evidence relied upon by the state has now been cast in serious doubt. "He is no more the I-10 shooter than, respectfully, you are."

It was enough to cause the new judge to reduce Merritt’s bond from $1million to zero and release him from jail under electronic monitoring. "I am just ready to go home and be with my kids," he said moments after walking out of the jail.

"Our client was branded public enemy No. 1, he was called a domestic terrorist and he's been in jail in solitary confinement for seven months. Our reaction? We're thrilled,” declared his attorney. The court set a new hearing date and told Merritt that it's important for him to show up.

"I'll be here sir," Merritt said.

Well, of course he will be there. This poor guy was never any threat to the community. There was not nearly enough credible evidence against him to give a court probable cause to lock him up in jail for seven months on $1million dollars bail. He wasn’t a flight risk.

He was simply railroaded – denied fundamental due process of law -- because of community hysteria. That Arizona governor, the cops, the prosecutor, and especially the initial bail hearing judge should all be ashamed of themselves.  

Had this defendant been provided fundamental due process of law from the beginning as he should have been – as he was entitled to under the Constitution of the United States of America -- there would never have been a kangaroo court in Phoenix. 

Microsoft fed up with and fighting federal goons

What would you think if the federal government goons claimed the authority to force your bank to provide them with a key to your safe deposit box so that they could open it and rifle through your papers and possessions any time they liked without your knowledge?

You would want your bank to say no to the goons, wouldn’t you? You would want your bank to tell you about what the goons were after so that you could object and fight the goons yourself, wouldn’t you? But suppose the goons wouldn’t take no for an answer and threatened to punish your bank if it told you what was going on?

I think you would want your bank to fight those goons. And that is exactly what technology companies like Apple and Microsoft are doing today – fighting the goons over their claims of authority to violate your constitutional rights.

Apple fought the FBI when its goons insisted that the company was required by law to produce a backdoor to encryption software on customers’ i-phones. And now Microsoft is suing  the government goons who claim authority to force the company to violate your privacy by turning over its customers’ email and online files for examination by the goons without your knowledge.

Yes, the federal goons claim the authority to violate your individual privacy rights – to look at your emails, photos, financial records and personal possessions – documents that you store online with providers like Microsoft. And Microsoft is saying no.  Microsoft is saying that the goons are attempting to abuse whatever authority they have under the law – like insisting that Microsoft be prohibited forever from notifying its customers about what is going on.  Those "non-disclosure" orders violate its constitutional right to free speech, as well as its customers' protection against unreasonable searches.

 "We appreciate that there are times when secrecy around a government warrant is needed," Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith said in a statement. "But based on the many secrecy orders we have received, we question whether these orders are grounded in specific facts that truly demand secrecy. To the contrary, it appears that the issuance of secrecy orders has become too routine."

“It’s very important for businesses to know when the government is accessing their file room, whether the file room is down the hall or in the cloud," Smith continued, noting that consumers and privacy groups have expressed concern about the issue. “People shouldn’t lose their rights simply because technology is moving to the cloud.”

Never-mind insists Bill Fitzpatrick, president of the National District Attorney’s Association. He claims that Microsoft’s position is “obscene.” “I don’t know what’s in the water over there at Microsoft or Apple corporate headquarters, but this is ridiculous,” he said. “If I’m tracking a serial sex offender, child pornographer or a human-trafficking ring, I can’t tip these people off.”

I suppose he thinks his goons have the authority to break into your home without your knowledge too if they think you might be a sex offender. That’s their attitude – violate constitutional rights and ask questions about it later. 

But Microsoft, to its credit, is finally fed up with and fighting the federal goons.

Lewdly & lasciviously legal

Statist American lawmakers both federal and state are continuously in the habit of making silly, stupid, tyrannical and unconstitutional laws since long before the ink even dried on the Bill of Rights.  

Religious extremism is almost invariably the impetus for such laws. But if enough good people simply ignore, defy and openly disobey them the statists eventually find their edicts difficult to enforce. Rarely, the statists decide to do the right thing and finally remove the farcical laws from the books.  

Lawmakers in the State of Florida have recently decided to do just that with a stupid law on the books for the last 148 years which criminalized the conduct of unmarried couples “lewdly and lasciviously cohabitating together.”

You see, 150 years ago the religious extremist statist lawmakers in the State of Florida believed that unmarried people living together in the same home was ipso facto lewd and lascivious behavior. Back then, and even up until relatively recently, interracial marriage was also prohibited as lewd and lascivious conduct so interracial couples living together was naturally considered a “crime.”

A conviction of this “crime” resulted in a fine of up to $500 and/or 60 days in jail.  The law was rarely enforced, but there were some instances as recently as 1979 where state regulators would reference the statute to suspend business licenses. Between 2007 and in 2011, nearly 700 couples were reportedly penalized for living together unlawfully. As of 2010 census data revealed that nearly 550,000 Floridians were cohabiting illegally.

“It’s a victory to have our laws reflect the real world and get rid of old laws that no longer have any support,” said one lawmaker. “It’s also another case of the Legislature recognizing the real lives of a huge and diverse population. We can always have more of that.”

“Whether friends or more, government has no business looking under the sheets. In talking to elders in Florida, who often live together for financial reasons and companionship, they were distressed to find out they might be breaking the law even if they were just friends,” declared another. He characterized it as “victory for smaller government.”

Imagine that! After 148 years at least one lawmaker is actually concerned about having a “smaller government” with laws that reflect the “real world,” and the “real lives” of people. 

Yes, at least one lawmaker admits that “government has no business looking under the sheets.”

Cohabitation -- lewdly and lasciviously -- is finally legal once again in Florida. 

Abort the GOP

The Republican Party’s unrelenting religious obsession with abortion leads me to the conclusion that the GOP should be aborted. When it comes to law and politics few things irritate me more than GOP lawmakers passing, and governors signing, laws that they know beyond all doubt are unconstitutional, and the GOP are experts at that when the laws pertain to abortion.

Last week, for example, Republican Gov. Mike Pence signed a bill into law which bans an abortion if the reason a woman seeks it does not comport with what the GOP statists deem appropriate.

Of course as a fundamental principle of liberty any woman in the United States of America enjoys a federal constitutional right to have an abortion for whatever reasons she desires and therefore it is none of the State of Indiana’s goddamned business what her reasons might be. She is not required to discuss her reasons with the government. If she doesn’t want to bring a pregnancy to term for any reason at all that is reason enough under the Constitution of the United States.

But the GOP statists in Indiana like to fanaticize that they have the legal power to force a woman to reveal her personal reasons about why she is seeking an abortion, and if they are the “wrong” reasons, the power to deny her constitutional rights.  They have to know full well that they don’t possess that kind of power – their fantasies are unconstitutional-- but they pass the laws anyway and in the process brazenly flip their middle fingers to the Constitution.

Pence and the rest of his religious extremist GOP ilk have the nerve to think they can deny a woman’s right to an abortion if her reason is because she doesn’t want to bear offspring with fetal genetic abnormalities such as Down syndrome or any number of other profound and debilitating genetic deformities.

Reasons having to do with the fetus’ race, sex or ancestry are likewise deemed inappropriate, and the law mandates that the only way to dispose of an aborted fetus is through burial or cremation. The statists want to require an expensive emotionally taxing funeral ritual which might make the woman think twice about whether to seek an abortion.

Pence called the bill "a comprehensive pro-life measure that affirms the value of all human life… I believe that a society can be judged by how it deals with its most vulnerable — the aged, the infirm, the disabled and the unborn," he declared in a statement.

You see, that’s what this law is all about – religion – and the Constitution may be damned. Gov. Pence was a prominent abortion rights opponent while serving in Congress before being elected governor in 2012. Now he’s facing a tough re-election campaign and is counting on a strong turnout from his evangelical base in November.

The GOP abortion hypocrisy position is glaring under this law as well, since doctors who perform abortions could be sued for wrongful death or face discipline from the state medical licensing board while women wouldn't face any punishment.

"It is clear that the governor is more comfortable practicing medicine without a license than behaving as a responsible lawyer, as he picks and chooses which constitutional rights are appropriate," observed a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky, which will ask a federal court to block the measure before it takes effect.

Yes, and it is also crystal clear why this is just another good reason why the GOP should be aborted. 

Glutton Gorges While Subjects Starve

 

Kim Jong-un, 33 year-old Supreme Leader of the Democratic [sic] People's Republic of Korea, and bloated Jabba the Hutt wannabe, since his coronation as the nation’s belligerent hostile sabre rattling dictator, has been stuffing his fat face with large quantities of exotic culinary delicacies while the vast majority of his hapless subjects starve.

While this gorging glutton’s menacing conduct has resulted in crippling international sanctions on North Korea, sanctions causing unrelenting misery to the populace, the body weight on his 5 foot 7 inch frame has ballooned to nearly 300 pounds. He’s become so fat that his ankles have fractured under his own weight which is why he’s had surgery, is gout ridden, and now walks with a cane.

Now it appears that North Korea is headed toward another terrible famine like the one that starved to death an estimated 3.5 million innocent subjects during the 1990’s. "The road to revolution is long and arduous," explains an editorial in the state-run North Korean newspaper. "We may have to go on an arduous march, during which we will have to chew the roots of plants once again."

The government has ordered every citizen in the capital to provide around 2 pounds of rice to the state’s supplies every month. Farmers are forced to supply the military with additional rations from their own meager crops while the glutton’s regime has been cracking down on open-air markets that have served as a source of additional food for city dwellers.

"Even if we give up our lives, we should continue to show our loyalty to our leader, Kim Jong Un, until the end of our lives," the state-run newspaper wrote, calling for a "70-day campaign of loyalty."

Kim Jong Un is today’s ugly face of communist totalitarian statism in North Korea, founded by his grandfather, Kim Il-sung after the Korean War and perpetuated by his cretin father, Kim Jong-Il. While South Korea has prospered greatly under the relative freedom provided the people by a vibrant democratic capitalist based government, North Korea has slid down into a political and economic national abyss, a shit hole wherein the people live in abject poverty and enjoy no rights. Satellite images of Korea at night show a stark contrast between the two nations. South Korea is brightly lit up while North Korea remains pitch black.

The Kim dynasty has brought absolutely nothing to the people of North Korea during the last 60 years besides a horrible existence characterized by hunger and terror of their government overlord’s.

There are no reasons whatsoever for the people to remain loyal to these tyrants except for fear of what might be done to them at the least hint of disloyalty. They richly deserve the fate of history’s rouge gallery of tyrants. I predict an unpleasant ending for the Kim dynasty and it can’t happen too soon.  

Kim Jong-un is a human abomination – a glutton who gorges while his subject’s starve. 

GOP Abortion Hypocrisy Trap

Donald Trump got caught in the GOP abortion hypocrisy trap this week when he chose to follow his natural intellectual instincts and be logically consistent regarding his pro-life stance on abortion. He found out the hard way that among the gaggle of GOP hypocrites in the Republican Party it doesn’t pay to be logically consistent when the issue involves abortion.

Liberal Democrat MSNBC news anchor Chris Matthews shrewdly laid out the trap at a town hall campaign event in Wisconsin, asking Trump to comment on who should be punished for the crime of abortion if Congress successfully made abortion illegal in the United States and the legislation were upheld by the federal courts.

“I am pro-life…  There has to be some form of punishment,” said Trump. 

“…For the woman?” Matthews asked. 

“Yeah,” Trump responded, it would “have to be determined.”

 Of course, Trump’s statement was perfectly logically consistent. If abortion were illegal and a woman chose to have an abortion she would be engaging in an illegal activity right  along with the doctor performing the procedure and therefore it is logical and only makes sense to assume that both should be subject to the punishment prescribed by the law.

But logical consistency is not acceptable to a hypocrite and both Republican and Democrat hypocrites alike pounced on Trump’s comment calling it a huge mistake which alone should disqualify him from becoming President of the United States.

Trump’s rival, Ohio Gov. John Kasich told MSNBC: “...of course women shouldn’t be punished.” 

“Trump doesn't understand the pro-life position because he's not pro-life,” explained a spokesman for rival Ted Cruz, and Cruz himself said that Trump’s statement was “pathological.”

“[Donald Trump] knows there’s no way he can undo the damage of the abortion statement,” declared Fox News Special Report hypocrite Charles Krauthammer. 

Judge Andrew Napolitano, another Fox New hypocritical pundit heartily agreed that saying women should be punished for abortion if abortion were illegal was a huge mistake which very likely will spell the doom for his campaign.

As I posted last January, this is the same Andrew Napolitano who wrote an op-ed piece opining that abortion is murder; abortion is killing babies; and all human beings are “persons” endowed with a full palate of federal constitutional rights from the moment of conception. Virtually every pro-lifer anti-abortion advocate I know agrees that abortion is murder.

But Trump found out to his dismay that the very same pro-lifers who insist that abortion is murder take the position that women should not be punished for it. In short, their hypocritical position is that women should be allowed to get away with murder; only the abortionist should be punished.

A top official with the March for Life condemned Trump’s comments, calling him “completely out of touch with the pro-life movement… Being pro-life means wanting what is best for the mother and the baby…  No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. This is against the very nature of what we are about.”

"None of the other candidates would have made that mistake," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which supports anti-abortion legislation and candidates.

So the Donald, faced with this hypocritical outcry from both pro-life Republican’s and pro-choice Democrats, was immediately compelled to become a hypocrite himself and completely walk back his logically consistent position. 

“If Congress were to pass legislation making abortion illegal and the federal courts upheld this legislation, or any state were permitted to ban abortion under state and federal law, the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman,” he said in a written statement. “The woman is a victim in this case as is the life in her womb.”

Huh? The woman who conspires with and hires a doctor to kill her baby is a victim? She must not be punished? If she hires a hit man to murder her husband, is she a victim? How can she be a victim in one instance of murder but not in the other?

Hypocrisy, that’s how; only with hypocrisy.  

The Donald got caught in the GOP abortion hypocrisy trap.