A Broker in Pillage

Published: Thursday March 1, 2012 10:55am
By Maggie McNeill

Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods.  –  H.L. Mencken

As an organism which is at best symbiotic with (and in the overwhelming majority of cases parasitic on) society, government is a non-producer; its only means of support is to drain money from those who are producers.  When a government is small and efficient, the funds thus consumed go to providing useful functions such as public works, territorial defense and a means of adjudicating disputes; in the typical case, they also support a hopelessly inefficient bureaucracy, pay thugs to enforce leaders’ arbitrary whims on the people, and line the pockets of functionaries at every level of government (not to mention their cronies ostensibly outside of the government).  But in the case of pathologically bloated modern regimes, the primary usage of stolen resources is the funding of yet more growth and increased means of stealing still more money; in other words, the theft itself becomes the primary function of government rather than a means of enabling some useful (or at least mostly-harmless) function.  Expressed more succinctly, proper governments eat to live, but tyrannical governments live to eat.

The process by which lean, minimal government feeds is best described as leeching; it’s slow, gradual and so minimally intrusive a healthy host may not even notice the drain.  The feeding of a typical government is more like that of a lamprey; it debilitates its host and causes serious, permanent damage.  But an overgrown monster-government is like a rapacious predator which tears its prey to pieces and scatters fragments everywhere, ruining that which it does not consume.  Minimal governments can survive on reasonable taxes, fees, monopolies or the like; most governments require all of those plus fines, tolls, tariffs, unfunded mandates and political contributions.  But the Oriental despotism under which we now exist requires still more, and therefore has given itself the right to openly steal the assets of citizens.  Usually, this is accomplished by accusing the victim of violating some arbitrary rule against a consensual behavior which it has defined as a “crime” and demonized to the point where the sheeple accept that definition.

In the UK, this is usually accomplished by targeting “brothels”.  When the businesspeople so pillaged own actual brothels (especially more than one), the media can be counted upon to disseminate pro-robbery propaganda, as in this January 31st article in which the Evening Chronicle describes the victim as the owner of a “sleazy brothel empire”, laments that the government was “only” able to steal £42,212 of her “ill-gotten gains”, and describes her business as a “debauched operation” which the police robbed by perpetrating a scam…though the paper bizarrely applies that label to her business (which provided a valuable service to willing customers) rather than to police trickery which benefits only the police.  Furthermore, the media chooses to ignore the fact that this same law is used to victimize escorts who share premises, stealing their property and life savings while ignoring violent (but poor) criminals.

When using prostitution as an excuse for banditry, US jurisdictions prefer to pander to neofeminist “end demand” rhetoric and “human trafficking” hysteria by robbing the clients of streetwalkers instead:

Police in eight states participated in prostitution stings over the past 10 days, coordinated by Cook County [Illinois] Sheriff Tom Dart…there were 565 arrests – including 314 men allegedly soliciting sex.  A total of 227 people were arrested on prostitution charges and other misdemeanor counts, and two more were arrested on human trafficking charges.  The roundup was all part of what Dart calls the “National Day of Johns Arrests.”  Twenty law enforcement agencies in eight states ran sting operations…If the johns are all convicted, fines will be in the neighborhood of nearly $475,000.  While prostitution is often characterized as a victimless crime, the sheriff’s office says that is not true.  Dart’s office says customers of prostitutes “perpetuate a violent, exploitative industry,” and if there were no johns, there would be no abusive pimps and traffickers either.  “Large sporting events, such as the Super Bowl, bring out competitiveness in all of us, including, unfortunately, pimps and sex traffickers…In the days leading up to and including Super Bowl Sunday, my office coordinated with 19 other[s]…to send a strong message that our communities refuse to tolerate the sale of human beings for sex.”

Obviously, Sheriff Dart is perfectly OK with the sale of human beings for government profit.  But whether the melodramatic rhetoric is quasi-Victorian or neofeminist, it serves the same purpose:  rationalizing armed robbery by denying women’s agency and casting the perpetrators as “protecting” women from “exploitation” (except government exploitation, of course).  Nor do these authorized crime syndicates limit themselves to stealing cash and automobiles from clients; the hysteria over “human trafficking” has allowed them to grab even juicier prizes from innocent bystanders:

A southern California flight school owner faces the loss of his two-year-old business, along with the Cessna 172 he rented to a well-known customer.  The Jan. 20 seizure of N5283E…[was] the fourth…of a light aircraft involved in the smuggling of people, rather than drugs, since 2010…Denney Marsh, owner of Hemet-Ryan Flight School…said [local business owner Lino] Rodriguez-Chavez, arrested Jan. 20 after allegedly picking up three men from a Motel 6 and driving them to Imperial County Airport, had taken flight lessons at the school…“He’s not somebody who just showed up at the door like the newspaper said,” Marsh said.  “I have no idea how to prevent this…Oddly enough, the building that I’m in stores seized airplanes,” Marsh said.  “I frequently send my pilots down with 83E to bring back other airplanes for storage that they’ve seized”…Marsh…is not optimistic he will ever see it again.  Federal officials have offered few options:  Marsh can file a motion with the federal court that, if he loses, is not subject to appeal.  Or, he has been told, he can post a $5,000 bond and apply for a hearing, with no guarantee the aircraft will be returned…

Of course, it’s accusations of drug trafficking which net the largest profits; a quarter-million dollar aircraft is small potatoes compared to a million-dollar motel:

Imagine you own a million-dollar piece of property free and clear, but then the federal government and local law enforcement agents announce that they are going to take it from you, not compensate you one dime, and then use the money they get from selling your land to pad their budgets—all this even though you have never so much as been accused of a crime, let alone convicted of one.  That is the nightmare [faced by] Russ Caswell and his family…in Tewksbury, Mass., where they stand to lose the family-operated motel they have owned for two generations.  Seeking to circumvent state law and cash in on the profits, the Tewksbury Police Department is working with the U.S. Department of Justice to take and sell the Caswells’ property because a tiny fraction of people who have stayed at the Motel Caswell during the past 20 years have been arrested for crimes.  Keep in mind, the Caswells themselves have worked closely with law enforcement officials to prevent and report crime on their property.  And the arrests the government complains of represent less than .05 percent of the 125,000 rooms the Caswells have rented over that period of time.  Despite all this, the Caswells stand to lose literally everything they have worked for because of this effort by federal and local law enforcement officials not to pursue justice, but rather to police for profit.

The list of “crimes” which excuse police robbery will inevitably grow; they’re already stealing cars for selected misdemeanors, and more are coming soon.  Imagine losing your stereo over a noise complaint, your car for speeding or your house for fighting with your spouse, and then realize that even if you don’t break any laws at all the SCOTUS ruled seven years ago that it’s perfectly OK for politicians to steal your home for the “crime” of being in an area their developer buddies want to build something on.  The precedents for these abuses are already well-established, and they aren’t going to stop until the peasantry wakes up and takes a stand against its bandit overlords.

(Cross-posted from The Honest Courtesan)

Posted in civil liberties, economics, government, law enforcement, police state, war on drugs | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Don’t let Whitney Houston become the next Len Bias

Published: Monday February 13, 2012 9:03am
By Mark

To sports fans, Len Bias was a college basketball star who died too young of a drug overdose, a symbol of what might have been. To those of us who oppose the War on Drugs, however, Len Bias is a symbol that was exploited and abused by posturing politicians, resulting in the passage of the “Len Bias Law,” also known as the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986.

It was among the very worst legislative excesses in the war on drugs, specifying mandatory minimums, asset forfeiture, and the infamous 100-to-1 weight ratio in sentencing for crack cocaine. Pete Guither describes it, with only a little hyperbole, as a “near-genocidal attack on the African American population in the United States. Or at the very least, the systematic disenfranchisement of African American males.”

Bias was pretty much the worst case, but celebrity deaths are often a seed for sowing moral panic that destroys freedom. There was a small anti-drug panic following the deaths of John Belushi and Chris Farley. The death of Princess Diana in a car crash caused an anti-paparazzi frenzy that threatened freedom of the press for fandom and traditional news reporters.

So now that Whitney Houston has died, and even though the medical examiner’s report isn’t in yet, people are attributing her death to her reputed heavy use of illegal drugs. And over at Jack Marshall’s Ethics Alarms, the moralizing has begun:

That she didn’t say no to drugs, and is dead because of it, was the direct result of an American culture that does not give its constituency a clear message and verdict. Instead, the clearest and most unequivocal signal from the culture, the fact that recreational drugs are illegal and that America enforces the laws against them, is progressively weakened by ridicule, attack, popular culture, and the defiance or hypocrisy of role models and public figures.

Oh good God. Apparently it’s not enough that these drugs are illegal in every state and at the national level, that the War on Drugs costs billions of dollars a year, that armed police are invading people’s homes, that the Fourth Amendment has been gutted, and that hundreds of thousands of people are arrested every year. No, Jack won’t be happy unless we unless we also say we love it.

Whether they are preventing the culture from rejecting drug use because enforcement is expensive, or because they have a relative or friend in prison for drug-dealing; whether they are calling for legalization because they are libertarians and academics or Ron Paul, or because they are public officials who see a new revenue source; whether they are longing for the halcyon days of Haight-Ashbury and the Strawberry Alarm Clock,  or just like getting stoned, these are the people that killed Whitney Houston, as surely as if they had shot her between the eyes.

Screw you, Jack. The only person who killed Whitney Houston is Whitney Houston.

I would say that if their insistence on legalization is followed, and the nation’s laws join the popular throng in pronouncing addictive and life-destroying drugs as legitimate “options,” many more like her will die…except there aren’t many more like her. But there are countless lives to destroy, and unimaginable losses to families, businesses and America to be endured.

I guess he prefers the current system, in which we destroy lives and families by throwing drug users in prison. I wonder how many Americans never got to fulfill their promise because they got thrown in jail first.

This time, let’s not pass any more laws. Let’s not turn a tragedy into an atrocity.

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Divine delusions (or, why I prefer observable reality)

Published: Saturday February 11, 2012 5:57pm
By Rogier

The other day, I came across a photo of an Egyptian pyramid. The camera had been pointed in the general direction of the sun, and what  appeared to be a beam of purple light streamed across the top of the monument toward the viewer.

Almost everyone recognizes this phenomenon as lens flare (an artifact of man-made optics that is especially prevalent in cheap, uncoated lenses), but to the person who posted it to Facebook without a hint of irony, it was a supernatural sign. She saw it as evidence that the “goddess era has arrived,” which apparently meant, if I followed her reasoning, that a surfeit of male energy was being rebalanced in favor of a kinder, gentler, female energy. She had been praying for this outcome for a long time, and concluded happily that “The violet ray in this picture is confirmation that our work is happening with ease and grace.”

I wish I could share the photo and the exact comment with you, but it has since been pulled from Facebook. However, here is a similar effect, and a comparable assertion about what it means, courtesy of a self-professed new-age “healer” by the name of Margaret Ruby.

(On a side note, I have a pretty unimpressive five-year-old Canon point-and-shoot whose video mode gives me that same purple streak every time I point it anywhere near a light source.)

Anyway, when I made some throwaway comment about the irrationality of it all, a colleague of mine, a smart guy with Buddhist leanings — let’s call him Dharma Dwayne — took issue, arguing that reality is what we make it.

For her [the Facebook poster] it’s a sign that the goddess era or whatever has arrived. Who’s going to prove she’s wrong? If you look at historical fact, women are coming into more power and rights than perhaps ever before in history. … Just because we can so easily explain the mystery out of life with a simple utterance of “lens flare” doesn’t mean it’s not still miraculous. We tend to see phenomena and respond with only our rational mind, and in turn we sometimes end up neutering reality. A scientific and rational way of seeing is really not the only valid way. It was Albert Einstein who said, “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.”

That made little sense to me, and so I got ready to do battle.

“If we really are to give serious consideration to the viewpoint that purple artifacts in lens optics are a miracle,” I offered,  “then good luck and have fun, but you may count me out. Sorry, Albert Einstein: If everything is a miracle, nothing is a miracle. And if a ‘miracle’ such as this one vanishes as soon as you lower the lens by an inch, or as soon as you use a non-shitty lens with professional coating, it wasn’t much of a miracle to begin with, was it?”

Dharma Dwayne remained unconvinced. He fired back:

You see the purple beam as a lens flare phenomenon. However, if you look at the image symbolically, the pyramid can easily represent stability, power and more specifically masculine power. The pyramid represents balanced and properly proportioned and well functioning masculine power. Purple oftentimes is a symbol of royalty, as well as new age femininity, and also sometimes death. Light coming down in a ray from the sky is easily seen as symbolic of divinity, and some type of divine covenant and promise or connection to earth and humanity. Open space is symbolic of new beginnings, possibilities, etc.

If he’s saying that people constantly go around looking for confirmation of their views, however strange and irrational, I agree. If he’s saying that people have long ascribed divine meaning to perfectly ordinary (that is, explainable) natural phenomena, I agree with that too.

The Norse people believed that lightning bolts were hurled from the sky by an angry Thor (a belief that ultimately spilled over into Christianity by the way, as many pagan beliefs have). The Romans, according to St. Augustine, had a god of menstruation who ruled women’s periods. Well, how else would you explain the monthly visit to the Red Roof Inn?

Knowing what we do today, how much credence should we give such theories? Why should there be otherworldly meaning to everything we don’t quite understand (or choose not to understand)?

Dwayne says that “the pyramid can easily represent stability, power and more specifically masculine power.” Well, yes, I suppose it could. It could also “easily represent” the Christian Holy Trinity (maybe the ancient Egyptians were Jesus worshipers avant la lettre!). Or it could “easily represent” successive Pharaohs’ eccentric aversion to vertical lines. It could also “easily represent” Deepak Chopra’s sphincter (after all, God works in mysterious ways!). I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it!

My colleague went on:

But I do believe in the symbolic meaning of imagery, and that can easily have meaning to people with convictions, etc.

I said before that if everything is a miracle, nothing is a miracle. By the same token, if anything can be said to have special meaning, nothing is truly meaningful.

Look, I get symbolism, on some level. We all subscribe to it, more or less, because we are steeped in it. For instance, when people get married, they exchange rings — circle-shaped objects which, as we have collectively decided, stand for eternity (no beginning, no end). I’ve worn my wedding ring for more than 17 years now. That doesn’t mean I believe the love I feel for my wife can literally never end. And it doesn’t mean that I can’t see that hundreds of millions of people who at one time pledged each other their undying devotion have subsequently gotten divorced.

Reality sucks, because…it doesn’t care about our symbolism. Reality is. Our minds manufacture what it “means.”

Symbolism, then, is conceit. I don’t mind symbolism in the slightest, I’m only saying it doesn’t speak actual truths. Lens flare is not proof of divinity. Pieces of burnt toast do not carry messages from the Virgin Mary. Statues of Ganesh do not drink milk. Sorry.

Still Dharma Dwayne persisted.

So here’s perhaps how she making the connection between her beliefs and aspirations and this photo. This photo for her is a symbol of her convictions: To bring the masculine energy (which she perceives is out of whack) into balance with the feminine energy.

So far, so good, I guess. People can imbue anything with any meaning they choose. I have no problem with it; I wish them well. My motto is “live and let live” (which also means they mustn’t insist on foisting their delusions on others by hook or by crook).

But then he concluded:

So this image is a visual confirmation and symbol of her beliefs, and makes perfect sense.

I don’t see how he arrived there. At all. Unless he means that it makes perfect sense for some poor guy in an asylum to believe that he is Napoleon Bonaparte, or for the cat lady down the street to worship her scraggly charges as multiple reincarnations of Nefertiti. Yes, it makes sense to those two people, I’m sure. But almost everyone else easily recognizes the outsized fallacies involved.

There is no equivalence between the unprovable views of Cat Lady and Fake Bonaparte on the one hand, and the provable ones of Richard Feynman, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and all the rest of science on the other. Scientists have flown us to the moon, and cured polio.

And here’s what else is cool about them: Scientists tend to be open to changing their minds based on what they observe (real science requires this); whereas faith — in Wodan, Ra, Vishnu, Jehovah, take your pick — is the opposite: the denial of observation.

Quoth the imcomparable Tim Minchin:

Life is full of mysteries,
but there are answers out there,
and they won’t be found, by people sitting around
looking serious, and saying ‘Isn’t life mysterious!‘

I’m not saying to have “faith” in nothing but science. Personally, I’m a skeptic with some Fortean proclivities, so as far as I’m concerned, it’s fair game to ask scientists “Are you certain about that? I’m not sure I believe you.”

I just find it wiser to place a higher level of trust in people who seek observable truths, and who aim for reproducible, peer-reviewed results, than in people who maintain they have a third eye, that s0-called prophets can part the sea, or that they can discern divine messages in the entrails of livestock.

Or, as Woody Allen once put it: “I hate reality, but it’s still the best place to get a good steak.”

Posted in philosophy, religion, science | Comments closed

The iPhone owner’s guide to liberal hypocrisy

Published: Friday January 27, 2012 3:10am
By Rogier

I’ve been watching the indignation build over the alleged treatment of workers at Apple’s biggest supplier, the unfathomably huge Chinese Foxconn plant, where iPhones and iPads are assembled. The New York Times published two big stories about Foxconn this week (1, 2), setting off the discussion. Today, on an Internet forum for professional photographers that I frequent, a couple of people weighed in with now-familiar condemnations of Apple.

Corporate greed at it’s worse. I type this on my Macbook Pro.

…said one commenter, which prompted another to likewise chide Apple and then come clean:

If Apple wanted, it can end world hunger. If Apple wanted, it can use the $65 billion that it has offshore, bring it back home to America and help the economy. But they are playing by the rules set by the market, and are winning. The losers are all of us still buying everything they dish out, and have no say. I too, typed this out on my iPad. [emphasis mine]

Come again? How on earth do you have “no say”? If the supposedly poor treatment of the Chinese workers means enough to you, you can vote with your wallet and refuse to buy any more Apple products.

Also, shares of Apple have been for sale for the past 32 years to anyone who wants them. So you’re free to become a shareholder and exert influence on Apple’s policies and practices that way, too.

And those rules you decry — the ones that, to your unspeakable horror, are “set by the market”? That market includes you. Don’t pretend that it exists in some vacuum for which you bear no co-responsibility. As surely as you may boycott any company that’s part of that market, you may also picket it, publish pamphlets and websites and editorials against it, and whinge on Internet forums about it. Just be prepared for a little pushback, because not everyone will find your opinions logical or well-informed.

It’s astonishing to me that even a lot of Apple’s harshest critics in this matter, such as Foster Kamer at the New York Observer, get all high and mighty about the topic and then sputter about how they might not buy the next iPhone.

Full-Disclosure: I own an iPhone. Reading the Times‘ piece today — like every other piece about Foxconn out there — gave me further pause about what owning an Apple product (or anything containing any of the products Foxconn manufactures) actually means, and whether or not it’s time to start looking into alternatives.

The articles give him “further pause.” Ah, such heartrending solidarity with the proletariat (though of course the pretty sentiment is, for now, without inconvenient consequences). Mr. Kamer, bless him, considers “whether it’s time to start looking into alternatives” for his beloved iPhone. But not too quickly! Wouldn’t want to give up the favorite lifestyle totem of all self-respecting hipsters and digerati!

What do you want to bet that Mr. Kamer and roughly 98.4% of all “concerned” Apple end users will still be using an iPhone and/or other Apple baubles three or five years from now — all the while maintaining that they’ve totally had it with Apple’s “corporate exploitation”?

No one is keeping anyone from putting their money where their mouth is. Except these people themselves — at least those who talk out of both sides of said organ.

Also, let me add a word about the oft-repeated, angry assertions regarding the ostensibly terrible suicide rate at the main Foxconn plant. In a piece that was actually pretty critical of Foxconn, Wired reported that

Out of a million people, 17 suicides isn’t much — indeed, American college students kill themselves at four times that rate.

But even that is (f)actually incorrect if you consider that those 17 Foxconn suicides occurred over a three-to-four-year period. The suicide rate at U.S. colleges is 7.5 deaths per 100,000 students annually, or 13 times the Foxconn number. And according to the World Health Organization, China’s suicide rate, for the whole population, is 13.9 out of 100,000, or more than 24 times the rate at Foxconn. In other words, when it comes to suicide prevention, working at Foxconn is roughly 24 times safer than working at the average plant or office elsewhere in China.

Then there’s the related poppycock about how immoral it is of Foxconn to install anti-suicide nets around its buildings. The critics who work themselves into a lather over the nets should apply the same outrage to Cornell University, to the people who operate the Golden Gate Bridge, to the folks who run the Eiffel Tower, etc. The nets provably reduce the number of suicides. If you think that’s horrible, you’ve got a mighty odd sense of right and wrong — or maybe just an aversion to saving lives when the methods used to achieve that goal don’t fit your blinkered world view.

And just by the fucking way, when Foxconn opens its gates to jobseekers, this is the scene that results (photo and caption from the New York Times):

Oh, the humanity! Those poor brainwashed people, so deluded that they actually want a job that will enable them to provide for themselves and their families — and perhaps climb the career ladder and grab a piece of China’s growing abundance!

Look, I have no doubt that work conditions at the Foxconn plant are not exactly ideal, and it’s fair game for the Times to report exactly as the paper did. I hope that Apple will listen, and that the company will insist that any violations of its code of conduct be addressed. But the wolves now baying for Apple’s blood appear to lack all perspective. I hate especially that their howls have an undertone of xenophobic sanctimoniousness. I mean, why single out an Asian employer? Working at your average U.S. slaughterhouse, poultry plant, paint factory, or sewage-treatment facility is surely no picnic either. Beyond that, millions of Americans work in low-paying, pretty disagreeable retail and fast-food jobs at WalMart and McDonald’s. And the same is true for all those companies as well: If you don’t like how they treat their workers, then don’t apply for a job there, and don’t give them your hard-earned money.

Anything less is just grandstanding: Meaningless, hypocritical, and annoying.

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SOPA author is caught stealing someone else’s photo

Published: Thursday January 19, 2012 12:24am
By Rogier

Congressman Lamar Smith (R, TX) is the author of the awful SOPA copyright bill that is about to go down in defeat.

Rep. Smith clearly cares a lot about creators’ copyrights, but not as much as he cares about his desire to save a few bucks by…ripping off a photographer.

Turns out that Rep. Smith long had an image on his website that was copied off the Net without the photographer’s knowledge or consent. The Congressman neither credited the image nor made any attempt to pay for it, says photographer DJ Schulte.

I’m sure Rep. Smith is a man of principle, and will insist on being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. And of course he will want his website shut down. I mean, otherwise people would start calling him a flaming hypocrite, wouldn’t they?

Posted in civil liberties, entertainment, facepalm, free markets, government, law enforcement, U.S. politics | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Bloomberg morphs into Giuliani

Published: Saturday January 14, 2012 1:35pm
By Rogier

Here’s one cool thing about being a politician: You can make up shit about little people, like accusing them of being cokeheads even if the white powder they were caught with was in fact aspirin.

So if you hold elected office, go ahead and commit slander. No problem.

If the victim of your lie sues, you’ll never even feel it, because you have a taxpayer-funded cadre of lawyers at the ready to defend your dick moves; and if you lose, those same taxpayers will be on the hook for the financial judgment.

It’s good to be the king.

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Going mental, going metric

Published: Saturday January 14, 2012 12:10pm
By Rogier

Another pot raid [via Balko].

No deaths this time, not even a gun battle, just seventeen shattered windows, a battered-down front door, plus half-burned curtains and char marks on the walls from the flash grenades the officers threw.

The haul? Some water pipes and, allegedly, 20 grams of marijuana.

Isn’t it interesting that when cops announce the drugs seized in a pot bust, they suddenly use the metric system? You’ll never hear them talk about how they filled their patrol cars with 70 liters of gas, or how they gained three kilos since going on that all-donut diet.

But after they find some marijuana, it’s, “Ooh, look everyone, twenty grams!”

I guess that does sound better than saying they destroyed someone’s home over .7 (zero-point-seven) ounces of weed — the weight of four nickels.

Posted in civil liberties, government, law enforcement, nannies, police state, war on drugs | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments closed

Friday the Thirteenth

Published: Friday January 13, 2012 12:25pm
By Maggie McNeill

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.  –  P.J. O’Rourke

Today is the third Friday the Thirteenth since I’ve been writing The Honest Courtesan, and there will be three such days this year (today, April 13th and July 13th); as it so happens, three is the maximum number of such days in any given year, though each year has at least one.  In my very first column on the subject (Friday, August 13th, 2010) I explained how the superstition arose and why even superstitious whores should consider it lucky for us rather than unlucky:

Given the origin of beliefs about Friday the 13th…even the superstitious whore has nothing to worry about…since Friday is the day sacred to our patron goddess, and 13 the most feminine of numbers, Friday the 13th should be good luck for whores even if it really were bad luck for Christian men.  Now, I’m not really superstitious; I don’t believe that a day can bring either good luck or bad.  But considering that the reasons for fear of this day are so closely related to the reasons our profession is maligned and suppressed, perhaps whores and those who support our rights should make every Friday the Thirteenth a day to speak out in favor of full decriminalization and an end to the institutionalized persecution of prostitutes.

Nine months later (on Friday, May 13th, 2011) I explained why it’s especially important for my readers who aren’t sex workers to speak out:

A number of advocates are working to respond to the lies, propaganda and misinformation wherever we find them, but…we’re often accused of distorting facts to make ourselves look good, and no matter how assiduously we work to present a balanced view this is a natural and credible accusation against anyone who advocates for some issue which directly concerns her.  That’s why allies are so important; it’s much harder for the prohibitionists to shout down people who don’t have a dog in the fight, but merely support prostitutes’ rights on moral grounds.  Every Friday the Thirteenth I will ask my readers, especially those of you who aren’t yourselves sex workers, to speak up for us in some way; talk about the issue with someone who will listen, make a post on a discussion board, comment on a news story which spreads disinformation, or even just post a link to this column.  If you aren’t confident in your ability to debate, even a simple phrase like “I think adult women should have the right to decide why and with whom they want to have sex” or “everyone has the right to equal protection under the law” might have a tiny but important impact on those who overhear.  Because in the final analysis, they’re the ones we have to convince; rational people already support some type of prostitution-law reform and fanatics cannot be convinced by argument because their minds are already made up, but the silent majority – the fence-sitters and swing-voters, the ones who answer “unsure” or “no comment” on polls – are the ones who can and must be made to understand that we are not intrinsically different from other women and deserve the same freedoms and protections that non-harlots take for granted.

Last time around I also offered a synopsis of prohibitionist victories since the last such day, but since I already offered a similar list just two weeks ago I think that would be inexcusably repetitious.  And though there are several other days dedicated to fighting for sex worker rights (namely International Sex Workers’ Rights Day on March 3rd,  International Whores’ Day on June 2nd and International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers on December 17th), human rights are not something to be discussed only once a year; even six occasions to speak out on the subject are not enough.  For me and many others, every day is Friday the Thirteenth, and so it must remain until people wake up and understand that no collective, “authority” or government has the right to tell women what we can and cannot do with our own bodies.

(Cross-posted from The Honest Courtesan)

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A hard line against a soft drink

Published: Thursday January 5, 2012 3:44am
By Rogier

Noted without comment:

The Indiana State Police told a student working at the Statehouse on Tuesday that she could not bring a full can of Dr Pepper, packed in a lunch bag, into the building — despite the fact that Dr Pepper is sold in cans in a number of Statehouse vending machines. The Dr Pepper, [commissioner of the Indiana Department of Administration] Rob Wynkoop said, is “potentially dangerous.”

[link]

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Illinois battles drain cleaner

Published: Wednesday January 4, 2012 6:42pm
By Rogier

Got a plugged-up drain? If you live in Illinois and are thinking of buying Drano or Liquid-Plumr, better bring an ID. You’ll be asked to show it and sign for your purchase.

That’s mostly because some evil asswipe threw acid in a woman’s face in Chicago three years ago. Hence the new measure.

The legislators, however, were kind enough to offer this reassurance:

If the law proves to be overly burdensome, it can be changed.

That’s great. Or they could try not to pass bewildering, ineffective, time-wasting laws in the first place.

Am I missing something? Exactly how would a past acid attack have been prevented if the perpetrator had been required to show ID when he bought the Drano? Or future attacks, for that matter?

And can we now look forward to the same legislative response to an attack with, say, a hammer? No more hammer purchases without an ID and a signature, then? How about a screwdriver? An ice pick? A steak knife?

I suppose the purchase of landscaping rocks, building bricks, and two-by-fours should also be restricted. In fact, state registries should probably be kept for all buyers of anything that could ever be used to attack another person. Public safety demands it.

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Maine: Come for the lobster. Stay for the corruption.

Published: Wednesday January 4, 2012 4:21pm
By Rogier

Here‘s how the loophole works (kudos to the normally catatonic Bangor Daily News):

If [fictional] legislator Mary Smith is an accountant and performs accounting services for the state for which she is paid more than $1,000, she would have to disclose this under the requirement. But if she were the president of Accounting Associates, Inc. and performed the same work, she would not be required to disclose.

And here’s how my state’s politicians have gratefully been using said loophole, lining their own pockets and those of their spouses to the tune of almost 235 million dollars:

Sen. Joseph Brannigan, D-Portland, was chairman of the Appropriations and Health and Human Services committees when Shalom House received $98 million from the state. Brannigan was executive director of Shalom House. He is still in the Legislature but has not been a member of those committees since 2011.

Former Rep. Joseph Bruno, R-Raymond, was House minority leader when $35.6 million went to Goold Health Systems, where he was CEO and president, and $49 million to Community Pharmacies, where he was a board member of the controlling group. Bruno’s legislative service ended in 2004.

Former Rep. Arthur Lerman, D-Augusta, was a member of the Appropriations Committee and executive director of Support Solution when it received $14 million from the state. Lerman’s legislative service ended in 2006.

And so on.

They insist they did nothing wrong. And if you use the dimmest and most rigid interpretation of the rules, they may well be correct. To them, the loophole is simply there to be exploited. Not taking the bounty unwittingly offered by the people? That’s crazy talk. So they just dive right into that barrel of juicy, glistening pork. It only requires extending their arms and gathering up what they can, clutching the lucre to their excitedly thumping chests. No ingenuity is required, and no talent other than being able to shut off one’s conscience. Easy.

Oh sure, the whole thing is actually an indefensible form of highway robbery if measured by any honest, ethical yardstick, but when has that ever stopped the average government sociopath?

Cronyism can and does reach Chicagoan proportions in Maine sometimes, even among politicians who talk a good game about transparency, accountability, and government belt-tightening. F’rinstance: A year ago, then-newly-elected Tea Party governor Paul LePage gave his inexperienced and underqualified daughter, Lauren, a government job, and awarded her a way-above-average salary plus a really swanky place to live, all at taxpayers’ expense. Nice work if you can get it.

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The Totalitarian Moment

Published: Wednesday January 4, 2012 9:06am
By Mark

Well ain’t that a kick in the head?

Going into the Iowa caucus, it was starting to look like Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch’s libertarian moment was going to happen in a big way. Ron Paul was actually leading in some polls. But now that the results are in, I’m starting to lose all hope.

It’s not just that Mitt Romney beat Ron Paul. That’s really not so bad. Romney is a big-time professional politician who is, shall we say, adept at molding his image to the voters’ desires. He’s been the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination for months. If he wins the Presidency, I fully expect him to be an Obama-of-the-right whose single overriding goal as President is to win another term as President. I won’t be voting for him, but I can understand that he appeals to voters.

No, what really hurts is that Ron Paul came in third behind that freedom-hating fuck Rick Santorum. I mean, watch this video, where he spends three minutes pretty much denouncing all human freedom. Near the end, he literally says the “pursuit of happiness” is harming America.

Santorum’s nephew John Garver explains it pretty well:

If you want another big-government politician who supports the status quo to run our country, you should vote for my uncle, Rick Santorum. America is based on a strong belief in individual liberty. My uncle’s interventionist policies, both domestic and foreign, stem from his irrational fear of freedom not working.

It is not the government’s job to dictate to individuals how they must live. The Constitution was designed to protect individual liberty. My Uncle Rick cannot fathom a society in which people cooperate and work with each other freely.

Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate who spends any time talking about making us more free. Given his baggage, I can understand why people might not vote for him, but it makes me a little insane that so many people voted for a guy like Rick Santorum who hates and fears our freedom.

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