damn near everything that's wrong with this country

Alex Jones is a nut job, a total nut job, and he does a terrible job of interviewing some of his guests, BUT.... He reads a lot of news, and talks to a lot of interesting guests. He brings up a whole lot of things that I want to research, but don't have time. He talks to representatives of the Minute Men. He talks to a guy named Celerino Castillo about CIA shipping cocaine into the US. He talks to a lot of people about the 9-11 attacks. He brings up mountains of cases of government representatives and entities not respecting citizens' rights. He claims police in Galveston are arresting people on site for expired inspection stickers. He talks about a bill (recently defeated) to require transponders in every car in Texas. I don't know about any Skull-and-Bones NWO Bohemian Grove Lucifarian death cults, but if even one tenth of one percent of Jones's claims are true, we are all in serious shit.

What's this about abortionists eating babies?
Is it true that we're not allowed to know the contents of the Patriot Act?
What's really in the Patriot Acts?
Why is anyone supporting the RealID Card Act?
What's the story on people being arrested for selling Rubics Cubes, and pirating movies under the Patriot Act?
What about this story of Bush telling the Border Patrol to stand down?
Is it true that there was a proposal to repeal the term limit for the presidency?
Is it true that they're trying to require psychological testing in public schools?
Is it true that they've had anti-terrorist drills in schools where armed men pretended to be home schoolers and the children were spattered with fake blood?
Is it true that they're beating and raping people at Guantanamo Bay?
Is it true that we can really afford to build these new highways in Austin without tolls? Are these tolls permanent or temporary? Where is their funding going? Is it true that the contract for the collecting of these tolls is a close relative of a member of the board that's mandating them? Is it true that 95% of the population is against tolls, but they're still being created?
Is it true that they're trying to register political dissidents in California (including people against open borders)?
Is it true that more people listen to Alex Jones's show than whoever MSNBC's top commentor is?

Like I said, serious shit. If I try to abstract myself from Jones, and look at developments from my own perspective, we're losing freedom, anonymity, and safety. Jones looks at this an sees conspiracy. I look at it an see Evil. When I see how susceptible I am to sin, I don't have any trouble believing that Satan can entice our government officials and citizens to walk down this dark path. And that's all it takes to get where we are. I'm more worried about where we're going.

I don't know about a lot of this stuff, but I know about the high tech world. I know the Real ID Card Act opens up the possibility for a whole lot of bad things, and is one itself. It makes tracking all a person's significant actions trivial. Any major purchase requires ID (soon to be RealID), even at mom-and-pop places, when you pay by credit card or check, someone is contacted, either a check verification agency, or a credit card issuer. With checks, your ID is ussually swiped, and that is checked, too. Setting up a database that records all these actions will require a lot of computing power and storage, but no new inrfrastructure. The credit agencies can just about do this now. Credit agencies scare me. A lot. They have WAY too much power, and I have WAY to little say in what they do with it. With RealID, the federal government can do this, too. An RFID, as proposed, means all your motions can be tracked as well. That takes infrastructure, so probably they'll only be able to track people they actively want to follow, but then it'll be a flip of a switch to do. Want to know who's buying guns? Anyone not paying cash can be flagged when they purchase a gun. Hell, there's an age requirement to buy guns, right? You have to show your ID to buy a gun even if you pay cash. We've been worrying about gun registration. No need.

I also know that there are a lot of proposals underway to make computing more "secure." There's something called Trusted Computing, Microsoft had a project a while back called Palladium. I don't know what stage these are at, but some of the proposals include making software and media (music, movies) that after you purchase and own it, you will have to ask permission from the manufacturer to open it every time. Another proposal is a chip on your motherboard that will connect to the internet and verify your right to use your OS every time you boot your computer. The Movie and Music activist groups are working on all kinds of encryption techniques to keep you from copying their stuff, or doing a host of other things that ought rightly to fall under fair use. Basically, they way that you can copy VHS tapes, edit them, turn them into other formats, they're trying to keep people from doing that with DVDs. It's crap. I want to back up my movies on my hard drive. That should be my right. I'm not depriving them of anything they deserve.

Oh yeah, there's some software patent issues, mainly in Europe. People (Microsoft), claiming the exclusive right to things like mouse pointers.

The concept of Intellectual Property has been blown way out of proportion. The idea was, originally, that people who spend time and energy creating intellectual property should be rewarded for their contribution to society. But what it's coming to now is large corporations getting the government to give them their way because they have deep pockets, not because they're right. First off, there's movies and music. Piracy in this arena was rapant, and still occurs with they advent of file sharing networks. This really wasn't right. People were getting music and movies for free, when the people creating them should have been making money. They weren't reaping a reward that they had actually earned. On the other hand, a lot of people used file sharing as a "try-before-you-buy" service, and it actually did boost sales in certain areas. Now we have pay services. I think that's great. They're gradually surpassing the free networks. I think that's even better. What bothers me, though, is that a lot of these services are using weird codecs and other mechanisms that limit the functionality of their files. They make it so that you can't transfer the file to another format, or another device, or if you can, only ones they like. This is crap. If I buy a book, it is my book. If I want to read it, fine. If I want to defecate on it, and then remove each page and mail it to a different country, that is my business, and none of anyone else's. The same goes for music files. If I PAY for a music file, it is MY music file. If I give it to someone else and keep a copy for myself, that's against the rules, but if I want to move it to another computer, or an MP3 Player, or change it to MP3, or compress it, that's MY business. No one should be able to tell me "NO" and I'm not going to ask permission.

Media companies have rights. They have the right to be paid for their work, and to prosecute people who do not respect that right. But first off, I have rights too. I have the right to own property, and to use it as I see fit, and the right to privacy. Also, if someone illegally procures a song, CD, or movie, the very most they owe the media company is $30 a piece. That means if someone steals one unit, it shouldn't be worth prosecuting. It costs more than that to track them down and sue them. The media companies should only be going after the major players, the people with huge libraries of stolen media. If they have that much stuff, you shouldn't need these unconstitutional tracking mechanisms to find them. If the media companies can get enough out of a small fry to make it worth thetime and trouble, then the system is flawed. A lawsuit costs thousands of dollars. If you can get thousands of dollars out of a guy because he stole a movie or two, that's just wrong. The punishment doesn't fit the crime.

Another note on codecs. A codec is an algorithm which allows you decode a digitized media file. It's a manual for a player to understand what all the ones and zeroes in the file mean. The DVD Codec is a dark secret. No one is supposed to know it, except en elite cadre. If you want to make a DVD player, you have to know it, whether you're making a software player for a computer, or a settop box for a TV. This means the elite group who controls the codec controls who can make DVD players. The people who bring you WinDVD, PowerDVD, Interactual Player, Apple DVD Player, and a bunch of other DVD playing softwares must know the codec, because they use it to make their software. For a long time, there was no DVD playing software for Linux, none of the people in the elite group of codec-knowers felt like making one. Finally, some clever duck cracked the codec, and made a linux version, which can be incorporated into several linux media players. Cool, right? Yes, very, but in the US, illegal. The software is still produced, and downloaded, but if anyone in the gets it, that's a crime. This supports a monoply on the OS market, because it means that if you don't have Windows or Mac OS, you can't legally play DVDs.

Now one operating system may have a feature that another doesn't have, but to make a feature illegal for one OS, and not for another, that's just wrong.

A word on monopolies and anti-trust: I believe in the free market. It's and awesome societal mechanism that benefits consumers and rewards people who work hard to produce quality product efficiently. Monopoly is NOT free market. Whenever a cool computing technology is developed, Microsoft makes their own version which is ussually inferior, and is ALWAYS Microsoft-centric. That is, it's more likely to be compatible with Microsoft products, it's less likely to work with other people's products, and it ussually has other strings attached. When MP3s came out, they made WMAs. When Java came out, they made J++. When Mac OS came out, they made Windows. When Netscape Navigator came out, they made Internet Explorer. When SQL databases came out, they made their own SQL Server. When networking became big business, they got their won proprietary protocol. Apple made the iTunes Store, so MS had to have an MSN Music Network (which, of course, uses WMA). Oh, and of course, all MS stuff is closed source, so making products compatible with MS products is a royal PIA. The jist of this is that people figure out how to do something cool, and MS copies it, but tries to force people to use the MS version, because their machines run Windows and other MS prodcuts, and so the MS version works automatically, wheras the alternative version is sabotaged. Thus, the two computing prodcuts are not compared based on quality, but instead based on which one works with Microsoft's other monopolistic products. Free market is cool, because it naturally gives consumers the best deal, monopoly prevents this.

Monopolies prevent competition based on product price and quality. Competition is the engine that drives free market. With out an engine, the car is going nowhere. Just ask my buddy William.

So, in summary:
-The government is probably enslaving us, whether on purpose or not, and if we don't do something about it, we're in deep shit.
-Alex Jones is crazy, but he's still got me scared shitless. (Not frozen in terror, more like desperate self-defense.)
-Large corporations are creating monopolies, and software that violates our rights, and paying the government to support them.

A few recommendations:
-DECENTRALIZE EVERYTHING - put as much power and responsibility in the hands of the citizenry as possible.
-A new rule for government programs: you should be either be funded by taxes, or service fees, not both.
-If I have to pay a fee for a service, it should be in a free market situation, such that I have more than one choice of provider (i.e. I should have my choice of electric companies so TXU will stop screwing me over)
-Examine the schools, they're producing rapant idiocy. (As evidenced by the fact that all this crap is happening.) We need to set some reasonable, simple education standards, and then let people meet them pretty much however they see fit (yeah, I'm talking about vouchers, but much more extreme). Education should be a right, not a requirement. Everyone should have the opportunity to learn, but educating someone against their will doesn't work, short of brainwashing, and brainwashing should be a capital crime. Oh yeah, if you opt not to be educated, you don't get the voucher in cash.
-We need an inquisition. Every member of our government needs to be put on trial, from the top down. Graft should not be tolerated. If a person is found to have committed a criminal offense, the appropriate charges and punishment should be rendered. If it's a more minor form of corruption, they simply need to be barred from government service for the rest of their lives, and from making more than the average income for wherever they live. We don't want corrupt government officials becoming corrupt CEOs. They'll just have to live out the rest of their lives in mediocrity.
-The entire U.S. Senate should be impeached an removed from office, and should have that stuff about being barred from government service/high income thing. The RealID Card Act was passed unanimously in the Senate, therefore all the Senators have abandoned their duty to protect the Constitution.
-Remember oaths, and hold people to them. Congressmen and Presidents are sworn to uphold the Constitution. Sometimes they claim that it's the Supreme Court's job, but that's bullshit. It's everyone's job.
-Issue a firearm to everyone over the age of 21, then gradually lower the age until it gets down to 16. Can you imagine if those punks in Columbine had tried to shoot up the cafeteria while it was full of armed teachers and upperclassmen? Coulda saved a lot of lives. As a matter of fact, they probably wouldn't have tried it. If we're going to do this, we need to require gun safety classes for every citizen, too. But just imagine, if every citizen over 16 had a gun. If the government goes to hell, the people have the power to reign it in. Furthermore, it's a fact: guns lower crime. What? Yeah. Guns lower crime. If you confiscate all the guns in a country, the crime rate skyrockets. If everyone is armed (like in Switzerland and Texas), you get a very low crime rate. Why is this? Well, first off, gun confiscation does affect criminals, so in England, the police don't have guns, the law-abiding citizens don't have guns, but the criminals do. On the other hand, do you really want to rob a house if the owner has a 12-gauge? Or even might have one? Didn't think so. Even if you have one, too, you're fighting someone on the defensive, protecting his family, self, and home, he's gonna fight hard. It's just not worth it.
-Slap relativists. There is Truth, it's what's real. There aren't "many truths." That's a load of horse shit. (Different rant.)
-Let's think about making lying illegal. Or at least big, willful lying. I mean, for the most part, if you tell a big lie, you're committing fraud or coercion or some other existing crime, but if you say something that is provably untrue, and you know it's untrue, that's wrong. I'm excluding fiction (stories), because there is an understanding that what your saying isn't meant to be considered true.
-No more hate crimes. Hate is an emotion, a feeling. I reserve the right to think and feel whatever the hell I want, damnit. If you kill someone for being black, is that worse than killing a white guy? Personally, that sounds pretty racist. Murder is murder, it shouldn't matter what color a person's skin is. And racial slurs, that's freedom of speech. I should be able to say what I want, so long as it isn't libelous or slanderous. Most racial slurs are slanderous, unless they're true. If a racial slur is true, then people who bitch about it should be slapped. It's more important to protect the truth than people's feelings. The truth is more important any one of us. Period.
-Government must be by consent, or I will die fighting it. That's what's wrong with the UN, and the EU, and the rest of those acronyms. Who did you vote for for U.S. Ambassador to the UN? No one. We do not elect members of the UN, and we did not vote to join it. Therefore, the UN has the authority to be a a grandiose focus group, or else, well, a tyranny. Government without consent and representation is tyranny. Period. Maybe it's a benevolent tyranny, but a gilded cage is still a cage. That's why the US overrules the UN, because the US is, for now, a legitimate, democratic government. If you can make a world government that is concentual and has proper democratic representation, I'll think about following it. Here's the thing, though. That's the ultimate Centralization of government. Centralization is almost the opposite of democracy. The more people a level of government presides over, the less control each person has over it. The only way a world government can work is in the model of the Articles of Confederation, where it basically has no power, and has to ask its member states' permission to do anything.
-Remember: Government is a NECESSARY EVIL. We have some government because the world wouldn't work right without it. But the less of it we have, the better. Studies show that frequently, when governments cut taxes, since the money is returned to private citizens, the economy is invigorated, so that the government actually collects MORE money when it collects a SMALLER percentage of people's income. Read that a couple more times, I don't feel like retyping it. Big governments aren't even good for big governments.


Our own government is like a couch potato (fitting really), with great folds of fat obscuring the remote control. This fat doesn't help anyone, and it makes it more difficult to do anything. There are vey few things the government needs to do: It has to build roads, private roads don't work well. It has to have an army (at least in time of war). It has to have courts and police, to maintain order (although police should only be used in criminal matters, not minor traffic violations). It needs a lawmaking body. It should provide for the elderly, and permanently disabled. It should provide temporary assistance for people who are temporarily unemployed, because this makes the Free Market economy work better. It should protect historical monuments, but I think the best way to do this might be to create a non-profit organization for the purpose, which might be partially funded by tax dollars, but primarily by donations and fees charged to visitors, this puts most the burden of caring for such things on those who value them, which is reasonable.

It does not need a national parks service, this can be handled by non-profit organizations funded through donations and the fees currently charged to visitors. It does not need a Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Fire Arms, these aren't even illegal! It does not need to own or run schools, it is much more cost-effective to let other groups run schools and simply issue somethinglike the proposed vouchers. It does not really need an FBI, local and state police can handle most of these issues. It does not need nearly as much of a CIA, admittedly, the US has enemies abroad that require intelligence agencies, and armed forces, but I think we have an excess of intelligence agencies. It does not need an NSA, a CIA, Homeland Security, and military intelligence, sure, one such group, but only one, makes sense. It does not need to run utility companies, when subdivision is outside any city limits, its water, waste water, parks, and trash pickup (or some cobination thereof) are administered by MUDs, municipal utility districts, which tend to do a much better job than city utility companies. It should not have unnecessary programs which are prone to pork-barrelling. It does not need to make elected officials wealthy. While it is a good idea to pay elected officials enough to live and do their jobs (otherwise only the independently wealthy can serve), we don't need to pay them extravagantly. I'm pretty sure the President makes $100,000 or more a year, and he doesn't have to pay for his food, housing, or transportation. The only other thing he really needs is clothes, and I don't want a president who spends $100,000 a year on clothes. I'd like to have a president that buys all his clothes at thrift stores. Now that's a man who can clean our fiscal house.

I'm not sure about groups like the FDA, USDA, and other groups that monitor industries to make sure they play fair. We need these, and we need them to be impartial, and it's good that they have governmental powers (to fine, and to force companies to pull bad product). I think perhaps one agency, a branch of law-enforcement, could cover these matters and anti-trust matters. A Fair Business Practices group, or something.

I guess we need an IRS, because we need taxes, but maybe with a smaller government, we could have a smaller IRS. I'd like to see tax collection stream-lined. The mere act of collecting taxes is expensive. It takes a lot of man-power to process it all. I'd prefer it if we only had one taxation method. As it is, we have tarifs, income tax, sales tax, property tax, and then other revenue sources. If we had, say, just income tax at city, state, and local levels, we could save a lot. For one, your income should be calculated the same way by each group, so hopefully, they can share the cost of calculating it. Only property tax unfairly targets landlords, although I guess ultimately, it just raises rents. I think it's important that everyone pay taxes, even low taxes. It's part of taking ownership in your country, like voting and jury duty.

As for tarifs, I'd prefer embargoes. We shouldn't be trading with countries that aren't protecting human rights. If a country is not exploiting their workers, their product should cost the same as the local guy's product, plus shipping. I guess things cost less besides slave labor outside the US, but shouldn't it balance out? Have to ask an economist on that one.

As for sales tax, there's something to be said for that as a taxing method. Rewards the frugal, since they don't buy as much, but that's a lot of bookkeeping, taxing every dollar anyone spends.

We don't need the FCC, not this one anyway. The broadcast airwaves are a communal resource owned by the people, and so it needs to be administered in everyone's best interest. If some guy builds a tower and starts broadcasting hardcore porn, that's no good. Someone has to make sure that stations broadcast in an orderly manner, so they don't interfere with each other, and make sure the content reflects people's wishes. Well, I look at the broadcast situation here in Austin, and they're doing a terrible job of both. First off, look up all the radio stations broadcasting in your area. There's about 20 FM stations in most cities. Here in Austin we have an 89.5 and a 90.5, so theoretically, stations can be positioned within one MHz or whatever, thus 88 to 108, we should be able to accomodate 30 stations, but we don't have 30, and in fact, there cannot be anymore FM stations here in Austin. I've been told that stations may need more space at the higher end of the spectrum, but if that's true, shouldn't they be able to pu them closer together at the low end? The frequencies seem to be pretty random, why not organize them, and pack them as close as possible without degradation? Also, Clear Channel owns 2 country music stations here in Austin. Two identical stations: same format, same owner. That's a terrible waste. So, the FCC is not regulating the things they should be regulatin the way they should. Meanwhile, they're trying to regulate cable tv and the internet. This is ludicrous. They're not broadcast on airwaves, they travel on wires. They can be wireless, but the supply of frequencies is not limited. They might have a right to regulate the frequencies and technical issues, but not the content. The content is international, and should not be under anyone's jurisdiction. Fraud is another matter. As is libel. The same rules apply to the internet as to speech. Don't lie and the law should leave you alone. I'm not trying to protect porn, but if there's a point where the law should interfere with internet porn, it's not the transmission on the internet.