Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

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My head hurts

My head hurts. This isn’t anything new, but it does grow tiresome. Tylenol and it’s generic equivalents don’t seem to help much, and while I’ve heard lots of good things about NSAIDs, I can’t take them. Stronger stuff leaves me dull-witted or groggy. So I live with it. Rest sometimes helps, and at other times waking up isn’t exactly a joy. The light hurts my eyes and everything seems to shimmer, shake and leave afterimages that bring pain to the back of my head.

I’ve fought with headaches for most of my life since I was a teenager. There have been some blissfully pain free times, some even lasting quite a while, but the pain always comes back. It’s almost like an old friend. Or maybe an it’s more like an old enemy that you’ve grown accustomed to, one who gives focus to your days and restlessness to your nights, and who is never far from sight.

Politics and ideology are a bit like that. There’s no joy in them, but we are all bound up in them whether we like it or not. Left, right, center, moderate, progressive, conservative, socialist, communist, we pretend there are but two sides, that it’s all black and white, or is it red and green? or red and black? It doesn’t matter. The Libertarians have it closer to the truth, there are many facets to the world, but even they only present four in their little leaflets or “ideological tests”.

The problem is, as I see it, that we all only find what we are looking for. If we are looking for enemies we find them. If we are looking for opponents there are plenty about. Do we really live for conflict?

There’s a vast sea of information out there. Far more than any of us can consume if we dedicated an entire lifetime to nothing else but the pursuit of it all. Even if we could absorb it all, there is always more information being generated. And how are we to filter it, to sort it, to discern which part or parts of it are true and which are not?

There are six, or is it seven, billion of us on this planet. Once I thought that was a vastly huge number. Now, just watching the world go by I see that it’s a paltry figure. Our national budget uses numbers more than a thousand times larger as a matter of course, and we worry about numbers almost a million times smaller as we try to chip away at it and try to balance it.

No one of us can hope to cope with all of the information available. No one of us can hope to cope with the sheer numbers of humanity. None of us can truly know what is best for another of us. None of us can, as an individual, save the world. That is, if it even needs saving.

Perhaps I am only seeing what I’m looking for, and my reasoning is only rationalization of a predetermined conclusion, but I simply don’t see how any kind of central planning can make things better. None of us has the capacity of intellect, nor the wisdom to pull it off. If anyone claims to, then I have one simple question for them.

Can you make my head stop hurting? If you can’t, what makes you think you can solve the world’s problems?

Isn’t it better if instead of central planning and centralized power we all pursue our own happiness, and maybe help each other out a bit along the way?

It’s not the Obama economy <insult deleted>

Yes, Barack Obama is the president while we have suffered through this economy. But, Democrats will rightly point out that the economy began tanking during the presidency of George W. Bush, and that there has been somewhat of a recovery in the economy recently.

They’ll do this, and they’ll be right. Statements to the effect that President Obama “inherited” this economy from his predecessor will still be made, and those that make them will point to the numbers to “prove it”. They can also point to numbers that “prove” that it’s been a long hard road, but the President has turned the economy around.

As the economy continues to recover – even if slowly, you can expect to hear about these things on the campaign trail. Sadly, people will hear these things and be taken in by them – all due to a persistent myth about the presidency that the media continues to push, and that pundits who should know better do as well.

What myth is that? Quite simply that the president is responsible for our economy.

He isn’t you know. Congress is. Sure, the president sets the tone and is the public face of the nation. Sure he runs the executive branches and is in charge of the bureaucracy that actually ends up spending the money that our federal government spends. But the president is not responsible for raising the revenue to pay for that spending, nor is he responsible for enacting the laws that authorize it.

We call the recent health care fiasco Obama Care, but the president isn’t the author of it. Congress is – or more accurately a bunch of congressional staffers are. After all, we know that many congressmen couldn’t be bothered to even read the bill before voting on it – and who could blame them when you actually try to read through the law as passed.

Those massive Keynesian stimulus packages? Sure, they may have been proposed by the president, but they never would have happened without Congress. Those stimulus packages were a failure by the way, no matter what MoveOn.org has to say about it. While our economy has begun improving, it’s still in worse shape than it was when they were enacted, and the improvement isn’t related to the stimuli, which actually made the damage worse.

But let’s examine what I’ve said a little more deeply for a moment. I say that the president is not responsible for the economy. As support, I ask you, which of the presidential powers deals with the economy? Which of the presidential powers deals with the generation of federal revenue or with determining how it may be spent? Can you name one? If so, can you show me where in the Constitution it can be found? Let’s look at his powers and responsibilities as defined in that document (Article II, section 2 and 3). Let’s start with the powers of the president.

• He shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the Unites States
• He may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices
• He shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the Untied States, except in cases of Impeachment.
• He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur
• He shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law; but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
• The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

That about wraps it up for the powers. Did you notice something? Two out of the six powers granted to the president are only partial powers. If the Senate doesn’t overwhelmingly agree, no treaty signed, no ambassadorial appointment, and no appointment to office made by the President will stand, and he can only fill vacant offices while they’re in recess.

I don’t see establishing a budget in there at all do you? I don’t see the power of the purse listed at all. And yet we still credit the President with the state of the economy, or blame him for it.

Let’s look at the duties of the president too, just to be sure we aren’t missing it somehow…

• He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union
• Recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient
• He may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper
• He shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers
• He shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed
• He shall Commission all the Officers of the United States

That’s it – those are his duties and responsibilities. Section 1 of article II (amended) defines how the President and the Vice president are elected. Section 4 defines how he or any of his appointees can be removed from office.

So, the only thing remotely looking like the President has any responsibility whatsoever for the state of the economy is the fact that he has to report on the state of the union to Congress, and that he can recommend for their consideration various measures.

It seems to me then that it’s a misnomer to call the current economic situation either the Obama economy or the Bush economy…

Whose economy is it then? As I intimated before, it’s the Congress’ economy. Congress holds the power of the purse. Does the current situation become a bit more clear perhaps?

The economy began to falter back about 2007 – 2008 if I recall correctly. When president Obama declares that he inherited a bad economy from his predecessor he’s almost correct, because the economy was souring during president Bush’s term. But the economy belonged to Congress, not the president – and the Congress was completely in the power of which party at the time? Whose policies were they that sent the economy into a tailspin? I would leave that as an exercise for the reader… but I won’t. It was the Democratic Party that held power in both Houses of Congress – and need I point out that president Obama was at that time Senator Obama? – So who truly did he inherit the economy from but himself. Ah, but it’s not truly his even now.

The economy has begun to recover of late. It’s true – although many are still suffering, the corner has been turned. You measure a cycle from the inflection points at the peaks and troughs. We’ve reached bottom and the numbers are starting to improve – but we’re still awfully close to the bottom. Have the president’s policies changed? No? How then can he take credit?

What has changed then? Oh, that’s right – control of the House of Representatives has shifted back to the Republican Party. The House has begun enacting measures that can help to improve the economy… but wait – the recovery has been delayed, and it’s still pretty slow.

What could be the cause of that? Why nothing less than a Senate that refuses to pass a budget, or to bring to a floor vote any of the bills that have come through from the House – except in dribs and drabs. We have Senate leaders saying we don’t need a budget. We have Senate leaders refusing to even give a chance for a floor vote to many measures that would improve the economy.

Now I’m not saying that the party in control of the Congress matters that much. Both parties have drifted far to the side of big government over the last dozen decades or so, but at least when Republicans are in control you’ll see more of a trend toward fiscal responsibility than when Democrats are in control. We’d do even better if more Republicans truly held to conservative ideals rather than populism – but that’s a dream – or as many on the left would say a nightmare.

In any case, there’s a plain solution to our economic distress, and it has little to do with who we choose for President in the coming election. We need to clean up Congress!

Natural vs. Class Rights

I’ve been having a few discussions lately about rights, and it seems to me that there’s either confusion or downright dishonesty about what they are. I’ve heard and read statements from people that claim to believe in “natural rights” that seem to indicate that these people believe more in “class rights”. Somehow that just doesn’t ring true to me. I think the two notions are diametrically opposed.

To put it simply, I believe that “natural rights” are those rights that are a part of our very nature. They are inherent in our being. They can neither be given to us by others, nor taken away by others. We cannot even legitimately surrender them up. Oh yes, they can be violated but they can never be taken, nor surrendered. They are a part of our being.

By their very nature, “natural rights” are also individual rights. To say that society or some class of people has rights superior to the natural rights of the individual is, to me, ludicrous. Society did not, and indeed could not exist before the individual. Societies are formed by the mutual agreement of individuals for their mutual benefit and gain. Individuals on the other hand must have existed independent of society, although that existence must have been somewhat impoverished. When individuals band together to form a society, their individual rights, their natural rights cannot be sacrificed in order to form that society – and therefore natural, individual rights must be superior to and take precedence over any so-called rights of society.

What then tempers our ability to exercise our natural rights in a society? Only the recognition that we are all of us equal – all sharing and having the same natural rights. My exercise of my natural right to pursue happiness cannot legitimately deprive you of your right to life, nor can it infringe upon your right to liberty. If in my exercise of my rights I violate yours, then being equal creatures with equal natural rights your exercise of your rights might well violate mine also. Neither of us recognizing and honoring the rights of the other can then expect to exercise our rights in such a way as to violate those of another.

Thomas Jefferson, who despite having penned it was not the sole author of the Declaration of Independence, after recognizing duty and obligation began by enumerating three natural rights. These were Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Our constitution recognizes even more of our natural rights (I say recognizes, not grants) including the right to free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, freedom to peaceably assemble, the right to keep and bear arms, and more. Our natural rights are recognized by our constitution, but they are not granted by it – and the list of those natural rights explicitly recognized and protected by our constitution is only a partial enumeration of those that we have. Recognizing this the constitution includes the statement that simply by enumerating certain of our natural rights no disparagement of others that were not enumerated is implied.

If our natural rights are more numerous than those listed in the Declaration of Independence and enumerated in the constitution, how then are we to recognize them? Must we rely upon some Judge to find them in shadows of meaning and emanations of modern societal whims? I should think not! Instead, let us apply a little reasoning of our own to help us to identify our natural rights.

First, and again, we must recognize that our natural rights are inherent in our very being. They do not come to us from society or government. As such, they cannot rely upon society or government in their definition. Second we must recall that we are all equal – if any of us has a natural right therefore, we all have that same natural right. These facts lead us to another conclusion about our natural rights – they can place no demands upon others – else others may place those same demands upon us (Those that would assert that the right to keep and bear arms cannot therefore be a natural right since it is seemingly dependent upon technology and therefore upon society forget that even a simple sharpened stick or sharp edged stone qualifies as a weapon. The right to keep and bear arms is the right to keep and bear weapons, especially and including those you make for yourself – not the right to require that someone provide those weapons for you.). In fact, examine those individual rights that are enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and in the constitution. You will see that each and every one of them involves our very life, our liberty, and our right to protect that life and liberty from others.

Now let’s turn to the notion of “class rights”. Class rights are quite obviously those rights held by a certain class of people as opposed to the rights of the individual. When we speak of gay rights or women’s rights, we are not talking about individual, natural rights. Nor, when we speak of “the rights of man” are we talking about individual, natural rights – but rather of the rights of society. In fact, all “class rights” are merely societal constructs. They are not natural rights. They do not inhere in our being – but rather upon our membership in one or another preferred class of society.

Class rights therefore are subject to the whims of society. They can be granted or revoked based upon current mores or the whim of the government. They are then not even truly rights, but rather mere privileges. Considering this then, the fight for women’s rights, or gay rights, or workers rights isn’t truly the fight for rights at all – whether those engaged in it perceive that to be the case or not. Instead these are each and all of them a fight for special privileges which may be granted or revoked by society. No matter how high-sounding the rhetoric, no matter how well-meaning the advocates then this is an unworthy struggle when compared to ensuring that the rights of the individual – the true rights of the individual – are preserved.

In this context then, let’s quickly examine a few of the more controversial rights people are asserting these days.

Let us first take up “the right to marry”. Is this a natural right? Of course it isn’t. Marriage is a social and religious institution. True, it has been around since antiquity – but it is still a societal construct. As natural rights are inherent in our being and precede society they cannot be dependent upon societal constructs – no matter how time honored and ingrained into our society those constructs may be, therefore the right to marry cannot be a natural right.

Central to the current fight over the right to marry is the struggle over the definition of marriage. For millennia marriage has meant the union of a man and a woman. For the Christian church marriage is more than merely the union of a man and a woman though – it is symbolic of the relationship between the church and Christ. For society in general marriage between a man and a woman has cemented relationships between men and women and provided a stable home for the raising of the next generation. Society therefore, in addition to religion, has an interest in the traditional definition of marriage.

The gay rights movement wants to change that. They want marriage redefined so that marriage can be between a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. Quite naturally many religious organizations are opposed to this – on moral, and theological grounds. Even setting aside the religious arguments there are secular reasons to oppose it as well, primarily the role that marriage has in procreation and the stability of the home for raising the next generation.

Arguments that some who marry choose not to have children do not invalidate this as a primary reason for retaining the existing institution of marriage. Neither do arguments that point to infidelity in marriage, the fact that heterosexuals get divorced or any number of arguments based upon the failure of people to live up to the ideals of marriage.

Now, as far as I’m concerned I think that homosexual behavior is sinful and aberrant. That does not mean that I advocate violence against people that engage in it, nor does it mean that I want to interfere with their right to pursue their happiness in that way – whether I agree with it or not. I do oppose “gay marriage” however.

No, I don’t feel that my marriage is threatened by Chuck and Larry deciding to become husband and husband. But I do believe that forcing us to accept “gay marriage” does violate the natural right to the free exercise of religion. To force churches to both honor and participate in gay marriage is to force them to suborn their religious doctrine to the desire for a class privilege.

When gay marriage advocates talk of the right to marry and assert that those who do not support their right to marry are trying to take away their rights they are completely wrong as a matter of fact and logic. In fact, they’ve got the situation turned on its head 180°. They are instead attempting to violate the right to the free exercise of religion in favor of a mere societal privilege.

I am also unable to accept the conflation of the gay rights struggle for “marriage equality” with the civil rights movement of the 1960s. There’s a vast world of difference between the two. The civil rights movement was a struggle to have the basic equality of individuals be recognized regardless of racial origin. Recall that we are all equal – and that we all share the same natural rights – inherent in our very being. The civil rights movement was a struggle to re-assert that basic truth and to end the violation of the natural rights of the individual that had been perpetrated on one class of people by another. The “marriage equality” movement seeks to violate the natural rights of some members of society in order to gain a privilege for a chosen class. Once again, twisting meaning on its head to befuddle the unwary.

Now let's look at another controversial right, the right to “health care”. Is this a natural right? Most certainly it is not! While we all will at one time or another in our life find ourselves in need of health care it’s important to remember that health care is a service provided by highly trained professionals. No natural right can make any kind of demand upon another person – not even for service. If it did so it would violate the other person’s natural right to liberty.

There are those that classify health care as a basic human right though. To them, I say that if they do not go to college and medical school at personal expense and then enter into the health care profession and offer their services to humanity for nothing that they are hypocrites. For if health care is a basic human right, they are taking away that right from others by refusing to provide the service known as health care. And let’s face it, if no one offers the service then health care as such ceases to exist. And, if it can cease to exist because people choose not to provide the service how then can it be a right?

There are those that see health care as an extension of the right to life (a time worn and tired argument used to justify oh so many expansions of class privilege, but I digress). How I ask, can something that is inherent within us place a demand upon the resources of another? Surely health care is a privilege, and one that must be paid for.

“Health care” advocates, particularly in government argue that we have a right to the services of another – but some recognize that that is an infringement on the liberty of the service provider (some care, and some do not) – and so typically health care laws take the form of insurance, whether paid for though taxes, fees, or more recently governmental mandates that the individual purchase a policy conforming to government requirements.

This provides no one with any rights whatsoever – but rather with government guaranteed entitlements. Worse, it does so through the violation of multiple natural rights.

In support of the first assertion all we need do is look at how health care is parceled out. Government decides what health care services must be provided. Government decides how those services must be provided and how the providers may receive compensation.  If government is doing this then health care is obviously not a natural right – and instead is a privilege that the government can, and eventually will take away. Most likely this revocation of the “right” to health care will come as cost cutting measures or ways to sustain the system.

In support of my second assertion, that government controlled “health care” is established through the violation of multiple natural rights let’s look in more detail. Let’s start with the individual mandate to purchase health insurance that conforms to government requirements. Isn’t it obvious to you that when government can require you to take a particular action that government has taken away your liberty with regards to that choice? So through the individual mandate our right to liberty is violated. If government can require you to purchase anything, then it can require you to purchase anything at all – even toxic wastes which you must keep in your basement which must then be available for government inspection at any time to ensure that you comply with the mandate.

But the violation of our natural rights doesn’t end there. Employers are also required by law to provide health care insurance that conforms to government requirements to their workers. All employers (except those that somehow manage to receive an exemption – which must surely be a violation of the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment) must do so. Among this “all employers” class are religious institutions and their subsidiaries. And when the mandated policy must include coverage for contraceptives whether the employer wishes to pay for that coverage or not then the right to the free exercise of religion is violated.

Now let’s not get started on the whole “reproductive rights” thing. If we must, we can go there in the comments, but that’s yet another set of class privileges – and not natural rights. For now, just remember that no natural right can place demands upon others – and that a person’s reproductive rights (if for the moment we allow the argument that they might be natural rights) therefore cannot require someone else to provide their contraception for them. If you want to assert reproductive rights then take the responsibility for doing so yourself – don’t make it your employer’s or the church’s job.

Next we come to the argument that the government has backed off on requiring churches to pay for the coverage of contraceptives, as if this somehow negates the violation of right to the free exercise of religion. Surely if the churches don’t have to pay for contraceptive coverage the issue is resolved right? Not really. This supposedly principled compromise merely shifts the violation of rights to yet another party. For now the insurance provider is required to provide contraceptive coverage for free – another violation of the right to liberty. In this case, the government is mandating that the insurance provider give away something that they would normally charge a premium for.

That’s like telling a baker that he must, by law give away a loaf of bread to each person coming into the store. Or telling a bartender that he must provide peanuts with every beer sold. Or telling a shoe salesman that he has to give away a box of donuts with every pair of tennis shoes. If you think that’s absurd – well that’s the point. If the government can tell you what you must sell, and that you must give certain things away then the government has violated your right to liberty and your right to hold property. All in the name of a “basic human right” which is really nothing more than a privilege – granted and taken away at the whim of government and bureaucrats.

That’s two. I could go on. We could address the “basic human right” of broadband access to the Internet. Or we could spend some time examining reproductive rights, the right to pornography, the right to burn the flag, the right to not be offended, or many others. We could address the right to a free public education, or the right to the redistributed wealth of others.

It shouldn’t be necessary. Ultimately these so-called “rights” are nothing more than special class privileges or entitlements that people want to assert over the natural rights of the individual. As such they’re not rights at all.

Remember, our natural rights are inherent in our very being. We all share them equally, and they take precedence over any of the so-called rights of society. This does not say that we are free from obligation to our fellow man. At the very least we must honor and respect one another’s rights. Whether we agree with the choices that others make or not does not change the fact that they have the right to pursue their own happiness in the manner that they see fit – providing that it does not violate the rights of others to do so.

The purpose of government is to defend our natural rights. Government doesn’t grant them to us. Nor should it be going about the business of granting privileges to a select class at the expense of our natural rights. And we should never support any effort to have it do so – regardless of whose natural rights are being violated or how “worthy” the cause may seem.

Don’t blame the hackers

Recently someone I know had to take their computer to have some malware removed. It seems that the removal process, along with the installation of some protection software is going to take about five days. Their response? “Thanks hackers.”

To that I can only say… don’t blame the hackers. Learn to protect yourself. Oh, and if you’re a Linux user or a Mac user don’t think that you’re immune. No software is immune from attack unless it’s in ROM and has no access to external systems. I’m not even sure about it being immune then. But the higher you can raise the bar for attackers the better off you’ll be.

A good anti-virus program is a must. Regular application of security updates for the operating system and all of your installed software is as well. Just as important is applying common sense. Most computer problems don’t come from hackers.

Don’t open attachments in e-mail unless you both know the sender and expect the attachment. Even then be careful. David likes to run a virtual machine for opening attachments – if they don’t do anything dangerous in the VM they’re probably safe on the system at large. Even if you do know the sender and expect the attachment… run your anti-malware software against the attachment before opening it. Did I mention regular updates of all of your software, including your anti-malware software? It doesn’t do much good if the anti-malware software is out of date. Script kiddies are always coming up with new bugs, so the protection vendors have to keep coming up with ways to detect them.

Don’t download software games, “movie players”, and especially those programs that claim they’ll detect and fix problems on your PC from the Internet. Especially don’t go to any of those “free Warez” sites to download software. If you must download software from the Internet, be careful. Know the company providing the software. Be especially careful when typing in the Internet address (don’t just click on a link in e-mail… type the address yourself, I’ll explain in a bit). Even when you know the software vendor, and when you know that the Internet address you’ve entered is right, run anything you download through your anti-malware software.

Why the emphasis on typing Internet addresses, and typing them correctly? Well, it’s because of the nature of HTML. It’s easy to spoof an address in a link. If you see a link in e-mail, you can’t be sure it goes where it says it does. When the link text says “our website” that doesn’t tell you much. If it says “www.microsoft.com” that doesn’t mean that that’s where it goes either. A link in e-mail consists of several parts. A typical link (source code) might look like this…

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com" title="www.microsoft.com">www.microsoft.com</a>

If you look at that, I repeated “www.microsoft.com” three times. Why? Well, the first one… “href="http://www.microsoft.com"” is where the link really goes. The second one, “title="www.microsoft.com"” specifies the text that appears in the tool-tip window that pops up when you move the mouse pointer over the link. The third one (between > and <) is the text that is shown in the e-mail. If you think about it, it’s pretty easy to make it look like the link is going to Microsoft’s web site when it might actually be going somewhere else… Here’s one of those famous exercises for the reader. Where does this link go?

<a href="http://whitehouse.com" title="whitehouse.gov">whitehouse.gov</a>

If you think it goes to the United States White House web site you’re mistaken. And this illustrates the other point about typing addresses correctly. whitehouse.gov IS the United States White House web site. From what I understand, whitehouse.com is a pornographic web site. They may have taken it down or they may not have, but it’s my understanding that lots of people have entered whitehouse.com instead of whitehouse.gov and been shocked at what they found. So be careful when typing Internet addresses. And DON’T click on links in e-mail.

Why did I say “especially those programs that claim they’ll detect and fix problems on your PC”? Because, while some of them actually will do just that, there’s a large number of them that don’t.

There are very few actual computer “viruses” or live “hacking” attempts in the wild compared to a vast number of “trojan horses”. What’s the difference? A virus is capable of spreading on its own without help from the user.  They DO exist, but there are much easier ways to get your malware on someone’s machine. A hacker actively takes advantage of security flaws in the target system (no, hacking isn’t just “guessing passwords” the way it’s portrayed in the movies and on television). Hackers don’t really need your help, but they’ll certainly take advantage of it if they can. A trojan horse on the other hand requires active help from you.

For those too young to have learned about it in school, or who never had an interest or exposure to Greek classics, the term “trojan horse” refers to a large wooden horse that the Greeks built during the siege of Troy and left outside the city walls. Greek warriors hid themselves inside the horse and the Greek fleet sailed out of sight. The Trojans thinking that the Greeks had given up and had left the horse as an offering to the Gods opened the gates and hauled the horse inside. That evening the Greek warriors crept out and slaughtered the Trojans who were sleeping off their celebration of their “victory”.

It’s all about social engineering and deception. The author of the trojan horse seeks to take advantage of your weaknesses and laziness to get onto your system. Are you in financial trouble, or a bit greedy? Do you want something for nothing? They’ll try to tempt you with promises of easy money (or lately with job opportunities) . They’ll either promise that their program will help you get lots of money easily, or offer you enormous savings on things that are normally relatively expensive. Do you get off on schadenfreude? The attachment might well offer you the chance to see a celebrity in an embarrassing position or to see a painful pratfall. Have you been visiting porn sites and now you’re feeling guilty about it and want to hide your tracks from your wife? They’ll offer ways to “clean your tracks”.

Open those attachments and bam… your computer is infected. Don’t blame the hackers. You did it to yourself.

Oh, and those programs offering to detect problems and speed up your PC? Some of them are legitimate, but a lot of them offer false reports of problems. Then they’ll pop up over and over again claiming to have detected problems. And then they’ll offer you the opportunity to fix the problems – if only you pay for the privilege. Pay and the program will remove itself. The only problem it really found needing cleanup – itself. That and all of the other adware it installs on your machine for you so you can run the “detection” for “free”.

Practice safe computing. Use anti-malware software and common sense.

Every now and then

Every now and then the things I see just really start to grate on me. And every now and then the innumeracy of people does as well.

Friday afternoon, as I was heading to my car from the office I noticed several dozen people standing around holding signs and chanting near the federal courthouse. They held signs saying that “Corporations aren’t people”,  “Veterans didn’t fight for profits”, and “Money isn’t speech”, among others. One sign, and I’m sorry I didn’t take pictures and my photographic memory ran out of film a long time ago, said something to the effect of “don’t outbid my vote”.

OK. I’m willing to admit that corporatism may not be the best thing for society, but I’m still tempted to ask a couple of questions.

What is a corporation? I suppose people will say that it’s a legal fiction designed to exploit the poor, or some such nonsense. Corporations have been around in one form or another since the Roman Empire. It’s an association of people working together toward a common goal.

Naturally there’s more to it than that. Corporations generally have a structure or hierarchy. They generally are formed to provide legal protection to the people that formed them. And, of course there’s that common goal thing.

In the end though, the corporation consists of people, whether those people be the partners that formed the corporation or its shareholders. And those people have a common, agreed upon, formalized purpose for banding together.

Now then, the people holding the signs presumably are grouped together for a common purpose as well. Based on what I saw they’re after two things – a reversal of the recent supreme court ruling holding that corporations have as much right to give money to political campaigns or disseminate a message as the individuals that make up those corporations do, and an end to the “unfair” profits that corporations make.

Apparently the idea is that if a corporation can spend massive amounts of money on a political campaign then it will drown out the speech of others. I beg to differ. It that were the case then how is it that recently in the “Golden State” we saw referendums pass despite their supporters being outspent by large margins?

And have these same people forgotten the aphorism “money talks, bullshit walks”? Yes… money is speech. Just as surely as pornography is speech.

No, the real problem with our political system has little to do with how much money people spend getting their message across. The real problem is that the message is pretty universally the same, or at least one of the problems anyway.

John McCain (thank the Lord above he’s not running for President this time) hinted at a real problem in our political system back when he championed McCain-Feingold, although his “solution” for it addressed the wrong problem. The problem with our political system is corruption. Perhaps that’s why people want to see big corporations prohibited from spending money on campaigns?

But that’s the wrong medicine for the ailment. I ask you, if a politician is corrupt, what’s the solution to the problem? Is it really to stop allowing people and corporations to spend money on political campaigns and advertising? Or is it to punish the politician. Do we punish the electorate or the corrupt electee?

As for the matter of bribery – who is more corrupt, the person that offers the bribe or the politician that takes it? Aren’t they both equally culpable?

What then constitutes a bribe? Surely there must be some sort of exchange of value – “do this for me and I’ll give you this”… How are we to distinguish between a group campaigning for a particular politician in order to gain something (preferential treatment) and another group campaigning for a particular politician in order to gain something (the election of a politician whose policies they favor)?

You just can’t fit the answers to those questions on a poster board or into a catch chant – can you?

So, the sign said “Veterans didn’t fight for profit”. That’s nice and catchy. What did they fight for? Let’s see… ostensibly in Afghanistan they fought to strike back at the murderous barbarians that attacked our nation on September 11, 2001. There the United States deposed the Taliban and allowed the Afghani people to establish their own government in its place – a Democracy. Do we get oil from Afghanistan? I don’t think so.

In Iraq, we went in to remove Saddam Hussein – after he had attacked Iran and even his own people with weapons of mass destruction. And yes, that’s exactly what he did. He was known to have possessed and used weapons of mass destruction. That was one of many reasons. We went in after he had shot at our own servicemen who were enforcing the terms of the surrender agreement that he was in continual violation of. And, we went to root out terrorists that went there after we invaded Afghanistan. Do we get oil from Iraq? I don’t think so.

Were these wars about profit? Hardly. They were both fought to expand the foothold of Democracy in the world and to strike blows against terrorist barbarians that use suicidal maniacs to spread fear. They were fought to spread Liberty!

What else does our military fight for? Well, I have to admit we really have misused it. Joining the blue helmets to act as the world’s police force is not something that I normally associate with defending our own liberties after all. And, what do we get when we do that? We get accused of imperialism – of course we get that even more when we hope to spread democracy and republican forms of government throughout the world.

I ask you… if you honestly believe in something to the point that you think other people should at least have the opportunity to be exposed to it (as say, the Jihadi’s do with Sharia) don’t you have an obligation to share it? And if you believe that people benefit from Liberty, Freedom, and the right to hold private property, is it imperialism to fight to give other people the ability to take up and assert those very rights?

Wait… did I say “the right to hold private property”? – And what exactly is that anyway… is it anything less that the right and ability to profit from your own labors?

Hm.. maybe our veterans did fight for profit after all – just not quite the way the poster declared.

A friend of mine “shared” a “photo” on Facebook recently (OK, the sharing part I get… the photo part not so much). The photo was more of a poster that quoted Bernie Sanders in 2011…

“This country does in fact have a serious deficit problem. But the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars – unpaid for. It was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. It was caused by a recession as a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit, I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That’s wrong”.

Let’s analyze this screed for a moment.

First of all, what is a deficit? Isn’t it really the difference between the amount we spend as compared to the amount we take in annually – when the one exceeds the other? In other words, if there’s a deficit it’s something that happens from year to year. The deficit isn’t the debt. It’s the amount we overspend every year.

OK, so the Afghanistan and Iraq war aren’t paid for. That’s debt, not deficit. In any case, the annual deficit is over ten times the annualized cost of those two wars combined if I recall correctly (See the table below).

For that matter, this nation has been running a deficit every year for a long time before those “uses of force” were even “authorized” by Congress. Even during the so called surplus years of the Clinton presidency we never stopped running a deficit. We just took money from social programs and moved it around to give the illusion that we were taking in more than we were spending. But that’s all it was, an illusion.

“Huge tax breaks” for the wealthiest? Excuse me  Mr. Sanders – but those tax breaks were largely responsible for reducing the total amount of our deficit. They kick started the economy after Wall Street was hit by barbarians and allowed the President during those times to see unemployment reduced after the attack until it was back in the four percent range – less than half of the “new normal” under the current administration and congress.

As for the “greed, recklessness and illegal behavior” on Wall Street? How about your own recklessness in denying that there was any problem in the two government sponsored entities you were touting before the economy tanked, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? How about the recklessness of the programs that YOU sponsored that not only encouraged, but practically demanded that Banks lend money to people regardless of their ability to pay? When you’re forced to lend money to people who won’t pay, what do you do to make sure you don’t get left holding the bag when they finally default?

Our deficit was caused more by cronyism than anything else. We didn’t really need to revisit and re-implement the failed Keynesian economic policies of the past. Taking money from the productive in society to give it to a chosen few – to guarantee the success of political cronys that have otherwise failed is the cause of our deficit. Spending TRILLIONS of dollars with little or no benefit is the cause of our deficit. Here are a few numbers to look at.

Amount		Description
$125,000		Annual income threshold for being held as “wealthy”.
$1,000,000		A million dollars
$1,000,000,000		A billion dollars
$129,000,000,000		Annual Cost of two wars
$1,560,000,000,000		ANNUAL deficit.

Lord, I hate innumeracy! Here’s another thing that bothers me. While it’s true that our politicians earn lots of money it seems that people have been sucked into the whole class warfare thing for so long that it has become normal to be angered by what other people earn. Another friend of mine “shared a photo” recently… This one compared the salaries of politicians to the salaries of our military and the social security benefits of retirees… then it tried to make a point that completely ignored another facet of reality…

Salary of retired US President		$450,000	for LIFE
Salary of House/Senate members		$174,000	for LIFE
Salary of Speaker of the House		$223,500	for LIFE
Salary of Majority/Minority Leader		$193,400	for LIFE
Average Salary of soldier deployed in Afghanistan		$38,000	per YEAR
Average Income of seniors on Social Security		$12,000	per YEAR

The “photo” then stated “I think we found where the cuts should be made!”

While it might seem outrageous to some that our politicians are paid so highly (some would think they’re paid poorly), especially in relationship to the salary of our military and retirees, this isn’t a great jumping off point for budget cuts.

How many living Presidents and former Presidents are there in this country? How many living congressmen or senators? How many of those were ever Speaker of the House or the Majority or Minority leaders? Even if you added up their total compensation for life it would be a drop in the bucket compared to the total outlays for Social Security or for soldiers earning combat pay. There are tens of millions of retirees after all, so our total outlays just on them are likely a thousand times that that we could save even if we totally eliminated the salaries and retirement benefits of all of those federal politicians…

If we really want to get things under control we’ve got to stop this petty class warfare BULLSHIT which is based on nothing less than covetousness and start looking at where our REAL budget problems come from.

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