On Tuesday, August 14th, 2012, I attended court at the Mount Laurel, NJ courthouse with Nicholas Shankin to observe his 7th court appearance for his drug charge. Thankfully, his case was dismissed and all charges dropped because the prosecutor did not have the evidence to back up the state’s case against Nicholas.
While there for only an hour, I witnessed a tragedy of people having their names called out and one by one they trudged up in front of the judge, in his beautiful robe! I decided that I would take a tally on how many victim crimes vs victimless crimes were taken up that hour.
Here is the tally, in all its glory:
Victim Crimes
Animal Cruelty
Check Fraud
Victimless Crimes
Speeding
Possession of marijuana
Littering
Soliciting w/o a license
Soliciting w/o a permit
Storing construction material in an unauthorized zone
Possession
Careless driving
DUI
Reckless driving
Throwing rocks into road
All of this in under 1 hour, oh the humanity! I estimated that the state garnered well over $3000 in less than one hour from mostly victimless crimes.
I also witnessed the judge being the daddy that we all need, lol!
The judge:
1. Take your hands out of your pockets! (He said this to 2 different people)
2. Grilled a woman about her living arrangements and wages.
3. Don’t interrupt me!
After Nicholas’s case was dismissed, I threw my arms into the air in victory (said nothing) and Nicholas danced his way out of the courtroom! The judge screamed at us and said that he would not tolerate that kind of behavior in his courtroom and then he yelled that we were not at a baseball game! I wanted to laugh at him, especially since I was wearing my Copblock t-shirt! I then got up slowly, all the while smiling sweetly at the judge, picked up my belongings and slowly walked out of the courtroom! The judge glared at me the whole time!
What a farce the state is, instead of focusing on real victim crimes, they spent about 96% of the hour I was there prosecuting victimless crimes. I kept thinking about what a financial racket the court system really is. This was the first time in many years that I had been inside a courthouse and I couldn’t believe it. In a few instances, people were not allowed to leave until they called each and every person they knew to pay their fines.
I walked away that day with mixed feelings, while I was ecstatic that Nicholas was exonerated, I was saddened by the victims of the state who had their hard earned money stolen from them by a man in a dress.
I also talked about Copblock outside the courthouse and handed out cards and literature!
Today Congressman George Miller (D/CA) and Senator Tom Harkin (D/IA) introduced the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2012 in both the House and the Senate. The bill proposes three $0.85 raises to the minimum wage which is currently $7.25 to be $9.80 by the end of 2014. I find this to be outrageous.
Do these politicians never learn? The minimum wage is a job killer. Every time the minimum wage is raised, more jobs go away, never to be seen again.
“The Employment Policy Institute, a nonprofit research organization that studies public policy issues surrounding employment growth, released findings from a study that examined both Miller’s and Harkin’s proposed legislation, that concluded the proposals would eliminate as many as 768,000 jobs for less-skilled and less-experienced employees.”*
“The economic consensus on raising the minimum wage is clear, and these latest proposals are no exception,” Michael Saltsman, research fellow at EPI, said in a press release announcing the study findings. “Instead of reducing poverty rates, a higher minimum wage reduces employment for the least-skilled job seekers.”*
In a voluntary society, companies could produce more jobs while paying employees a “fair” wage based both on the companies needs and the experience of the employee. This would leave room for the companies to hire more employees, plus neither the company nor the employee would have to pay out much of their profit and income in taxes. The employee would benefit by being able to bring home all their pay and companies could hire more people with the increased profit margin.
All the minimum wage laws do is eliminate jobs and decrease profitability for companies, which in turn brings down goods and services provided by the employees and companies and increase the prices of goods and services.
Local luddites are up-in-arms over a proposal from Verizon to place a tower on Beech Hill, which according to the Keene Sentinel’s story, is the highest elevation in the immediate area. It’s the same place where Time Warner has their head-end.
The arguments against the tower amount to, “we like our hill to be all green”. The detractors hold a ridiculously anti-technology position that will put roadblocks in the way of future connectivity for the area. (Read: likely the near-future availability of 4G service in Keene.)
We’re in the 21st century. Radio is a hundred-year-old technology. Towers already exist, and they make our lives better. More communication leads to more safety and productivity. They are a symbol of progress and important to the economic success of a geographic area.
The city council should allow Verizon to build their tower (which would be constructed to even look somewhat like a tree, as in the picture and likely be rented to various other radio services, beyond just cellular service) and go even further and repeal their tower regulations entirely. Let the market decide these matters – not luddites and politicians.
Well, Obama has won the battle for mandatory healthcare in the US. SCOTUS has let the people down again. It is burning me up that most people disagree with this law, but since the Obama administration has labeled it a tax, SCOTUS upheld the law. Had the administration not labeled it a tax, it would have been a violation of the Commerce Clause and would have been struck down. This would and could have been a win for Freedom, but SCOTUS and POTUS don’t give a crap about the people nor do they care about freedom. The US just gets less free and less free every day. Every one of us will be forced to purchase health insurance by 2014, I will not comply. Will you?
Mitt Romney comes out today and says the only way to repeal Obamacare is to elect Romney…hmm…guess he totally forgot Romneycare! What an ass! He should be in the Democratic party, since he plays the same shit they do! Actually, there is zero difference between any of the crappy, fascist politicians and bureaucrats under them. Woe to us all!
Republicans are going to try once again to repeal Obamacare in a few weeks at the start of the next legislative session. How many times are they going to try this and fail? LOL, maybe they should have thought of that before nominating (soon to be official) Mitt Romney. Such hypocrisy! Why do people still fail to see the hypocrisy that is almost slapping them in the face? Argh, the American masses are doomed.
PorcFest (short for Porcupine Freedom Festival) is a week-long camping extravaganza put on each year by The Free State Project, an ambitious organization trying to move 20,000 liberty activists to the state of New Hampshire. PorcFest takes place on a large campground with hot showers, bathrooms, roads, meeting halls, and even a manicured grass field. It is camping-lite, but it makes a perfect environment for over a thousand liberty lovers to converge, drink, smoke, talk, laugh, argue, and show off their new semi-auto pistol accessories.
As a long-time member of the Free State Project, I moved to New Hampshire in early 2011 and have now been to three PorcFests. This one was the best, as you can imagine, because this was the first time Bitcoin had any significant presence. And wow, what a presence it had! (more…)
Yesterday I was showing Dave – founder of Suns of Liberty – video editing via Final Cut Pro. What started as an editing lesson turned into a short, but funny, video from the Matrix. Check it out:
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