Casus Belli

Crackdown: State troopers seal off a road as the Feds conduct a tri-state operation to arrest members of the Hutaree "Christian militia."


The first thing that must be understood is that while the murder of any human being is the most serious crime one can commit, it is not necessarily a crime to kill a police officer.


Defensive use of lethal force against criminal aggression is morally legitimate and legally protected, even -- no, make that "especially" -- when the aggressor is clothed in the habiliments of the state's punitive priesthood. This is not the view of some obscure, unsavory self-styled Christian militia group from Michigan. It is the long-established view of the United States Supreme Court as expressed more than a century ago in the ruling John Bad Elk v. The United States.



John Bad Elk, a Lakota Indian living on a South Dakota reservation, shot and killed a tribal policeman named John Kills Back, who attempted to carry out an arrest without warrant or probable cause. Bad Elk was convicted of murder after the Judge instructed the jury (as paraphrased by the High Court) that "the policeman had the right to arrest [Black Elk] ... and to use such force as was necessary to accomplish the arrest, and that [Black Elk] had no right to resist it."



Under the common law, the High Court pointed out, Black Elk was not obliged to submit to an unlawful arrest, and he "had the right to use such force as was absolutely necessary to resist an attempted illegal arrest...." Furthermore, ruled the Court, "the law looks with very different eyes upon the transaction when the officer had the right to make the arrest from what it does if the officer had no such right. What might be murder in the first case might be nothing more than manslaughter in the other, or the facts might show that no offense had been committed." (Emphasis added.)


Simply put: As a matter of law, a citizen has an unqualified right to use lethal force to defend himself against a criminal assault by a law enforcement officer. This is not "sedition"; it's stare decisis.


The federal indictment against the Hutaree "Christian militia" describes the group's alleged preparations for potential armed conflict against law enforcement officers as a "seditious conspiracy." Whether this constitutes a criminal conspiracy of any kind depends entirely on whether the group planned to commit aggressive violence against individuals.



If they were acquiring weapons and developing appropriate skills in anticipation of defending themselves against government aggression, their actions-- while possibly conspiratorial in nature -- don't amount to a crime. This is particularly true in light of our cultural history, in which sedition -- agitation to change the existing political order -- is our proudest civic tradition.



Government is nothing more than the rationalization and exercise of violence. Everything done by government contains at least the implicit threat of lethal coercion. Thus the indictment's description of Hutaree as "an anti-government extremist organization which advocates violence against local, state and Federal law enforcement" is a product of rhetorical onanism.



The same is true of the charge that the militia's members "did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree with each other and other persons known and unknown" -- great googlymoogly, do federal prosecutors pay their scribes by the syllable? -- "to levy war against the United States, to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States, and to prevent, hinder, and delay by force the execution of any United States law."



If Hutaree was preparing for armed defense against criminal actions by government officials, this charge is as pointless as a broken pencil. If their efforts to "prevent, hinder, and delay" various government initiatives were confined to activism, rather than armed conflict, they are -- in that particular -- not substantively different from hundreds or thousands of other groups.



Once again, the gravamen here is the question of aggressive violence. As paraphrased by the Regime's media stenographers, the charges against Hutaree are digested into a "plot to kill law enforcement officers." This would allegedly entail murdering one policeman and then ambushing others who would attend the Soviet-style paramilitary ritual that occurs on those rare occasions a police officer is killed in the line of duty.



Rather than providing specific details, referring to particular witnesses, or alluding to other material evidence, the indictment repeatedly refers to Hutaree's "general concept of operations." To whose "concept" does this refer -- the specific, overtly stated intentions of the militia members, or the way those intentions were conceived by federal authorities or their allied left-wing "watchdog" activists? Was this "concept of operations" committed to print, or captured on an audio or video record? Was there a specific plan, or were there outbursts of ill-considered speculation or depraved wishful thinking?



In studiously vague language, the federal indictment alleges that "one officer in particular" had been identified as a potential murder target. Plotting to murder another human being is a crime, of course, as is preparing to murder others who would assemble for a funeral.



These matters are questions of fact dependent on evidence not outlined in the indictment. Given that cases of this kind often end in plea bargains before they go to trial, it's possible we may never learn what, if any, evidence supports the most serious charges against the group.



Hutaree, we are told, is a violent cult. FBI Special Agent Andrew Arena referred to Hutaree as typical of the "radical and extremist fringe groups that can be found throughout our society." It may well be a dangerous little sect; like nearly everyone else, I hadn't heard of the group prior to yesterday (March 28), so I can't offer an adequately informed opinion of its intentions. At least some of those involved in other citizen militia groups in Michigan were leery of Hutaree, suspecting that it was seeking to provoke a civil war.


Whatever is eventually learned about Hutaree, as things presently stand the indictment against it could provide a template for "seditious conspiracy" prosecutions involving practically any group that endorses the use of defensive force to protect citizens against government aggression.



Indeed, the definition of "conspiracy" used in the Hutaree indictment could make a criminal out of anyone who reads Federalist Paper 46 in public, thereby sharing James Madison's commendably seditious admonition that the people preserve "the advantage of being armed" in the event that insurrection against the central government proves necessary in order to preserve liberty.


The tri-state crack-down against Hutaree, which involved what was described as a "batallion" of state, local, and federal troops (there's little point in using the term "police" any more), is the largest but by no means only recent campaign of its kind.


Last week the Feds reeled in several members of a properly ignominious Connecticut neo-Nazi street gang calling itself the White Wolves.





The White Wolves crackdown followed the familiar outline:


A federal informant (in this case, a convicted felon acting as a "cooperating witness") infiltrates a tiny and all but inconsequential clique of petty criminals, incites them to commit an "overt" criminal act (in this case by asking them to sell him firearms). The feds then draw up a grandiose indictment depicting that the little knot of skinheads as a world-historic menace.


As is true of the case against the Hutaree militia, the White Wolves indictment is a bureaucratic confection -- a wedding cake-sized pile of rhetorical meringue concealing a criminal complaint the size of a small Twinkie.


The objective here -- and, most likely in the Feds' prosecution of the Hutaree militia -- is to induce at least one or more members of the targeted group to join the pool of infiltrator/provocateus for use against other targeted groups.


The dynamics of this routine are a bit like multi-level marketing: The federal handler -- usually an FBI Special Agent assigned to a Joint Terrorism Task Force -- serves as the "upline" to a small stable of provocateurs, each of which is highly motivated to create a large "downline" of similarly compromised assets. As with many other MLMs, nothing of value is actually accomplished, but the people at the top of the pyramid -- in this case, the Homeland Security bureaucrats -- make a very comfortable living.


In times of relative tranquility, that cynical exercise provides career security for Homeland Security functionaries. There's reason to believe that the Feds have expanded and escalated this ongoing enterprise to exploit, and exacerbate, growing public hostility toward an increasingly invasive and esurient government.


Whether it is ever demonstrated that Hutaree intended to "levy war" against the U.S. government, this much is beyond serious dispute: The Homeland Security state is unambiguously preparing for war with the public -- in fact, it has been doing so for a long time.


During a 1997 visit to the Battle Command Training Program at Ft. Leavenworth, author Robert Kaplan frequently heard "discussion of the Posse Comitatus Act, which forbids the National Guard to act as a local police force once it has been federalized by the army in a civil emergency," he recalled in his book An Empire Wilderness. "The implication was that turbulence within the United States might one day require the act to be repealed."


Kaplan describes a round-table discussion of potential military action against domestic dissident groups. One Marine Major, referring to the Oklahoma City Bombing (an atrocity carried out by a former federal employee and "others" who remain "unknown"), declared: "The minute I heard about Oklahoma City, I knew who did it -- rednecks, the kind of guys from southern Idaho."



According to Kaplan, that officer and another of the same rank "suggested that `a time might come when the military will have to go domestic.'"


In the strictest sense, that was a treasonable utterance -- a threat, by people in a position with the means to carry it into effect, to wage war against the people of the "united States in Congress assembled."


When talk of that kind is indulged in by members of a tiny, disreputable club, it is labeled "seditious conspiracy" involving "weapons of mass destruction" -- that is, homemade explosives. When such talk reflects the shared opinion of armed functionaries of the Regime -- people with access to the largest and most destructive arsenal ever assembled, and a growing foreign body count demonstrating a willingness to use it -- this is a sober, responsible discussion of Homeland Security affairs.


Apparently, it's sound public policy for the government to wage war against the citizenry, but a federal offense to take notice of that fact.



Be sure to get your daily dose of sedition on Pro Libertate Radio, courtesy of the Liberty News Radio Network.

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Czars to Serfs: Pay Up and Shut Up

"A Peasant Leaving His Landlord on Yuri's Day," by Sergei V. Ivanov.



A wealth of unnecessary and petty [regulations] here engenders a whole army of clerks, each of whom carries out his task with a degree of pedantry and inflexibility, and a self-important air solely designed to add significance to the least significant employment. He refrains from speaking, but you can see him thinking, more or less: "Make way for me; I am a cog in the mighty machine of state."


-- Astolphe Louis Leonor, the Marquis de Custine, Empire of the Czar: A Journey Through Eternal Russia
(1839)



“If I’m the bad guy to the average citizen … and their taxes have to go up to cover my raise, I’m very sorry about that, but I have to look out for myself and my membership," grunted Chris Mesley, president of the Albany, New York Police Officer's Union. "As the president of the `local,' I will not accept `zeroes' [no increase in salaries or benefits]. If that means ... ticking off some taxpayers, then so be it."


It would be difficult to find a more candid expression of the parasite class's predatory contempt for the productive than the words that departed Mesley's snout. The police union capo will occasionally remove that appendage from the public trough just long enough to spew demands for an ever-larger share of the wealth produced through the honest labor of others, or to justify some corrupt privilege he claims as a "cog in the mighty machine of state." In all of this he is entirely typical of the army of public employees pillaging what little remains of America's wealth.


A brave resident of Albany who identified himself as "Justin" pointed out in an admirably confrontational speech to that city's Common Council that the city's median annual household income in 2009 was about $33,000. In the same year, Mesley -- who was hired as a patrol officer in 1992 -- received a base salary of $70,289, while also scarfing down at least another $30,000 for serving as union president.


"Chris Mesley is making three times or more the median salary and is complaining that he might not get a raise," Justin observed. "The sense of entitlement of Chris Mesley and all those who think alike has led to the pilfering of state and city coffers. They are like leeches, sucking the taxpayers dry, and that's an insult to leeches. At least leeches know when to let go."


The implacability of Mesley's union is made vivid in the fact that its recently expired contract granted "retroactive raises" of four percent for both 2008 and 2009 -- years during which private sector employment declined and raises were scarce, at best, for those in the productive class.


Special exemption from parking tickets -- one of the myriad ways sheep are fleeced on behalf of the lupine law enforcement caste -- is another of the perquisites and emoluments demanded by Mesley and his comrades.

Unalloyed porcine arrogance: Chris Mesley, president of the Albany Police Officer's Union.

An investigative report compiled by Albany's City Common Council documented the existence of a secret "VIP list" maintained by Mesley's union containing the names of police officers and others who would be given "ghost tickets" -- citations they didn't have to pay -- when parked in ways that would result in fines or towing in cases involving mere Mundanes. Those on the list could be recognized by the presence of a union-created bull's-eye bumper decal.


Mesley insists that he is immune to a Common Council subpoena to testify regarding the "ghost ticket" scandal, and he quite predictably declined to offer testimony when the demand was softened to an invitation.


On the one occasion he deigned to cooperate in the inquiry, Mesley insisted that he wasn't obligated to answer questions dealing with his conduct as president of the local Police Union. Since his "official" duties didn't include traffic enforcement, Mesley simply refused to answer questions about his union's "ghost ticket" racket.


Were a common citizen to display similar non-cooperation, a bench warrant would likely result.


Several years ago, Mesley displayed an atypical investigative zeal as he and his police union comrades, seeking to identify the "mole" responsible for leaking a piece of corrupt police business to the press, illegally obtained information about a private citizen's e-mail account.


Robert W. Berry, a pastor from Boca Raton who until recently lived in Albany, had learned that Mesley's union had intervened with Chief James Turley to reduce the disciplinary suspension of an officer who had turned away a criminal suspect trying to turn himself in. That officer, who was occupied surfing the Web for porn or conducting some other important business, told the suspect to come back later.


Originally given a 30-day paid vacation by way of punishment, the officer -- thanks to Mesley's intervention -- saw that suspension reduced to a single week by Chief Turley.


When Berry learned of this -- most likely from one of the decent and conscientious Albany police officers he counted among his friends -- he fired off an e-mail to the local media. In contrast to the torpid reaction displayed toward the bank robber, the department -- led by Mesley's union -- focused with laser-like intensity on the task of identifying the "mole." After all, it simply wouldn't do for the tax-victim public to know how little service they were getting in exchange for the salaries paid to their purported protectors.


Through means they refused to disclose, and without either a warrant or a subpoena, Mesley and his colleagues were able to obtain Berry's confidential information.


Both Berry and Albany County District Attorney David Soares were infuriated by this Stasi-style violation of privacy. But this is simply the order of things as understood by Mesley and his porcine ilk: He belongs to a class the law doesn't restrain, and Mundanes such as Berry belong to a class the law doesn't protect.


While Mesley has distinguished himself through public displays of abrasive arrogance, his overdeveloped sense of entitlement and reflexive contempt for tax victims are typical of the mentality displayed by statist cogs found all across late imperial America. The machinery of government regimentation and redistribution continues to grow and consume an ever-greater share of our country's ever-depleting wealth.


Forbes magazine reports that the five wealthiest counties in the United States (in terms of per-capita income) can be found in orbit of the Imperial Capital City and Wall Street, which constitute the binary system around which revolve all of the institutions of our imperial system of corporate socialism.


Imagine, if you can stand to, a binary system composed of two omnivorous black holes devouring everything within their joint event horizon, and you'll have a pretty good understanding of how America's welfare-warfare economy operates.


America probably crossed the economic event horizon during the October Revolution of 2008, which saw Congress ratify the creation of a corporatist economic dictatorship within the Treasury Department.



Just as it's impossible for light to escape the gravity well of a black hole, it is impossible to penetrate to the inner workings of the engine of plunder created through the TARP legislation. However, just as we can learn about the conditions that create black holes by examining gamma-ray outbursts, the supernova of corruption that created the TARP singularity resulted in some revealing after-effects.


"To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up," exclaimed an employee of AIG, the worthless insurance and investment conglomerate that was bought with taxpayer money in September 2008. "I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved."


This outburst took place during a March 2009 conference call between Gerry Pasciucco, the official hired to unwind AIG's financial services portfolio, and employees in the conglomerate's offices in London, Paris, and Hong Kong.


As of May 2009, AIG's financial services sector consisted of "44,000 often complex, long-dated derivatives with a notional value of $2 trillion," according to the Newark Star-Ledger. The key to that description, of course, is the cute little modifier "notional," a word that serves as a three-syllable license to lie. Using exactly the same approach I could claim that my "notional" assets are valued somewhere in the high seven figures, irrespective of the dismal reality reflected in my actual bank balance.


Prior to September 2008, AIG was involved in "insuring" -- by way of credit default swaps -- Goldman Sachs' immensely lucrative and entirely corrupt traffic in sewer-grade mortgage-backed securities. After the bubble burst, AIG was left owing huge sums to its "counter-parties," including Goldman. The federal buyout of AIG was actually a payoff to the insolvent company's counter-parties, beginning with Goldman.


If the insurance company had gone bankrupt, it would have been required to make an equitable distribution of whatever assets it had (which could be rounded up to nothing) among its creditors; this meant that Goldman would have eaten a huge loss. Instead, thanks to the nationalization of the AIG under comrade Bush, 100 percent of Goldman's potential losses were subsidized by the taxpayers.


This represented an interesting update on Marx's famous formula: The Feds had the ability to extract wealth from the taxpayers, and Goldman had the need. AIG provided a convenient conduit for this act of redistribution, and its corporate cadres were just the right kind of public-spirited people to accept huge salaries and bonuses in exchange for rendering such a service.


Oddly enough, those compelled to surrender our wealth weren't terribly as enamored of this arrangement. Some of us loudly expressed that displeasure. According to a transcription of the March 2009 AIG conference call, which was published a few days ago in the Washington Post, AIG's financial services drones are mortified by the uncivilized attitudes and behavior of the firm's critics.



Corporate socialist: AIG financial services director Gerry Pasciucco is the tool second from the right wearing a sportcoat over a Che Guevera t-shirt.



The supposedly unconscionable behavior denounced by unnamed AIG functionary quoted above consisted of public outrage over $100 million in "retention bonuses" -- all of it coming out of the earnings of tax victims -- paid to the firm's employees.


It wasn't enough for the Regime to plunder what wealth remains in the hands of private households -- many of which were once middle class, and are now teetering on the precipice of absolute destitution -- on behalf of Wall Street kleptocrats. The necromancers at AIG who helped transmute bad debts into corporate profits apparently believe that the public should be grateful for the privilege of being expropriated, and that any complaints are acts of aberrant persecution.


One AIG staffer referred to critics of firm as "a bunch of immoral bigots." Another excoriated politicians who had condemned the subsidized bonuses as hypocrites who really ought to dispense with the pretense of public-spiritedness and revel unabashedly in the vulgar rewards of statist opportunism: "They only care about the next election, just like we only care about the next bonus. Well, none of them cares about the country, [just as] none of us cares about the institution. They really don't care, and I really don't care. And frankly, if a trillion dollars gets lost, fine."


AIG's behavior is typical of the new, federally supported Wall Street nomenklatura.


Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi, who deserves a Pulitzer for his work but is more likely to be fed a Lubyanka Breakfast, points out that the nation's six largest banks -- all of them on the federal dole -- "set aside a whopping $140 billion for executive compensation last year, a sum only slightly less than the $164 billion they paid themselves in the pre-crash year of 2007." At Goldman Sachs, the de facto shadow Treasury Department, average take-home per-employee compensation was $498,246, "a number roughly commensurate with what they received during the bubble years."


"In an economy as horrible as ours, with every factory town between New York and Los Angeles looking like those hollowed-out ghost ships we see on History Channel documentaries like Shipwrecks of the Great Lakes, where in the hell did Wall Street's eye-popping profits come from, exactly?" Taibbi writes. "A year and a half after they were minutes away from bankruptcy, how are these [emunctory apertures] not only back on their feet again, but hauling in bonuses at the same rate they were during the bubble?"



The answer, of course, is that rather than creating wealth, Wall Street's kleptocrats are carrying out exactly the same fraudulent schemes they pursued before the bubble collapsed; this time, however, they had "the full financial support of the U.S. government" -- which means, of course, official promises to extract as much wealth as possible until the economy is a dessicated, lifeless husk.


It's tempting to refer to our present condition as "serfdom," but that term is a poor fit. Serfs, after all, enjoyed greater economic mobility than we do.



For your daily dose of uninhibited anti-government invective, tune in to Pro Libertate Radio weeknights from 6:00-7:00 Mountain Time on the Liberty News Radio Network.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Sheep-Shearing Season on the Revenue Ranch

During the most recent Federal Reserve-engineered economic bubble, state and local governments made extravagant promises to their tax-feeder constituencies regarding pensions and other benefits. Now that the bubble has burst, sales and property taxes -- once a mighty, roaring river of revenue -- have been reduced to a thin, pathetic trickle.


This comes at a time when, as the New York Times reports, there is "a $1 trillion gap between what all 50 states have promised their workers [sic -- a more accurate description is "employees"] and what they have set aside."


As the economic crisis deepens, how will state and municipal governments continue to provide for their most cherished constituency -- those who live by plundering the productive?


Wendy McElroy highlights one approach being pioneered by the town of Tracey, California: The city will now impose a surcharge on emergency services that have already been paid for through taxes. Residents of that city will be charged $300 for the fire department to respond to a medical emergency; non-residents will be billed $400 for the same service. There is the option of paying an annual $48 fee for "premium" 911 service.


Note carefully that this is not privatization. Taxes will still be extracted, but tax victims will now have the privilege of paying twice for the same services. If you're a Tracey resident and see someone having a heart attack, McElroy wryly comments, "you should quickly set a trash bin on fire. Otherwise, by calling for help, your monthly budget may not stretch to include mortgage or food." Tracey's political class simpers that the city government is running a $9 million budget deficit. Interestingly, that is exactly the amount spent each year on employee pensions.



Rather than renegotiating those benefits, the city government is putting the screws to economically burdened tax victims, and doing so in a way that is going to cost the lives of some of them. "Forget that phone bills already include a charge to cover 911," continues McElroy. "Forget that property taxes already assist with those costs. The politicos don't care. They want your money. And they will let people die -- many of them elderly poor -- rather than deliver services for which they have already been paid."


In other jurisdictions, the wealth-devouring class is resorting to other potentially lethal revenue enhancement strategies. Before examining the specifics, two principles should be kept in mind.


First, government -- unlike private entities that offer goods or services in exchange for revenue -- engages in pure consumption. As a result, all sources of government revenue involve destruction of wealth, rather than mutually beneficial commerce that enhances both parties.


Second, everything government does to obtain revenue contains an implicit death threat. Anyone who resists or refuses the demand for revenue with sufficient tenacity will find himself on the receiving end of an explicit threat made by an armed stranger in a government-issued costume.

A gathering of statist shearers: Maryland State Police and personnel from the St. Mary's County assemble before carrying out "Operation Most Wanted Weekend," a 2008 exercise in "taxation by citation."

Those principles provide the proper context to examine the tactics employed by various municipal and state governments to conduct what former Sheriff Richard Mack perceptively describes as "taxation through citation."



To put the matter bluntly, police -- the self-described "Sheepdogs" -- aren't here to protect the flock, but rather to make sure that we're securely penned in when it's sheep-shearing season.



During the penultimate weekend of February, police in Minneapolis-St. Paul Minnesota conducted an elaborate and lucrative sting to enforce the state's primary seat belt law.


Officers disguised as homeless people were dispatched to harass drivers at a busy intersection: The "homeless" people -- most likely in violation of traffic ordinances, certainly in violation of the 4th Amendment and Minnesota's state equivalent -- would peer into cars and then radio ahead to their cohorts in officially sanctioned crime, who would hand each "offender" an extortion note (more commonly called a "traffic ticket").


Dave Kvam, the deputy police chief of Maplewood (a suburb of St. Paul), insists that the multi-departmental racket was a justifiable exercise. After all, he told local reporter Ruben Rosario, "police have received numerous complaints of panhandling, and he believes the seat-belt law is a good one and should be enforced" -- by, among other things, having police violate ordinances against panhandling. That parallel is a bit unfair: Although panhandlers may be obnoxious, even the most tenacious of them couldn't get away with demanding money at gunpoint, as Kvam's fellow street criminals did during the seat-belt ambush.


Each victim would typically be mulcted $25 for declining to wear seat belts, coupled with a $75 "petty misdemeanor surcharge fee" -- which is essentially a tax inflicted on people for refusing to obey a spurious enactment the tax-absorbing class calls a "law" -- plus an additional $8 kickback to the state crime bosses in St. Paul (who had already been given a $3.5 million federal bribe to enact the primary seat-belt "law" in the first place). At least 122 citations were handed out in a space of three and a half hours.


As Rosario points out, the homeless ruse has been used not only in Minnesota but also "in Houston and a few other jurisdictions." (As we will discuss anon, Houston is also the scene of another creative effort to harvest revenue from the plebes.) As the economy sickens and street people become a more visible presence, it's quite likely their numbers will frequently include predatory, revenue-hungry police.


The tax-extracting class afflicting Texas will celebrate the beginning of March with the fourth annual "Warrant Roundup," a yearly event in which police fan out to shakedown or imprison anyone with unpaid citations of any kind. This includes not only traffic tickets, but also fines for violating any of the myriad morally unsupportable but lucrative provisions in state and municipal building, planning, zoning, and safety codes.

*** ***

The armed revenue farmers presented in this film clip were on their best behavior, of course. They weren't shown banging on the door of some underpaid, overburdened private citizen at or before daybreak, demanding money and dragging away in handcuffs those who couldn't pay. They weren't shown barging into classrooms or workplaces to present the same demands and inflict public humiliation on those not capable of complying with them.


All of this does occur during warrant roundups, however -- a fact prominently mentioned in official pronouncements, if played down, for propaganda purposes, by government-aligned stenographers in the local media.



At the risk of culpable redundancy, I make the point once again: All of this is done for the purpose of collecting revenue on behalf of the political class, not to serve or protect the productive public. This is made quite clear by the opening lines of a Houston Chronicle account of a "warrant roundup" conducted last August: "Nearly 2 million warrants worth more than $340 million are outstanding in the Houston area, and in most cases they're not for hard-core criminals. They're for average citizens who haven't settled minor traffic and ordinance citations."


Revenue farmer in the rear-view: No good can come from this.



Of the eight people listed as "Houston's Most Wanted" during the round-up -- people who had at least 100 outstanding warrants -- four were cited for the apparently grievous offense of “failure to securely attach a tax permit to a coin-operated machine.” Other grievous offenses committed by that band of shameless rogues include failure “to conspicuously post at every entrance a sign stating smoking is prohibited,” and “having no hand-washing sign in a bathroom used by employees.”


How can Houstonians sleep peacefully in their beds knowing that such marauders are on the loose? As Barney Fife might exclaim: "It's a regular reign of terror!"

According to the Chronicle, in 2008 the Houston Police Department -- in tacit recognition of the fact that its primary function is to plunder the populace rather than to protect it -- “purchased automated license plate readers that read up to 60 vehicle license plates per minute." This allows the police to identify those with outstanding warrants, including the growing number of people who “have to choose between paying their grocery bill or their tickets.”

What a shameful lack of civic consciousness! How dare such people put food on their tables when there are tax-feeders pining for revenue? And coughing up the money is so much more convenient now that police “have the ability to run credit card payments so people can settle their outstanding warrants on the spot.”

For those who cannot pay off the parasite class and its armed enforcers, debtors’ prison awaits: As the Texas Court of Appeals recently observed, Class C misdemeanors “are still crimes, and … the person charged can be arrested on warrant like any ordinary criminal, forced to travel a long distance to attend the court, [and be] remanded in custody and imprisoned in default of payment of the fine.”

The only things that government makes -- as I've said before -- is criminals out of innocent people, and corpses out of living human beings. A Government's lethality increases the more energetically it criminalizes innocuous behavior.

In light of that relationship, it's reasonable to suspect that the ruling class in the Lone Star State appears determined to precipitate a bloodbath: The Texas Public Policy Foundation points out that 779 Texas statutes identify “misdemeanors,” but “only 64 of those instances are in the Penal Code or Code of Criminal Procedure.”

In the once-free Lone Star State, concludes the Texas Public Policy Foundation, "the criminal law is not just for criminals anymore. The same is true of imprisonment: Half of all Texans behind bars were incarcerated for nonviolent offenses.

This trend is not confined to Texas. The state and municipal governments that disfigure our country like pustules on the face of a smallpox victim are relentless in devising new measures intended to justify the extraction of wealth at gunpoint. This aggression will only increase as the depression deepens.

At some point, those presuming to rule us won't be satisfied merely to fleece their increasingly bedraggled flock. That's when the options for the sheep will be clarified into a stark and unmistakable choice between revolt and slaughter.

Be sure to tune in to Pro Libertate Radio for your daily dose of sedition -- weeknights from 6:00-7:00 Mountain Time on the Liberty News Radio Network.

Dum spiro, pugno!

The Thin Blue Whine, Pt. III: Who Mourns the Murdered Mundanes? (Update)

The Brotherhood in Blue (and Red) Gathers at the Tacoma Dome during a memorial service for four police officers recently murdered in an ambush in Washington (above, and below, right). More than 20,000 police officers, including 1,000 members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, took part in the service.


In a State of Nature, it is true, that a Man of superior Force may beat or rob me; but then it is true, that I am at full Liberty to defend myself, or make Reprisal by Surprize or by Cunning, or by any other way in which I may be superior to him. But in Political Society ... if I attempt to avenge myself, the whole Force of that Society is ready to complete my Ruin.

-- Edmund Burke, A Vindication of Natural Society (1757), original spelling and punctuation.



The year soon to expire, according to the Washington Times, was a particularly "deadly" one for police. That claim was made in the story's headline and first two paragraphs, and then thoroughly rebutted in its coda.


2009 "was a particularly perilous year for officers involved in gun disputes," insists the Times, with a 24 percent increase in the number of officers killed in the line of duty by gunfire. As of December 12, 47 police officers died nationwide after being shot while on duty, as compared to a total of 38 who had died in similar circumstances in 2008.


As it happens, however, 2008 saw "the lowest number of gunfire deaths [of police officers] since 1956" -- which would mean that 2009 wasn't unusually dangerous for police, but rather that the previous year was an unusually safe one.


In fact, fewer police died in the line of duty this year (117) than last (125). Tucked away near the end of the article, the Times observes: "In 1973, during a heyday of corruption and crime, there were about 600,000 officers and about 156 gunfire deaths. Now there are about 900,000 law enforcement officers nationwide and only 47 gunfire deaths this year -- a per-capita decrease of nearly 21 percent."


"The chances of being killed in the line of duty are lower than they have been in modern times," noted Kevin Morrison of the Officers Memorial Fund.


This is the reality behind the all-pervasive rhetoric describing law enforcement as a uniquely hazardous occupation. Pundits of an authoritarian bent, playing to the punitive populist sub-population, refer to a non-existent "war on police"; police officials insist that exceptional episodes of genuinely tragic violence represent the "new normal" for police officers.


The impression that police are under siege is also cultivated through the pomp and paramilitary ritual that characterize police funerals, even when the circumstances of death weren't particularly heroic (such as a traffic accident or other lethal mishap). Such events aren't so much intended to lament the death of an individual as to celebrate the might and glory of the State.


The December 8 memorial service in Washington's Tacoma Dome for four police officers killed in an ambush sets a new standard for institutional self-dramatization by the "law enforcement community": The event, which drew an estimated 20,000 officers from 150 agencies, including a crimson-clad contingent from the RCMP, was the largest memorial service of its kind since -- no extra credit if you've guessed correctly -- those convened after 9-11.

***


***

As the police gathered for the memorial, they were enveloped in a security cocoon akin to that routinely created for presidential visits, with heavily armed SWAT operators in full military gear haunting the rooftops.


As Tacoma's ABC affiliate KXLY explained, the extraordinary security measures were in place because of concerns that police "might still be a target." Thus we can see that "officer safety" is the prime directive even where police funerals are concerned.

***


***

As is the case with every large-scale police funeral, coverage of the memorial service in Tacoma repeatedly emphasized that the murder of the four Washington police officers wasn't merely a crime against four irreplaceable individual human beings, but -- more importantly -- an assault on an "institution."


We are invited to believe that these killings were particularly outrageous because a criminal had lifted his unhallowed hand to strike down four sanctified personages who wore the insignia of state authority. The same assumption can be seen in the concentrated fury with which police and prosecutors focus their attention on "cop killers," as if people in that profession are innately more important or more valuable than murder victims from other walks of life.


Retired Pittsburgh police officer Todd Cenci captured that conceit in a December 20 letter to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.


"I think it's about time to draft a bill that makes the death penalty mandatory for anyone who is convicted of killing a police officer who is in the line of duty," opined Cenci. "We need to show our police that we stand behind them 100 percent. So I ask my local politicians to introduce a bill that makes the death penalty mandatory for anyone convicted of killing a police officer on duty -- without any exceptions."


Why not make the death penalty mandatory for all murder convictions? Why should it be unavoidable only when the victim is a police officer? The tacit but obvious answer is that Cenci -- who reflects the culture of the profession from which he is now retired -- sees police officers as a caste apart from, and more valuable than, the "Mundanes," or general population.


What of cases in which people kill police in self-defense, perhaps as a result of mistaken identity during a no-knock raid at the wrong address? No extenuation would be provided for under the "no-exceptions" standard described by Cenci.


Once again, Cenci is not merely some Keystone State Floyd R. Turbo ventilating his frustration in the letters column; the approach he describes was followed in the case of Mississippi resident Cory Maye, who shot and killed a sheriff's deputy who was part of a paramilitary strike team that invaded Maye's home without a warrant because they didn't double-check the address.


Although Maye will soon receive a new trial, the prosecutor in the first trial sought and obtained a first-degree murder conviction and a death sentence -- apparently on the assumption that when a mere Mundane is on the receiving end of unwarranted police violence, he has no right to resist, because his life is not as important as that of his assailant.


A less pronounced form of the same reflexive elitism was displayed in the pages of Canada's Victoria Times-Colonist.



On December 8, that paper described the findings of Paul Smith, head of a the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP, regarding the death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski when he was needlessly electrocuted by Taser-wielding Mounties at the Vancouver Airport.

***


***

Dziekanski, who spoke no English and had been traveling for 20 hours (10 of which he spent waiting in the airport for his mother, who had been told he hadn't arrived), threw a fit while being held in a secure area prior to passing through customs.


RCMP officers arrived and within seconds shot him five times with a Taser within a period of 31 seconds. Dziekanski, after being handcuffed died within minutes at the scene. Smith's report condemns the RCMP for making no meaningful attempt to de-escalate the situation, being torpid and indifferent in seeking medical help for the victim, and for staging a crude cover-up of the incident.


Two days after publishing its report on the RCMP Commission's findings, the Times-Colonist's editorial board --reacting to reader criticism -- decided it was necessary to defend itself for publishing a news story that reflected badly on the police on the day of the Tacoma memorial service.


"The entire law enforcement community just finished burying four officers just a few hours south of here," complained a reader. "We're waking up to read the morning paper, hoping that it was just a bad nightmare, and find this article [regarding the Taser-inflicted death of Robert Dziekanski at the hands of the RCMP]."


To the paper's credit, it reiterated the criticisms of the RCMP, even though it did so amid formulaic expressions of submissive respect for the Heroes In Blue ("The thousands of officers who attended [the Tacoma] memorial service celebrated everything that is heroic about police work, and they had to blink back tears as they did it").


What is genuinely noteworthy about that exchange, once again, is the unmistakable assumption that there was something sacrilegious about mentioning the needless death of an innocent man at the hands of police on the day that the "entire law enforcement community" was mourning four of its own.


Sure, it's a shame Robert Dziekanski died. But after all, he was just another Mundane.


While the names of every police officer who dies before retirement is known and carefully memorialized, there is no similar record kept of those who were unjustly killed by police.


We are told that 2009 was a year fraught with peril for the police because 47 officers were killed by gunfire. During the same time frame, however, at least 56 people suffered "Taser-related" deaths at the hands of police. It's difficult to find out how many others were killed by police -- in shootings, beatings, or mistreatment in jail or prison. The chances are pretty good, however, that the body count is much higher than the 117 police deaths that occurred during the past year.


Shouldn't we therefore conclude that 2009 was (to paraphrase the Washington Times) "a particularly perilous time for civilians involved in encounters with the police"?



It is a singular tragedy whenever any human being suffers an avoidable death. When that individual is a police officer, we are expected to prostrate ourselves in inconsolable grief. When the deceased is a victim of unwarranted lethal violence by the police, we are instructed to sympathize with the assailant, who has a difficult and dangerous job. Who will mourn the Mundanes?

A personal note

My brother Jeff, my adopted "Irish twin" (we were born in the same year to different mothers, then adopted by our parents) is in the hospital in grave condition.

As I write he is undergoing surgery to deal with advanced necrotizing fasciitis; after that procedure is finished, he will be flown from Ontario, Oregon to a university hospital in Portland for more surgery. His prognosis is not encouraging.

Over the past several years, as I have dealt with Korrin's repeated hospitalizations and my own very serious health scare, Jeff has been incredibly helpful and generous. My kids are besotted with him, and he's been a wonderful uncle. The two of us were alienated for a long time, but in recent years we've grown very close. It's one of life's larger ironies that I had to wait until my 40s to know him as a real brother.

Please pray for Jeff, or if you're not inclined to, please spare a kind thought on his behalf. I would really appreciate it.

Be sure to tune in for Pro Libertate Radio from 6:00-7:00 Mountain Time (7:00-8:00 Central) on the Liberty News Radio Network.

Dum spiro, pugno!

Brotherhood of Plunder: Snapshots of America's Criminal Oligarchy

"Twisted sense of entitlement": Police extortionist David M. Cohen (left), and his accessory, former Chief Manuel Cachopa (below, right).



David Cohen, a nebbishy, balding fellow from Stoughton, Massachusetts, seemed poorly cast as a loan shark.


Unlike Chili Palmer, the mob debt collector created by Elmore Leonard (and played on screen by John Travolta), Cohen couldn't pry open the bank accounts of recalcitrant debtors simply by fixing them with a steely gaze and hissing, "Look at me."


Cohen was dispatched by a friend named Peter Marinilli to collect $9,000 from a businessman named Timothy Hills. Frustrated when his demand didn't reduce Hills to a puddle of compliant jello, Cohen -- a sergeant in the Stoughton Police Department -- tried a different approach: He placed Hills under arrest, handcuffed him, and detained him until the businessman signed a promissory note to Marinilli.


Hills had received $10,000 from Marinilli as an investment in a business deal, and he later admitted in court that he had taken the money under false pretenses. During the same trial, one of Hills' former employees described him as chronically dishonest and entirely unreliable -- in short, a terrible credit risk.


Given that history it seems odd that Cohen had Hills sign a promissory note, a document that most likely wouldn't have been necessary had the debt to Marinilli been legally enforceable. Cohen, a part-time attorney in addition to being a police sergeant, must have understood that the debt couldn't be collected without a legally valid contract.


What Cohen seems to have forgotten is that forcing a hostage to sign a contract at gunpoint is extortion.


Hills immediately filed a complaints against Cohen with the Stoughton Police Department, the Board of Bar Overseers and the Massachusetts Attorney General.


This prompted an investigation of Cohen by Lt. Michael Blount of the department's internal affairs unit. Blount's inquiry didn't sit well with Manuel J. Cachopa, who at the time was Chief of the Stoughton Police.


"Why are you trying to f**k this officer?" Cachopa asked Blount on one occasion.


Cachopa refused to cooperate with the investigation in any way, demanding that Blount simply "get rid" of it.


All of this took place between 2002 and 2004. During that period, Cachopa was demoted to Lieutenant after the town selectmen refused to renew his contract as Chief. Two of Cachopa's critics were removed in a recall election, and Cachopa was reinstated -- just in time to be hit with a felony indictment for being an accessory after the fact to Cohen's extortion attempt.



Up to this point, the damage done by this sordid business was limited to those directly involved in a dubious business venture and a handful of less-than-upright police officers. However, when Cachopa was indicted, the local taxpayers were cut in for a share of misery: Cachopa was placed on "administrative leave" from 2005 until his conviction in 2009, which means that he collected his full annual salary of $139,000 for doing nothing while another paid official carried out the duties of Police Chief.


Cohen was convicted on four criminal counts and sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. Cachopa was found guilty of acting as an accessory to extortion and given three years' probation, in addition to 1,000 hours of community service. Cachopa could have received a seven-year prison sentence.


Despite their criminal convictions, Cohen and Cachopa insist that they are entitled to nearly three-quarters of a million dollars from the long-suffering taxpayers of Stoughton, Massachusetts -- most of it going to pay the legal bills they ran up during their own criminal trials.


Through his attorney, David Cohen -- who was released from prison while appealing his conviction (a consideration not many convicted extortionists receive) -- has filed a demand for at least $113,000, a sum that includes "87 accrued vacation days, 125 unused sick days, 144 hours of compensation time accrued for not using sick time, 152 hours of supervisor comp time, 481 hours for court appearances related to his criminal case, 280 hours of overtime to prepare for his case, and least 61 percent education incentive pay for 2007, and 61 percent for accrued stipends and benefits," reports the Brockton, Massachusetts Enterprise-News.


Not content with collecting $600,000 in salary and benefits during his four-year "administrative leave," Cachopa is now demanding $549,000 to pay his legal bills, and $55,978 in vacation and sick pay. The Enterprise-News editorially lambasted Cachopa for his "twisted sense of entitlement" while pointing out that "the ill-considered contract language" agreed to by the City of Stoughton "is loose enough to give his lawyers a fighting chance in court."


"This is a union contract that clearly and unequivocally states that if charged with a criminal offense or sued, the town indemnifies you," insists Kevin Reddington, a member of Cachopa's legal team.


A much better arrangement would have been to put Cachopa on unpaid leave and, in the event he was cleared of charges, "give him back pay and benefits," observed the Enterprise-News. "Instead, Cachopa was on extended vacation, able to collect his annual salary of $139,000 year after year while the town struggled to keep its financial head above water." Assuming that Cachopa and Cohen are able to force the town to make good on the terms of their union contracts, the resulting financial undertow may drag Stoughton down for good.


The "twisted sense of entitlement" displayed by those corrupt officers is entirely typical of the "public servant" class nation-wide. Yes, this self-serving arrogance is particularly acute among police, firefighters and other "public safety" employees, who -- statistical evidence to the contrary notwithstanding -- describe their jobs as so fraught with peril and stress that they shorten the life expectancy of those who somehow manage to live until retirement. But similar self-exalting attitudes suffuse government employees in every field that is blighted by the state's influence.


As Steven Greenhut of the Orange County Register documents in his infuriating new book Plunder! How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives, and Bankrupting the Nation, this pervasive sense of entitlement has been translated into financial burdens that are suffocating local economies.


During the past several decades, writes Greenhut, "politicians have been dramatically increasing the pay and especially the benefits for all categories of government workers [sic; I prefer the term "government employees" -- WNG]. The pay structure also has a sort of multiplier effect. Because they receive such generous pensions, public-safety workers are encouraged to retire at an early age, thus leading to `shortages' in law enforcement in particular. The taxpayer gets hammered twice, as he pays full freight for retired employees and then has to pay for a full-time replacement."


The coprophagous grin of an impenitent parasite: Meet Glenn Goss, the pension-spiking millionaire police chief of Highland Beach, Florida. Remember that smile next time you look at your 401(k).

Chief Cachopa's case, in which he received a full salary for four years after being suspended following his criminal indictment, is a particularly obnoxious variation on the familiar scheme described by Greenhut. Another version that involves what has to be considered criminal fraud is the case of Glenn Goss, the Police Chief in Highland Beach, Florida.


In 2005, the same year Cachopa began his all-expenses-paid vacation, Goss retired from his $90,000-a-year job as a police commander in Delray Beach. At the age of 42 he began drawing a $65,000 annual pension -- guaranteed for life, indexed to inflation, and including full health benefits. Goss draws that pension in spite of the fact that he immediately took a better-paying job as Chief of the Highland Beach Police Department.


At age 47, this "poor, honest cop" is now a tax-fed millionaire -- merely one of countless others, Greenhut points out. With increasing frequency, government employees "are made instant millionaires just for taking a job and sticking with it over their career," notes Greenhut. "This certainly is easier than taking the more traditional American route to becoming a millionaire, through risk-taking and entrepreneurship."


Government employment rewards creative deviousness, rather than risk-taking and productivity. Former Fullerton, California Mayor Mike Clesceri presents a splendid case study.


In addition to being mayor -- a part-time job -- Clesceri worked as an investigator for the district attorney. When he had a falling-out with his boss, Clesceri filed for a disability pension of $58,000 (complete with COLA), claiming that he was crippled by Barrett's Esophagus, a condition related to acid reflux.


While waiting for his disability pension to kick in, Clesceri "pursued a local police chief's job and remained on the job as mayor and ran a tough re-election campaign," recalls Greenhut. "He even had time to have his brother-in-law attorney send threatening letters to members of the community who commented on the absurdity of his disability pension."


"Pension-spiking" scams of this variety are plentiful in California, a state being driven into financial ruin by its rampant "public employee" unions. Thanks to the terms of their union-negotiated contracts, many firefighters and police (particularly in the upper echelons) are afflicted with "Chief's Disease" -- a mysterious malady that causes those who suffer from its multifarious symptoms to go on disability pay during their final year of employment.


As the Los Angeles Daily News pointed out, this means that the final year's salary is tax-free, which "creates an artificial boost in take-home pay, which is how the final pensions are tabulated. The [spurious] injury also paves the way for a disability retirement with half the income being tax-free. The bottom line is more money for firefighters [as well as police] during their lifetime pension at the expense of a public that will be lucky to retire on a paltry Social Security check."


Often several scams will operate in synergy, resulting in huge profits for tax-feeders and a much larger burden for the productive. For example: A lucrative new pension plan for Orange County deputy sheriffs resulted in a wave of early retirements. At the same time, the Sheriff's Office, in compliance with union demands, went to a three-day "work" week. The Orange County Register described the predictable results: "After enhanced pensions led to a large number of retirements, deputies with four days a week off were happy to fill up the empty shifts with overtime."


Cops as Robbers: Remember Fahrenheit 451, in which the "Firemen" were sent to start fires? Police in Detroit today serve a similar function, stealing cars and other assets in order to make up for tax "shortfalls."

Orange County employs more than one hundred deputy sheriffs. Nearly all of them make more than $100,000 a year, despite the fact that "culture and discipline problems" are rampant in the department.

Scams of this kind are more plentiful in California than in some other states, but as Greenhut demonstrates, few if any municipalities have been spared from the ravages of omnivorous public employee interest groups.


"At all levels, state and local government employment grew by 13 percent across the United States from 1994 to 2004," he writes. During the past half-century, the country's population has grown 115 percent. During the same period, the sub-population of tax-feeders increased by 492 percent. The federal government is now the nation's largest single employer.


"I fear that the nation has reached critical mass -- the number of government employees at every level has gotten so high that it is politically impossible to roll back the bureaucracy and rein in the costs," Greenhut observes. Be that as it may, he suggests several very sensible reforms, among them the quite sensible proposal that "public employee" unions be banned.


Summoning the political will to enact such measures will be difficult, however, in an electorate long inured to the repellent notion that it's proper to live at the expense of others. This suggests that the parasite class will continue to propagate itself until it entirely kills its host economy. And then -- what...?


Robbed by the Police: Detroit resident Jacque Sutton, who was never charged with a crime, had to pay $1,000 to recover his 1989 Ford Mustang after it was stolen ("forfeited") by the police. "It's like legalized stealing," he complains. No, it is "legalized" stealing.



Michigan offers a glimpse of what may become a common future. In 2006, Greenhut notes, total government employment in Michigan exceeded the number of manufacturing employees for the first time in recorded history. Already teetering on the edge of the economic abyss in 2006, Michigan -- particularly Detroit and its immediate environs -- is now plummeting rapidly into the bottomless pit of a depression.


In Detroit, municipal authorities, led by the local police, have dealt with the downturn by resorting to undisguised theft. The Detroit News reports: "Local law enforcement agencies are raising millions of dollars by seizing private property suspected in crimes, but often without charges being filed -- and sometimes even when authorities admit no offense was committed."


Between 2003 and 2007, Romulus, Michigan witnessed a 118 percent increase in forfeiture revenues (the theft, by police, of money and property from people not charged with criminal offenses) despite the fact that there has not been a corresponding increase in criminal activity. Well, make that unofficial criminal activity. One township, Novi, went from $12,278 in 2003 to $2.7 million in 2007. The Wayne County Sheriff's Office netted $8.69 million in 2007, four times the haul its banditti seized in 2001.


Sgt. Dave Schreiner, who is in charge of Canton Township's forfeiture unit -- which is to say that he's the kingpin of that community's most notorious criminal gang -- is astonishingly candid: "Police departments right now are looking for ways to generate revenue, and forfeiture is a way t offset the costs of doing business.... You'll find that departments are doing more forfeitures than they used to because they've got to -- they're running out of money and they've got to find it somewhere."


When it can afford to, the Brotherhood of Plunder prefers to shroud its criminality in the sanctimonious argot of "public service." That veil is being lifted, and the Robber State is revealing itself in the full malevolence of its criminal corruption.


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Dum spiro, pugno!