Tag: Eric Peters

Theocracy Advances in Utah… And Soon Near You, Too

Guest Post by Eric Peters

FILE – In this Feb. 23, 2017, file photo, Rep. Norm Thurston, R-Provo, looks on as he stands on he floor of the Utah House of Representatives at the Utah State Capitol, in Salt Lake City. Utah’s hospitality industry is urging Gov. Gary Herbert to veto a bill giving Utah the strictest DUI threshold in the country, lowering the blood alcohol limit to .05 percent, down from .08 percent. Thurston, says he doesn’t think it will hurt tourism but it would make people think twice about drinking and driving. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)

The slippery slope argument gets mocked a lot – but here’s another case that proves the point:

Utah has just done what thinking brains knew was inevitably coming. The state government has nearly halved the legal threshold defining what risibly continues to be called “drunk” driving (see here) from the iffy .08 BAC (Blood Alcohol Content) to the downright ridiculous .05 BAC.

This is a level that many people reach after as few as two – or fewer – drinks. One is enough, in some cases, to risk a “bust.”

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STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

If you prefer fake news, fake data, and a fake narrative about an improving economy and stock market headed to 30,000, don’t read this fact based, reality check article. The level of stupidity engulfing the country has reached epic proportions, as the mainstream fake news networks flog bullshit Russian conspiracy stories, knowing at least 50% of the non-thinking iGadget distracted public believes anything they hear on the boob tube.

This stupendous degree of utter stupidity goes to a new level of idiocy when it comes to the stock market. The rigged fleecing machine known as Wall Street has gone into hyper-drive since futures dropped by 700 points on the night of Trump’s election. An already extremely overvalued market, as measured by every historically accurate valuation metric, soared by 4,000 points from that futures low – over 20% – to an all-time high. Despite dozens of warning signs and the experience of two 40% to 50% crashes in the last fifteen years, lemming like investors are confident the future is so bright they gotta wear shades.

The current bull market is the 2nd longest in history at 8 years. In March of 2009, the S&P 500 bottomed at a fitting level for Wall Street of 666. In a shocking coincidence, it bottomed on the same day Bernanke & Geithner forced the FASB to rollover like mangy dogs and stop enforcing mark to market accounting. Amazingly, when Wall Street banks, along with Fannie and Freddie, could value their toxic assets at whatever they chose, profits surged. The market is now 240% higher.

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Kill People, No Problem… Just Don’t “Cheat” Uncle

Guest Post by Eric Peters

A VW engineer may be going to prison – and has already been professionally (and probably personally) ruined… for having “cheated” the EPA. Which is like expelling a picked-on kid who outsmarted the playground bully.

Which, of course, is what often happens now.

Whether it’s the schoolyard bully – or the EPA (or other “agencies” of Uncle) – we are supposed to take it, never resist it – and may the motor gods have mercy upon you if you ever “cheat” it.

The engineer’s name is James R. Liang. He’s worked for VW since 1983, but not anymore. Bye-bye career (and pension) and hello Federal prison. Which he’s facing on account of having been a member of the engineering team that developed “defeat” software for VW’s TDI diesel engines. The software made the engines “compliant” when emissions tested by Uncle but less-than-compliant when driven by customers.

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The Quacking of Ducks

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Here’s the trouble.

Most people can’t read… and so, can’t think.

Not quite literally, perhaps. But, meaningfully. They have been taught – very deliberately – to be sloppy and fluid with words. A given word has a vague, constantly shifting meaning – that meaning transmitted and accepted by a kind of semi-conscious collective osmosis. You “get the drift” – and the word is henceforth used accordingly. It is not necessary to formally announce the new meaning. It just sort of happens.

Examples include liberal and fascist.

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Beria’s Technique… As Applied to VW

Guest Post by Eric Peters

The trick is keeping your victim alive… so that the beatings can continue.beria-lead

That was Lavrenti Beria’s dictum.

Beria was Stalin’s secret police chief, the Soviet version of Nazi Germany’s SS chief, Heinrich Himmler. (Stalin actually referred to Beria this way when he introduced him to Hitler’s foreign minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, during the latter’s visit to Moscow to sign the NonAggression Pact that led to the dismemberment of Poland and WW II.)

Anyhow, the principle.

Make them suffer.

This is the policy of the U.S. Justice Department, which is “assessing how big a criminal fine it can extract from Volskwagen AG over emissions-cheating without putting the German carmaker out of business.”

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Road Clovers

Guest Post by Eric Peters

It may be the fluoridation of the water. Possibly the chem trails. Perhaps it is an assault at the micro-genetic level. Q tip CloverWho can say?

Whatever the source, Cloverism is propagating. They are everywhere.I thought five chapters (see here, here, here, here and here) would cover it. But it seems there are still a few more subsets to document:

* The Defensive Driving Clover –

He is steeped deep in the learned passivity taught by government “defensive driving” schools. If any one thing defines a Clover, it is just that – his passivity. Taking the initiative, acting on his own judgment – those things are as foreign to him as the Grotto at Hef’s mansion must have seemed to Liberace.

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Punishment vs. Being Held Responsible

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Which is better?

Which is right?

Punishing people … or holding them responsible for the harms they cause?

Libertarians think (well, this Libertarian thinks) it is enough to hold people responsible for any harms they cause. That punishing them when they have caused no harm to anyone is bizarre, cruel – and most of all, morally indefensible.

Punishment is fundamentally vindictive.

It is about harming the person – either physically or some other way (as by taking his money or depriving him of his liberty).

If the person who is the object of punishment has harmed someone, how does harming him benefit his victim?

And if there is no victim….

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No Smoking… In Your Own Car

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Soon, they’ll be coming for your cigarettes.Bland image

In your car.

See Sandra Bland.

Or, the study released by the CDC that characterizes “second-hand smoke” as the latest threat to “safety” and (of course) “the children.” It urges what you’d expect: That it be made illegal to smoke in your own car, at least, if “the children” are present.

Possibly even if they’re not.

See Sandra Bland.

Or Daniel McIsaac.

Both were ordered by armed government workers – law enforcers – to put out their cigarettes while sitting in their own cars during a traffic stop. Maybe for “officer safety” (second hand smoke being a “threat”) but probably just to clarify who’s boss.

In the above notorious instances, what the armed government workers did wasn’t legal.

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Just Saying No

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Probably I ought not to commit this to print – much less the ‘Net. But I feel obliged.ear tag

Ok, here it is:

I haven’t renewed the cattle tags for some of my vehicles in several years now. I mean “renewing” the annual registration. That is to say, I have stopped paying the annual tributum the state demands of me in order to maintain my “privilege” to operate these vehicles on the roads I have already paid for.

I figure once is enough.

Especially since it’s many times more than once.

Each time I buy gas, I – like you – pay taxes, highly regressive (50 something cents in taxes on a gallon of fuel that costs $2 or so – tax inclusive – amounts to loan sharkery) which is my weekly contribution toward the costs of building/maintaining the roads.

I’ve also – like most of you –  paid the state title and sales taxes as well as personal property taxes in perpetuity – using whatever funds are left to me after paying federal and state income taxes. Plus the might-as-well-be-taxes (because mandatory and enforced at gunpoint, like taxes) extortion payments I have to make to the insurance mafia. Notwithstanding I’ve never filed a claim in almost 30 years of driving, nor had one filed against me.

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A New Excuse to Harrass and Collect

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Orwell described things that seemed a bit much in his novel, 1984. Like, as a for-instance, the Telescreen-prompted mandatory morning calisthenics – physical jerks – the novel’s main character, Winston Smith, was forced to endure each day.NJ SS

Well, things that seemed a bit much when I read this book back in high school – back in the ‘80s – have become our Loving Big Brother reality.

Like this, for instance:

The state of New Jersey – arguably, the California of the east coast as far as regulatory idiocy goes (this is the state in which you are not allowed to pump your own gas) is on the verge of passing what would be the most idiotic “distracted driving” law in the country.

The legislation – see here – defines “distracted driving” as “any activity unrelated to the actual operation of a motor vehicle in a manner that interferes with the safe operation of the vehicle.”

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A Big Got Damned Difference

Guest Post by Eric Peters

A reader – a Libertarian friend – chastises me for supporting Trump over Hillary; for supporting any candidate who isn’t a principled Libertarian. I thought some of you might be interested in a principled Libertarian’s thoughts on this business:

Dear X –

Here’s a stark difference to consider: Hillary is a murderer. A mass murderer. By proxy, yes – but a murderer, nonetheless. Eager to have people killed. Arguably, more guilty of murder than Julius Streicher – who was hanged for merely inciting murderous hatred. Hillary has ordered people killed. Has literally reveled in the murder-by-sodomy of Quaddafi, which she helped to orchestrate. Hillary face

She is an obvious psychopath. Worse than The Chimp, even. And The Chimp was pretty got-damned awful.

Trump is arrogant, a blowhard. He may be a dick. But he hasn’t killed anyone that I am aware of, either himself or by proxy.

He doesn’t seem eager to get the US involved in more wars. Hillary does.

If she is elected, more people will die – a certainty.

With Trump, they may not.

That’s a big got-damned difference, in my book.

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The Car Bubble … and Cash for Clunkers II?

Guest Post by Eric Peters

A guy who smokes meth can pull a week of 15 hour days. But come next week… .meth head

That’s how artifical “incentives” work on the economy. On the macro level, it is the Boom – and Bust – business cycle, whose unnatural peaks and valleys are caused by manipulation of money and credit, which causes excessive and unwarranted “investment” that – inevitably – leads to a downturn (or even a crash) when the artificially induced supply is disproportionate to demand. The housing bubble of the early 2000s is an obvious example of this.

Cash for Clunkers (same era) is another – and its unfortunate effects are just now beginning to become obvious.

As with housing in the early 2000s, the federal government decided it would be a good idea to “stimulate” new car sales by enacting a program that paid people to throw away perfectly good used cars. The idea being that they would then buy new cars to replace the ones thrown away.

Many (but not all, bear with) did so. This created a boom in new cars sales. Not only because there were fewer good used cars available, but also because the ones that remained had gone up considerably in price due to (wait for it) limited supply. This artificial scarcity in turn became the artificial incentive to buy a new car.

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Quack Addendum

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Well, I finally saw the Quack.

Actually, his PA. Nice guy. I told him about the indifferent response I got the day of the accident, when I called to see about getting an emergency appointment to deal with my fresh – and gaping and bloody – chainsaw wound. About how the Frau at the desk Doc-blocked me. The PA told me that, in the future, if something like this happens again, that I should use a Special Secret Codeword to get around the Frau.frau

That’s what it’s come down to in these Obamacare Days. But while it’s easy to blame Obama (it does have his name on it) the fact is the insurance mafia wrote Obamacare; the presidente was just the sock puppet. It is the insurance mafia that has turned medicine into “health care” and put us all under legal mandate to have (to purchase) health insurance but the mafia under no obligation to deliver medical treatment. And when it is grudgingly provided, to finance-rape us such that we, in future, will be very reluctant to seek treatment again.

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Fixing The Problem

Guest Post by Eric Peters

And yes, it is a problem.reforming cops lead

Whether you are a “law and order” type or otherwise. In fact, especially if you are a “law and order” type. Because, simply put, cops are not subject to the same law and order as the rest of us – and that is a problem.

For them as much as us.

For them, because it has created an arrogance – a recklessness – that encourages the extra-legal excesses that we’re seeing on video almost every day (these videos probably capturing only a small slice of what actually goes on every day).

For us, because we are increasingly threatened by these excesses.

It is worrisome and very dangerous – for everyone.

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The EPA and the IRS… it’s the Same “Business”

Guest Post by Eric Peters

This VW business is a lot like the income tax business. And “business” is exactly the right word. It’s a business (albeit a perverted one) in both instances.scam-alert

The victim is compelled to fund his own persecution.

Yes, VW “cheated.” It is like me using a radar detector to “cheat” a cop out of his quota.

In both cases, the underlying law is ridiculous; the “cheating” nothing more than an attempt to evade the ridiculous. No one is harmed by “speeding” unless the car strikes another car or another person, which happens only rarely. Think about it. Almost all of us “speed” virtually every time we drive and yet accidents happen maybe a couple of times in a lifetime if they ever happen at all

And when it does happen, the cause is more likely to be inattention or some other thing. Not velocity.

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A Libertarian Guide to Driving Etiquette

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Driving – like walking – is an inherently individualistic activity. We each have our own pace, destination and timeframe. Some of us are faster walkers than others. Some prefer to take their time. The same applies to driving – or should.tailgater

But doesn’t.

Because government controls driving – and imposes an inherently artificial and one-size-fits-all regime on everyone – punishing any deviation from its rules, not because someone was harmed but only because someone deviated from the rules.

And the worst part is that many people think this is ok. Get mad when someone questions it. Cheer when someone is punished for not toeing the line. Some make it their business to impose the code on others, by refusing to yield as a notorious for-instance. Or speeding up (temporarily) to thwart a pass. Then resuming their slow-motion pace.

It’s as silly as as insisting that everyone walk in lockstep and at the same pace – or face punishment.left lane hog

But it’s accepted when it comes to driving because of conditioning. Much in the same way that people are conditioned to accept the idea that when government takes your money and calls it “taxes” it’s not theft. Or that you have given your “consent” to an action of the government’s you weren’t even consulted about – but which nonetheless imposes an obligation on you to obey.

Let’s uncondition ourselves.

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