Categories
culture politics

Systemic Problems

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Image by Jeremy Brooks

“You start out with a lack of due process, a lack of notice of what it is you’re accused of doing,” [Larry James] said. “A lack of adequate preparation. A lack of any rules to govern the process or procedure. So it just lends itself to abuse.” (The System by Jeff Benedict and Armen Keteyian ch 15 “The System at Work” – p. 216)

Larry James is talking about the NCAA enforcement process and the abuse he alludes to shows up in ways such as DeVier Posey being suspended for 10 games during his senior season at Ohio State because he was overpaid by $3 on a summer job (a suspension that would have ended at 5 games if he hadn’t challenged the original accusation that he was overpaid by $727 – double the suspension for being 0.4% guilty). Hopefully Mr. James isn’t personally aware that his statement was also perfectly describing the CPS investigation process.

Categories
life National politics

Saying “No” to the TSA

Laura and I have been talking about what we can do in response to the horrendous new TSA procedures. Inspired by Connor and Jesse I took a first step by sending this letter:


To: ata@airlines.org

To Whom It May Concern,

I have been appalled at the new security procedures being implemented by the TSA. I don’t consider myself a particularly frequent flyer but I have personally flown twelve times in the last nine years (usually with at least one family member flying with me) and I was planning flights to New York and Orlando next year for both personal and business purposes but after these latest changes in procedure I have determined that I will not take any further flights for any reason. I will avoid business travel that cannot be done on the ground and I see no reason to spend my money so that myself, my wife, or any of my children can be subjected to the full body image machines or the enhanced pat-downs that are now standard procedure by the TSA.

These new “security procedures” are all the more outrageous and intollerable because as far as I am aware passenger screenings have never stopped a single incident of someone trying to interfere with the normal operations of a flight. All such incidents have either been stopped before the would-be criminals approached the passenger screening area or else after they had successfully navigated the passenger screening procedures and boarded the plane.

I refuse to teach my children that nothing we have taught them regarding the sacredness of personal space – especially with regards to strangers – applies when they are inside an airport or when the stranger in question is wearing a uniform. Although others travel much more than I do, I will avoid all public air travel wherever possible and teach my six children to do the same so long as such degrading and unreasonable procedures are in place.

David Miller
Bountiful, Utah


Update 11/17/2010: I got a response to my letter this morning. Normally I would see little reason to share the response publicly but this response included some information that I think should be shared publicly for anyone who is concerned with this issue. Specifically, the response included two links where people can provide their feedback directly to the TSA:

While we will pass on your concerns to the TSA in our routine discussions, we suggest that you also comment directly to TSA – they have a moderated blog on these very subjects, which can be found at:

Enhanced Pat Down: http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/new-tsa-pat-down-procedures.html

?Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) Scanner: http://blog.tsa.gov/2010/11/white-house-blog-backscatter-back-story.html

Categories
culture politics

What Do You Expect?

What started as a post about Equality Before the Law grew into a discussion about the role of government in helping our fellow men. That eventually spun of into a discussion about how we can or should mix religion and politics at The Life I am Choosing. Later I ran across Connor’s post about the truth concerning charity in a capitalist system. That related post had a comment that seemed to capture the difference in the expectations between the two sides of the debate.

These and similar accusations . . . stem from a mistrust of capitalism and a lack of faith in man’s innate desire to help others.

Man’s innate desire to help others is what drives most of those who argue both sides of this issue. There are those capitalists who are not thinking of how to benefit others, and yet what they do almost always does help others. There are those communalists who are not really interested in helping others and they are very happy to be useing the force of government to negate the property rights of others. Despite those two groups, the majority of people approach this discussion with an honest desire to help others. Some believing that  government can provide the best coverage in helping others while others believe that individuals can tackle the major problem areas as well as filling the cracks that would be missed by government.

Categories
politics

Rights and Liberty

This is 8 minutes well spent if you have any question about what constitutes a right and why rights are more than simply good things that deserve legal protection or assistance. (Hat tip: The Anti-PC Infidel)

Categories
politics State

Justice In Texas

The Texas Supreme Court has just shown what justice looks like:

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that the removal of FLDS children from the YFZ Ranch was unwarranted — and the decision to take them was an abuse of judicial discretion. . . .

In its ruling, the high court said that state law gave the lower court broad authority to protect children “short of separating them from their parents and placing them in foster care,” including removing alleged perpetrators from a child’s home and preventing the removal of a child from the jurisdiction of the investigating agency. (emphasis added)

One of the hard things in opposing the actions of CPS is trying to illuminate the distinction between protecting the children and ignoring the rule of law. Unfortunately it is all to easy for an agency like CPS to abuse the power that is placed in their hands and in many cases where that happens it is also very easy for the courts to side with the professional and well organized government agency while discounting the plea’s of the distraught and disorganized parents. Naturally in a case as large as this the parents were not so disorganized as they often are when it is a single family – or even a single parent – trying to challenge the government agency.

The important thing right now is that the Texas Supreme Court got it right in saying that CPS overstepped their bounds but that they are still allowed to investigate allegations of abuse and take less drastic steps to protect the children.

Categories
National politics State

A Reasonable Proposition

I think Tim Lynch has outlined a good idea for moving forward from the FLDS Texas Nightmare. This is what the Texas CPS would do if they were serious about upholding the law and pursuing justice.

    • Send the 300 children under age 4 home since there has been no evidence of abuse and they are a decade from being forced into underage marriage.
    • Send the boys over the age of 4 home because there is no evidence of abuse toward them.
    • Allow the police one more week (since it’s already been three) to present evidence of abuse. Absent that evidence they should send the rest of the girls home as well.

Tim suggests that the investigations can continue past the next week, and prosecutions can come whenever there is evidence for a trial, but holding innocent children in detention, away from their parents for three weeks, without being able to present any evidence of abuse is a slap in the face of justice.

Categories
politics

Defining “Rights”

I liked this very succinct argument about why health care is not a right.

With one exception, the right to representation in court and a trial by jury, {the rights safeguarded in our Constitution} require nothing of any other citizen but that they recognize your rights and not interfere with them.

Your “right to health care” would require some other person to give up a portion of their life or their property to either treat you or to provide you with drugs or medical implements. The Constitution does not provide for another individual to be indentured to you in this manner.

Therefore, you have no “right” to health care.

What I really like is that this argument provides a plausible framework for distinguishing between fundamental rights and the manufactured “rights” that make for such good campaign promises. Does anyone else have any perspective on this argument (in general or specific to health care)?

Categories
culture National politics

Unalienable Rights

On the issues of gay rights, abortion rights, or womens rights I think that Ron Paul captures the truth with his repeated assertion that there is only one kind of rights – individual rights. These are the rights that were called unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. When individual rights are properly protected many of the issues related to gay rights, womens rights, or minority rights fall away so that the central issues can be approached from their proper perspective.

For example, if individual rights are fairly enforced we do not need hate-crimes legislation because hate crimes are, first and foremost, crimes against individuals which should be dealt with in a manner to protect and defend the rights of those individuals. No amount of legislation will make a racist like a minority against which they hold a prejudice. If individual rights are properly enforced that will serve as a deterrent against racially inspired crimes as any hate-crimes law (this is not to imply that it will stop the crimes completely, but an admission that hate-crimes laws won’t either).

On issues such as abortion we can stop asking about whether a woman has “a right to control her own body” and focus the discussion on defining where individual rights begin – in other words, if the pre-born infant is an individual then the woman cannot blithely infringe upon the rights of that individual, but appropriate decisions can be made when the well-being of the mother and the well-being of the child are at odds.

The more I think about this the more I am convinced that it is difficult to  help people understand individual rights when we have ceded responsibility to the government to ensure that nobody is hungry, sick, uneducated, or poor and we have allowed the government to own everything although it generously allows us to keep part of the money we earn through our economic contributions.