“You can feel sorry for the first few sheep slaughtered but then you must start to question the others for staying in line.”

On behalf of all of us who post here, I’d like to thank you, our audience, for your feedback, arguments, discussions, and explanations.

You, our readers, are why we write.

Thanks for reading.

My response was an immediate “to myself and to my family, but certainly not the federal government of the US!” (for many of the same reasons that tarran so eloquently explained). I’m quite certain that this is not a response this talk show host would appreciate. I’m also quite certain that in his view, these corporations are supposed to “provide American jobs” no matter how costly and no matter how much the federal government punishes them with taxes and regulations. To suggest that a business should make its first loyalty to pursuing profits for shareholders would be heretical! These populist propagandists ask such questions of these businesses but fail to ask the question of government “to whom or what does Washington pledge its allegiance?” (Hint: it certainly isn’t to free market principles or liberty).

After thinking about the question a little longer, I concluded that my allegiances are as follows: myself*, my family, and the defense of the principles of life, liberty, property and justice for all**.

Now I pose this question to you, the reader: To whom or what do you pledge your allegiance?

*The fact that I put myself first may be shocking to those who haven’t spent much time studying the philosophy known as Objectivism.

** “Liberty and Justice for All” – This is at least one part of the Pledge of Allegiance I can keep, but when I say “all” I mean all individuals irrespective of color, gender, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, rich or poor. All individuals are entitled the rights of life, liberty, property and justice (justice meaning equal treatment under the law).

Sen. Webb is looking for some recommendations on how to reform the prison system so I thought it would be interesting to solicit some ideas from readers and fellow Liberty Papers contributors. The following is the specific questions Sen. Webb wants to answer:

I am now introducing legislation that will create a national commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom. I believe that it is time to bring together the best minds in America to confer, report, and make specific recommendations about how we can reform the process. This commission will be tasked with giving us clear answers to hard questions, including:

Why are so many Americans currently in prison compared with other countries and our own history?

What is this policy costing our nation, both in tax dollars and in lost opportunities?

How can we reshape our nation’s drug policies?

How can we better diagnose and treat mental illness?

How can we end violence within prisons and increase the quality of prison administrators?

How can we build workable re-entry programs so that our communities can assimilate former offenders and encourage them to become productive citizens?

How can we defend ourselves against the growing scourge of violent, internationally based gang activity?

The more specific your answers, the better. I’ll refrain from posting here as I will answer these questions and more in my upcoming post.

When I had the opportunity, I asked James if I could ask him a quick question.  “Sure,” he replied.  The question I lobbed at him was whether or not he would absolutely commit to not increasing taxes if elected governor.

“No problem,” he responded.  “Got a tougher one?”

I pitched the second question a bit harder, but his response came as quickly as the first one.  I asked if he’d commit to not increasing state spending.  “That’s easy,” he said. “You got a tough one for me, now?”

“Okay,” I responded, and threw him a bit of a curveball.  “Would you mind signing a pledge to this effect?”

“I’d love to…,” he stated. Later on, we set up a telephone call to deal with speaking arrangements for an upcoming event and the pledge issue.

Tim Fernholz’s response:

It all seems so flippant. Even given the conservative predilection for smaller governments and the ubiquity of Grover Norquist’[s] conservative loyalty oaths, is it wise for any potential chief executive to completely tie their hands, especially in a time of recession? It speaks to a rigid ideological prism rather than the attitude of addressing problems on their own merits.

Now here’s where the awesome idea comes from (emphasis added):

Most of America’s successful conservative executives would have violated both of those pledges; it’s as foolish a set of strictures as if Democrats demanded that their candidates sign pledges to raise taxes and increase spending.

The idea isn’t as foolish as Fernholz suggests.  According to the Americans for Tax Reform website, “The idea of the Pledge is simple enough: Make them put their no-new-taxes rhetoric in writing.”  For the sake of simple honesty, I’d love to see candidates running on tax-and-spending-increase rhetoric.

If today’s Democrats (along with Republicans such as Senators Snowe, Collins and Specter) wish to outspend even the Republicans on corporate bailouts and stimulate the economy with trillions of dollars we don’t have, why not at least be honest about it?  Here’s an applicable rewrite of Grover Norquist’s gubernatorial pledge for candidates running on a big-government platform:

I, ____, pledge to the taxpayers of the State of ________, that I will support and sign any and all efforts to increase taxes.

I also like the Republican Liberty Caucus pledge.  Here’s the new Slavery Compact:

Decrease liberty, not promote it; expand government, not shrink it; increase taxes, don’t cut them; create programs, not abolish them; despoil the freedom and independence of citizens, increasing the interference of government in their lives; and absolutely disregard the limited, enumerated powers of our Constitution, not promote them.

If politicians are going to legislate and govern expansive and ever expanding government programs, it sure would be nice to see some honesty in advertising as they run for public office.

Trevor Paglen is an author, and Dr. of Geography, who developed a fascination for the “black” side of the military some years ago; and started snooping.

His first book on the subject “I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to be Destroyed by Me“, was basically a recounting of his experiences in trying to figure out what mission patches for classified projects meant.

…snipped a video…

His new book is “Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon’s Secret World.“; in which he extends and develops on the methods and means from the first book, into an expanded view of the black world, focused on geography (and specifically logistics, and how they are related).

…snipped another video…

If you haven’t watched them yet, go back to the original post and watch the videos; and be prepared to be amazed at just how much can be inferred about black projects, by simple things like unit patches, and public records.

Amazed, and/or horrified (or perhaps simply resigned and amused), if your job is (or used to be) to keep such things secure…

Which brings me to the fun part of this post.

Dr. Paglens publishers saw my original post, and have graciously sent me a review copy of the book; which I plan to read and review this weekend.

In addition, they’ve offered a signed copy of the book to one of my readers, to be decided by blog contest (smart publicists these ones).

So, here’s the rules and parameters of the contest:

1. Submissions accepted as comments to the contest post on my blog, from now through Monday morning 12:01 AM

2. At 12:01 I will pick what I think are the top five posts if we get ten or more, or top ten if we get 20 or more. I will them put them up for a vote to the readers of the anarchangel blog, (and copy the stories here, but it would be a little complicated to have two polls) open from the time I post the stories, until 5pm Monday evening (at which time I will also be posting a review of Dr. Paglens book).
3. Entries will consist of one each of the following:

   a. Your best, funniest, most interesting, or scariest (from a security perspective) patch, flash, sign, symbol, or insignia story; preferably with a pic, but at least with a very clear description and detailed story.

   b. Your best, funniest, most interesting, stupidest, or scariest (from a security perspective) security story. It can be infosec, comsec, psec, prosec, opsec, doesn’t matter.

4. Stories do not have to be military or governmental in nature; though I suspect most of the best and funniest will be (governments are even better at absurdity than big corporations), so make it good
5. Multiple entries from a single individual will be accepted; and if the stories are good, are in fact encouraged.
6. All entries must be true and correct to the best of your knowledge (notice the out I gave you there).
7. First hand stories are preferred, and will be given more credit; but a sufficiently good second or third hand story will certainly be considered.
8. All entries should be either declassified, or sanitized sufficiently to avoid compromise; or in the case of non-military security stories to avoid compromise or disclosure of private or confidential (or higher) information.

Also, although I’m generally not a linker or memer, I would ask that if you find this interesting, please link it up, and forward it around. I’d really love to see what we get.

If there are enough entries, or if people post some REALLY GREAT after the deadline, I might even throw in a consolation prize myself afterwards.

Check in this Thursday night at 8pm ET with your questions for Cheye Calvo, the Berwyn Heights, Maryland mayor who was subject to a violent, botched drug raid last year.

Calvo’s pushing legislation that would bring transparency to how Maryland’s police departments use their SWAT teams.

I’m hoping to be home in time to participate in this chat because I am very interested in what Mayor Calvo has to say. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, the mayor spoke at a Cato Policy Forum on September 12, 2008. The full 90 minute podcast can be downloaded here; the podcast below is a much shorter (just under 9 minutes) interview with the mayor following the Cato event.

Post Chat Report:
The chat with Mayor Calvo ended just a few minutes ago. The mayor stayed about a half hour over the scheduled chat to answer more questions from participants. I managed to have a couple of questions answered and the other questions which were asked were also very good. The chat was very informative and worthwhile. Readers who would like to read the full chat can click here.

The mayor answered questions about his ordeal with the SWAT team raiding his home as well as some legislation he is pushing in the State of Maryland. The proposed legislation would require all police departments with SWAT teams to provide monthly reports to the Attorney General, local officials and the general public. These reports would provide the number of raids, general locations, purpose, authorization, and results of raids. The overall goal is to provide additional oversight.

For more information about this legislation and how you can help, go to MakeMarylandGreat.com.

Lovers of liberty, rejoice. Today, we’re launching FreedomPolitics.com, a site dedicated to the pursuit and protection of freedom.

We’re not the only ones who think freedom needs a hand, but as a Freedom Communications site, we follow the model of an exceptional defender of liberty, R.C. Hoiles. [snip]

With the support of more than 25 newspapers across the country, including that flagship, FreedomPolitics.com will be a hub of news and commentary dedicated to spreading R.C. Hoiles’ vision and the ideas of liberty of liberty he loved.

Right now we’re just getting started (consider this our soft launch), so don’t hesitate to let us know if something goes awry. The site will go fully operational on Inauguration Day with a slate of commentary from the top minds in the freedom movement.

The first set of articles are great. My fave is from former co-worker Doug Bandow, who writes about our “Return to Liberal Interventionism.”

Barack Obama is nothing if not a unique politician.  Despite his liberal background, he rushed to the center after the election.

Indeed, his foreign policy is starting to look like a slightly more reasonable version of Bush-McCain neoconservatism.  The result may be promiscuous military intervention, but only after Washington takes the usual diplomatic steps and rounds up the usual allies.

The most disconcerting sign of the future is the appointment of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.  True, when testifying before the U.S. Senate she sounded like the model of responsibility:  “We must build a world with more partners and fewer adversaries.  Foreign policy must be based on a marriage of principles and pragmatism, not rigid ideology.”

I’m bookmarking the site and will be checking it out from time to time.

In the comments section of this news story, some suggest that the very act of naming a child Adolf Hitler constitutes child abuse. There’s no question that in the course of Adolf’s life his name will cause him a great deal of hardships; not having a cake with his name on it will probably be the least of them. But child abuse?

I am hesitant to say that naming a child after a despicable person is child abuse for the same reason I oppose so-called hate crimes legislation: criminalizing thought. Are those who would argue that naming a child Adolf Hitler is child abuse suggesting that CPS should take the children away from the Campbells? If so, what other names should be considered child abuse worthy of the state taking action? David Duke? Joseph Stalin? If the Campbells would have chosen “Che Guevera Campbell” or “Mao Zedong Campbell” (Mao who killed many times that of Adolf Hitler), ShopRite probably would have had no problem inscribing those names and the child would likely have far fewer problems associated with those names in his lifetime.

Perhaps when Adolf reaches adulthood he can choose to change his name** and serve his loving parents with a lawsuit for a lifetime of otherwise avoidable emotional and psychological damages?

But until that day, how should the public respond to the Campbells? They should be shunned.

And goods and/or services businesses would otherwise provide the Campbells? ShopRite did the right thing by refusing to grant their request. Businesses should have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.

If enough people refuse to associate themselves with the Campbells, perhaps they will be shamed into learning that naming a child Adolf Hitler isn’t the best idea. But to say that giving their children such terrible names is child abuse may be a bridge too far.

*It’s not clear from the story if the request was made including the boy’s last name or not.
**If I were him I’d probably change my last name too. Why even be associated with this family? This is one person who probably wouldn’t mind being in the witness relocation program.

I have asserted this impression as truth on numerous occasions over the past few years.  Recently I sat down to analyze the recent election and discovered that I was wrong.  To my horror, I discovered that undervotes are routinely counted in nearly every precinct in the U.S.  In fact, I can’t find a single precinct where they are not counted!  Nor can I find any article online (other than one containing my comments) that makes that assertion.  Somehow, I got it wrong.  Very wrong.

I want to apologize to our readers for making this false claim.  In my defense, I sincerely believed it to be true when I made it.  Nevertheless, you all deserve better than this, and I will endevour never to make such a mistake again.

Thank you for your patience.

The main concerns Libertarians have (large L and small l) concern his congressional career, namely his support for the USA PATRIOT Act, the Defense of Marriage Act, and his work as a notable drug warrior. Barr has since denounced and apologized for these policies and is working toward their repeal.

The question Libertarians have to ask is whether or not this conversion is authentic or opportunistic. Personally, my approach is “trust but verify.” I am willing to take Barr at his word.

Why? He is a politician after all!

I truly think his conversion is authentic because people CAN and DO change. I have a great deal of respect for both Bob Barr and his running mate Wayne Allyn Root because they both admitted their mistakes and say they want to correct them rather than pretend that they were always staunch Libertarians all along. I’m sympathetic to this because I too have evolved a great deal in my thinking over the last year or so and have made a near 180 degree turn on certain critical issues (I’ll write a complete treatise on this someday soon).

If you believe that this conversion is opportunistic rather than authentic, then by all means I would urge you to not support Bob Barr. If, however; you do think this conversion is real and if you believe he does support the goals of less taxation, less government, and more freedom then I urge you to support Bob Barr in the general election.

Sure, many of Barr’s policies have been very destructive toward these ends but what do we gain by beating someone over the head for making mistakes one has apologized for and promises to make right. Isn’t the whole point of debate to persuade your opponents to your side? And who makes a better argument for a position than the converted?

My press pass will give me the same access as the MSM outlets (though some events will be reserved for “invited media only”). The events which I believe I will be able to get into include the platform debate, the presidential debate, national chairs debate, presidential nominating speeches, presidential election roll call with acceptance speech, the first press conference with the LP Presidential Nominee, and much, much more.

Fellow Liberty Papers contributor Jason Pye will also be attending the convention as a delegate.

Usually, The Liberty Papers does not have a great deal of activity on the weekends as far as posts are concerned but this weekend will be much different. Expect periodic reporting from the convention beginning Saturday. I’m going to try to score some high profile interviews, will post lots of photos, and possibly post some video for your consumption.

It’s my goal to bring the convention to The Liberty Papers’ reader. Any suggestions for what you would like me to cover, who I interview, and what questions you would like me to ask would be greatly appreciated!

**UPDATE** Jason Pye will also be adding content to The Liberty Papers throughout the weekend:

I am taking a video camera and a laptop and will be updating daily both here and The Liberty Papers. You may even see a post or two over at Red State.

There will be a few battles between moderates and anarchists, mainly over the platform and Bob Barr. Over a beer not too long ago, I told Daniel Adams, chairman of the Libertarian Party of Georgia, that I expected a walkout of different factions at some point during the convention.

Pye has much more insight to the inner workings of the Libertarian Party than I do, so I think his take on the event will be very interesting. Between the two of us, I think we will have the convention covered quite well.

Thankfully, he’s back!

Head on over and see what he’s up to.

Ron Paul and many libertarians reflexively yearn for a return to such an idea. The central government we have now is a behemoth, trampling our freedoms under its oppressive taxes and mountains of regulation. Even worse, the system is largely out of control, and citizens have almost no power over its workings. Devolving power to the States and local governments would counter the dilution of power that naturally occurs when one is a single voice out of 300 million. Petitioning your city or state representative is much more effective than some Senator who may represent several million people.

Inherent in the assumption by these libertarians, though, is that moving power to smaller levels of government will improve individual freedom. I’m not sure that assumption is accurate. There are pros and cons of both systems.

Federalism:

On the positive side, federalism allows for experiments in freedom. States and localities compete on a whole host of aspects, such as taxation, regulation, and social policies. In many instances, it allows those states to do things that would not be allowed in a true top-down structure. In some cases, that may be liberalized policies such as California allowing doctors to prescribe medical marijuana, the city of Galveston, Texas to opt out of social security for their retirement plans, or states like Massachusetts recognizing gay marriages. These are all things that individual states or localities are doing to increase personal freedoms.

But there’s a big negative. Many policies undertaken by individual states inimical to individual freedom. For example, the trend to outlaw smoking in private businesses would be a simple example. Another fairly innocuous example would be the crazy alcohol “blue laws” dotting the nation, many of which have absolutely no justification and are simply a way to appease special interests at the expense of freedom. On a more serious note would be the “Jim Crow” laws, or if you’re looking for a modern incarnation, Massachusetts’ new health-care plan. States are laboratories for new policies, but those policies are not always pro-freedom.

Central Government:

The benefit of central government mandates are simple: if the central government does something right, it can immediately apply that across the country. Many of our Constitutional amendments have followed this path, such as the 24th, eliminating a poll tax. It was a way to end an immoral form of discrimination in a place which sorely needed it. Similarly, while the 14th amendment may have opened the door to some very strange unintended consequences, the idea is purely in favor of liberty: to make sure that individual states and localities cannot engage in unfair discriminates against individuals based on things such as race or gender.

But again, there’s a big negative. As co-contributor tarran quoted Barry Goldwater to me in a discussion on this topic, “The government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away.” Look no further than the government’s failed attempt at Prohibition, a distinctly anti-freedom policy that might have been proven to be damaging if done in individual states that was instead foisted on the entire nation. Even worse, our central government has the potential to cut down individual states’ pro-freedom policies at the knees, as we saw in Raich.

So what’s best?

Well, the ideal government would be a single world government that was only powerful enough to protect freedom but disciplined enough not to infringe on individual freedom for the “common good”. However, such a government has never existed, will never exist, and with the incentives inherent in government, can never exist. So looking at the ideal government is not a useful way to answer this question.

The best way to answer this question is to ask how federalism relates to individual freedom. I used “vs.” in the title of this post for a reason. Of course, I don’t believe that federalism works contrary to individual freedom. However, I don’t think it necessarily works FOR individual freedom either. Federalism is only a tool for individual freedom if the people in a region believe in individual freedom, likewise a strong central government is only as damaging to individual freedom as the populace allows it to become.

Where federalism does shine, however, is in giving individuals choice over what mix of freedom and of taxation/regulation they prefer. However, as the differences in politics between the “liberal” and “conservative” states show, federalism does not automatically equal liberty. In states like California, there are large degrees of personal freedom, but not much economic freedom. In states such as Georgia, there is a large degree of economic freedom, but the level of social conservatism circumscribes personal freedoms. All this occurs in the spheres of control outside those of the central government, and I see no reason to believe this would not be the case if the central government were weakened.

The problem, whether you look at the central government or individual states, is that the government will only be as pro-liberty as the populace it represents. If you’re in Massachusetts, you just might get a weak version of socialized medicine through “mandatory coverage”. If you’re in Alaska, you may find nearly non-existent government that actually pays you out of oil revenues to live there.

But as I mentioned, if you then have a choice between Massachusetts and Alaska, you have a lot more choice than between America and Australia. The closer in proximity those choices become, for example between Taxachusetts and the Free State, and the better it will be for lovers of liberty. And the weaker the central government is, the more differentiation there will be between more-free and less-free states.

Federalism is not a panacea that will solve our nation’s problems. It’s a step in the right direction, but it must always be remembered that the message must be about freedom, not about federalism. Federalism is a potential means to the end, but it is not the end in itself.

So I went looking, and found a nice paper titled Interpreting Prediction Market Prices as Probabilities (PDF). I recommend following the link and reading the whole thing, but if you’re not interested, the first paragraph of the conclusion tells you what was discovered (emphasis added):

An old joke about academics suggests that we are often led to ask: “We know it works in practice, but does it work in theory?” This paper arguably follows that model. As discussed above, a variety of field evidence across several domains suggests that prediction market prices appear to be quite accurate predictors of probabilities. This paper suggests that this evidence is easily reconcilable with a theory in which traders have heterogeneous beliefs that are correct on average.

There are several concrete examples given, but as a football fan and occasional gambler, I know how difficult it is to predict football games. Last year, I tracked college games as if I were betting on the games, and against the spread I had a surprisingly good 62.5% record. That’s enough to beat Vegas, but the odd thing is that it was still only about an 80% record straight up picking winners and losers. So to read the below made me a believer in prediction markets:

For this reason we turn to two rather unique datasets. The first was provided to us by Probability Football, an advertising-supported free contest that requires players to estimate the probability of victory in every NFL game in a season.17 Including the pre-season and playoffs, this yields 259 games in the 2000 and 2001 seasons and 267 in 2002 and 2003. On average we observe the probability assessments of 1320 players in each game, for a total sample size of 1.4 million observations. Contestants are scored using a quadratic scoring rule; they receive 100 – 400(w – q)2, points where w is an indicator variable for whether the team wins and q is the stated probability assessment. Truthfully reporting probabilities yields the greatest expected points, a fact that is explicitly explained to contestants.
The top three players receive cash prizes. While these rank-order incentives potentially provide an incentive to add variance to one’s true beliefs, it turns out that given the number of games in a season, this incentive is small. For instance, in 2003, two mock entrants to this contest that simply used prices from TradeSports and the Sports Exchange (a sports-oriented play-money prediction market run by NewsFutures.com) as their probabilities placed seventh and ninth out of almost 2,000 entrants.

Such ideas are fairly simple. As a personal test, if any readers are in offices where you participate in weekly football pools, try a “system” of picking instead of your own intuition, and see how you do. For example, I’ve seen college pick’em pools where you assign a “confidence” rating to your picks for winners. A simple system would be to take the favorite in every game, and assign the confidence ratings to the teams in order of the largest spread to the smallest spread. You may not always have the best weeks, but I would postulate that over the season, you’re going to be in very good shape.

But the key here is that when you’re looking at various ways of determining probability, no method is 100% accurate. Prediction markets, though, have certain features that make them more likely to be accurate than many other “conventional” methods of evaluating probability, like polls. For that reason, and especially now that I have found empirical evidence to support my earlier intuition, I am more and more comfortable in my use of Intrade’s numbers over those of Gallup or Pew Research.