tyranny

You Must Pay

Let’s say that your Florida house has solar installed. Your system is so good that you have enough power to be completely off the grid. You don’t need outside power, so your house only uses about $5 of electricity each month. Too bad for you, because Florida utility companies have recently instituted minimum billing. Even if you don’t use their product, you have to pay them for it.

You can’t even disconnect from them, because Florida law requires all homes to be connected to the electric grid.

This is one of those times where Florida law is a bit too draconian for my taste.

By Divemedic, ago

Policing For Profit, Episode CXVII

There is an old quote where a bank robber was asked why he robs banks. He replied, “Because that is where the money is.” It seems that the police have decided to take his advice and begin robbing the modern day version of the stagecoach. The Feds are helping them.

Sheriffs in California and Kansas have exploited the fact that marijuana distribution, while legal in those states, is illegal under Federal Law. Because of this fact, they are having deputies conduct traffic stops on the armored cars and confiscating all of the money. In the case of Kansas, no law is being broken in Kansas. The cops are merely stopping the armored cars that are transporting the cash from Missouri pot shops to Colorado banks.

As soon as the money is seized, the cops turn the money over to the Feds, which places it out of the jurisdiction of state judges, who are then unable to intervene. Under Federal forfeiture laws, the local cops get 80% of whatever the Federal government confiscates. Getting $800,000 for a traffic stop is a pretty lucrative business move.

This is purely an attempt to use badges to conduct armed robbery. The cops want people not to oppose them, but that is pretty hard to do when you are acting more like a criminal gang than you are a legitimate law enforcement agency.

By Divemedic, ago

President Potato is Wrong

President Biden made a speech on gun control in New York. He said that

When the [Second] Amendment was passed, it didn’t say that anyone could own any kind of gun and any kind of weapon. You couldn’t buy a cannon when this Amendment was passed, so there’s no reason why you should be able to buy certain assault weapons.

President Joe Biden on gun control

The Amendment didn’t say that, for two reasons: First, the Amendments to the Constitution don’t say that people can do anything. The Amendments say that the GOVERNMENT can’t do things. The government can’t infringe on the right keep to bear arms, is what it says. Second, people DID own cannons. Privately organized and funded artillery companies in the colonies date all the way back to the 1630s. A century later, in the 1740s, there are records of Benjamin Franklin helping organize artillery companies while stressing that they were made completely of volunteers and armed at their own expense.

One of the driving forces behind the first major battles of the Revolutionary was because the British soldiers were coming to confiscate privately-owned arms – including cannons and mortars – such as ones that were being held by veterans of the French and Indian War as war trophies.

In fact, there were people who owned entire warships. See my post on this from 2013.

During the course of the Revolution, approximately 1,700 letters of Marque were issued to privateers. In the War of 1812, President James Madison issued more than 500 letters of Marque to privateers. These letters of marque created what was, essentially, legal piracy, and it was sanctioned by the government and even deemed necessary. So how did these privateers arm their vessels? With cannons that they purchased as individuals.

Our colonial navy had approximately 1,200 cannons on board less than 65 ships. The privateers, on the other hand, had almost 15,000 cannons – all privately owned.

The National Firearms Act of 1934, which is, by far, the most restrictive piece of Federal legislation related to the ownership of arms, says nothing about cannons. It wasn’t until 1968 that things we regard as modern artillery were regulated further when ‘destructive devices’ were added to the law.

But muzzleloading cannons, like the ones used during the Revolutionary War remain conspicuously absent in any legislation. You could buy a cannon as an individual in the Revolution era, and you can still buy one today as an individual.

The President then went on to say that the DOJ will be issuing restrictions on guns made at home within the next few weeks, what he calls a “National ghost gun enforcement initiative.” He also took a shot at the “assault weapon” boogieman.

You know, futures cut short by a man with a stolen Glock with 40 rounds. A magazine with 40 rounds. And it’s really a weapon of war. One of the things I was proudest of years ago when I was in the Senate, I was able to get these weapons and the size of magazines outlawed, that got changed, got overruled, but I don’t see any rationale why there should be such a weapon able to be purchased. It doesn’t violate anybody’s Second Amendment rights to deny that.

President Joe Biden on the ’94 Assault Weapons Ban

The law didn’t get overruled. It expired. Because the law had a ten year expiration date built into it.

The President is also claiming that outlawing weapons doesn’t violate your right to own them. Since when?

By Divemedic, ago

Policing for Profit

After my post from a couple of days ago, it has become apparent that some people think that speed cameras are a good idea, saying that they don’t speed, and are tired of people who do. It’s cute that those people think that speed cameras have anything to do with traffic safety or actual speeding.

In Baltimore, a speed camera issued a speeding ticket to a stationary car. The real story here isn’t that one car was erroneously ticketed. No, the real story is the fact that Baltimore’s 164 cameras have issued $48 million in tickets over the last three years. If the amount of the ticket, $40, is typical, this means that 400,000 tickets a year are issued by those 164 cameras: roughly 2400 tickets for each camera. The officers that review the pictures before a ticket is issued review and issue 1200 tickets per day. On an 8 hour workday, that leaves just 24 seconds for each picture to be reviewed and a citation issued. In other words, this is nothing but a revenue generator with few safeguards or oversight.

Officials in Heath, Ohio installed 2 speed cameras to watch for excessive speed on Route 79, an area that had seen only one crash in the previous two years. Those two cameras alone accounted for 5,000 traffic citations in just 4 weeks.

Since it was such a money maker, ten more cameras were installed to watch intersections in town and look for red light runners. Those ten cameras were responsible for 5,000 more tickets their first month. At those intersections, light runners had been responsible for only 16 traffic accidents over the previous two years.

In all, the traffic tickets will cost the drivers in the area more than $12,000,000 in fines each year, of which the city will keep $10,00,000.

Then there was the Long Island traffic cameras that were responsible for $2.4 million in School Zone speeding tickets during the summer, when there was no school in session.

The big winner here is actually the private company that installs and runs the cameras. They frequently are involved in kickback schemes.

Miami, Washington, DC, and half a dozen other cities have been involved in this fleecing of the public. No oversight, with a private company running the camera while giving some of the take back to the city.

By Divemedic, ago

Isn’t it Still Tyranny?

Let’s say that the cops want to see if you have anything illegal in your house, but don’t have any probable cause with which to get a warrant. So instead, they coerce a local burglar into breaking into your home and reporting on what he sees, so they can use his report to obtain a warrant. Has the government still violated your rights? Many people would say yes.

Now let’s say that the government wants to control what you can say. It would be against the highest law of the land for them to do so. With that being the case, the government instead gets private industry to shut down what you have to say. Has the government still violated your rights? Many people would say yes, although sadly, many would also be OK with that.

So what if the FBI bought spyware that enabled them to break into your phone? Would that be OK? Even if they promised not to actually use it? Just the tip, I swear.

By Divemedic, ago

Troops to be Sent

Not to the Ukraine, but to DC. Expect the walls to go up, and the J6 prisoners will get some new neighbors in cell block 13. As people become more unhappy and protesting becomes more frequent, expect the communists to be more panicked and expect them to take more drastic and violent action.

How many truckers will be disappeared?

By Divemedic, ago

Third World Policing

Wirecutter over at Knukledraggin my Life Away points out a story of a tiny Alabama town that has discovered that it can use cops as a money making machine and has become the worst speed trap in the entire nation. The town has less than 1300 residents, but has at least sixteen full time cops and a number of part time cops. (The police chief, claiming “security” won’t tell how many cops he has) Those cops make over 1,000 arrests, write over 3,000 traffic citations, and have their own SWAT team, complete with an armored vehicle that they call a “riot control vehicle.” (How big of a riot can that small of a town have?)

Read the article that the post is based on, and think about this quote:

Chief Jones testified under oath that just one of the 10 Brookside vehicles is painted with police striping, but nine others bear no emblems, and seven are tinted all the way around, making it impossible to see inside. Jones testified his officers wear gray uniforms with no Brookside insignias.

These dumbasses think that they are badasses because they carry the authority of a badge that they don’t even wear. Thinking that they are some kid of secret agents, they act more like a street gang that is shaking down the citizens for protection money. They refer to themselves as “agents” and do not provide their identification, even on arrest affidavits:

The names of the officers were not listed on the tickets in secretive Brookside. Instead, the arresting officer was listed as “Agent JS,” while the assisting officer was “Agent AR.”

Arrests in Alabama come from all sorts of things that you wouldn’t think are a crime. For example: It is considered road rage in Alabama to drive in the left lane for more than a mile and a half. One of my favorite legal Youtube channels is Lehto’s Law. Take a look:

The entire thing is a scam. The traffic court judge is a local lawyer who was hired as the municipal traffic court judge to hold court one day a month. When audited, the town had no written budget. Wanna take odds on some skimming off the top by the police chief, Mayor, and judge?

These idiots are so predictable, it begs for an ambush. The kinder version would have a person with hidden cameras break a traffic law in full view of Roscoe Coaltrain, and when he pulls you over it seems like it would be easy to get some civil rights violations on film. Then they can be taken down by some good attorneys.

The more aggressive ambush would be to goad them into a traffic stop, coming to a halt in a kill zone, then having an ambush team light up one of these would be secret agents. Since they are in unmarked vehicles and wearing clothes with no insignia, one could argue that they look more like a criminal gang conducting an ambush than they do a legitimate police force.

By Divemedic, ago

Kill Switch

Former Vice President Joe Biden signed the infrastructure bill into law. Buried in that law is a provision that requires all new cars, trucks, and SUVs to have a “kill switch” installed by 2026. The system must connect to the vehicle’s operational controls, so as to disable the vehicle either before driving or during, when impairment is detected.

Marketed to Congress as a benign tool to help prevent drunk driving, this measure is disturbingly short on details. The switch will passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired. The term “impaired driving” isn’t defined by the legislation, so it would be open to interpretation by regulators such as the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The worst part of the legislation is the open nature of the system which will feature at least one backdoor for third-party access to the system’s data at any time.

Who has access to the data collected by the kill switch system? Will the police be given access to the data without a warrant? What about insurance companies, will they be granted access to the data in order to better understand what kind of driver is being insured, or worse, will they know with what frequency your driving habits “change” which could then be interpreted as impairment?

What if a driver is not drunk, but sleepy, and the car forces itself to the side of the road before the driver can find a safe place to pull over and rest? Considering that there are no realistic mechanisms to immediately challenge or stop the car from being disabled, drivers will be forced into dangerous situations without their consent or control. Imagine your car stopping in the middle of a bad neighborhood.

This law is a disaster in the making. They just can’t resist bossing people around. Tyrants, the whole lot of them.

By Divemedic, ago

Secret Police

Marsalee (Marsy) Ann Nicholas was stalked and killed by her ex-boyfriend in 1983. Only one week after her murder and on the way home from the funeral service, Marsy’s family was confronted by her daughter’s murderer. Having received no notification from the judicial system, the family had no idea he had been released on bail mere days after Marsy’s murder. Marsy’s family was not informed because the courts and law enforcement had no obligation to keep them informed.

As a result, voters in seventeen states have passed Marsy’s law, with Florida voters passing its version of the law in 2018. The law was sold as a victims’ rights bill, but it wasn’t long before the law of unintended consequences showed itself.

Since police who use force against someone are only doing so because they claim themselves to be victims of a crime, they can refuse to allow their names to be released. A cop can claim that someone threatened them, use force against that person, and then demand that their names be withheld because they are a victim.

That is exactly what happened here when a police officer shot and killed a man on the campus of a Melbourne college. The odd part here is that the same law doesn’t appear to apply when a private citizen does the exact same thing.

When the voters of this state voted on the amendment, it was intended to give victims of crimes a bit of privacy. It wasn’t intended to give police a means of becoming secret death squads with no public accountability.

By Divemedic, ago