Thomas Sowell over at Townhall.com seems to think so:

The cost of paying every member of Congress a million dollars a year is absolutely trivial compared to the vast amounts of the taxpayers’ money wasted by cheap politicians doing things to get themselves re-elected. You could pay every member of Congress a million dollars a year for a century for less money than it costs to run the Department of Agriculture for one year.

There is no point complaining about the ineptness, deception or corruption of government while refusing to do anything to change the incentives and constraints which lead to ineptness, deception and corruption.

I do have to take issue with some of this logic though. Simply paying politicians more may is not a guarantee that the laws they write would be more competent or free of corruption and scandal. Nor does it properly address the issue of the number of laws and regulations that are churned out each year.

As long as we’re speculating on grand salary schemes, why not adjust salaries of congresscritters to that of their average constituent, rewarding them when their corner of the country does well (yet penalizing them for any pork expenditures so their goal as in congress isn’t simply to inflate wages through tax money redistribution).

What do you think a politician is worth?

From time to time, I want to share the good news on our growing influence and audience growth here at Hammer of Truth. Today’s good news is that we’re pretty much passing LP.org now and will likely outgun them in traffic easily througout 2006:

Who’s next on the overtake radar? Stay tuned…

We could all probably have a hearty laugh over this little bit of keystone kops nonsense where a passenger was “caught” smuggling three condoms filled with flour (a gag squeeze toy meant as a stress reliever). Except they ended up throwing her in jail for 3 weeks after some sketchy testing declared the powder to be cocaine and opium (via The Agitator):

In the space of a few hours on Dec. 21, 2003, Janet Lee landed in a Philadelphia jail cell, where she would remain for three weeks, held on $500,000 bail and facing 20 years in prison on drug charges.

All over flour found in her luggage.

“I haven’t let myself be angry about what happened, because it would tear me apart,” Lee said. “I’m not sure I can bear to face it… . I’m amazed at how naive I was.”

That naivete, she said, began when screeners at Philadelphia International Airport inspecting her checked luggage found three condoms filled with white powder. Lee laughed and told city police they were filled with flour. It was just part of a phallic gag at a women’s college, she told them, a stress-reliever, something to squeeze while studying for exams.

The police didn’t find it funny. They told her a field test showed that the powder contained opium and cocaine.

A lab test later proved the substance was flour – and no one now disputes that Lee is innocent, including the prosecutor.

It’s simply amazing that the whole legal system thinks they can get off the hook with a “woops, my bad” through a shit-eating grin. I think what’s warranted here is an investigation into all prior arrests and convictions based on the results of that drug-testing machine. Who knows how many people are locked up for trace amounts of whatever thanks to some bogus test readings?

Update: If you’re like me and enjoy the puns that naturally come a-flowing from this story, check out this Philadelphia Inquirer editorial (which is actually a decent editorial as far as that goes as well):

No Gold Medal for the narcs … Some Pillsbury, though, perhaps. … a “stress reliever” cooked up in a dorm room gag

Reader comment: Robert notes the limited TSA involvement (I corrected the title, but can’t touch the URL):

TSA Screeners only found the suspicious substance. The matter was turned over to local law enforcement who brought the charges based on flawed testing.

Well, not so much anymore, thanks to the FAA’s new guidelines on space tourism (via Boing Boing):

More than 120 pages of proposed rules, released by the government Thursday, regulate the future of space tourism. This don’t-forget list touches on everything from passenger medical standards to preflight training for the crew.

Before taking a trip that literally is out of this world, companies would be required to inform the “space flight participant” – known in more earthly settings as simply a passenger – of the risks. Passengers also would be required to provide written consent before boarding a vehicle for takeoff.

Legislation signed a year ago by President Bush and designed to help the space industry flourish prohibits the Federal Aviation Administration from issuing safety regulations for passengers and crew for eight years, unless specific design features or operating practices cause a serious or fatal injury.

I’m skeptical of the need. As witnessed by all the previous flights of SpaceShipOne, regulation hasn’t been necessary in the slightest. But hey, when has the government ever let a little thing called entreprenurial spirit get in the way of government law?

I want to thank all the editors of Hammer of Truth for giving me the opportunity to be a part of a growing blog!

My first introduction to libertarianism and the Libertarian Party was back in 1988 when I was attending Heritage High School in Littleton, Colorado (I attended the same school of the famed, Matt Stone, who co-produces South Park, he graduated a year before me). I remember having a conversation with a fellow speech team member who was supporting Ron Paul and I was at the time supporting Michael Dukakis. We got to talking about drugs,taxes and the Constitution and he told me that I sound more libertarian than a Democrat.

I happen to be flipping the channels on my day off in August of 1991 and I caught a glimpse of the Libertarian National Convention on C-Span. I recall seeing Richard Boddie making a speech to the delegation. I was thinking “there’s a black guy who is a Libertarian, this Libertarian Party must be alright!” I met Doug Anderson getting signatures to get Andre Marrou on the ballot.

Right then I knew that I had found a new political home. I was very active in the LPCO from 1991-1996 and I even helped with the Coloradoans for Andre Marrou group. During that campaign I did my first GOTV (Get Out The Vote) in the county I lived in and handmade signs encouraging people in my area to vote for Andre Marrou. I know that we didn’t get many votes in my county BUT voter registration for Libertarians increased three fold! I think Andre would had done better had a big ears, billionaire, midget named Ross Perot had not entered the Presidental race. Ross Perot did however bring the federal debt and government spending into the forefront with those ridiculous infomercials.

It hasn’t been easy being a libertarian, not much easier being black and libertarian. Liberal blacks call me “Uncle Tom” because I want to empower minorities and get rid of their social programs. Conservative blacks want to test my morality and religious beliefs. I think if the Libertarian Party ever became a powerhouse in politics, minorities will flock! It’s all about maximizing our freedom and decreasing the coerciveness. It’s really not about what group should be better than others, it’s all about respecting individual rights and freedoms. Until we get to that point-we need to be more pro-active and reach out to those who will benefit-everyone. That’s the reason why I’m a libertarian.

Well, it’s now official:

The new “meet up” place on the Internet is now Upcoming.org. The company was recently purchased by Yahoo and serves as an open, “global event calendar” where specific groups can organize, plan and attend events in the real world.

How is this relevant to the LP? As part of a coming redesign for this website, we will be adding in features from Upcoming.org thanks to a handy tool created by Libertarian Blogger Stephen VanDyke (Stephen will also be an instructor for the new Libertarian Leadership School that will launch on January 2nd).

You can see our national group is #7 based on the popularity ranking (sorting is something new that’s been added in the past month I might add).

If you’d like to have a way to show Libertarian Upcoming.org events on your own site, you can download the free PHP script.

Open source, open standards, giving control back to the users. Get on the bus.

Only a couple of weeks after we analyzed the situation here and concluded that Dubya and Tricky Dick had more in common than just being dog owners, the ACLU figured it out and placed this full-page ad in the New York Times. Glad to see my membership money is going to something worthwhile.

Before you get all excited, it’s likely that any impeachment efforts will be derailed by the complexity of the FISA issues, the inherent Article II powers, and whether or not we’re at “war.” The legal waters are muddy enough that the Administration can make a plausible case that they thought everything was legal and avoid conviction. On the bright side, this might put the kibosh on any future warrantless domestic wiretapping.

Hat tip: I Am Not A Crook?

For those of you who don’t follow marijuana legalization efforts, Colorado is considering an absolute legalization ballot measure for people with small quantities of marijuana.

Marijuana advocates vowed from the Capitol steps Wednesday to put a statewide measure legalizing adult pot possession on Colorado’s November ballot and mobilize an army of voters to pass it.

The statewide campaign is fueled by outrage over Denver authorities’ rejection of Initiative 100, said Mason Tvert, campaign director for the initiative’s sponsor, Safer Alternative for Enjoyable Recreation.

City voters passed the initiative in November, ostensibly making it legal for adults to possess up to 1 ounce of pot. Denver law enforcement officials, however, continue to ticket small-time pot-possession violators under state law. They always have prosecuted the vast majority of possession cases, saying that state law is unaffected by local statutes.

The Colorado Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative seeks to pass a state law identical to the Denver measure, Tvert said, so Denver officials can no longer “ignore the will of the voters by hiding behind state law.”

To be placed on the ballot in Colorado, the measure requires around 68,000 validated signatures. While a tough goal, this should not be an insurmountable hurdle for this issue. What’s interesting to me is that the state is trying to outlaw the will of the local voters in Denver. This is very similar to what the Feds do whenever medical marijuana initiatives or legislation is passed at a state level.

Quite often on political campaigns I’ve worked, the candidate used lines or arguments which were thought up by me or members of my team. As political whores, we custom tailor such sound-bytes to be picked up by the media or to influence votes, and quite often they work for the desired purpose. I rarely remember these lines, but I do have a strong tendency to remember the lines actually from the candidates when they are on the Johnny-on-the-spot on some issue or another.

One line of reasoning on this topic I’ll always remember is from Aaron Russo. As I’ve heard the general argument a million times (or so it seems), I’ll paraphrase from the originator of the Constitution Party who also was a presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party. It goes somewhat like this:

Early in the last century, America outlawed alcohol. In order for this law to have been considered legitimate by the American people, a constitutional amendment had to be passed. An amendment to the United States Constitution must be ratified by three-quarters of the state legislatures in the country. While I’m not stating that I agree with alcohol prohibition, it was handled in a totally legal and proper manner. This is not the case with marijuana, where no such amendment has ever been passed.

The Constitution is essentially the contract between our government and the people. Each time it is violated by our Congress (which swears to uphold our covenant every two years) is an act of tyranny. One really great place to block the tyrants, both at a national level and in Colorado, is on this specific issue. Let’s do it!

_{As the author of this article, I’d like to make it very clear that I do not smoke marijuana (although I’ve tried it on several occasions before and did actually inhale). Maker’s Mark is my drug of choice, and weed simply ain’t my cup-of-tea. This is a freedom thing to me, and I’ll continue to push such issues until they take my keyboard away from me.}

We’ve caught this kind of mislabeling previously when someone thought for whatever reason that Bill O’Reilly was a libertarian (and it was promptly corrected), but this one rankles me just as well.

MSNBC’s Howard Fineman seems to think branding some moderate Senate Republicans as “libertarian” is hokey dorey (via Liberty for Sale):

Arguably the most interesting — and influential — Republicans in the Senate right now are the libertarians. They’re suspicious of the Patriot Act and, I am guessing, pivotal in any discussion of the NSA and others’ spy efforts. Most are Westerners (Craig, Hagel, Murkowski) and the other is Sen. John Sununu. He is from New Hampshire, which, as anyone who has spent time there understands, is the Wild West of the East Coast. All you have to do is look at its license plate slogan: “Live Free or Die.” It’ll be interesting to see how other nominal small-government conservatives — Sen. George Allen of Virginia comes to mind — handle the issue.

I’m surprised that Fineman so readily throws the word libertarian in here. Simply because someone is for small-government is only a fraction of the equation of what makes a person a libertarian. Once again we go to the Wikipedia definition of libertarian:

Specifically, libertarian politics holds that a person’s freedom to dispose of his body and private property as he sees fit should be unlimited as long as that person does not initiate coercion on the person or property of others. Libertarians define “coercion” as the use of physical force, the threat of such, or deception (fraud), that alters, or is intended to alter, the way individuals would use their body or property. The libertarian political principle prohibiting coercion is known as the non-aggression principle, and many libertarians consider it a defining tenet from which spring all their political views. Libertarians see themselves as consistent supporters of maximum freedom and minimum state intervention in all human activities (where “freedom” is defined as negative liberty).

Go back and take a look at those four Senators’ records and political mappings (Larry Craig, Chuck Hagel, Lisa Murkowski and John Sununu), and tell me they fit even a third of that definition. Don’t get me wrong, I think Howard Fineman is a good journalist and we all make mistakes, but we simply cannot start throwing the libertarian label at every politician who shows an ounce of common sense every once in a while. Because while there may be no Libertarians in the Senate right now, if the Democrats and Republicans as a whole continue on this path of expanding government in size and cost while stripping away liberties, no doubt will he be able to call some Senators libertarians in their proper form after future elections.

Email Howard Fineman yourself to ask that he strike the mislabeling from this article.

Coyote Blog posts word of a novel scam the State of California is running these days: sending “refund” checks, then demanding the money back with usurious penalties and interest charges months later (he estimated at 97% APR). He got a $81 “refund” and 3 months later they now want it back… plus $15:

In September, the State of California sent me a check for $81 as a tax refund. I did not file for the refund — they sent the check out of the blue. Since no one human being is smart enough to keep up with all the taxes and user fee formulas in California, I just accepted it, cashed the check and forgot about it. This refund was for my unemployment taxes, and I just assumed my rate had changed slightly leading to a refund.

Then, in December, the State of California sent me a notice that the $81 was in error, and I needed to send it back.

He’s right about the fraud part of it:

[If] I as a company was running this scam with consumers, sending them refund checks and then asking for the money back 3 months later with interest and penalties,I would be going to jail, would I not?

Absolutely.

I would think in a libertarian-run government, there’d be accountibility at the highest levels of whatever bureacracy for this kind of reverse-tax-fraud. That is if we allowed these kinds of institutions to continue to exist in the first place.

The Pentagon is being stymied by five lobbies working on behalf of defense contractors who claim that they’re in favor if the idea of barring human trafficking and forced prostitution, but by golly don’t expect them to try and enforce it. From the Chicago Tribune article (via Boing Boing):

Three years ago, President Bush declared that he had “zero tolerance” for trafficking in humans by the government’s overseas contractors, and two years ago Congress mandated a similar policy.

But notwithstanding the president’s statement and the congressional edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to bar human trafficking.

[...]The long-awaited debate inside the Pentagon on how to implement presidential and congressional directives on human trafficking is unfolding just as countertrafficking advocates in Congress are running into resistance. A bill reauthorizing the nation’s efforts against trafficking for the next two years was overwhelmingly passed by the House this month, but only after a provision creating a trafficking watchdog at the Pentagon was stripped from the measure at the insistence of defense-friendly lawmakers, according to congressional records and officials. The Senate passed the bill last week.

The Pentagon’s delay in tackling the issue, the perceived weakness of its proposed policy and the recent setbacks in Congress have some criticizing the Pentagon for not taking the issue seriously enough.

The short list of contractors: DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related concerns.

The lobbying groups defending this: five defense-contractor-lobbying groups within the umbrella Council of Defense and Space Industries Associations: the Contract Services Association, the Professional Services Council, the National Defense Industrial Association, the American Shipbuilding Association and the Electronic Industries Alliance.

Here’s to hoping someone kidnaps their executives and sells them into a life of giving head to fat russian women with hairy moles. Talk about a perversion of justice coming home to roost.

[image credit: Banksy's perverted justice statue]

I have to admit knowing about the Libertarian Party site redesign since at least mid-November 2005 when Shane Cory (LNC Chief of Staff) gave us a sneak preview. Since any embargo on telling the world has now clearly passed, I think perhaps it’s time to have my say. First, I agree wholly with what Austin Cassidy had to say:

I saw this link posted on LP.org last week and I wasn’t immediately sure if I liked it or not.

The current site somehow feels more inviting to me. The new one is a little overly “flashy” and the name of the party doesn’t have the strong look that I would think they’d want.

[...]If you look at the DNC and RNC pages, it doesn’t quite look up to those standards. The LP redesign looks kind of pale and washed out by comparison.

It’s pretty clear that there is change afoot inside the LP, and for that I’m thrilled. However I get the distinct feeling that they are largely playing catch-up to the DNC and RNC instead of taking the long view of where political Internet strategy for communities is heading: open source.

See, I have an idea for how the LP could always stay one step ahead of the competition: set-up a technology foundation that does nothing but upgrade and build tools for libertarian websites and candidate campaigns. Something similar to how AOL funded Mozilla before they parted ways. There’s thousands of libertarian geeks out here who are already working on state, county and candidate sites who could be harnessed for a few hours of their time to create the best community strategy we could dream of.

A unified set of tools means a unified face for the party, from candidate to state party to national, and for less cost and time. The effect is simple: hundreds of people working on hundreds of projects versus hundreds of people working towards cohesion.

Then again, who says we need to ask the LP?

I was sitting here debating whether to get some work done or catch up on the news I had been neglecting due to the Christmas holiday. Since I am posting, I am sure you know my decision on the matter. I started with Latinas converting to Islam, found my way to Bolivia’s President-elect, Evo Morales, and walked right into Cuba.
The latest in the “Religious Makeovers” du jour was just not doin’ it for me tonight. If Madonna ain’t involved in it, I don’t wanna know about it.
What was interesting was the campaign platform of Bolivia’s president-elect. It is reported that Evo Morales, a coca farmer, rode to victory with help of America’s War on Drugs.

The U.S.-led war on drugs inadvertently helped bring Morales to power. The battle against coca eradication that he led helped mobilize Indian organizations already angered by continuing poverty and political domination by a rich elite, feeding a broader political movement.

I know, from experience, that the coca plant is not (always) the evil that it is associated with here in the states. I have family- ex in-laws- that come from Bolivia. I know that they use coca for ailments far removed from fun. I know that my former mother in law chewed coca leaves to relieve altitude sickness. I know that it is used in spiritual cases. And I know that it is used for recreation. But I see now, that our “war” against its recreational use may be bringing us closer to something we despise. Reading about Morales and his fight to keep his livelihood, I learned of his fondness for Castro.
Learning of that fondness made me want to see what Fidel Castro was spouting of late. I found this article where Castro states,

“We are in transition: to socialism, to communism…”

and that his revolution was “uncontainable and unstoppable”.

Hmmm. If I were feeling the love from the US government elected to “serve the people” I would not be worried. But, then I read this piece by Dr. Lee Edwards which offers

We Americans are lucky. We’ve never had to worry about a knock on the door in the middle of the night, with members of the secret police ready to drag us from our homes. We have never had to endure the horrors of re-education camps to break the minds and bodies of dissidents. We have never seen whole families, whole cities, even whole peoples deported or extinguished in the name of communism.

and

In Cuba, Fidel Castro has silenced any opposition to his rule, placing political dissidents in concrete jail cells with no light and no furniture for as long as 20 years. In China, thousands of dissidents are imprisoned in the laogai, slave-labor camps that are the Chinese equivalent of the old Soviet gulag. Others, as noted above, are shot down in the streets. In North Korea, the entire populace lives in a totalitarian nightmare, marked by starvation and mass public executions.

The warm and fuzzies did not even start to gel when I remembered that our government is indeed incarcerating political dissidents and spying on the public and that people- citizens or not- are being imprisoned and tortured on less than sound intelligence.

A great big circle. We start off fighting tyranny and oppression. Then we aid it. And then we find that we are subjected to it- again. And this time, there seems to be a willing abdication of freedom’s crown.

I should have done the work. But then I would go to bed knowing that my good work-bonus money taxed at a different rate- would be used to further encourage communism.

We’ve had ongoing controversy (1, 2, 3) on this site over whether the quotes provided by Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue are accurate or not. For those of you who live in a cave rely on the mainstream media as your primary source of the news, Thompson is the one who broke the story about these alleged Bush statements:

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”

“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”

“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

Stephen VanDyke, currently my key partner in journalistic crime, may wake up more abruptly than normal tomorrow after reading this article. After all, he initially described Capitol Hill Blue as “the political rag that doubles as a tin foil hat.”

At HoT, we try to qualify our rants as opinion and verify our facts when reported as news. We’ve made our mistakes (few and far between) and apologize (loudly) when we do. However, I’ve been doing this political reporting gig in print and electronic media as well as on political campaigns and websites for years. As a result, I get a lot of calls, e-mails, tidbits, rumors, and unsubstantiated facts on almost a daily basis. To be sure, my cell phone record just from tonight contains two juicy stories that I will not publish — yet. Somedays I can report them, as this small rumor (the one with the Kiefer Sutherland pic) from a very recent example provides. I’ve received my share of rumors of prominent conservative Christian politicans who have bedded people out of wedlock or done illegal drugs, liberals who cheat on their taxes, and so on. I won’t run these stories without a high enough level of substantiation — but when I do feel that I have enough reasonable sources for the information, I’ll publish them.

Thompson stated that he had three sources for his information. Depending upon the identity of the sources, that would probably be enough for me (or even VanDyke) to publish. It would not be enough to stop reasonable criticism of the story, however.

If I had to defend such a story without revealing my source(s), I might write a piece which would show that I was likely to have received the information from sources who are placed in a position to confirm its accuracy. Thompson just did.

In his latest article, Thompson provides a reasonable spectrum of groups of people close to the president who might just be privy to the quotes provided while providing a bit of cover to the people who presumably leaked the information. More importantly, he provides the necessary motivation for these hypothetical people to come forward.

Were I a juror in a court of law, I could not conclusively state that what Thompson reported is accurate. I could not disprove it, either. Bush has clearly acted in a manner to suggest that the words uttered might be true, Thompson is in a position to have received the aforementioned leaks, and there has been no credible evidence offered suggesting that Thompson lied. As a result, the preponderance of the evidence seems to lean toward Thompson — at this moment. If this changes, you can be certain to see a new story at Hot or another of the ubiquitous UPDATE tags with which our regular readers are all too familiar.

Note: this article contains dead links, the url is still in the hover/alt text. Keep the web working, curate content well!

Ron Fournier of the AP just wrote an article about the Internet and politics which is not filled with new news, relevant insight or even reasonable balance.

The article starts off just fine and dandy while promising much more:

Frustrated by government and empowered by technology, Americans are filling needs and fighting causes through grass-roots organizations they built themselves — some sophisticated, others quaintly ad hoc. This is the era of people-driven politics.

He is correct here, and could have used this beginning to start a great article. Instead, he chose to focus primarily on three has-been sites: MoveOn, Meetup and Blogs for Bush.

If he is not aware, Upcoming may actually be upcoming, while Meetup might need to be renamed Metup — especially since they decided to charge for their services.

While Bush may have won the presidential election, Dean clearly won the Internet battles. Kerry was even better than Bush on the ‘net, but can’t claim the credit for a movement started by Joe Trippi. I know, as I was a key player on the third front of this war.

According to the article, MoveOn has already moved on:

Shull, 31, was brimming with ideas for liberal causes, but MoveOn had virtually shut down after the election and the Democratic Party was catatonic. So she took matters in her own hands, e-mailing the 1,500 contacts she had made through MoveOn and asking if they wanted to keep busy.

Finally, Fournier didn’t even approach balance in his article. He covers the monolithic body of Democrats and Republicans but seemed to forget the people who first envisioned the Internet and ran the first political websites. These people claim to have been among the first major political movements on the Internet, and also very significant as late as the recent presidential elections. They also provide the best coverage of the relationship between the Internet and politics.

Update by Stephen VanDyke: Tom Knapp notes that libertarians have been known to “steal the march” or adopt new technology early, but that there is trouble in the follow-through:

Libertarians have proven their ability to “steal a march” on the enemy, and that’s a valuable ability, but it’s short by half of what we need. The next step is amassing enough troops — activists, dollars and voters — to take, or defend, the hill we reach before the other guys get there too. Figuring out how to take that next step is going to require some genuinely creative thinking, not just an assumption that the tools will get us there. The inability to figure out the other half of the equation is what brought Howard Dean and Joe Trippi to grief in Iowa, and it’s what Steve’s been breaking lots of skull-sweat over for the last couple of years or so.

He has a valid point.

Some people credit the fall of the Soviet Empire on the massive U.S. military buildup in Europe. Others credit it to capitalism (I prefer “commercialism” in this case to avoid connotations of preferential government treatment). Most believe it was the combination of the two, combined with other elements like internal corruption, foreign aid and western culture. I prefer the latter alternative — and will disagree with some libertarian philosophers (on the efficacy — not the mores — of the military angle) about the ultimate primary reasons for the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

Perhaps there is some hope to be found about the relations between Israel and Islamic mideastern countries. The AP reports:

Staff members at a Riyadh hospital got a surprise when they looked at the fine print on the paper cups they were using. Workers in a storeroom at a Dubai hospital were similarly shocked when they took a close look at the tags on a large shipment of uniforms, towels and sheets.

While officially illegal (the totals are disputed) in almost all of the Islamic states, the black market trade seems substantial:

The hidden trade is worth about $400 million a year about two and a half times what Israel sold to its official Arab trading partners, Egypt and Jordan, in 2004 said Gil Feiler, the director of Info-Prod Research, a Tel Aviv consultancy specializing in Arab markets, and an economic professor at Bar Ilan University.

OK, we now have phase one in what might perhaps build a long term peace in the Middle East. There are other factors in play, too. Clearly, western culture permeates both the Jewish and Islamic communities. As evidence, one merely needs to listen to the songs played on the ubiquitious transistor radios and boomboxes prevalent thoughout the region. Or simply look at the amount of Levis or t-shirts worn which are portrayed on the filmclips which make it to the west.

There are several problems in breaking down the walls between these ancient enemies, though. One is their own military and political culture. As Americans, we can’t do much to help that situation — but we can do a lot to harm it. Let’s take a look at how much we provide to the region in foreign aid. The Christian Science Monitor reports the cost of foreign aid to Israel at $1.6 trillion since 1973. The breaks out to approximately $5,700 per person. More precise details of how this aid is distributed are available from the Jewish Virtual Library.

In addition to the cost of the war (or perhaps as a direct result of it) in Iraq, we give money away to hundreds of countries around the world. We do this in a disproportionate manner, according to government figures:

In 2004, the United States is providing some form of foreign assistance to about 150 countries. Israel and Egypt continue, as they have since the late 1970s, as the largest recipients, although Iraq, receiving over $20 billion for reconstruction activities since mid-2003, is the biggest recipient in FY2004.

While outnumbered, it has been clear since 1967 that Israel has a superior military to that of its neighbors, creating a relative balance of military power in the region. What would happen if we quit playing favorites in the Middle East and thereby allow economic forces to prevail? Perhaps if the U.S got out of Israeli politics, the entire region could finally have a lasting peace.

_{Credit: Thanks to Rick R. for the research assistance.}

In proof-positive that Southern Baptists don’t all march in lockstep, Vox Day adds some thoughts about the costs of empire building. His latest WorldNetDaily article begins:

It is written that there is nothing new under the sun. Some 2,421 years ago, a politician convinced a powerful democracy that in order to defend itself from an enemy that had attacked it, it was necessary to attack an enemy that had not attacked it. In the event that the analogy I am drawing here is not immediately apparent to the reader, the relevant comparisons are Athens to America, al Qaida plus Saudi Arabia plus Iran to Sparta, and Iraq to Syracuse.

Day then outlines his case by showing historical parallels of fallen empires which used reasons similar to those used by Bush to our current foreign policy. While those of us opposed to the war in Iraq already get it, I believe this is a good read for the few real conservatives still defending Bush.

(sidebar to our favorite debating site commenter: See, I used religion in both a positive and neutral light today. I’m not opposed to religion, merely to blind adherence to dogma — be it religious, social or political.)

From BusinessWeek:

When Julie Abel goes grocery shopping each week, she drives more than 25 miles to Georgia to avoid paying the nation’s highest average tax on food: 8.4 percent in Tennessee.

“If you can save $5 it is worth driving down the road,” Abel said after traveling from her rural home in Hamilton County, which collects 2.22 percent sales tax on food on top of the 6 percent for the state. Georgia does not tax food sales.

Abel is not alone in her frustration. Rep. Michael Kernell, D-Memphis, said he regularly hears complaints about the state’s almost 60-year-old food tax and he predicted it would change.

“A lot of people can’t believe it,” he said. “People are leaving the state to buy groceries.”

As a strong advocate for lower taxes and having worked this particular issue in Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, I am in disbelief that anyone would find this shocking or even newsworthy. Of course people wish to pay less for the same product — taxes or no taxes. And people are pretty opposed to taxation, too — especially in the heart of the south.

Perhaps Tennessee is starting to get what folks in Alabama have known, though:

Chris Daly, chairman of Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, wants to end the state’s tax on food because he said it victimizes low and middle income people.

I used those arguments again and again during the Alabama tax debacle, where we (rich and poor alike) took the Republican governor’s proposal for the largest tax increase in state history and shoved it up his [you know what]. I’ve spent a lot of time canvassing the streets in Birmingham’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods and their word is typically the same as in lily-white agricultural areas and smaller towns: We can no longer allow these outrageous taxes.

Perhaps others in the south are now getting it, too. I’ve met Kimble Forester of Alabama ARISE on several occasions, and we agree upon and are allied on many civil liberties and justice-related issues — but not typically on taxation. From the article:

Another report by Tennesseans for Fair Taxation shows average sales taxes on food in states that border Tennessee range from no tax in Kentucky to 8 percent in both Alabama and Arkansas.

In Alabama, a spokesman for Montgomery-based Alabama Arise, an advocacy group for the poor, said there is an ongoing effort to eliminate or at least reduce the tax on food.

“We are taxing the poor on the necessities of life and that is something most states avoid. But we are doing it with pride,” said Alabama Arise director Kimble Forrister.

Welcome aboard, Kimble. Maybe we can now work together to get rid of a very wide range of oppressive taxation.

According to the Associated Press, a man has been jailed for over a year without ever seeing a lawyer.

This should come as no big suprise. Eminent Domain Obersts, Drug War Sturmführers, Homeland Security Standartenführers, Patriot Act Generals and War on Terror Field Marshals have been very busy tearing portions of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments from the Constitution and throwing them into the incinerator. In this particular case:

Walter Mann Sr., 69, was released Dec. 16 after a year and three months — more than twice the time he would have served if he had been convicted in his contempt-of-court case.

Mann’s legal troubles began in 2002, when his 13-year-old son assaulted him and was sent to a juvenile detention center. Mann, who was unemployed and on disability benefits, was ordered to pay $50 a month for the boy’s housing but never did, according to court records.

Is there any jurisdiction remaining in the U.S. which actually respects the judicial portions of the Bill of Rights?

The word gospel literally translates as “good news”, and here is some from the Catholic Church (for once).

I’ve done my share of verbally beating up on the Catholic heirarchy over the years, covering topics ranging from the banning of gay priests to covering for pedophelic ones. However, this case deserves some positive reinforcement:

Just 5-foot-2 but crackling with energy, Brenner’s days are jammed. She administers quick counseling sessions and does countless small tasks on behalf of the 7,100 inmates at La Mesa State Penitentiary, just across the U.S. border from San Diego. In come bandages, soap and medicine; out go messages to loved ones beyond the prison’s high walls.

In order to perform these services, she actually lives in the prison:

The cell at the end of the dark hallway barely fits a cot, a desk and a folding chair. There lives Sister Antonia Brenner, an aging American nun who was raised in Beverly Hills but abandoned a life of rare privilege to live in a notorious Mexican jail.

A snapshot of a day in her life provides:

She rises around 5 a.m. for prayer, then distributes prayer cards to inmates who are crammed inside a boxed chain-link fence waiting for a court appearance. Four days a week she speaks at the prison’s new church, an orange building with five rows of wooden benches and white plastic chairs.

“Everything eventually ends – your money, your sickness, your family, your time in jail,” she tells about 20 inmates dressed in gray sweatsuits, speaking in flawless though American accented, Spanish. “The only thing that won’t end is Christ’s love for you.”

From there, she walks the grounds, where a guard thanks her for finding a wheelchair for his grandmother, who died that morning.

The world could use a few more Catholics like this.

It’s anecdotal, to be sure, but it seems that the military-industrialist-corporate-government partnership has stated a War on Moms. We just reported on one mother under attack from the military, now it seems that corporate America has jumped into the fray. This time, the battlefield is on the peer-to-peer (P2P) front.

In the judicial Intellectual Property skirmishes between the music recording industry and downloaders, one mom seems to be caught in the middle and her apparent innocence is seemingly ignored by the corporate recording giants. From the AP:

It was Easter Sunday, and Patricia Santangelo was in church with her kids when she says the music recording industry peeked into her computer and decided to take her to court.

Santangelo says she has never downloaded a single song on her computer, but the industry didn’t see it that way. The woman from Wappingers Falls, about 80 miles north of New York City, is among the more than 16,000 people who have been sued for allegedly pirating music through file-sharing computer networks.

“I assumed that when I explained to them who I was and that I wasn’t a computer downloader, it would just go away,” she said in an interview. “I didn’t really understand what it all meant. But they just kept insisting on a financial settlement.”

A federal judge described Santangelo as “an Internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo, and who can barely retrieve her email.”

After having spent $24K in her defense, she has run out of money, and is now representing herself in court. One would think that the recording industry would drop this particular person simply because of the potentially negative PR. To date, this has not been the case, which is loud and clear statement about the scruples of the recording industry.

Robin Vaughan, the mother of a combat soldier, reports significant military harassment over a private and closed small group website on MSN. The site was established as a support group for “moms” of service members from one unit deployed overseas.

From ICH:

During the first few months of our site, the Army decided to call every single family on the site, informing them, that the site was not to be used by any of the families. The Department of Defense called families in the middle of the night to notify them to not use the web site. Most of the families were near tears, thinking they were getting “THE” call telling them their child or loved one had been killed or injured.

The information received via the phone call was to inform the families that the base did not condone the site, nor [did] the Army, and that it was not to be used; the gist was, families were not allowed to use the site, or they could get into “trouble”. Some members reported their soldier calling from Iraq, telling them to be careful about using the site as the Army was monitoring it.

Vaughan goes on:

As Web Mistress of the site, I needed to respond and qualify this information, as well as to educate this commanding officer as to the rights and liberties of a private web site; which I did. I was told I would have to let a commanding officer on the site to monitor the messages; I did allow this, but I also informed the officer that this was a courtesy, as there is no such law, or right of the military to monitor, shut down or exclude our web site.

I believe we received this order, and treatment for a couple of reasons.

Occasionally we would voice our concerns publicly over what our government was failing to do to help our soldiers, or we would share or argue political opinion as well. The second reason may be: the armed services all have a group of their own family type support (FRG); as we were not local to the base our soldiers deployed from, the site was a means to provide that support, as best as we could.

The support group at our base, tried to force the site to be given over to them, which I refused. At this time I was told, I might want to be careful, as the government was monitoring the site as well. Soldiers in our unit, while in Iraq, were telling their parents to stay off of the site, or to be very careful of what they wrote. This came from a rear detachment officer in charge, and members on the site.

I reminded the Army I am a private citizen, not on base, with a private site making no claims to have any affiliation with any branch of service, but clearly stating we were families and friends of our unit in support of one another. We were treated to power by intimidation. It isn’t hard to make that work, when you have someone’s child in a war zone.

We were a group of 77 families from all over the country, at the time of the call. Every single family was phoned and told not to use the site; and I believe some 150 other families were phoned as well, as it was an official order from a commanding officer.

Even in these days of frequent new reports of domestic spying, it seems this is one group of people the government would have chosen not to harass. Props.

It seems that the Bush war on everything the wingnuts consider immoral may be reversing itself. President Bush just pardoned two men who had previously been convicted of the manufacture and distribution of one of the more dangerous drugs abused by Americans:

President Bush has pardoned two Tennesseans convicted decades ago of moonshine charges.

“It’s a good Christmas present,” said Charles E. McKinley, 75, of Pall Mall.

Also pardoned was Carl E. Cantrell, 57, of Monteagle, who said, “It was the biggest relief I ever had.”

The pardons this week restore full U.S. citizenship to the men, including the rights to vote and buy a gun, their attorneys told The Knoxville News Sentinel. But their records will reflect both the felony convictions and the pardons.

Perhaps this is the beginning of a trend and Bush will likewise pardon the approximately 1.5 million other people currently in state and federal prisons for drug-related non-violent offenses. (I can already anticipate some of the comments on this posting, so I’ll save ya’ll the effort with: What have you been smoking, Steve?”) Props.