Samizdata

Paul Marks sees the rotting effects of increasingly authoritarian statism on both coasts of the USA

New York City has been known as the heart of statism in the United States since the late 1930’s. However, in recent decades the State of California (or rather its rulers) have been keen to overtake New York in statism.

New York State still (by some measures at least) manages to just have higher taxes than California (although I doubt that New York State is still ahead in terms of state spending as a proportion of average income), but in terms of regulations California is well ahead, and in terms of the practices of the courts California has (in some ways) the worst legal system in the United States.

Statist Californian cities (most notably Los Angeles and San Francisco) are handicapped in their race to have higher taxes than New York City by the fact that so much is centralised in California – but they do their best, and in terms of regulations are in many ways ahead of New York City in statism.

Why I am going over this well known and rather sad story? Well there have been recent developments in the race to collapse.

California has decided to ban home schooling (at least parents will now need to be qualified teachers) – this should increase the government education budget (in a state that is heading for bankruptcy anyway) and reduce the standard of education.

Not to be outdone, New York City is banning smoking in restaurants, bars and so on that seat under 35 people (smoking is already banned in establishments that seat 35 people or more) – all this is a direct aping of Californian regulations. New York City already has the highest taxes on tobacco in the country (much to the joy of organised crime). Both the anti smoking regulations and the higher taxes are the brain children of the new ‘Republican’ Mayor (both New York City and New York State have a long tradition of ‘Republicans’ of this sort).

Is the race to collapse intentional? I do not think so. Although the Greens and other small groups (stronger in California than in New York State) really do want collapse, mainstream Democrats and Republicans do not. However, intentions will not change results (objective reality sees to that).

Which area will collapse first? I simply do not know. New York City has already gone bankrupt once (during the mid 1970’s), and been bailed out (in return for some fiscal responsibility) by New York State and the United States government, I suppose history could simply repeat itself.

California may simply be too big for such a bailout, especially as the national (and world) economy goes into decline next year (unless there is an oil price collapse of course). A Californian collapse should finally get people’s attention focused on the fact that statism does not work.

However, academia and the media will work hard to prevent people drawing this conclusion. We can expect lots of articles and TV interviews from the likes of Paul Krugman on the lines of “the collapse of this symbol of capitalism proves that laissez-faire does not work”.

At least in the United States the TV networks (although utterly dominated by ‘liberals’) still feel the need to sometimes have people on screen arguing against the statist account of an event – they are not quite on the level of British television.

Paul Marks

In a landmark decision, W.R. McDougall says:

“Your number is finally up, America. I, together with the rest of the civilised world, wish to announce that we, yes we, the true human beings, intend to wash our hands of you.

Yours is a sick, warped, twisted cesspit of a nation drenched in the blood of innocents and corpulent on hamburgers made with the flesh of oppressed humans harvested for you by Sharon the Butcher and which you wash down with sticky, sweet drinks full of chemicals perfected by the Nazis and eagerly sold to you by your egomaniacal corporate criminals who intimately control absolutely everything you ever say, think or do.

You are solely and directly responsible for every single bit of misery and injustice that has ever occured since the inception of mankind and you neither realise nor care! But then what can one expect from a country whose national sport is Disembowelling Senior Citizens with a Pitchfork? And you all laugh while you do it just to reinforce how depraved and bestial you have become. And all the while you worship at the infernal throne of Bush the Barbarian who gnaws on the bones of harvested infants while licking his chops at the prospect of the next peace-loving nation he will reduce to dust and ruins with a mere contemptuous flick of his gnarled hand.

You conspire with each other in hideous cabals as you infest every corner of our beautiful planet like some kind of toxic parasite, sucking all the goodness out of creation and excreting in your wake poisonous fumes which deplete the air we breathe and contaminate the precious oceans with the odious ruins of your bloated bodies.

You arrogantly insist on the right to bear fossil-fuels and deplete the ozone layer with your primitive guns and you lose not even a wink of sleep while all around large parts of the globe fester with raw sewage and unmentionable diseases! Just look at Africa, Asia and my underpants!

But what’s the use of me complaining when you don’t even care a jot? Who else but demons could stand by indifferently while impoverished Argentinian civil servants are forced into sexual congress with farm animals while you flaunt yourselves flagrantly in your electric go-go bars with your styrofoam bossom-enhancers and obsessively free-market genitals which you wave provocatively at anyone who has the decency and heroism to stand up to your tyrrany. I am one of the few, one of those heros who is sick of watching you spend trillions of dollars on precision-guided nuclear-tipped junk food to launch into the unguarded orifices of helpless third world children and now everybody knows that the world would have woken up much sooner and smelled the stench of your fetid influence were it not for the genetically-modified TV programmes that you force them to watch.

Just how stone-hearted can you get? I bet if I was lying, stretched out in front of you on the sidewalk you wouldn’t even stoop to tell me the time. You wouldn’t even give a damn. You’d just walk right over me, wouldn’t you. Yes, you would. In fact you’d hop and skip over me, cackling with malicious glee at my misfortune before running off to one of your precious malls to buy onion-ring flavoured condoms with which to asphyxiate some poor Afghan peasant. In fact, you’d probably drive over my supine body in one of your monster, four-wheel drive, 12 cylinder blood-guzzling pick-up trucks while eating a pizza topped with endangered species. You’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you. Yes, you would. You’d trample all over me. You’d stamp viciously on the soft protuberances of my helpless body with your hob-nailed cowboy boots while laughing and telling each other dirty jokes and practising your golf swing and high-fiving and whooping and whistling dixie and waving fl…AAAAAAARRGHHHH…MY BRAIN JUST EXPLODED!!!”

Until recent heavy pressure from the US Congress, Saudi Arabia had a fast track for US Visas. All you had to do was talk to your travel agent and everything was sorted. Of course you had to make other arrangements for your AK47 and explosives, but what the hey?

Meanwhile, Marcelo Tosatti, a top Brazilian Computer Scientist with Connectiva, the current maintainer of the Linux 2.4 Stable kernel and the resident of a free democratic country that doesn’t treat women like excrement, is banned from entry. In his words:

I wouldn’t avoid going into the United States because of the DMCA, but I can’t go there anyway. I went into the United States for business on a B1 tourist visa, by mistake. I’ve been doing it for a long time, I never thought about it. They turned me away, I had to turn around and fly back. Before they always let me into the country on this visa, but after September 11 they’re more paranoid.

It’s not a big deal, with the B2 (business) visa you just have to pay $40. But now I can’t go into America.

Yep, that’s the way to do it. Keep out those pesky well paid computer geeks from friendly democratic countries. You just can’t tell what they might get up to.

While googling for the previous posting I ran across a pair of articles which left me open jawed. The first of them should be informative to many as to why Americans think Europeans dislike Americans for their middle class culture. While the reality is euro-trash culture is just as middle class as that of the US, the Continental Elites are, well, more Elite. “People who matter” actually listen to them and nod in sage agreement when they speak.

But before anyone over there gets their back too straignt and proud, read this one. You’ve got your own Holier Than Thou academics, every bit as bad as their euro-brethren.

It’s just that you don’t pay them no never mind.

Paul Marks reports on some interesting developments in the USA… and the politico-legal establishment do not like it one bit!

Our old friend jury nulification is back. For those people who have not heard of jury nulification it is the doctrine that a jury has the right to judge, not just the “facts of the case”, but THE LAW as well. All the Founding Fathers of the United States believed in this doctrine, but it tends to make modern legal folk froth with rage – things like the “war on drugs” might get into some difficulty if jury nulification makes a come back.

This November in South Dakota an amendment to the Constitution of the State will be on the ballot. The amendment will explicitly give a defendent the right to argue against the law (whether in terms of what it makes illegal or in terms of the severity of the sentance) .

Now I am not claiming that the admendment will pass (no doubt the legal establishment will do just about anything to defeat it), but it would be interesting to see “judge made” and “politician made” law mitigated by a real jury.

Of course, I should not assume that a jury would be more libertarian than a judge or a group of politicians in a legislature – but it may put an obstruction in the way of the statists.

Paul Marks

Imagine walking into a branch of a fast-food restaurant with a view to buying yourself a quadruple cheeseburger and fries, only to be told by the smiling counter-assistant; “Sorry, sir, we can’t serve you that food because you’re already too fat. Have a nice diet”.

When you protest at this public humiliation you will be told (through a rictus smile) that they are only acting on their legal advice.

This is the scenario that could be coming to a town near you if a certain Mr. Caeser Barber gets his way. Mr.Barber, a resident of New York City, has launched a legal action against several world-famous fast-food restaurant chains who, he claims, have conspired to turn him into a hog-beast.

“He claims the fast food restaurants, where Barber says he used to eat four or five times a week even after suffering a heart attack, did not properly disclose the ingredients of their food and the risks of eating too much.

It is too much to hope that that is a mis-print? Even after suffering a heart-attack this human vacuum-cleaner continued shovelling cheeseburgers and fried chicken down his neck. As somebody who is engaged in a lifelong jihad against flab, I am only too aware that my waistline is entirely my own responsibility but that sort of makes me a marginal minority in an age when one’s woes are expected be laid at someone else’s doorstep.

I could wax angrily about the rank silliness and raging absurdity of this victim-culture but I’d only be treading over well-worn carpet. Besides, Mr.Barber is highly likely to win regardless of my posturings.

Those of us who are familiar with the Holy Scripture of Post-Modernism (Neurosis, Chapter 1, verse 12 – “He that provideth for me shall face a mighty reckoning for his sin”) know only too well how this will play out. Mr.Barber will sit in the Courtroom (in a reinforced chair and with some sort of drip in his arm for theatrical effect – it generally works) and blub about his ruined life. His pudgy hand will wipe away a tear as he recounts how his childhood dreams of competing in the Olympic Decathalon have been cruelly dashed by Colonel Sanders and his monstrous regiment of corporate calorie-peddlers. Mr.Barber will blub, the Judge will blub, the lawyers will blub, the jury will blub and the press reporters will blub. Everyone will have a good old blub about blubber and the good citizens of New York will do their humane duty and compensate this poor man and punish the wicked purveyors of tasty nosh who have actually profited from his misery.

And once the inevitable verdict has been delivered, the flood-gates (or should that be ‘the food-gates’) will be open for everyone who has ever popped a button off their shirt or moved up from dress size 14 to dress size 16. The money may even make it worthwhile. Hey, if you can’t be beautiful, you may as well be rich. I swear that I see a new form of prohibition on the horizon, together with a War on French Fries.