why punks should support the second ammendment

Often times people make decisions based on the goodness in their heart. They want solutions that lead towards their ideal world. This is a pure, and beautiful intention. However, the real world is not easy, its a very hard life. Things happen which are unfortunate, and sometimes to good people.

This is something we know. Our founders preserved our right to bear arms in hopes that when the government became persecutive, an armed populace would serve as a deterrant against severe actions of tyranny. They never understood how powerful our Federal Military might one day become, and how effectively that organizations like the FBI, COINTELPRO, and HOMELAND SECURITY could eliminate our ability to organize a militia. Our representative republic only works as a system of checks and balances, and the local militia is a check and balance against police and military corruption. Day-by-Day we let the progressives in the media and the big government camp take away these rights from us, claiming that they make us less safe.

When you take away weapons rights from law abiding citizens, that means the only people who will carry a weapon are people who do not mind violating the law. The idea that someone will not kill a police officer or your daughter or son because the weapon he would be using is considered contraband is a logical fallacy. Murder is illegal, and a far more serious violation, so for them to illegally acquire a gun is by no means a deterrant from them committing the crime. In fact, it transfers wealth from a private gun manufacturer, who makes safe and effective guns, to a black market, who charges a higher markup, and uses this money to build a criminal enterprise, including gangs, who may well kill your children with a stray bullet in a shooting or a robbery.

The Center for Disease Control did a study on the effectiveness of gun regulations on reducing death by gun accident, crime, suicide, and any other health risk associated with firearms usage and found that it had no sufficient relationship with an increase in safety.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwR/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm

You may reference that study there yourself. The CDC is one of my favorite resources for determining things like the rate of spread of infectious disease and I think they would be a more effective enterprise if they could operate privately and receive funding for their reports from the medical community! I would even sign up for a monthly fee to read their reports, because it is a great resource.

However, I digress, most Republican bobblehead types, the ones that get elected and stand for less than the "fringe" ones that actually stand for conservative type issues, defend gun rights for hunters. Organizations like the National Rifle Association compromise with New Dealers and big government Statists left and right to take away our right to cast off wicked government and be a first line of defense against violent crime. Did you know they recently passed a law that if an Iraq War Veteran comes home from the war with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he is no longer allowed his constitutional right to bear arms? What an insult to someone who served our nation, and sacrificed his life, and probably a limb or two to ensure our ability to walk around in a safe and free street.

Now if a crook sneaks into his home into the dead of the night, he can't even legally own a firearm to defend himself. He must instead rely on big government to protect him, the same one that somehow blew truckloads of money on Katrina yet left the place in a total shambles.

Mike Huckabee would tell you that gun control is about a man's right to hunt a deer. This is wrong. This attitude is an attitude of compromise. The right to bear arms is there to cast off wicked government, to deter military occupation, to help in an invasion on our soil by a foreign nation, and to act as a first line of defense against crime. The 10 minute to an hour response time of the local police is not sufficient to defend your family from a murderer, but the 600 feet per second response time of a bullet definately is.

Notice that all the school shootings and other major mass murder events happen at places where guns are prohibited? Murderers love the monopoly on firearms that Big Government Statists offer them... and the Statists love the shooting events. It allows them to tear at your heart strings and get you to vote for more gun legislation.

Let's be realistic, is the problem at Virginia Tech that there was 1 gun there that shouldn't have been there? or was the true problem that there were 62 guns that were NOT there. How could one man fight an entire school building full of people, killing half and injuring most all by himself? Only because he had a monopoly on the weapon involved.

Don't let the statists take away the one thing that keeps a Military Occupation in America off the table.

It is your right, and your responsibility to protect this right, both in your State and Federal Constitution.

The Future of Music Consumption -- How you will get your Jams a year or two from now

This is the all defining document regarding the future of music media.

I mean that in total seriousness. If you are in the business of music or are a fan of music, and fail to understand the predictions I'm about to bring to light, you will be left in the dust.

Ladies and gentleman, now that Best Buy and Wal-Mart have cut their shelf space by 60%, the compact disc has passed away. We need to give it a funeral, so people will stop talking about them, and bands will get the memo and stop signing away their licensing rights to record labels in exchange for a loan which is smaller than a car loan only to ship between 300-5000 copies of their CD to stores, making it one of the least popular items at their merch bin behind their side print shirt of an exploding heart hand grenade.

its over. the record industry based on physical media is over. at least as the central avenue of revenue it is... and boy is that exciting for an artist and libertarian like myself! That a. ends the corporate strangehold on our dollars, and b. means we can redesign how money flows in music.

HERES THE NEW FUTURE:


I have a friend from a prominent banking family(who I will not name here). His family is one which is so rich and tied into the finances of the world that they don't like to flaunt their name around in public life, and, being my friend, I will respect that. I happen to disagree with him very much politically on a lot of things, myself being a non-interventionist libertarian and he is a globalist in fan of a global union, but, i digress. He talks about an IMPENDING NEW TECHNOLOGY that all the financiers are investing in right now.


This technology is GOOD NEWS for music fans. It is called WiMAX. Follow the link for the tech jargon on this stuff to see what it is. For layman's terms it is a broadband micro-wave wireless internet connection which can be received anywhere in a miles-and-miles radius from the tower. All the money men are desperately scrambling to get these towers up and the funding is already there. Rural governments are matching funds with them in order to get this super high speed internet to areas where traditional cable and satellite methods are ineffective. This will accomplish several things:


1. bring the internet to rural communities, meaning more people stealing our music(HELL YEAH!)

2. the speed that the towers can transmit, especially close to the tower, is wildly faster than any current technology can receive it


Essentially, this will create de facto worldwide access to an internet with speeds that make the speed from your CD to your headphones look like a snail.


What does this for mean for music? Last.FM and Myspace have entered into deals with all the majors to license their music for free for streaming play. All of it. I'm sure they are paid some licensing fee. Indie artists can sign up for the programs too, and when your song is streamed, you are paid a portion of the ad revenue, which, although small, ads up very quickly. My own band has over half a million plays on myspace alone... so this is insignificant with the current technology, BUT...


Imagine if someone created a streaming device that read the signal from WiMAX towers, at a faster rate than 128kbps. That is the common resolution for most of those stolen .mp3s you guys are jamming on your ipod to save space for more songs. Imagine if the device could log on to myspace or Last.FM and just literally stream any song that existed immediately over the air at a better quality than you could save it on your harddrive. You paid a small fee per month for service to the company which carried all the music. Indie artists could upload the songs themselves and you could hear them that very day. Every time you played a song, it would report back to the service and give the band of your choice an ad revenue share, something probably like .01 cents.


Now, if everyone were using these devices, which would be hot as fire for how cool they are, then every single play of every single song everywhere in the world would be ad supported and then would fairly pay the artists who put them out. You would no longer need a label to publish your songs or collect payment.


The only thing that is stopping this from happening is a tiny leap in technology, which, I guarantee, will happen whether someone takes charge of it or not. The WiMAX towers are going up, I've overheard the phone calls between investors. The BIG MONEY people who can swallow governments and eat the corporate record labels for breakfast are talking about six month timetables for some of these to go up. This creates a vacuum of technology for the first developer to come up with a streaming device which can stream over the air music at a better quality than an .mp3. Whoever creates this device first becomes a millionaire. I hope that millionaire graduates from MIT or whatever really quickly because I NEED this transition to earn the money from all the European LWID fans who can't buy our record because its not available in stores.


I need a way for our fans to support us, just by jamming our tunes. What an awesome world for an independant band if this technology hurries up and happens.


But mark my words, it is happening. These towers are going to be everywhere, everyone will be on the net, and the device to read it and shift from digital download to streaming play will be the FUTURE OF MUSIC. There's too many millionaires to be made off of this for it to not occur. So bands, be prepared, start giving away more music for free, let fans stream everything you've got. the more used to this they are, the better your stats will be when the transition occurs and the more viable you will be.


The music industry is built off of a bad model right now and is dying, we are in a "correction period". The Golden Age will come when these towers are built. Prepare ahead, do not sign record contracts that give away your rights to these types of plays in a royalty sense. Demand that the contracts treat streaming play ad revenue as a partnership, so that you can see the money from them.

Powers which are not enforced, do not exist

Mayor Carty Finkbeiner of Toledo, OH recently denied the Marines access to using his city for wargames. While I will say with all confidence that a strong defensive military needs to have a sound understand of all types of combat, including urban combat, and that reasonable efforts to train them in such skill is of high importance, in this case Finkbeiner's actions were a neccessary assertion of the power of a state governed mayor to deny federal military authority over his city.

While it is generally understood, falsely so, that in America every individual is a sovereign and the elected officials are simply citizen representatives, there lives a more complex reality behind the organization of authority in American politics. The significance of this particular event is that we have reached a new age where the Military feels that urban training exercises in American cities is a valuable and necessary activity. Despite having a budget which is in excess of any industry in the history of mankind, which could build the most technologically advanced training facilities, they still chose to do this in a live American city. The mayor felt that this would be inappropriate and told the Marines to leave. The significance here is that the Marines left. It is through their leaving that Finkbeiner retained the authority to remove the Federal Military from his city.

On the one hand, though Finkbeiner was lambasted in the Media, with a similar line of reasoning as "if you don't support the war, you don't support the troops", he stood up for an authority and a power which he believed lied in his constituency, based in constitutional design, and by the submission of the Federal Marines to his command, he assumed this power for his constituents. It is for this reason that he is a patriot to the people of his city. Had he not stood up for this power, the Federal authority would have been able to use it as case precedent that this sort of thing is acceptable. The Marines probably have the military might to command that the city allow their wargames regardless, and if enough cities allowed it over time, a dissentor in the future might be facing full executive challenge to his sovereignty, beginning with legal action and possibly ending with military action.

The reason for this, is the nature of authority. It is falsely believed that authority is found in the defining document, the constitution, in America. In reality, it is international law, through a complex system of treaties, relationship, and military conquest that the division of power exists in civilized society. Although much of our current government exists in direct violation of the constitution of the United States and its pursuant State constitutions, the violations themselves are legal, have the backing of the United States Military Generals, the executor and his branch of subjects including the law enforcement authorities of the states of the United States. While the militia is the Constitutional check and balance against the executive military, the militias of the states or interests of the citizen-sovereigns were defeated, most notably in the Civil War, but in many other cases as well. One could argue that cases such as Waco also prove victories of the Federal Military against the militia of citizen-sovereigns. As per international law and recognition of state authority, these defeats and the submission of the citizen-sovereigns to the rule of the new law thereafter create new treaties which supercede the Constitution of the United States as legal authority. Although the new governments caused by these coups grants some recognition to Civil Rights found in the consitution, it overturns the concept of Natural Rights which are demonstrated in the constitution.

The shift from the usage of the concept of Natural Rights to the usage of the term Civil Rights only further submits to the will of the new governments, to whom the Constitution is an ideal, not the rule of law. This means that you now get your rights from the government, and that these rights can be taken away. Natural Rights mean that your rights are given from your creator, and that no man can take these from you.

Considering that you at one time had a Natural Right extended from the Constitution, under Constitutional rule, let's take a look at how that has changed. It is clear that no citizen of the United States is a citizen sovereign. You cannot afford a private military or weaponry to defend a claim that you own land. If you choose to purchase land and then refuse to pay taxes, you will have your property taken from you. You do not have the power to hold the land and live in peace in a way that others would recognize as sovereign. You do not have the right in America to choose what products you will buy, or what you will ingest into your body. There are a vast array of products which, upon purchasing, you can have your life and liberty seized from you and you can be placed in an increasingly private jail system. Since the gross majority of crimes which would incarcerate a citizen of the United States are ones which do not cause harm to a third party, it is not being done on the behalf of the citizen-sovereigns of the United States or the individual States. It is being done on the authority of the executor of the Federal Government or the executor of the state government at the expense of the pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness of the citizen-sovereign. This, on a singular event, is a declaration of War between the government of the United States and the citizen-sovereign which is recognized by the Founding Father's and their documents concerning the design of our Republic.

When a citizen-sovereign submits to an executive authority, allows himself to be placed in prison for such a crime by force or threat of violence, he has lost a war. His imprisonment is the terms of the treaty. When the community around him allows it to happen, they have either sided with the non-Constitutional authority of Civil Rights and State power, or at best, decided to remain neutral to shirk off the responsibility to protect these rights for other citizen-sovereigns. In a microcosmic way, they have granted the same authority to the State concerning themselves in the future. Since they did not protest or take arms against the State for the crime committed, they have given away this power to the state in regards to their own right to Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness.

There exists a truth in saying that one cannot bring a Constitution or book of laws into a court to his defense. Once you have entered into a court, and submitted yourself to its authority to render judgement on a matter, you have de facto given away the power to resolve the issue to the judiciary in question, and he can chose to rule however he likes.

Ultimately, there has not been a successful military challenge by a state or citizen militia to the power of the State in U.S. History. This means that, in accordance with International Law, there is no guarantee of Constitutional protections in our government. It is only through popular election of people who recognize the authority of this document that we can hand back the power to the people. As of right now it is a tiny minority who believe in Republican government in American politics, so to refer to our system of government as "Republican" or "Democratic" is in ideal alone.

There exists a famous quote, "we have four boxes with which to defend our freedom, the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. Apply in that order." Be not fooled, no power exists without proper enforcement. Enforcement of power can come only through the submission of your opposition to the application of said power. As it stands, the powers of Liberty in America, the Natural Rights of the Citizen-Sovereign exist in a tiny, limited scope, and are undefendable from further trespass.

We now have quite a few guys who are standing on the Soap Box, I will join them there. We need to now move to step two. There is a Revolution at hand to return to our Republican system of government, and to add new protections to help us maintain it. The Ballot Box is our next line of defense, let us use it!

Remember, the moral of the story here is that powers which are not enforced, do not exist.


SPECIAL NOTE: to those of you who get the entirety of your understanding of political theory from broadcast television news, what i mean by Republican government is Republic vs. Empire, not George Bush vs. John Kerry. To me, George Bush AND John Kerry are representatives of the rule of Empire, and Republican government is a representative government of the people(who are the sovereign nations), under Constitutional rule.

A critique of socialism from a true libertarian perspective

The universal critique of libertarian capitalists by libertarian
socialists holds its basis in semantics.  The libertarian fundamental
that one is free to do whatever one chooses so long as it does not
constitute an act of aggression upon another is set against their
economic beliefs.  They then say that accruance of personal wealth is
considered an act of economic aggression against another and therefor
is a contradiction.

This is built on a false piece of logic; that all resources belong to
society, and that when one accrues resource it comes at the expense of
someone else.  I'm not saying that there aren't lots of examples of
economic entities that do this, in fact there are, but libertarians find
these actions crimes.  The reality is, resources are in the possession
of nature, and if man does not create material resource, it does not
come into his possession at all.

Their argument holds no distinction between a large private company that
provides a great service at a low price and a constitutionally illegal
corporation that exists in the public sector.  Surely, publicly traded
corporations, insurance companies, venture capitalists definately take
opportunity and productivity away and then financially profit on it.
This is no doubt the truth, I agree with that wholeheartedly. However,
without corporate welfare and corrupt legislation, limited liability
corporation would not exist, changing the entire face of the market.

This is something libertarian capitalists and socialists agree on, where
they part ways, however, is that a libertarian believes that when a
legal, uncorrupted liable private business increases its productivity in
order to provide more goods and services, it serves a dual purpose of
assigning wealth to the company and its workers, and lowering the cost
of the product they sell due to increasing the supply in the market.
This, a libertarian belives, makes the quality of life for the working
class much better.

It is public, social institutions that do the robbing.  Publicly traded
corporations, which are limited liability entities not connected to a
private individual pool enormous wealth, enabling them to artificially
deflate prices to destroy competition, then to raise them in the end
when they get a monopoly.  Then the workers, with no other option, are
forced to unionize, driving the price even higher still, which passes
the cost right back to the worker, especially the unskilled workers who
can't unionize.

The main point of debate here is that accruance of wealth does not have
to come at the expense of someone else.  In the event that one persons
gain of private property requires stealing anothers, this is a crime.
On this I agree, however to say that increasing your production of items
to accrue more wealth is tantamount to venture capitalism is where these
well-intentioned thinkers slide off track.

The concept that the workers will then be paid less while the business
owner profits is a failing business model.  In a situation where limited
liability corporations are not allowed to profit(19th century america),
private companies who refused to pay a great wage would see a suffering
in the quality of goods, resulting in a decline in profits.  The market
would destroy such a company, and he would be liable for all the risks
involved.

Ultimately, this argumental flaw comes from semantics, not intent.
Anyone who believes a libertarian is "pro-corporation" has not read any
of the fundamental readers assigned to the movement.  It is one sketchy
ruling on applying the 14th ammendment to corporations that makes this
possible, which any libertarian would like to see overturned.  Big
businessmen need the ability to fail when they are not productive, which corporate
liability loopholes do not allow.

When you consider that application of socialism requires statism of the
highest order, let not the libertarian socialist debate semantics to the
point of confusing him into agreeing with the totalitarian statist.

Change?

“When you choose the lesser of two evils, always remember that it is 
still an evil.”
-max lerner

“Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may 
cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
-john quincy adams


This will anger a lot of very happy people, but I can't say that I
care.  Its not in my nature, as you probably well know.

This is a bubble popping.  Just because there's hope we "can believe
in", doesn't mean its hope we "should believe in".  Bear in mind, the
general public doing the believing is the same general public that
beleived a third world county(iraq) was a threat to the U.S. National
security, the strongest military superpower in the history of the
world.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have campaigned tirelessly on the
concept of a change of direction in Washington; however they have not 
voted in such a way while in office.  This is wicked demagoguery of the
highest order.  Barack Obama may have spoken out against the Iraq War in
public life, he certainly voted to fund it in every opportunity he has 
been given.  Congress has the power to deny funding to any military action
at any time, and he, like many of the demogoguecrats, chose to prioritize
attatching pork barrel projects to the military budgets to increase
their electability at home over defunding a wicked and deadly war.  This
political expediency has a clear and defined body count of thousands of
americans and millions of arabs.

Furthermore, he voted YES on reauthorizing the wicked Patriot Act, which
overturns the constitutional protections of illegal search and seizure,
and has not signed up to co-sponser the reauthorize the constitution act,
which would undo the really heinous portions of the Military Commissions Act
which defacto authorizes torture.

These Bush-friendly votes are hardly evidence of a commitment to change;
rather they are proof of false rhetoric.  Barack Obama is not antiwar. 
Barack Obama voted to fund the Iraq War.  Barack Obama would not rule
out a nuclear first strike against the weak third world nations of Iran
and Pakistan.  This foreign policy of nuke first and ask questions later
was indicated in his responses to questions in recent debates.

Barack Obama's claims to be standing up for the poor and little guy in
our country are as empty as the echos of his false antiwar rhetoric. 
Judicialwatch.org rates him in the top 10 most corrupt politicians for
pushing for biotech legislation that benefitted his personal stock
portfolio.  His campaign coffers are loaded with huge money granted by
various corporations who will want the favors back in time.

There's still time, let it be known that before the general election, it
is wise to vote based on issues and your conscious, not rhetoric.  And
by issues, I don't mean campaign platforms, I mean by their voting
records.  These are easily available online.  There's no excuse to not
check the information out and make an informed decision.

Voting reflexively based on party lines, or voting for people you
perceive as a possible "winner" is unacceptable.  This isn't Las Vegas,
betting on a sure win does not make you rich, it makes you a sheep to
corporatism.

While the middle class is whittled away by the stock market, the people
remain fooled that a vote for a republican is for the benefit of the
rich, and a vote for a democrat is for the benefit of the poor.

A vote for obama, clinton, mccain, romney, huckabee is a vote for
corporations and globalism... No matter what party they belong to.

Sadly, I feel it may be too late to turn our course.  We are a declining
imperial power.

If the people are to believe that someone who voted for all the Bush
garbage everyone hates is our best hope for "change", then bring on the
decline.  We deserve it.  At least the Caligula period will have some
sweet orgies.