The encroachment of the State can't be stopped if people increasingly give it the justification

The case after case listed at the Ron Paul site is interesting, not just for the encroachment of the police state but for the stupidity and/or borderline criminality of the punished anyway:

Whether it’s the working mother arrested for letting her 9-year-old play unsupervised at a playground, the teenager forced to have his genitals photographed by police, the underage burglar sentenced to 23 years for shooting a retired police dog, or the 43-year-old man who died of a heart attack after being put in a chokehold by NYPD officers allegedly over the sale of untaxed cigarettes, the theater of the absurd that passes for life in the American police state grows more tragic and incomprehensible by the day. 

In Georgia, a toddler had his face severely burned when a flash bang grenade, launched by a SWAT team during the course of a no-knock warrant, landed in his portable crib, detonating on his pillow. Also in Georgia, a police officer shot and killed a 17-year-old boy who answered the door, reportedly with a Nintendo Wii controller in his hands. The cop claimed the teenager pointed a gun at her, thereby justifying the use of deadly force. 

Then there was the incident wherein a police officer, responding to a complaint that some children were “chopping off tree limbs” creating “tripping hazards,”pulled a gun on a group of 11-year-old boys who were playing in a wooded area, attempting to build a tree fort.

The trouble is, the criticism of both sides is justified.  Yes, the SWAT team and female police officer were not only way OTT but they were criminal as well.  On the other hand, the burglar shooting the police dog needed to be put away all right.  But for 23 years? The public itself is making it so easy for the enforcers to get in and do what they shouldn't.  Much has been written about Mentoring programmes and these look nasty. It's become a science with its own sets of qualifications, extending the social service departments of local authorities to almost ravening monsters, ready to step in and remove a child at a moment's notice. The product of Children's Minister Aileen Campbell's backers:

Unfortunately, this dystopian future has arrived a little faster than I imagined, as last week the Scottish Government’s plan to give every child a state guardian from birth was launched. This state-appointed overseer will be a specific, named individual, and every child will have one, from birth. The responsibility for creating this named guardian will fall on the heads of the health boards for the first five years of a child’s life, before being transferred to councils. Perhaps the most worrying aspect of this development is that it clearly comes in large part as a mechanism to target and prevent child abuse.

It's not just over here:

Boston Children’s Hospital and the Massachusetts Department of Youth and Families take another child hostage because hospital staff disagree with the parents on the child’s medical diagnosis.  In California, “Baby Sammy” was taken from his parents because they left one hospital to seek a second opinion at another before subjecting the child to open-heart surgery.  In Ohio, an Amish family was forced to flee the country to spare their daughter unwanted and dangerous chemo-therapy, including a cocktail of drugs not approved for children by the FDA. Reports indicate the girl is in remission through natural means, but the Ohio hospital and child services department are livid.

In every case though, there were ostensible justifications which many might agree with.  In other words, there is a new era of parental irresponsibility, particularly with the young and single parent.  Over here, Labour acknowledges the problem but as it always does, tries to sheet it home to poverty because that ties into inequality and that means the rich can be slugged and the middle-class further attacked and eroded to "even the playing field" to that of stagnant mediocrity.

 All the while, state institution administrators draw fatcat salaries - witness the Baby P payout to Shoesmith. So what we have on the one hand is a society progressively debilitated, e.g. by the single parent family on benefits, the rise of gay adoption and so many other factors contributing to the death of the two original parent family which cost considerably less and gave a better chance to the child. Single parent families have issues.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/3235650/Children-in-single-parent-families-more-likely-to-suffer-emotional-problems-report-finds.html

 Even left-leaning publications acknowledge certain facts:
  http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2012/07/single_motherhood_worse_for_children_.html

 No one's suggesting it is the only factor - there is the world culture at an earlier and earlier age, dark gaming, children isolating themselves online, whereas once they were part of the family and so on and so on. The point being that the question of bad or irresponsible parenting is increasingly hard to define. It used to be the child found in squalour, with faeces about, having not being fed. But now even middle-class families which might have passed muster before fail on the criteria of increasingly empowered state agencies - hence the issues quoted and linked to above.

 And every one of those defends to the death that the children are loved and are being brought up well, that the parent knows "tons" of other cases where the original parents are abusive to each other and so on. And once again, these people are not wrong. Nor are those pointing the finger at single parents' situations.

They're all correct on their side of the argument. The issues, not cut and dried and fiercely contested, are simply an open invitation for the Mentor Service to step in. The Mentor Service is the foot in the door. It's the Mentor who notices "the problem" and passes it on to Social Services. It is Social Services which take it up from there. Encroachment. It couldn't happen without something to point to and this vanguard of the state does have many things to point to, to justify its intervention.

 Which intervention is, in principle, wrong and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Especially with Common Purpose and its brainwashing present in every council in England near the mayor's office. Common Purpose gets in on everything - witness Leveson. Some try to remove themselves from the State, from the grid but even that is fraught and anticipated. The Ron Paul site again:

Meanwhile if you’re one of those hoping to live off the grid, independent of city resources, you might want to think again. Florida resident Robin Speronis was threatened with eviction for living without utilities. Speronis was accused of violating the International Property Maintenance Code by relying on rain water instead of the city water system and solar panels instead of the electric grid.

Only an American phenomenon?  Blogger Macheath, over here, tells this tale:

Decades ago, in the maternity ward of a hospital later castigated in the national press for its shortcomings, a combination of indifference and brutally rough handling provoked me into expressing my opinion of the ‘skills’ of some of the nursing staff. As the objects of my fury stalked off, another nurse remained behind; “Please be careful,” she said, “if you say things like that, they will report you as having postnatal psychosis and have the Social Services in. They might even take your child away.” Parents, it seems, criticise those placed in power over them at their own peril.

The two points coming out of that are the danger and that it has been going on for a long time in the background in this country, only now it is coming to a head and reaching the press. The Ron Paul site again:

Now we can shrug these incidents off as isolated injustices happening to “other” people. We can rationalize them away by suggesting that these people “must” have done something to warrant such treatment. Or we can acknowledge that this slide into totalitarianism—helped along by overcriminalization, government surveillance, militarized police, neighbors turning in neighbors, privatized prisons, and forced labor camps, to name just a few similarities—is tracking very closely with what we saw happening in Germany in the years leading up to Hitler’s rise to power. 

When all is said and done, what these incidents reflect is a society that has become so bureaucratic, so legalistic, so politically correct, so militaristic, so locked down, so self righteous, and so willing to march in lockstep with the corporate-minded police state that any deviations from the norm—especially those that offend the sensibilities of the “government-knows-best” nanny state or challenge the powers that be—become grist for prosecution, persecution and endless tribulations for the poor souls who are caught in the crosshairs.

The people themselves must shoulder much of the blame for what they have become. They're almost inviting the State in with their irresponsibility and excessive self-centredness or even being innocent and finding themselves drawn into things made easy for them to be drawn into.  The kindly offer of help.  The kindly pay-day loan people.  The kindly Mentor.  Plus the infantilization of society in which parents would even countenance such things.

So who or what is to blame for this bureaucratic nightmare delivered by way of the police state? Is it the White House? Is it Congress? Is it the Department of Homeland Security, with its mobster mindset? Is it some shadowy, power-hungry entity operating off a nefarious plan? 

Or is it, as Holocaust survivor Hannah Arendt suggests, the sheepish masses who mindlessly march in lockstep with the government’s dictates—expressing no outrage, demanding no reform, and issuing no challenge to the status quo—who are to blame for the prison walls being erected around us? 

The author of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt warned that “the greatest evil perpetrated is the evil committed by nobodies, that is, by human beings who refuse to be persons.”

How many of the people described above are going to be remotely aware of what is happening? And of those who are aware, e.g. readers of this blog - how many dismiss it because it might criticize them either directly or obliquely?

 So therefore, what chance that anything can change and halt the advance of the State via the backdoor route of bureaucracy at local level?  The enormous danger is that the root causes are so diffuse, so hard to pin down, so removed from events further along the chain and so many people have bought into them that there is an inert but still collectively massive barrier to anything being done.

 If, for example, the "all must have prizes" paradigm in schools is but a tiny issue on the surface of a wider malaise and a group of teachers have bought into that, those teachers are not going to support any connection made between that and the malaise of society which allows a portal for the State to move in, even if the case can be made.  There's something for these individuals to lose here.

 And that's how Them operates.  It brings in legislation piece by piece via the backdoor, in response to some need perceived by people.

When they see that contrived need addressed, they're hardly likely to see that they have just enabled further totalitarianism.  When the State publishing organ - the MSM - brings up obesity and paedophilia and smoking and this and that., it wants the people who love banning things to all speak up.

 And slowly, the State, on the say-so of such people, bans this, then there's a new crisis and it bans that and onwards and onwards and then it extends it to everyone, just to be on the safe side, as in that Scottish Children's Ministry Mentor Number for all.

 And there we are.  Ninety Eighty-Four for a new age.

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Squaring the circle, packing your bags

In Britain, there are 28.89 million employed - 72.5% of the "people of working age"; median earnings approach £25,000.

In China, the average urban wage in 2006 was 1750 yuan per month, or (at today's exchange rate) slightly less than £2,000 per year.

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In Britain, there are 3 million homes where no-one works, with an average household benefit payment level of over £4,000 p.a. This doesn't factor in the cost of other benefits provided by the State, such as health and education. For example, State schooling costs something like £6,000 yearly per child.

In China, the official urban unemployment rate at the end of 2008 was 4.2%, or nearly 9 million people. This statistic does not include unemployed not eligible for benefits, or migrant workers - about 20 million out of 130 million migrants have no job. In industrialized Guangdong Province, for those who qualify, unemployment benefit for the first 24 months is 688 yuan per month, or £757 per year.

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In Britain, the 27.5% of the "people of working age" that might be employed but are not, number approximately 10.96 million.

In China, estimates Eric Janszen of iTulip, there are 20 million officially unemployed and the real tally should be 40 - 50 million.

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China has over 1 billion people and is desperate for land, and natural resources such as wood, water and arable soil. Despite restrictions on family size, her population continues to increase, largely because her people are getting to live longer (and will one day incur the high additional costs of growing old). She has industrialized at high speed and has built a massive skill base. She is continuing to acquire technological and scientific know-how, and is sucking in the world's steel and a panoply of key African and Australian minerals and rare earths. She sits on vast reserves of coal. The ruling Communist elite have not spent a long lifetime climbing the exceptionally dangerous slippery pole in their country, to see their beloved nation sink into chaos and their equalitarian beliefs defeated.

You are a British (or American) politician. You know all the above - or your handlers will tell you just before you go on "Question Time" or some other grill-the-pol show. (1) What will you say to your voters? (2) What private plans will you make for yourself, your family and your friends?

The power of ignorance

If we were as ignorant of what goes in political circles, as country folk were in the Middle Ages, how could we tell which party was in power? Unless we had been pressed into military service, wouldn't we pretty much go on as usual from day to day? The papers rage about tax but most people haven't a clue how much they pay in income tax and NIC on their salary slips. Is it OK, rational, to be politically apathetic? Isn't personal action to improve one's life 100 times more important than who you vote for every 5 years?

Refuge, flight, battle rejoined, victory, retribution

Brad Setser looks at a flood of demand for US Treasuries and suspects that it's central banks shifting into the securest dollar asset they can find; and away from other dollar-denominated assets.

The first comment on the same post says that the next stage is a run on the dollar.

Continuing the Tolkien fantasy theme, one recalls the flight to Helm's Deep, and the eventual breach. Ultimately, though at a cost, the good side wins, of course (Denninger explains today how we can face the mess and clean it up).

Time to revisit Michael Panzner's "Financial Armageddon" - reviewed here in May of last year.

If he's right - and he's been right so far - it's first cash, then out of cash. But there's not enough gold to act as the world's currency (unless a horrific amount of wealth is permanently destroyed), and if we start up a new fiat currency, the moral criminals of the banking class will play the game all over again.

I note that Max Hastings in the Daily Mail calls for bankers to be "named and shamed"; this is milksop stuff. Yet they're still going to get billions in bonuses this year! Why does the Proceeds of Crime Bill not apply? Heavy, heavy fines, so that generations of bankers and traders will remember and hesitate. How about the last 5 years' bonuses, as a benchmark? Punitur quia peccatum est ("punishment is to be inflicted, because a crime has been committed").

But even that's not enough. What about the political class that opened the financial sluices to alleviate the discomfort of 2002-2003? And did it several times before, too? (See Jesse today on Greenspan's bubbles.) How do we mete out condign punishment to those greedy for power, as well as those for money?

I repeat, this is a crisis of democracy.

Why don't the Tories now declare themselves on Europe, etc?

Supposedly the Conservatives are as far ahead as they've ever been since Mori started doing polls. Meanwhile, the economy is set for a hard, hard landing and Labour have been in power for far too long to be able to blame anyone else.

This is a golden opportunity. The Tories should make clear their policies, including all the contentious and painful ones. In or out of Europe? In or out of our various war zones? Higher taxes or cut spending? What to do about the NHS, education and welfare? About our corrupt and overpaid financial community? About importing low-paid people; trapping our underclass in unemployment and benefit dependency, and rotting their health and sanity; and exporting people that it cost us a fortune to support, educate and medicate? And what about the dreadful farce of the voting system itself?

Because one of two things will happen:

1. The Tories will win, have a mandate to sort things out, and have plenty of time between now and 2010 to make the people understand who made all these adjustments necessary. Once in power, they can keep repeating these messages so we will remember who's responsible for making us drink the nasty medicine. Fair blame to be apportioned to those Conservatives who failed us in the past, too - in reality, it's hard to find anyone among the British public so ignorant and cretinous as to think that either party can present a perfect record. Whom do the spinmeisters think they are kidding?
2. Or they will lose, and Labour can try to clean up after itself, fail disastrously, and shuffle into the shadows of history.

Or of course, the Tories can continue to do what they are now doing, and let us draw our conclusions. Then both major parties can fragment and, with any luck, die.

So, three choices: win straight, lose straight, or be unmasked. Because I'm darned if I'll vote for a Buggins'-turn pack of careerists, merely for the sake of a change from the conspiratorial, traitorous dictators we've got now.

The end of democracy

Simon Watkins and Helia Ebrahimi in The Mail on Sunday (p.58) give a graph showing that sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) purchased over £20 billion worth of British business in the last three years, and report a prediction that SWFs will own £6 trillion of world assets by 2015.

Wikipedia estimates the world's stockmarket capitalisation at $51 trillion and bonds at $45 trillion. Taken together, in sterling terms, that's about £49 trillion. So in seven years' time, sovereign funds are expected to control 12% of the market. This is significant: you'll recall that and EU countries require declarations of shareholdings at various levels between 2 and 5 per cent (3% in the UK), as seen in Appendix 5 of this document, and anyone owning over 1% of a company's shares has to declare dealings if the company is the subject of a takeover bid.

My hazy understanding of democracy is that it includes two crucial elements, namely, the vote, and the right to own personal property. We're losing both. What is our freedom worth when collectively, governments not only employ large numbers of people directly, but many more of them indirectly, through ownership of the businesses for which they work?

What does the vote matter? Here in the UK, we have had a coup by a small, tightly organised (and unscrupulous, even if and when principled) group who have realised that what matters is the swing voter in the swing seat, and nothing else. "What works is what matters" - a slogan that, superficially, seems simply pragmatic, but actually slithers away from identifying the principal objective: you can only tell if it works, when you know what you want it to do. And under our first-past-the-post system, with constituencies determined (how? and who is on the committee?) by the Boundary Commission, I could vote for the incumbent or the man in the moon, but I'm going to get a Labour Party apparatchik in my ward.

And I don't think the system will be reformed if "the other lot" get in, either: "Look with thine ears: See how yond Justice rails upon yond simple thief. Hark in thine ear: Change places, and handy-dandy, which is the Justice, which is the thief?" Structural issues matter: we are cursed by the psephologists, spin doctors and databases.

And as for property, when sovereign wealth funds go from being the tail that wags the dog, to becoming the dog, multinational businesses will be less concerned to satisfy the local shareholder, who may also be an employee. Big MD (or Big CEO) will have his arm around the shoulders of Big Brother.

We worry so much about wealth, and forget what it's for: not just survival, but independence, respect, liberty. Now, the peasants are fed, housed, medically treated, given pocket money, have their disabilities catered for, their children taught, and their legal cases expensively considered. So many of them are fat, enforcedly idle, addled with drink and drugs, chronically ill and disabled, negligent of their offspring and familiar to the point of contempt with the legal system. Despite (because of) their luxuries, they suffer, like the declawed, housebound cats in some American dwellings.

What matters is what works; these outcomes don't matter, except that they work for a class - which I think is becoming hereditary - that seeks, retains and services power. I have said to friends many times that we are seeing the reconstruction of a pan-European aristocracy, disguised as a political, managerial and media nexus.

The American Revolution was about liberty, not wealth, and it is one of the few major nations where the mice did, for a long time, succeed in belling the cat; there was a period here, too, when Parliament could call the King's men to a rigorous account. Now, even in America, the abstract networks of money and power are turning the voters into vassals of the machine that sustains them. As here, the political issues there will soon be welfare, pensions, Medicare and other elements of the badly-made pottage for which we sell our birthright.

As for Bombardier Yossarian in Catch-22, the first step back to our liberty is to stop believing in the benevolence of the system.

BTW: the man who wrote "The Anarchist Cookbook" later converted to Christianity. The one thing not to do with the system is to try to smash it - you'll only get something worse.

A winning combination

The Daily Mail alleges a new craze called "celebrity maths", where you combine two famous faces to make a third. Who might be the third here?

And what other political combinations would you like to see?