Police Are Government Revenue Generators

Hypothetical conversion:

cop: "Do you know why I pulled you over?"

Me: "To generate revenue for the government."

---

I've been meaning to write a post I was going to title: "The Jersey Shore DVD box set provides more value than cops."

Obviously, people who buy things, even as stupid as a tv show dvd series, do so becasue they chose to and were not forced to do so.  And because of this people are employed in the making of these things.  People are employed in the creation of goods and services desired by others.

And cops have jobs because most people cannot imagine a world without them.  And in order to justify their existence, and generate revenue, they are tasked with enforcing trivial laws and giving out tickets.

But rather than expand on that idea, I've discovered that my favorite author has been writing articles for a website that I've never heard of until recently.  And he's beaten me to it:

Police Work has become a Racket by Jeffery Tucker

Somewhere in my bag I have an envelope that contains a bill. It was handed to me by a local policeman after being stopped on an interstate highway in Texas. I was doing a mean 80 miles per hour in a 75 mph zone.

So of course this great servant of the public had to stop me before I endangered the lives of so many others, including the people going 85 and 90 miles per hour who were passing me on the right and left. I got caught because—well, probably because the others were going too fast to catch.

So this guy stops me and informs me of my very bad behavior. He explains that I’m not allowed to do what I was doing and so therefore he has to give me a citation. But he assures me that this citation does not mean that I’m necessarily guilty. This is a government of laws, not of arbitrary dictates by heavily armed people in bulletproof vests, and so therefore I have a constitutional right to a fair trial.
Or so we are constantly told.

I kind of began pressing him on this, which I probably should not have done lest I get arrested yet again. But I couldn’t help myself.

“Let’s just say that I think you are wrong. I mean, you are probably right, but let’s just say that I think you made this whole thing up. I can dispute this in front of the judge?”
“Yes, sir, you may. Just see the court date.”

“And where is this court?”

“Right here in this county.”

Of course I had explain to him that I was headed to the airport and that I live 1,000 miles away. I asked whether I could use Skype or Google Hangout to attend my hearing.
“I’m sorry, sir, you have to attend in person.”

I continued on: “So I have to drive to Atlanta, catch a flight to Dallas, rent a car and drive 100 miles south on some particular date in order to have my rights realized? You do understand that this would cost me probably two days of work and as much as $1,000?”

and so on...

Hypothetical Scenario

asshole cop: Do you know why I pulled you over?

me: To generate revenue for the government.



What would be the result?

Same as usual, I suppose.  Although I notice that they no longer start with that question and instead start with the lecture on speeding.

---

Note: In an attempt to delete some spam comments, I accidentally deleted a pile of legitimate comments.

Quality

A few days ago I lamented the lack of quality apparent in our culture today.

Recently my dad had a flat tire where the sidewall blew out.  He's suspicious the guys at the oil change place overinflated the tire.  (He did say that the cop, who waited in his car, was nice enough to illuminate the place where he was changing his tire with his headlights.)

My deer skin got back from the butcher shop recently.  I am 100% sure it is not the skin from the buck I killed.  This skin has a tag with my name on it punched through an ear, even though I kept the whole head when I left the deer at the shop. 

It seems to me that I'll need to be doing all my oil changes and deer processing myself.  It seems that these are two more cases of things where I am better off doing them myself.

We could add public safety to that list too.  What I've learned about police this month is that they won't help changing tires, they are of no use when we are robbed, and they are of no value in finding those responsible for hit and run damage.  Not to mention, just for starters that cops are apparently trained how to minimize their chances at being punished for murdering people.

What good are police?

One more thing that I've noticed about quality comes from my part time job at a sporting goods retailer.  Shoppers looking at binoculars are often disappointed when they learn that companies like Leupold, Vortex, and Zeiss have their stuff made in China.  These shoppers are invariably the ones that want to buy the cheapest stuff.

You can't complain that binoculars aren't made in America anymore, and simultaneously buy the cheapest stuff available.

Either pay more for your stuff, or stop complaining that in order for their to be cheap stuff available it needs to be made overseas.  The reason everything is made overseas is because you are all too cheap to pay for stuff that is made here.

All this leaves me with two questions:

1. How do I keep from smelling like oil all day after changing mine?
2. What do I do with the old oil once its out of the car?

Obamacare will be Awful: Links

No kidding, right?

Socialized medicine is bad in Canada.

Universal healthcare is bankrupting Japan.  Let the elderly die, says one politician.

And our politicians, who lovingly voted for Obamacare, have opted themselves out of it.

How wonderful.


"Everyone has a right to free medical care, but there is, in effect, no medicine and no care."

-Murry Rothbard

***

Also note that I was going to add a few select quotes from the linked articles, but Blogger was not allowing me to copy and paste.  Stupid Blogger.  Use Wordpress for blogging.

“everyone has the right to free medical care, but there is, in effect, no medicine and no care.” - See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.XwMKTzFG.dpuf

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpu

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.d

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpuf

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpufecent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.

Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpuf

A recent study on Canadian health care has been released late last year. In it, the authors examine the deleterious effects of socialized medicine on patient wait times and the delivery of care. It offers Americans a revealing glimpse of the future economic implications of Obamacare.
Released by the Fraser Institute, the December 2012 survey of specialists reveals that Canadians are now waiting 17.7 weeks between the referral to a specialist and the delivery of treatment. This is 91% longer than in 1993, when the institute began studying wait times.
In essence, wait times in Canada have doubled in the past 20 years. Sadly, the rationing of care that results in lengthy wait times for patients is a predictable consequence of government interference in the medical system.
- See more at: http://lfb.org/today/a-cure-for-obamacare-from-canada-with-love/#sthash.Zqh8Adkr.dpuf

Can you be right and a nut at the same time?

Race has something to do with it. A lifetime of mixing with East Asians has left me with the impression that the level of nuttiness there is somewhat higher than it is among Europeans. I don’t have much direct experience with blacks, but people who do tell me that high proportions of them believe in something crazy: AIDS is a CIA plot, a mad scientist named Yakub created the white race, O. J. Simpson didn’t kill his wife, etc.

Oh, and all those blacks being murdered in Chicago? Illinois State Rep. Monique Davis says it’s the cops:

There’s some suspicion—and I don’t want to spread this, but I’m just going to tell you what I’ve been hearing—they suspect maybe the police are killing some of these kids.

-Taki's mag

Quote of the Day, 7-9-2013

Guess which issue this comment is about.

Exactly. They can never let the issue go away. Neither side can afford to have the issue go away, really. Both the left and the right have a vested interest in keeping the issue alive and highly contentious, especially for fundraising purposes and to aid voter turnout for their side.

Compromise based on common sense is something neither side really wishes to think about.

And the issue is:  Does it matter?

How are we different from a police state?

And what can be done about it?

According to the Charlottesville Daily Progress, shortly after 10 p.m. on April 11, the 20-year-old U.Va. student bought ice cream, cookie dough and a carton of LaCroix sparkling water from the Harris Teeter grocery store at the popular Barracks Road Shopping Center. In the parking lot, a half-dozen men and a woman approached her car, flashing some kind of badges. One jumped on the hood. Another drew a gun. Others started trying to break the windows.

Daly understandably panicked. With her roommate in the passenger seat yelling “Go, go, go!” Daly drove off, hoping to reach the nearest police station. The women dialed 911. Then a vehicle with lights and sirens pulled them over, and the situation clarified: The persons who had swarmed Daly’s vehicle were plainclothes agents of the Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control. The agents had thought the sparkling water was a 12-pack of beer.

Did the ABC’s enforcers apologize? Not in the slightest. They charged Daly with three felonies: two for assaulting an officer (her vehicle had grazed two agents; neither was hurt) and one for eluding the police. Last week, the commonwealth’s attorney dropped the charges.

The agents’ excessive display of force is outrageously disproportionate to the offense they mistakenly thought they witnessed: an underage purchase of alcohol. But in a sense, Daly got off easy. A couple weeks after her ordeal, a 61-year-old man in Tennessee was killed when the police executed a drug raid on the wrong house. A few weeks later, in another wrong-house raid, police officers killed a dog belonging to an Army veteran. These are not isolated incidents; for more information, visit the interactive map at www.cato.org/raidmap.

-reason

Abortion

After watching this debate on abortion I think that the point at which life, and a person's rights, begins is an unclear issue.

If you insist on having even a limited government, then one of the laws should be that no one is allowed to harm another.  Therefore, deciding when a person "begins" is the point at which his right to not be harmed begins.

A point I liked from the above linked debate is that the point when the unborn can survive without the mother could be important, because that's the point when the unborn stop living at the expense of another.

However, that's an awkward point becasue science changes all the time and abortion laws cannot be changed that frequently.

As far as I can tell the logical abortion law options are:

1. Life begins at conception.  No post-conception birth control.  Abortions are illegal.

2. Life begins at birth.  Abortion is legal until part of the unborn exits the mother.  Abortions are legal, partial-birth abortions are not.

I like both options, for different reasons.   The imposition on the mother could be considered as the unborn "harming" the mother, but the right to live should be given priority over discomfort and pain.

A Private Police Force

Stationary Waves has a post on a private police force.

excerpt:

The idea is that anarcho-capitalists believe society is made safer more effectively by private police forces that compete with each other to serve citizens. A specific business model has never (that I know of) been specified, not because it's inconceivable, but rather because things could be handled a variety of ways. For example, you might live in a gated community that offered its own, internal police force, paid for by homeowners' association fees. In that case, your private police force would be tied to your location of residence.

(Note: There are a lot of good examples of private security like this out there in the real world today. It is more common in developing nations, but not at all uncommon in places such as universities in the United States, that form their own police forces paid for by tuition, grants, donations, and other funding streams.) Alternatively, you might live in an area served by multiple police forces among which you choose the one that offers the best protection/service at the lowest price. Here, you might subscribe to police services that can be invoked whenever you feel you need them, or perhaps you simply wait until you need to contact a police officer, and then choose a specific force's number to call. Or maybe you call a central dispatching agency that puts out a notice that someone is in trouble, and the police forces all compete to arrive first and gain your business.

As you can see, there are many possible ways that private police forces "could work," many of which presently exist in the world today, and are fully functional. So the first point I want to make is that it is not fair to merely dismiss the idea as wholly outlandish. Not only is it not outlandish, it presently exists and you have almost certainly availed yourself of its benefits at some point during your lifetime. (If not, give it a few years, it'll happen.)

The second point I want to make is that, since it is true that private, competing police forces already exist in the world today, as do public police forces, we cannot say that the two arrangements are mutually exclusive. The fact of the matter is that public and private police forces have learned to coexist peacefully with minimal occasional conflict. Therefore, the anarcho-capitalist position is not really "using private police forces," but more specifically, eliminating public police forces and letting the existing private police market expand in their absence.

Before I go on, let me summarize some of the rationale involved here. The problem anarcho-capitalists have with public police forces is many-fold. First of all, if the police fails you, you have no recourse. (More to the point, you only have legal recourse against the police "monopoly" if you survive whatever event we're talking about - which makes things worse.) Private, competing police forces theoretically address this problem by: (1) offering you more options, and therefore providing police with a profit motive to get the job done correctly; and (2) offering you a second police force to pit against the first. 

Regarding your legal recourse, it is notoriously difficult to "win against the police" in court, because the criminal justice system is weighted in favor of itself. This brings us to the second objection to public police monopolies, which is the potential for (and reality of) the abuse of police power. We need not look very far to find examples of that. Anarcho-capitalist policing addresses this problem by (1) and (2) from the previous paragraph, as well as (3) the settling of legal disputes through mutually agreed-upon and mutually hired professional arbiters who do not hold bias toward one party or the other because they are paid to be objective.

Don't you dislike monopolies?  Why would a government monopoly avoid your scorn?

Competition creates better results than a government monopoly does.

We can see what the government does for us, but we cannot see what could have been had the government not had a monopoly on the use of force against us.

We can see the public schools, but becasue we can afford to pay for public and private schools we don't know what a society all private schools would look like.  (Although evidence would suggest better reading, writing and math skills).

I say, bring it on, privatize everything.

You can count me amongst the anarcho-capitalists.

***

Ryan at Stationary Waves also points out a few problem, as he sees it with a wholly privatized police force.

I'd like to comment on one of them.  (I'd have put this as a comment on your post, Ryan, had I been able to do so without joining Google+.)

The second objection is related to the first: How do we actually know that there is sufficient market demand for a sufficiently strong police force?

 "sufficient market demand" is a subjective term

What you or I view as "sufficient" depends on what our views are.

And the market is always right.

I may not agree with the market all the time (such as having tabloid magazines near the registers at stores) but the market tells us what we the people want.  (To the extent that it is able with all of the government influence.)

Good Cops vs. Mean Cops

I recently discovered a new Wisconsin laws that says that you can be stopped and fined if your trailer-ed boat has its drain-plug in.  (They think that they can regulate the movement of zebra mussels and other invasive species.  Good luck with that.)

In the magazine article that I discovered this new law in (reading the actual rules and regulations is painful and confusing) the writer commented that there are two ways to deal with being stopped by the cops or game wardens: be very cooperative even to illegal searches or to be polite but ask for warrants before agreeing to be searched.

This reminded me of reading one of P.J. O'Rourke's books in which he commented on roadblocks in very poor countries.  It seems that the guys manning some roadblocks will shoot you if you try to evade the roadblock at speed, and so you must stop.  At other roadblocks you'll be robed or forced to bribe the roadblockers or you'll get shot, and so you should bypass these at speed.  And both styles of roadblocks look the same, so how are you supposed to know which is which?

How are we supposed to know whether to agree to illegal searches or which questions to answer when we deal with police?

Its not too difficult to find awful cops.  And I overhead a guy last week, who had just returned from the army, say that he wanted to be a cop, but too many of them are so bad that he did not want to be involved with them.  And one of the largest drug operations in Wisconsin was ended a year, or so, ago when the offending cops were arrested.

My heart nearly stops every time I see a police car, and I've never committed any crimes (other than speeding and not having a front license plate).

Then we keep giving the cops more laws to enforce: no talking on cell phones, seat belts required, drunk drivers are worse than pedophiles, etc.

Trivial problems like not wearing a seat belt (it can harm no one but yourself) would have been ignored by cops years ago, or so I'm told.  But no possible good can come from dealing with cops today, at best you'll be left with only having lost several minutes to being questioned.

***

I'd like to ask whoever it was that told me last week that we are more laissez faire than we used to be to repeat that claim.

PC Sensitivity

I read an article about some politicians who want the Washington Redskins to change their name because some white people are offended on behalf of the "native Americans".

Some of the people arguing in favor of changing the name had some good alternative suggestions:

"...the Mandingos, the Brothers, the Yellowskins, insert your ethnic minority here."

Who wouldn't want to watch the "Washington insert your ethnic minority heres"?

"The Washington Negros or how about the Washington Crackers?"

“Pittsburgh Polacks” or the “Washington Wetbacks”

The Pittsburgh Polacks would be a sweet name for a team.

Another good idea:

"They should just start bleeping the name during broadcasts. That would be hilarious."

Random Car Thoughts

I've been gathering my thoughts on cars while I have been driving my sister's old car rather than mine before I sell it.  (Anybody interested in a 2001 Hitlermobile Volkswagen Jetta? 13K miles $2000)

My grandmother was more correct than she realized when she pointed out that SUVs are just vans.

Is it just the Jetta or do all front wheel drive cars not like aggressive driving?

I had to get a new driver's license recently.  It took an hour to get my picture taken and then wait until the person behind the counter told me that I'd get the new one in the mail.

On a recent hour drive and hour back drive I saw eight police cars, seven were looking for speeders or had one stopped already.  How much did it cost to pay their salaries, and for their cars, and for their car's modifications, and for their computers on which they play solitaire?

Did the tickets they wrote out cover all of those costs?  Plus the costs of the courthouse and the judge, etc.?

What would happen the next time I'm stopped for speeding if the conversion went like this:

Member of the police farce: "Do you know why I pulled you over."

Me: "To generate revenue for the government."

Incidentally, my heart nearly skips a beat whenever I see a police car; even if I'm just walking down the street; even though I've only ever been stopped by the [real] police for traffic infractions.

Which is more dangerous: having people spend much time driving looking at their speedometer and parking on the edge of busy roads while being ticketed or having police ignore speeding that is not reckless?

Does anyone know a Lexus owner who is not black and/ or a teacher?

Buick drivers are old and/ or quite poor.

Volkswagen drivers are liberals.

And owners of Toyota trucks are the best sort of people.

I've still got my eye on that Factory Five Racing MK4 Roadster kit car.

Why do car radios have so many unnecessary features?  Whats wrong with having a radio that plays FM/AM, CD's, and connects to MP3s and doesn't have options to change the color of the lights, or connect only to certain obsolete iPods, etc?

That Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet sure looked cool, but I can't imagine rationalizing buying one.  (Why is is so hard to find a picture of one to copy here?)

A Mazda Miata would seem to be a good car to have, but it is a chick car.  Maybe a body kit would make it less of a chick car.

Anyone else desirous of a late 'sixties Alfa Romero?



How unreliable are they really?

My Post on Chris Dorner

“If you drive a black truck or apparently any truck, you might want to put a 'Not Chris Dorner' sign on the back,” he said in a status update posted Thursday morning. 

Apparently an ex-cop has a grudge against the police and has killed a few cops.

Two trucks have also been shot up by the police because they were trucks and Chris has a truck.

Wirecutter points out that these cops "can't tell their collective asses from a hole in the ground."

I don't know if Chirs Dorner has a legitimate complaint against the police.

I do know that there are an awful lot of cases where cops shoot, or illegally detain, people and dogs. Eric has listed many of those stories in his "Hero Cop" series.

examples:

Hero Cop Suspended
Hero Cop Murders His Son …and Maybe Others, Too
Hero Cop kills naked freshman at University of South Alabama
Hero Cop Shoots Puppy to Death

This Chris Dorner story should show more of us that the police may be just as dangerous as criminals.  We should all take more care to protect ourselves.  Cops may, or may not be helpful.

Chris Dorner may be far away, but what makes you think that the cops that are near you are any better than those who are shooting up trucks just because their suspect has a truck?

Privatize the Police?

Might not be a bad idea.

Insuring Against Crime

by Gil Guillory
by Gil Guillory

What if there were a company that would patrol your neighborhood and be financially liable for losses due to crime on your property…would you be interested in subscribing? Could something like that actually work and be profitable, and would it be preferable to tax-funded patrol?

This idea has been suggested by a number of libertarians, from Molinari to Rothbard to Benson to Hoppe to Barnett. Some people think the insurance component of such a venture would completely swamp its viability.

So how much would it take to just cover the payouts for losses? My friends and I decided to find out. We took data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports and the Department of Justice (sic) National Crime Victimization Surveys, picked a specific location in the US, did a little bit of math, and found out:

To insure against the peril of murder, assuming each victim's estate would be given 1 million USD, it would cost about $8 a year per household.

To insure against the peril of rape, assuming each victim would be given 50,000 USD, it would cost about $21 a year per household.

To insure against the peril of battery/assault, assuming each victim would be made whole for monetary losses only, it would cost about $3 a year per household.

To insure against all property crimes (robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft), assuming each victim would be made whole for monetary losses only, it would cost about $126 a year per household.

But wait — you already have car insurance and homeowner's insurance! What if the payouts were capped at your homeowner's insurance deductible, where your insurance company already starts picking up the tab?

Well, then, to insure against all property crimes, it would cost only about $25 a year per household.
Maybe the idea isn't so crazy, after all.

The Joy of Hate

by Greg Gutfeld

The book talk was not so good, but the following Q&A was the only time that I've ever heard a Q&A and did not think that every question asker was a moron.

Its worth a watch.

Brookfield, WI Shooting

Apparently there was a shooting recently, about a half hour's drive from where I live.  The guy killed his wife and a few others.

Apparently he was almost arrested earlier. 

When I said that if I resisted arrest for not paying my fine, for not having a front license plate on my car, I wasn't kidding about possibly being killed as a result.

Whoever intentionally does all of the following is guilty of a Class I felony: Refuses to comply with an officer's lawful attempt to take him or her into custody and retreats or remains in a building or place and, through action or threat, attempts to prevent the officer from taking him or her into custody and (while inside) remains or becomes armed with a dangerous weapon or threatens to use a dangerous weapon regardless of whether he or she has a dangerous weapon.

 Don't you feel safe with our nice police around?

The Police

I had been recording incidents of police wrongdoing here, when I stumbled across them.  I'm suspicious of what may happen to me if the police see that I am doing this.  Police brutality is wrong and many of us should be speaking out against it.  But, with this issue, I am not brave enough to continue.

I'll leave this subject with a link to a post at The Strangest Brew, "What Would Happen If They Did Go On Strike?"

He lists a series of recent stories of police brutality.  They're worth reading about.

More Evidence of Police Acting Questionably

Found here.

More Problems with the Police

I wasn't really inclined to link to this article, and video, but I have been linking to all unnecessary police related deaths that I've found since I started this blog.  And I haven't even been looking for these stories.

Another link, and corresponding picture below, thanks to The Feral Irishman.  Expecting the police to save you from problems, is not a wise strategy for survival.

Cop Humor

Check out what Florida police think is a joke.  Notice that they did not get a ticket, like us commoners would have.