Tag Archives: Lawrence Vance

Laments of the Stupid Party

21 Wednesday Nov 2018

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Another “woulda, shoulda, coulda” train of thought, from Lawrence Vance, on the uselessness of the Republican Party.

Here are twenty reasonable things that the Republicans could have done:

Repeal Obamacare in its entirety
Abolish the National Endowment for the Arts
Abolish the National Endowment for the Humanities
Eliminate refundable tax credits
Eliminate the Department of Education
Stop cash welfare payments
Cease funding any scientific research on climate change
Means test all welfare programs
Abolish the TSA and returned airport security to the private sector
Eliminate CAFE standards
Allow people to sell their bodily organs upon their death
Defund Planned Parenthood
End the federal war on marijuana and leave the issue up to the states
End the embargo against Cuba and allow Americans to freely travel there
Eliminate all foreign aid
End all restrictions on the production of hemp
Eliminate all funding for manned and unmanned missions to Mars
Privatize the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak)
Abolish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
End all farm subsidies
And Republicans certainly could have eliminated Daylight Saving Time.

Not only could Republicans have done these things, they could have done them the first month that they had absolute control of the government. But they, as usual, did nothing.

It’s not even a penny’s worth of difference.

Modern elections are nothing except different groups of deluded fools fighting over a rotting corpse.

Of Crime and Punishment and Non-Crime and Punishment

28 Tuesday Nov 2017

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While in Asia the other week, President Trump secured the release of three high value American prisoners. All good and well, but Lawrence Vance ponders if Trump’s amnestying efforts might be better spent at home.

LiAngelo Ball, Jalen Hill, and Cody Riley, who are now on indefinite suspension from the UCLA Bruins basketball team, were in China with their team for a basketball game against Georgia Tech. The trio was arrested after allegedly shoplifting from a Louis Vuitton store in Hangzhou, China. After being detained for over a week and facing up to ten years in prison, they were released after President Donald Trump intervened on their behalf with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

These are not the only prisoners that Trump should have freed. Far more important are the people imprisoned in the United States for victimless crimes.

The United States is indeed an exceptional nation. It has less than 5 percent of the world’s population, but almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. It has over 2 million people behind bars, more than any other nation. And it has the highest per capita prison rate.

A great many of the Americans who are in prison have been incarcerated for victimless crimes, and especially drug crimes. Only violent criminals should be incarcerated, and no one should ever be locked up for committing a victimless crime.

Every crime should have a tangible and identifiable victim with real harm and measurable damages. Rape, robbery, assault, child abuse, battery, burglary, theft, arson, looting, kidnapping, shoplifting, embezzlement, manslaughter, and murder are real crimes. Possessing “illegal” drugs, “illegal” gambling, prostitution, discriminating, price gouging, and ticket scalping are victimless crimes.

Prosecuting Americans for committing victimless crimes turns vices into crimes; unnecessarily makes criminals out of otherwise law-abiding Americans; is an illegitimate function of government; criminalizes voluntary, consensual, peaceful activity; costs far more than any of its supposed benefits; does violence to individual liberty and private property; and is incompatible with a free society.

Committing victimless crimes may be unwise, addictive, unhealthy, risky, immoral, sinful, and/or just plain stupid, but it is not for the government to decide what risks Americans are allowed to take and what kinds of behaviors they are allowed to engage in as long as their actions are peaceful, private, voluntary, and consensual.

According to Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution, the president “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States except in cases of impeachment.” According to the case of Ex parte Garland (1867), the scope of the president’s pardon power is quite broad. And according to United States v. Klein (1871), Congress cannot limit the president’s grant of an amnesty or pardon.

This means that Trump could, today, pardon every American in a federal prison for committing a victimless crime. And like he did for the American basketball players in China, Trump could work to free every American held in a state prison for committing a victimless crime.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, President Trump followed in the tradition of his predecessors and pardoned a turkey. Better that he ate the turkey and pardoned everyone in a federal prison for a victimless crime and ordered their immediate release. No one should ever be detained by police, arrested, tried, fined, or imprisoned for a victimless crime.

I completely agree with this idea. However, assuming (pointlessly) that we still have a Constitution, all Trump could do with the States would be lobby as he did with China. On the federal front things would be a little easier. Some, most, rather, violent federal inmates would have to freed as well.

That Constitution thing, the parts in, above, and below Article Two, only specifies three crimes. Honestly, if it’s not piracy, counterfeiting, or treason, what business has Washington prosecuting it.

Pardon this interruption…

“Conservatives,” The Second Amendment, and that Constitution Thing

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

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Lawrence Vance looks into the kooky antics of what pass for conservatives in America. As is now utterly obvious, conservatives conserve nothing:

But the strangest reaction did not come from a Democrat, a progressive, or a liberal. It came from a conservative. Bret L. Stephens joined the New York Times as an op-ed columnist in 2017 after a long career with the Wall Street Journal. Stephens, a neoconservative, argues in his book America in Retreat: The New Isolationism and the Coming Global Disorder that America should be the world’s policeman.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, titled “Repeal the Second Amendment,” Stephens declares that he has “never understood the conservative fetish for the Second Amendment.” From a law-and-order standpoint, “more guns means more murder.” From a personal-safety standpoint, “more guns means less safety.” From a national-security standpoint, “the Amendment’s suggestion that a ‘well-regulated militia’ is ‘necessary to the security of a free State,’ is quaint.” From a personal liberty standpoint, “the idea that an armed citizenry is the ultimate check on the ambitions and encroachments of government power is curious.”

…

Only once in American history was a constitutional amendment repealed. The Twenty-first Amendment of 1933 repealed the Eighteenth Amendment of 1920 that instituted Prohibition. What would happen if the Second Amendment were repealed?

Absolutely nothing.

If the Second Amendment didn’t exist, Americans would still have the natural right to keep and bear arms. This is because there is no authority granted to the federal government by the Constitution to ban, regulate, or otherwise infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

The federal government has no authority whatsoever under the Constitution—even if the Second Amendment were repealed—to ban or regulate handguns, high-caliber guns, shotguns, sawed-off shotguns, rifles, assault rifles, extended-capacity magazines, bump sticks, ammunition, automatic weapons, machine guns, grenades, or bazookas.

And neither does the federal government have any authority whatsoever under the Constitution to establish or mandate gun-free zones, background checks, waiting periods, trigger locks, limits on gun purchases, age restrictions on gun purchases, gun-barrel lengths, concealed weapons laws, licensing of gun dealers, gun-owner databases, gun licensing, or gun registration.

If anything should be repealed it is all federal gun laws—even the ones supported by Republicans and conservatives.

How about just repealing the whole Constitution. Replace it with nothing (or the old Articles – Articles of loose, weak, powerless, non-taxing Confederation).

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Carlos Slim’s Blog.

You Say You Want a Revolution

16 Tuesday May 2017

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Most don’t. But you might.

You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world

–Revolution, The Beatles, 1968.

Whatever you want, you’re not going to get it from the Republican Party – unless, of course, what you want is more and bigger government. Lawrence Vance explains, today:

Another Republican revolution has now failed.

A Republican revolution can be defined as a time when Republicans gained control of both Houses of Congress and therefore were in a position to severely limit the federal government.

There have been five Republican revolutions in modern times, and they have all ended in failure.

One hates to write off the Trump Train just yet but that’s what Vance has done – and with excellent reasons. I think I’m down to 1/2 of 1% of a shred of hope, a fool’s hope.

He gets right to the failures of this year, followed by a scolding for “conservatives” and a lesson about the DNC:

First, the failure to repeal Obamacare. …

Second, the failure to cut back the warfare state. …

And third, the failure to cut back the welfare state. …

Are there still conservatives and libertarians left in America who are gullible enough to believe that Republicans are any better than Democrats? The Republicans are welfare/warfare statists. The only difference between them and the Democrats is that the Republicans talk about the Constitution, the free market, and limited government while they ignore the Constitution, the free market, and limited government. At least the Democrats are honest statists.

Instead of simply repealing Obamacare as promised, they appear to be giving us (slowly) … uh … whatever the replacement thing is…

Another peace candidate found the joy of bombs, missiles, and drones.

Another joke of a “budget” that might have been written by Karl Marx.

Meanwhile serious problems manifest. The barbarians aren’t at the gates – they’ve smashed through and more keep coming. This is both figurative and literal.

I mentioned something about this before the last election. I will probably mention it again. Please stop falling for the “two-party” charade. Well, actually, at this point it really doesn’t matter anymore. Just know you’re being lied to by the Atlanta Falcons of politics.

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The crown doesn’t count. YouTube.