Musings from Brian J. Noggle

Reason magazine’s Hit and Run reports that the television news magazine 60 Minutes is going to run a piece about eminent domain abuse.

Reason also ran a story called “ Wrecking Property Rights: How cities use eminent domain to seize property for private developers“.

As some of you know, eminent domain abuse is one of the particular pet peeves of mine. So go read these pieces and arm yourselves for when your municipality comes for your house for a strip mall.

Some group called the Multistate Tax Commission has issued a report saying that Internet Service Providers should shed some of their tax burden. Hey, I’m all for lower taxes, but I’m a little worried when they start given little perks to some industries, because then the next one wants one, and suddenly my sales tax is at 20% and my property taxes are about 10% annually. Flat tax the corporations on their profits, but let’s not have our governments play favorites.

More troubling, though, is this from the mouths of the aristocracy:

“State and local governments understand that consumers need to get Internet access,” Tennessee Revenue Commissioner Loren Chumley said in a telephone news conference announcing the study. “The bill that was passed goes far beyond that. It has the potential to wipe out all telecommunications-related tax levies.” [Emphasis mine.]

Any time our Illuminated Leaders start babbling on about what luxuries consumers need, I tremble, for I see the future growth of the Great Society, paid for by….the taxed consumers!

Let no Child be without Broadband!

Rubbish! Now get back to work.

I have received mail about my post yesterday about the high school sophomores in St. Peters who got busted for do-it-yourself porn. As of this posting, three boys have been charged with felonies; the girls, of course, get none.

Let me point out, hopefully more succinctly, the absurdity of the charges. Follow me here:

1. Child porn laws touted as necessary protections for The Children who are not Smart Enough Or Responsible Enough (SEORE) to make their own decisions regarding sex and posing for photography therein. Never mind that The Children in this case are fifteen years old, three years short of the sudden burst from the maturity gland which will make them eligible to pose naked for anything they want.
2. Although these “children” cannot make their own reasoned decisions about posing naked and being photographed, the law will now prosecute them as though they are smart enough and responsible enough to make their own decisions regarding sex and posing for photography therein.

!SEORE = SEORE

Do you have that moebius strip of logic firmly grasped yet? They are being prosecuted as adults for doing something from which they are being being protected from doing something they cannot decide to do because they’re not adults.

It’s all a part of the ride on the official United States Eight Ten Year Adolescence. Face it, between the years of 13 and 21 23, children begin to phase into adulthood, and society and its occasional-lackey-and-sometimes-master government are pretty slow to dole out the adult privileges and responsibilities, and when they do, they stagger the ages and make it as drawn out as possible.

Consider:

• At 14 years old, if you shoot a person, you’re tried as an adult
• At 18 years old, if you get shot, you’re statistically “A Child” for those who collect statistics to promote gun control.
• Before you’re 16 years old, you can get a job and start paying your taxes to support The Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers in their pursuit of pharmaceutical immortality.
• However, you have to wait until you’re 18 years old to enter contracts.
• At 16 years old, you’re responsible enough to get a driver’s license and should know enough not to pile a bunch of your friends into your dad’s car, and go roaring around the streets until you collide with a retired schoolteacher on her way from the grocery and kill her and her nephew.
• Glass of wine at dinner? Not for 5 more years, you irresponsible welp.
• At 18 years old, you’re responsible enough to handle explosives and automatic weapons.
• However, concealed weapons will have to wait if you’re from Missouri until the Eddie Eagle Epihany hits you on your 23rd birthday and you can then safely carry concealed weapons.

What’s my proposed solution? At the 13th birthday, send each child into the Cave of the Mother Snake, where it must spend the night alone, without a Gameboy. In the morning, when the child emerges, it is an Adult. Drink responsibly, young man or young woman, and remember to use the booster seat when you’re driving.

Also, vote for me.

Thank you.

In a story certain to not shock anyone with the faintest memory of being young and hormonal and not suffering from the slightest repressed-guilt-turned-into-outrage, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

A group of 15-year-olds from a St. Peters high school who made a video showing two girls kissing and a naked girl being touched by two boys are facing child pornography charges.

All consensual among the fifteen year olds, but guess what? They’re facing child pornography charges! Of course. They’d be safe from statutatory rape charges if they’d limited themselves to copulation, but record it and wham! It’s a crime.

So they’re doing what curious and, let’s face it, unconstrained (whether by parents or morals) digital kids do, which is namely a little I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours, with the optional “see-like-a-blind-person” rule in effect.

Three have been referrred to juvenile court on charges of promoting child pornography, furnishing pornographic materials to a minor and promoting a sexual performance by a child. The other four are still underinvestigation and may be charged, police say.

“They did the act, they knew what they were doing, and they knew it was wrong,” said St. Peters Sgt. David Kuppler. “You can’t film a 15-year-old child nude no matter what age you are. It’s the same standard we would hold an adult to, it’s just the juvenile justice standard.”

Now the system’s going to brand them as sexual offenders, put their names on the Internet for the rest of their lives, and some suburban prosecutor will be one heroic step closer to governorship. That will protect and serve no one but… well, the government and its bit players hoping for named roles (instead of Municipal Assistant District Attorney #2, I will be David Justice, Avenger of the Oppressed!).

The kids all need a good swatting, without the cameras rolling, thank you. A good talking to, and a maybe bit of “Hold on for three years and you’ll be a Vivid superstar, but from here out, you’re wearing burlap.” But jail time (reform school time, I mean, not as bad as jail except it is)?

It’s a continuing shame that parents cannot discipline and their children and hence cannot trust other parents to discipline or train their own children. As part of this abdictation, the only alternative lazy or immoral parents can turn to is the heavy hand of Government, whose spanking hand is numb and unfeeling from overuse and whom the punishment is not hurting as much as it is hurting us.

Go read this post at Samizdata: A law-abiding person has nothing to hide?

I was just thinking up a few scenarios in answer to the assertion that “a law abiding person has nothing to fear from ID cards, in-car tracking systems or surveillance cameras”. These are some wholly or mostly law-abiding persons who do have something to fear:

You’ll have to go to the source for the list.