This is from a Mises.org piece called "The Bankrupt Finnish Welfare State"

by Kaj Grussner (link to article):

As a rule, the tax authorities don't care about the law, in the rare event they even know it. Not only that, but it is clear from the way they act that they consider every penny to be their money, and may only be retained by the taxpayer at their discretion. It even happens that they make up arguments that are blatantly false and without any legal ground whatsoever in order to levy more taxes and impose various other sanctions. When the taxpayers challenge their outrageous claims, they simply ignore the challenges and press on as if nothing has happened — even though the constitution mandates that all decisions and rulings made by a government agency must be based on law and thoroughly explained.

This doesn't seem to apply to the tax authorities though, and neither do other legal principles. In all other matters, you are innocent until proven guilty, but if the taxman charges you with something, it is you who has to prove your innocence. If you fail, you're guilty, and it is the tax authorities who decide whether you fail.

This type of behavior is certainly familiar to the American public, as the IRS has subjected them to all kinds of violations. However, these violations, taking place no less regularly in Finland than in the United States, fly in the face of the aura of utopia that seems to surround the social-democratic welfare states of Northern Europe.

The statists may be very comfortable with high taxes, but even they tend to become squeamish when they hear of the havoc wrought upon private individuals and their families by the tax authorities. And it is of course the private individuals and small businessmen who suffer the most aggression, because they seldom have the knowledge or the resources to defend themselves. Billionaires and big corporations at least have a fighting chance; the little guys don't. So much for the compassionate society.

Hey! I just looked at his blog (linked on his name). Stef's going to interview him. Cool!

Most of the article is, in fact, about the bankruptcy of the welfare state in Finnland. The tax bureaucracy is part of it. Grussner, btw, is a tax lawyer there.

Paul Bonneau's got four fantastic articles

at Strike The Root. [I don't think I have a link to them here. I'll have to fix that.]

Here's a piece of one:

I have to laugh at libertarians and anarchists depending on the murderous state to defend their life via the "right to life," and even more so depending on the "right to property" as they dutifully pay their taxes (surrender their property). I guess that means there is only a "right to a state-determined amount of property," eh?

The real reason to stop believing, is that "there is no there, there" (as Gertrude Stein once said of Oakland). There is nothing protecting you. It is a phantasm, just a meme in our heads--not a very useful one at that--which the state violates with astounding regularity. Stop believing in this statist propaganda, folks. If you want protection, then protect yourself, or join with others in a voluntary association to do it. If you want property, have enough that can be protected with your gun, or by your friends with guns.

That's not to say that you can't ever use the state to help you in this protection, but keep in mind that doing so is exactly like employing the Mafia to protect you. Yeah, sometimes it will come out your way, but the cost will be high. And they are not the most reliable folks to depend on, and will turn on you when it suits them. Oh, and never forget that protection implies submission.

I do have a link to The Libertarian Enterprise, don't I? I put his link in to show that he's published elsewhere as well.

I'm speechless with admiration

for this new, young writer, Patrick Coleman, who absolutely kicks the asses of the critics of WikiLeaks. Not to mention Utilitarianism, the failings of which (and its predecessors as well) have led to the relativistic morass of modern society.

I suppose I have to support my contention that this fellow is brilliant with a quote:

We have all seen the movie or TV show in which the police are attempting to bring down an organized crime ring, but in order to do so they need to put a witness on the stand. If they put the witness on the stand, however, it is a near certainty that the gang will go after the witness along with his family and close friends. Knowing this, the police decide to take precautions, such as putting the witness and his immediate family in protective custody. But despite the police’s best efforts, the witness is somehow found and killed. Of course, if they had not tried to put the witness on the stand, the witness and his family would very likely not be in danger, but they would also be willingly leaving violent criminals on the street. Who do we blame for the death of that witness? The murdering gangsters, or the people taking every responsible step they can to stop the murdering gangsters?

The answer, I think, is evident. The US government has plunged itself, the people under its rule, the occupied portions of the Middle East, and arguably the entire world, neck-deep into a mire of destruction. It has facilitated and maintained an environment whose only product is death, and whose only escape is truth; but the truth, in this case, is dangerous. The ruling class would have us believe that our ignorance is necessary for our security, when it is really only necessary for their continued theft and expansion. Were it not for the actions of unaccountable and sociopathic politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate interests, over 900,000 Iraqis, Afghans and coalition troops would still be alive today. Are we really going to believe that people who are responsible for extinguishing that many lives, the overwhelming majority of which were innocent, and have shown no sincere care or remorse for their atrocities, actually possess the empathy to be concerned about the remote chance that a few people might die because certain details might have been missed in Wikileaks’ three month harm minimization process? I think not. And in the tragic and, unfortunately, likely case that more people do die, keep in mind that it is because a coalition of violent governments started a war, not because peaceful activists tried to end it.

This is the footnote explaining the estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths from the linked website.

So, yes, I'm coming out 100% against the current wars.

Earth Crossing Asteroids

It's frickin' hopeless. Trying to keep them from hitting us, I mean. You gotta watch this video. I'm going to quote the guy's whole explanation, in case you're a complete newb to Youtube and can't figure out where he hid it:

View of the solar system showing the locations of all the asteroids starting in 1980, as asteroids are discovered they are added to the map and highlighted white so you can pick out the new ones.
The final colour of an asteroids indicates how closely it comes to the inner solar system.
Earth Crossers are Red
Earth Approachers (Perihelion less than 1.3AU) are Yellow
All Others are Green

Notice now the pattern of discovery follows the Earth around its orbit, most discoveries are made in the region directly opposite the Sun. You'll also notice some clusters of discoveries on the line between Earth and Jupiter, these are the result of surveys looking for Jovian moons. Similar clusters of discoveries can be tied to the other outer planets, but those are not visible in this video.

As the video moves into the mid 1990's we see much higher discovery rates as automated sky scanning systems come online. Most of the surveys are imaging the sky directly opposite the sun and you'll see a region of high discovery rates aligned in this manner.

At the beginning of 2010 a new discovery pattern becomes evident, with discovery zones in a line perpendicular to the Sun-Earth vector. These new observations are the result of the WISE (Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer) which is a space mission that's tasked with imaging the entire sky in infrared wavelengths.

Currently we have observed over half a million minor planets, and the discovery rates show no sign that we're running out of undiscovered objects.

Orbital elements were taken from the 'astorb.dat' data created by Ted Bowell and associates at http://www.naic.edu/~nolan/astorb.html

Music is 'Transgenic' by Trifonic: http://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Trifo...

Quite a few journalists, bloggers and tweeters are attributing this to NASA or Arecibo Observatory - while they do fine work they had nothing to do with this. If you write a story you can credit it to Scott Manley.

I assume szyzyg is Scott Manley. What an amazing and terrifying video. Of course it makes space look more crowded than it really is, the objects aren't millions of miles in diameter.

Apparently nobody knows anything about this song:

Feelin' low, cuz I know that it's all over now
And nobody cares for what happens anyhow
There's no use to cry
Cuz life passed me by
It meant for me to lose when I was born.

Dad's the only person I ever heard sing it - I have no idea whose song it is. Or... I imagine the title is "Feelin' Low," but I don't know that, even. I googled every pair of words in there -- nothing. Actually, I didn't spell "cuz" as I have here.

I got my Kingston 19-in-1 USB 2.0 Flash Memory Card Reader

Easiest thing in the world to use. Just plug it into your computer, let it fire up the drives, plug in your SD card and - bada-bing-bada-boom - there are your pictures! In this case, 253 of the most disappointing images ever produced. Actually there are about twenty good ones. Mostly the ones my daughter took of spring flowers.

I've got a "before" training picture in there that you probably won't see. I let the younger girl play with the camera a bit, so there are about fifty blurry pictures of the cat and the dog...the ground, her eyeball, the inside of her mouth... She got a couple of good ones too, but I'll be throwing a lot of them out.

Buncha dumb punk kids

who'll never amount to nuthin'!

link.

[Edit - 8/27] I should probably say that the ones I know, I like very much.

Does anybody know why I can't download my camera anymore?

For the past few months, when I plug in my camera and turn it on, it's been making a different noise than it used to. I can take pictures with it but I can't get the computer to recognize the camera.

Tom Sowell conveys the core of his message

-the message of his many books and articles--in four paragraphs [here]:

Native intelligence may indeed not vary by neighborhood but actual performance-- whether in schools, on the job or elsewhere-- involves far more than native intelligence. Wasted intelligence does nothing for an individual or society.

The reason a surgeon can operate on your heart, while someone of equal intelligence who is not a surgeon cannot, is because of what different people actually did with their intelligence. That has always varied, not only from individual to individual but from group to group-- and not only in this country, but in countries around the world and across the centuries of human history.

One of the biggest fallacies of our time is the notion that, if all groups are not proportionally represented in institutions, professions or income levels, that shows something wrong with society. The very possibility that people make their own choices, and that those choices have consequences-- for themselves and for others-- is ignored. Society is the universal scapegoat.

If "luck" is involved, it is the luck to be born into families and communities whose values and choices turn out to be productive for themselves and for others who benefit from the skills they acquire. Observers who blame tests or other criteria for the demographic imbalances which are the rule-- not the exception-- around the world, are blaming whatever conveys differences for creating those differences.

Espresso Drops! That's what I need!

Concentrated espresso packets, like those soy sauce ones. When somebody hands me a bland-ass cup o' coffee, I want something to juice it up. ...That's manly, I mean.

Big Race today.

I finished the Minnesota Half Marathon. St. Paul is really a beautiful city, even down at the waterfront. I got 2:13:somethin', gun time. Waiting for them to post the official chip times, hopefully later today. That might knock off a minute or two.

Ah! Here we are! This is my line:
538 261/317 63/73 2168 Erkkila, Alan 46 M Brooklyn Center, MN 2:13:49 2:13:16

The first number is my overall place, then sex place (there were 46 guys slower than me), division place (ten putzes in the 40-49 division), 2168 was my bib number, there's my name, age, gender (in case you doubted it - actually they just took my word for it, they didn't ask for proof), home town, and then there's my gun time and chip time. You notice that I only gained (or lost, depending on how you look at it) 33 seconds. Ah, well.

I wanted to beat 2:12, but, heck, I got close.

Here I am! In the blue hat.

Ah, it's been a while since I quoted Kevin Carson:

The next time you hear complaints about someone having a “bad attitude,” keep this in mind: It’s entirely because of people with “bad attitudes” that you’re not a slave. For the fact that you’re not working on a chain gang building a pyramid, you should thank all those whose previous bad attitudes won your present degree of freedom. Their bad attitudes echo down to us through time as the principal obstacle to your re-enslavement in the here and now.

It's from here. That's not the only great thing he said; read the whole thing.

Feelin' a little stiff this evening

Bullsh**! I feel like an old man!

I ran 15 miles today. I quit four miles out from the house and walked back from there. That's 15 miles running plus four miles walking, btw - just so there's no ambiguity there. Didn't feel in the slightest bit tempted to do any intervals. It was humid as hell, but not too hot - cloudy...the sweat wasn't evaporating much, so I took it kind of easy. I was carrying a bottle of green tea (diet, unfortunately - not a great choice), and a bottle of FRS Quercetin. They seemed to work OK for me.

Got the big 1/2 marathon in St. Paul next Saturday. It'll be a flatter course than the one from my house to Cedar Lake. It was just a roller-blading race for years before they added the running race - what the hell, they have the course all laid out, might as well make a few more bucks out of it, eh? It's right along the bank of the Mississippi on Shepard and Warner roads. I don't remember much for elevation changes there, but it's been a long time since I drove on them.
---
I've also started repainting the house. That's been keeping me busy. It's way past due. We were considering residing, but the finances are a bit uncertain these days, so painting it is. The cedar siding holds paint just fine, but the redwood stuff on the gable ends hates to be covered up.
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The puppy's tally for chewing up things we care about: 3 shoes, 2 belts and 2 baseball caps. I'd like to blame another belt on her, but it just broke because it was cheap, Chinese crap. She's chewed up quite a few other things, but that just gave us the excuse we needed to throw them out.

I see this all the effin' time...!

"Tenants" - people - are inhabitants of rental property!

"Tenets" are rules.

I have the urge to quote a little Voltairine de Claire

It was the intention of the Revolutionists to establish a system of common education, which should make the teaching of history one of its principal branches; not with the intent of burdening the memories of our youth with the dates of battles or the speeches of generals, nor to make the Boston Tea Party Indians the one sacrosanct mob in all history, to be revered but never on any account to be imitated, but with the intent that every American should know to what conditions the masses of people had been brought by the operation of certain institutions, by what means they had wrung out their liberties, and how those liberties had again and again been filched from them by the use of governmental force, fraud, and privilege. Not to breed security, laudation, complacent indolence, passive acquiescence in the acts of a government protected by the label "home-made," but to beget a wakeful jealousy, a never-ending watchfulness of rulers, a determination to squelch every attempt of those entrusted with power to encroach upon the sphere of individual action - this was the prime motive of the revolutionists in endeavoring to provide for common education.

"Confidence," said the revolutionists who adopted the Kentucky Resolutions, "is everywhere the parent of despotism; free government is founded in jealousy, not in confidence; it is jealousy, not confidence, which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power; our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go... In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

These resolutions were especially applied to the passage of the Alien laws by the monarchist party during John Adams' administration, and were an indignant call from the State of Kentucky to repudiate the right of the general government to assume undelegated powers, for said they, to accept these laws would be "to be bound by laws made, not with our. consent, but by others against our consent--that is, to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and to live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority." Resolutions identical in spirit were also passed by Virginia, the following month; in those days the States still considered themselves supreme, the general government subordinate.

To inculcate this proud spirit of the supremacy of the people over their governors was to be the purpose of public education! Pick up today any common school history, and see how much of this spirit you will find therein. On the contrary, from cover to cover you will find nothing but the cheapest sort of patriotism, the inculcation of the most unquestioning acquiescence in the deeds of government, a lullaby of rest, security, confidence--the doctrine that the Law can do no wrong, a Te Deum in praise of the continuous encroachments of the powers of the general government upon the reserved rights of the States, shameless falsification of all acts of rebellion, to put the government in the right and the rebels in the wrong, pyrotechnic glorifications of union, power, and force, and a complete ignoring of the essential liberties to maintain which was the purpose of the revolutionists. The anti-Anarchist law of post-McKinley passage, a much worse law than the Alien and Sedition acts which roused the wrath of Kentucky and Virginia to the point of threatened rebellion, is exalted as a wise provision of our All-Seeing Father in Washington.

Anarchism & American Traditions

Hey! This guy's got a good blog!

This is a great analysis of an old TV movie that used to plague us back in the days of the CBS-NBC-ABC TV oligopoly.

I need to post this Max Keiser show

Lloyd deMause

The Childhood Origins of the Holocaust

There is one exception to the conclusion that democracies have less wars. It is a result of the concept outlined earlier that social violence is mainly caused by fears of losing the mommy’s love and approval because you try to exercise your freedom and individuation (the psychohistorical term for this fear of freedom is “growth panic”).11 Psychoanalysts often term this “abandonment depression,”12 and demonstrate that people who have abusive or neglectful childrearing fear all progress, all success, all freedoms and new challenges, and react with annihilation anxiety, fears that the fragile self is disintegrating, and by displacing their rage against “bad self” enemies. This is why wars are found far more frequently after periods of prosperity and social progress — wars after prosperity being 6 to 20 times bigger than those during depressions13 — plus no great-power war in the past two centuries was started during a depression.14 So the cycle of war historically begins with progress which leads to growth panic, fears of loss of maternal support, fusion with Motherland and finally war against all the “Bad Self” enemies of the Motherland.

But careful empirical studies of wars have also shown that the nations that are among the most prone to war are those that are in transition to democracy.15 This makes sense in terms of our “growth panic” model of war: democratizing nations are more belligerent because only a small portion of their populace are more advanced childrearing modes (psychoclasses). These more evolved psychoclasses — like liberals in Germany and Austria before the two World Wars — produce an explosion in industrialization and new social and political freedoms. But the less evolved psychoclasses — who were still in the majority — felt the new successes and freedoms were “selfish” and feared the loss of approval of the internal voice of their Killer Parent alter, and so had to oppose modernization and democratization . . . then fuse with the Killer Motherland and find “enemies” to punish. That is why genocidal wars have been specialties of fast-changing democratizing states which are “leaping into modernity.” As Michael Mann puts it in his book The Dark Side of Democracy, “murderous cleansing has been moving across the world as it has modernized.16 Even the United States carried out a genocide of American Indians while they were democratizing, following Thomas Jefferson’s directive claiming they “justified extermination.”17 Once these periods of democratizing wars are passed and the majority of the nation is able to achieve what I term “socializing mode” childrearing,18 mature democracies have in fact never gone to war with each other.19

Let me get those footnotes...

12. James F. Masterson, The Search for the Real Self: Unmasking the Personality Disorders of Our Age. New York: The Free Press, 1988, p. 61.
13. Joshua S. Goldstein, “Kondratieff Waves as War Cycles.” International Studies Quarterly 29(1985): 425.
14. Raimo Vayrynen, “Economic Fluctuations, Military Expenditures, and Warfare in International Relations.” In Robert K. Schaeffer, Ed., War in the World-System. New York: Greenwood Press, 1989, p. 121.
15. Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War.” International Security 20(1995): 5-38; Michael Mann The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
16. Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing, p. 4.
17. Ibid, p. ix.
18. Lloyd deMause, The Emotional Life of Nations, p. 249.
19. John A. Vasquez, “What Do We Know About War?” In John A. Vasquez, Ed., What Do We Know About War? Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 200, p. 367.

Well, I know I can complete a half-marathon.

I ran the distance today for the first time this year. We won't talk about the time. I know a guy who did one in 2:12 already. I'm not close to that yet.

Damn near fainted while showering up. Napped for four hours afterward. At least there was no blood. I hate it when there's blood.

Fourth of July weekend.

We camped out at the in-laws over the Fourth of July Weekend. Set up the pop-up trailer in their yard, so we could have the puppy inside with us at night. I ran the Vermilion 10K in 59:11. I'm happy with that time.

That's what I posted on Facebook.

Elaboration: We got out extremely late - 8:30 Friday night. Stopped to grocery shop at the Cloquet Walmart. Ended up there for an hour because a clerk misdirected my wife to the batteries. Got to the cabin at 2AM and started setting up the pop-up trailer. In bed by 3:00. We hadn't gotten around to doing a practice run on the pop-up, so getting it up in an hour wasn't bad.

I got up at 6:30 to run my race. I was primed to run 9:30 miles. I ran 9:32. I think that's just awesome!

I can't really remember what went on the rest of the day, but I know I crashed in a chair before sundown.

We went swimming on Sunday. I got a good sunburn on the parts I hadn't tanned yet. Most parts. There're some that never see the sun. Crying shame, I'm sure.

The highlight of the weekend was, we took out the boat Sunday evening at about 8:30 and drove around the point. The water was reflecting the copper-colored sunset mingled with glints of cerulean and deep navy blue, the clouds were pink and purple and peach...it was just beautiful. Then, everyone in the universe started shooting off fireworks. Pretty amazing displays, most of them.

Oh, also, yesterday, I helped my father-in-law cut down a big balsam tree that was hanging over the driveway. I didn't have much for roots, so the wind had blown it over. Too bad they couldn't keep the tip of it alive until Christmas, it would have made a perfect Christmas tree.

So that's what's new around here.