Year-Round Fools

In honor of April's Fool day, I've decided to feature a site that reports on fools year-round, Reason.com's Daily Brickbat. For those unfamiliar with the site, the Daily Brickbat is a mini blog where they post a very brief summary of something particularly ridiculous that someone in power has done on that particular day. Links are always provided to more conventional coverage so you can share the tale with friends. Highly recommended for those times when you want a laugh, a reason to bang your head against the wall, an opportunity for a double facepalm... or a site you can share with friends who desperately need a wake-up call about the abuse of authority.

A sampling of a half-dozen recent posts:

Officer Leatherface: Judy Sanchez says she heard someone pounding on the door of her Fitchburg, Massachusetts, apartment, and almost immediately after that someone started cutting through the door with a chainsaw. Several armed people rushed through the door forcing her and her family to the floor. It was a team of FBI agents who figured out about a half hour later they were supposed to raid the apartment next door.

Uncle Sam's Clogged Arteries

There are many reasons for the listless, if not moribund, state of the US economy. Today, this Tireless Agorist would like to tackle the topic of the clogging of the arteries of commerce. I'm not referring to the continual degradation of the physical infrastructure on which commerce depends; the roadways, railbeds, waterways and airways along which products move, the systems that bring us clean water and carry away our waste, or the pipelines, electrical generation plants and transmission grid that power our industry, although that would be a good topic for a future posting. In this essay, we'll address the impact of ever-growing regulation on economic production, innovation, and competition.

The Code of Federal Regulations totaled 165,494 pages as of the end of 2010, the most recent data according to the Office of the Federal Register. This is an increase of 132% from 71,224 pages in 1975. These regulations are enforced by more than 50 agencies, and a 2005 study by the Small Business Administration found that the cost of all these rules seven years ago was more than $1.1 trillion dollars a year, more than Americans paid in federal income taxes in 2009. That figure includes only the direct burden placed on consumers. Constraints on innovation, new inventions or products that never reached the marketplace cannot possibly be measured, since they are by nature undefinable.

And note we're speaking only of federal regulations; for businesses involved in interstate commerce, there may be as many as 50 sets of state regulations they must adhere to. Nor does it stop there. Many counties and municipalities have their own sets of rules and regulations that must be strictly adhered to under the risk of financial penalties or even permission to continue operations.

Agorism, Country Style, in Hardyville

"If we as individuals can't find freedom in our own lives, our own work, our own communities, we're never going to find it. And that's what Hardyvillians do."

Claire Wolfe, interview with Brian Wilson, 8/12/2011
Although I've written on a number of topics over the last month, I've always felt remiss for not explaining the name of my blog. While "Tireless" is explained by the masthead quote, I've never defined the term agorist, although most of my posts reflect the agorist philosophy in one way or another. ¹

So here it is, briefly stated.

Agorism is a libertarian philosophy that holds as its ultimate goal a society in which all relations between people are voluntary exchanges and rejects the view that the solution to human aggression is to institute aggressive governments. It proposes that such a society can only be brought about by circumventing or ignoring the state.

Agorism embraces the libertarian philosophy of individual choice and responsibility and expands it to include a method for instituting that philosophy.

Claire Wolfe, libertarian author and columnist at Backwoods Home Magazine, wrote extensively of the rural community of Hardyville between October 2003 and September 2007. Hardyville, as a profoundly libertarian community with strong agorist tendencies, is a perfect example to illustrate the meanings of both libertarianism and agorism.

You Might Be a Terrorist If...DHS Edition

Having apparently learned absolutely nothing from the Missouri Information Analysis Center fiasco of 2009, when their report "The Modern Militia Movement" leaked and stank up the blogosphere for a while, the Homeland Security Science and Technology Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences Division (now that's a great bureacracy name, isn't it?) has issued a report titled Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008.

Of course, the fact that it's 2012 doesn't speak too well as to the timeliness of the report. But give them a break, they're a massive bureaucracy, after all, and can't be expected to react to myriad threats in a timely manner.

The report is actually produced by START, otherwise known as National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, based at the University of Maryland. Aren't those government acronyms cute?

After a thorough reading I am now completely convinced that the authors were paid by the word (why else all the redundancy and round-about modes of expression?) and per scholarly cite, as well as a hefty bonus for colorful charts and graphs.

I think this report is certainly worthy of reasoned, scholarly analysis in the manner of Jeff Foxworthy, so to that I dedicate these humble efforts. Now remember, after reading each of these bullet points aloud, you should encourage those around you to join you in the chorus: "you might be a terrorist!" It will provide the most entertainment if you read it in a library, on public transportation, or beside an open window in a crowded apartment or office complex.

If You Build It, They Will Come

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street, If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Don't ask me what I want it for If you don't want to pay some more
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman

- The Beatles -
Seven-year-old Carter King likes to fish with his dad. He likes it so much that he and his dad built a fourteen-foot wooden boat in the garage together so they could go fishing more often. Being good citizens, (or knowing they'd get nabbed by the state if they didn't have a bunch of ugly letters and numbers painted on the side) they properly registered the boat, paying the appropriate fees.

Not long after, Mr. King began receiving letters from the Tennessee Department of Revenue, informing him that because he was a boat dealer and manufacturer, he owed an additional $539 in taxes on the boat.

Of course, Mr. King assumed it was a mistake, so he contacted the auditor assigned to his case. Nope, there was no mistake. The state knew the boat was built by Carter and his dad in their garage, for their own use. Indeed, the state doubled down, warning that the family could face injunctions or misdemeanor charges if they don't pay up.

The Department of Revenue isn't talking. Requests for interviews are rejected, not only for this particular case, but about the issue in general.

When you have the guns and cuffs, own the courts and hold the keys to the jail cells, why be reasonable about $539?

Mr. King, instead of focusing on the piddling $539, should be preparing his operation for an onslaught of other government agencies, now that he's been declared a boat dealer and manufacturer.

My Guaranteed 100% Correct Super Bowl Predictions

I predict a bunch of relatively rich to very rich people will get richer; club owners, ballplayers, league officials, television network executives, concession operators, bookies, Indianapolis bar, lodging, restaurant, strip club and outcall services operators, crooked cops, tow-truck operators and lucky gamblers, among others.