Like I said. . .

This blog is the place that I say what needs to be said.  I will have a campaign website up presently, where I can sound-bite and sloganeer to your heart's content; but this blog is where the grown-ups talk.

'Immigration' is the topic du jour.  Here is my position:  The Welfare State as we know it must end.

"Huh?" you say. . . I thought the topic was immigration!

It is.

I spent a summer in the early 90's working in El Paso with the U.S. Border Patrol while I was in the Air Force.  We had a provisional Police Squadron set up to support USBP working the downtown area of El Paso/Juarez.  One of our jobs was to tally how many people crossed the border each hour of our shift.  From 0700h to 1000h, and again from about 1600h to 1800h an average of 2000 people per hour crossed at each of our positions.  That is approximately 10,000 people each day going back and forth.

Being Air Force Security, and therefore most apt at drawing a line (perimeter) and threatening to kill anybody who crossed it, we suggested to the Border Patrol guys that we could have this problem solved in about 48 hours, given the right equipment and enough ammunition. . .

Their response was instructive, and needs to be more widely known:  First, Mexico had let it be known that they would consider that an act of war, whether it was the military, or the Border Patrol doing it.  If you're the type that says, "Fine! Bring it on!(tm)", just consider what type of misery and disruption a cold war on our southern border would cause the country as a whole, and our home here in particular.

While you're thinking about that, the second thing they told us was that no less than the Hon. Senator from Arizona, and several of his colleagues had told Border Patrol and DOJ officials that if they completely shut off all illegal border crossings, then the economies of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Oregon, Illinois, and a couple of other midwestern states would completely collapse within 30 days.  Not partially.  Completely.

The anti-immigrant sentiment in this country is shameful.  How many of you have a last name of Christiansen, or Jensen, or Smoot, or Mc[anything], or or any other Irish, English, Italian, Scandinavian, or Germanic spelling or derivation?  And how many of you have done your genealogy and have stories about great-great-great-great Grandma coming to America because of famine, or war, or crushing poverty, or fleeing persecution because they held religious beliefs that weren't government approved?

How many of you know what the inscription in the Statue of Liberty says?

It is not immigrants.  It is us.

And it is not just us lamenting our economic situation.  It is us, the citizens of Utah, and Utah County, that are acting just like the (economically crushed) Germans in the aftermath of WWI.  They were being impoverished because their own government had led them into an economically and militarily disastrous war.  Rather than confront the truth, and find the integrity to change their government, they blindly followed the conservative, trusted, (geriatric) Von Hindenburg, and began blaming the 'other'.  In voting 'conservative', they consented to the ushering in of a madman who destroyed their nation.  (Point to remember: Germany was no third world country filled with uneducated rubes.  They led the globe at the time in their cultural, technological and financial expertise at the time.  Sound familiar yet?)

So, back to my answer.

The reason we have economically dislocating illegal immigration is because our national policies encourage. . . no, demand it!  Who wouldn't move from a home blighted by crushing poverty and unemployment to go to a country that provides free social security, medicaid, education, and citizenship to you and your children?  Let me be clear about this:  Every one of you who is supporting the RepbuliCrat's orgy of blame-diversion and hatred would do it in a heartbeat.

Hayek was pretty clear about the economics of this.  Mises is very clear about the economics of this.  When the government stops being about who can get the most of other peoples money (DeToqueville, Democracy In America, Vol 2, Ch. 20, see the second paragraph), then the citizens begin to address human suffering and well-being on the basis of equality and fairness.  They share with their neighbors and refuse to tolerate the suffering of those blighted by Fate.  They make free decisions about who to assist and who to refuse knowing that they may face the same blight tomorrow.

Instead, todays yammering political culture is a predatory, zero-sum game where, if you get yours, it used to belong to someone else.  That is how you start to hate immigrants.  It's just one more person you have to steal from to survive.


So, how does the County Attorney fit into this?

Not all of us are worse off today than we were 5 years ago.  There are some among us who have made a tidy profit for no other reason than they had the keys to the government, or knew someone who did.  They are vacationing in Vail, or Maui, or Switzerland with your money.  This is where the County Attorney fits into this.

These people should know that instead of knowing that their Political Party Favor will 'find' that insider deals that bankrupt entire communities were just business as usual, corrupt political insiders better expect a visit from my investigators, and subpoenas, and warrants, and charges.  Instead of targeting the easy-to-push-around, low-level folks who were just jumping on the 'innovation' bandwagon (shameful enough as it may be), I'll direct my attention to the top-level 'executives' who pocketed millions of your futures, and hopes.

Sure, they'll have lawyers, and political friends, but I'm not afraid of doing the hard work to preserve the long term integrity and safety of this county.  I chased international terrorists across the globe, and caught them.  Do you think I can't do the same here in our community?

Instead of picking on the weak, who's main crime is to not compliment the aesthetics of the rentier's planned communities, I will prosecute the true threats to our community: the corrupt, the corrupters, the predators, the demagogues, and the bandits that hide behind masks of respectability and trustworthiness.  I will be unimpressed by police agencies that ignore the hard work of investigating and finding the real criminals in favor of picking on the defenseless and vulnerable for a couple of bucks in municipal revenue.

There will, inevitably, arise the pestilential braying of "Tough On Crime!!!!!"  If all you want is tough-guys showing off their biceps, then you'll get a culture where corruption and violence are the highest values, and your Liberty and Property are just points to be scored.  The most dangerous criminals don't go out in a blaze of gun-fire and emergency lights.  They are led, broken from the long hunt, slowly to a nondescript cell to wait for the light of day to shine on the shockingly boring details of their life-destroying, community-poisoning crimes.  Those are the ones I will find.  Those are the trials I will not lose.  I will not disrespect you by filling up the courts with cases filed only to cadge a couple of hundred dollars out of whomever lost the crime/tax lottery today.


Don't fall for the easy sugar-high of hate and intolerance while the Republicans and Democrats are picking your pocket and laughing at you.  Stand up for yourself.  Vote for an Attorney who owes nothing to the political machines.  Vote for an Attorney who knows more about the world than political party favor jobs.  Vote for an Attorney who cares about, and respects your vote.

. . . but you have a Special Victims Unit.

The New York Times has this article that is, astonishingly, not 'news'; at least to anybody who lives here.

“The industry’s not legitimate,” said Norman Googel, assistant attorney general in West Virginia, which has prosecuted debt settlement companies. “They’re targeting a group of people who are already drowning in debt. We’re talking about middle-class and lower middle-class people who had incomes, but they were using credit cards to survive.”

(update 201019JUN:  I just read this article claiming that Utahns have been scammed out of $1.4 BILLION.  Good thing there is somebody protecting us. . .)

When I was growing up, my grandparents lived in Provo.  (In fact, my father grew up where the chapel on the east side of the new stadium is located.)  I remember all of Utah County as populated by good, hard-working people; home to a major, respected University; and a particularly well-educated and honest place.  I don't see that any more.

In my past career, I used to brief senior government officials about the CIA, and gave some comparisons of its size, using the FBI as a comparison.  While I was researching those facts, I found out that Utah had the largest fraud squad in the entire Bureau, and much of its operations were centered in Utah County.  This breaks my heart; but I think I understand why that is.

I've said before that when law enforcement is in the hands of people who did not have to run for the office, or who depend on the Republican or Democratic parties for their continued political survival rather than on the strength of their leadership and virtue of their ideas -- at that point, the Law becomes unimportant.  Political expediency is the only Important Thing.  Justice, judgment, wisdom, and fairness just don't matter.

What ends up mattering, instead, is the embrace and accommodation of of so-called entrepreneurs like the ones in the article, and the ones promising un-limited wealth creation through real-estate 'investment' or an 'amazing marketing opportunity', or the ones selling you 'preparedness' at a 350% markup.  What ends up mattering is the building of a new conference center to benefit a couple of well-connected contractors, rather than reducing taxes for everyone.

Stand up for yourself.  Stand up for your neighbors.  Don't give your votes to parties run by cliques of insiders who have no reason to care about you.  Don't waste your vote: Vote!  Vote Libertarian!

Today was a very good day.

That is all.

Stop Digging!

From here.

The polls are opening up for early voting in the primaries.  The Republicans and Democrats are joining together in their ritual of jumping up and down to shout who-can-be-"Toughest On Crime"-to-"Save the Children" most loudly.

It is the death rattle of civilization.  (Read the Ancient Rome piece in the Reading Room; Empires always try to crucify their way out of decline.)  Collective action in response to violence or fraud is an appropriate, adult, and inescapable consequence of the world in which we live.  Without it, we would be prey.  It is the responsibility of adults in a free Nation.  State violence, on the other hand, to merely sustain the privileges of rentiers is a sign that a society has passed its apex, and faces a choice to renew or wither.

The galleries in every courtroom in which I practice are filled with brown-skin, tattoos, and worn work-clothes, that is when they aren't already stripped of their dignity and wearing prison garb.  The benches are filled with white, stylishly dressed (for the most part) Baby Boomers, charging these people for the 'privilege' of living in 'their' communities, abetted by uniformed soldiers and Political Party-Favors.

We have to get back to knowing what a real crime is.  Then we have to become, (in Utah County, apparently,) much, much more competent at prosecuting it.  

Look into it for yourself.

How.

It's June.  The Republicans are in the throes of their Wars of Succession.  The Democrats are arguing about who is Less Republican than whom.  Primaries will decide who will be elected to most offices, especially in Utah County.

I had someone ask me, "What are the Libertarians doing to fix the problem?"  Andy McCullough was with me and we looked at each other and said, "Nothing!"   We don't need a statist intervention to 'fix' the problem.  Utah's election laws are far from the worst in the country, and while we'd like to see them mostly eliminated, the last thing in the world we want is more laws/regulations/orders.

When I tell almost anyone (and this is really surprising) that I'm running for County Attorney, every single person, whether they are Libertarian, Republican, or Independent (I haven't spoken to any Democrats for some reason. . .) tells me, "I hope you're going to try to win this.  I'm sick of the people who are running this county."  I'd like to oblige them.

The question remains, though:  What are we doing?

Political campaigns run on awareness.  Who knows who you are; who knows where you stand; who knows that there is a real alternative to the ruling party.  Awareness requires either money or activity.

If anybody in Utah County would like to see someone other than the Incumbent as their chief law enforcement officer, then we need to work together.  Nobody else volunteered to run for the office, and that's OK; but that doesn't mean you have no part in the process.

-- People who care should want to host what are called Cottage Meetings, where we get together in your home, or at your business and you grill me about what I want to do, and why you should vote for a Libertarian.

-- People who care about our community should want to volunteer their yards and storefronts for posters or signs.

-- People who care have to consider using their money to support an alternative to back room deals and absolute irrelevance to their political masters.

I realized after about the third exchange with people that this isn't a one-man fight.  This is a time for people who have been ignored, and laughed at, for decades to stand up and say, "Enough!  Enough corruption.  Enough abuse.  Enough of turning what used to be a place renowned for education and hard work into the laughing stock of the nation, and a flock of sheep to be fleeced."  This is time for you to stand up.

You have every right to tell me what you want; to tell me what you expect; to ask me what I intend to do.  But the answer will be, "Nothing," without your support.


(I note that as of the last time I checked this post about the impossibility of doing this alone, there are zero comments, and as far as I can tell, nobody has read this. . . Without a sense of irony and humor, politics would be a truly desolate thing.)