Month: February 2010

A villain by any other name…

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There is a frank and honest story on the Huffington Post by Will Bunch over the Austin IRS v. Joe Stack in a small plane.  I read the manifesto that Stack left, and his situation sounded rough.  What dulls the edges of his plight are the house he burned down and the aggressive nature by which he pursued his agenda.  What he, and many that champion his actions, fail to realize is that the occupants of the Echelon Building in Austin were not the fiends twisting the supposed thumb-screws that hammered away at his financial well-being, legislation that he attempted to counteract while part of an anti-tax group in California was.  Stack gave up the high road by descending from rational discourse, and found an irrationally violent solution.  That is not Maverick-y, it is not patriotic, it is not what defines a hero.

Those who have been championing Stacks attack in Austin call him a first shot in the revolution, a hero.  So, now heroes attack civilian that work for the government, unaware, unarmed, and unable to defend themselves.  His anger boiled over and he used this incident of violence to encourage a change in the way things are.  He wanted to alter the discourse through violence.  I would suggest to those who call Stack a champion of the every man to think long and hard on the implications of those actions.

He wasn’t a revolutionary mind and he was not a repressed citizen.  By every account and a reading of his manifesto, his failure lay not in the hands of the government and despicable agencies, but in his pursuit of the American Dream.  He couldn’t stomach the known pangs of climbing up the financial ladder, and so attacked what he thought was a giant, faceless aggressor.  He was a megalomaniac that thought he was special.  He didn’t follow the tax codes and rules he did not agree with, he did not qualify for tax break X so he became angry at the system and those that the break applied to.  His manifesto reads like the works of a frothing-at-the-mouth madman who feels that being mildly successful isn’t enough for his chops, and that the entities that be are repressing him and only him.  In short, he felt singled out and aggravated.

There are a lot of very aggravated people in this country at the moment.  With lost jobs to the tune of six million plus, a national underemployment/unemployment rate around 16 percent, and home foreclosures at their highest rate in years Stack wasn’t alone.  Stack chose to burn his home, which he owned at the time, to the ground.  Last I checked, arson invalidates an insurance policy, meaning he left his family with only an ashy plot of land that used to be a home, torched memories, and no way to replace their belongings.

A gun was never held to Stacks head.  He was given a choice.  He could negotiate, he could deal, he could have filed his taxes and worked with another accountant, he could have declared bankruptcy and started from scratch like the thousands of Americans that do so every year.  He made his decision to take the road less traveled, and didn’t give anyone a warning.  Guy Fawkes at least bothered to warn half of Parliament before attempting to blow ti up, whereas Stacks couldn’t even give that single courtesy to all the innocent lives he put at risk.  If he had made a call or bomb threat to clear out the building before slamming into it, he would have given his final middle finger to the IRS a Robin Hood-esque aura, rather than an undertone of murder.  He would have pinned a noted to the chest of the IRS symbolizing the collective anger many share with what they feel are unjust or restrictive policies.  Instead, blood stains his hands and his agenda.  There was no warning, there was no concern for human life.  There was premeditation, there was planning, there was intent, there was hideous symbolism in a plane slamming into a building in the United States of America.  He is, by the letter of the law, a murderer.

Ron Paul is a terrifying, horrible, evil man…until we need him, even then he’s still terrifying

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It was rather surreal to find out that after the solid ribbing that Rep. Paul (R-TX) received in the last Presidential election from the likes of the Republican National Committee and other conservative groups that his clout with them would have dropped into the abyss of political obscurity.  Somehow, logic apparently got it very, very wrong:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/20/conservatives.meeting/index.html?section=cnn_latest

If someone had asked in 2008 if Paul would have been the forerunner for the Republican party’s return to power, most of us would have scoffed at the notion that a representative with such radical views (albeit somewhat appealing) on economics, spending, and general reduction in the size of the federal government would even be considered.  Especially after The drumming the Republican party took in 2008, the odd duck out, who placed consistently in the top three candidates during the primaries, is now the forerunner for those tired, those mildly poor, and those with enough time on their hands to go out and protest government spending.  To be fair to those Tea Party members, I concur with them on issues like a reduction in government spending, in looking at the policies that led to a surplus in the late 1990’s into the early 2000’s.  I would love to see the government file legislation that is in tune with the Constitution and have serious debates about the quality rather than quantity of legislative documents that roll out of the halls of congress.  On those subjects we agree, and I’d be fine with Rep. Paul in those regards.

However, Rep. Paul is a staunch isolationist, and, to be frank, in this day and age, that won’t fly.  Hell, it hasn’t flown since 1945.  The United States, for better or worse, is the current superpower of the world.  Political Scientists accept this notion, and it is the basis for an understanding of how the gears spin in international circles.  One of the definitions of a superpower is that in events that occur half way around the world, we are directly or, most of the time, indirectly impacted by those results.  It is the price that comes with our prolific and immense economic and political base.  Isolationism will do jack-all for us.  He has called for leaving both the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to better protect state sovereignty in a day and age where state sovereignty is a paper tiger hiding monstrosities like genocide in Sudan.  Do we need to give up our rights to acquiesce to an international body, no.  Will either of these organizations ever ask us to give up something that we hold dear to our Republic, hell no.  The United States pays for 22 percent of the UN’s annual budget, ringing in at $458.3 million in 2008.  I, like many others and quite a few fans of Rep. Paul, am not a tremendous fan of the UN.  The process is lumbering, slow, painfully convoluted, and rife with the potential for corruption.  If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I was talking about the House or Representatives or Senate at length, but I digress.  In their massive approach, and nearly universal representation, they gain a legitimacy that is, largely, unquestionable.  Laws that passed by the US government are not ignored out of pure spite or conjecture, and if they are, there are penalties.  The same goes for the UN.  Follow their rules, or sanctions will fall.

We jest of strongly worded letters from Ban Ki-Moon to Sudan, Iran, or Myanmar, but in all due honesty, the men and women of the UN are doing what they can with what they have.  Same goes for NATO.  Isolationism doesn’t work because of the interconnected nature of the world today.  Without some sort of standardized international community in which to address issues, the big will continuously screw over the small, the violent will oppress those who have fewer firearms, and the world would be, generally, a giant mess…moreso than it is now.

It is noted that the international issue is not the only place where Rep. Paul and I differ, however, it is painfully obvious that my Libertarian beliefs will be challenged at great lengths should he continue to gain popularity amongst the Tea Party goers.

In closing, it is particularly odd to me that the Libertarians, and by proxy the constitutionalists and median Republicans, were for the longest time shoved aside. The message is similar, there are hooks that keep us from joining the party en mass.  They’re not doing any better at bringing us in.  Rather, the ‘big tent’ philosophy that ‘failed’ the Republican Party in 2008 was a sham at best.  You were in the big tent if you agreed with the big tent.  Right now, the big tent includes populist ideas amongst those who think Obama isn’t an American citizen, those who think he is Islamic and trying to torpedo this nation, and those who vow that obstructionism and a grinding halt to any legislative progress is considered advancement, not of the people of this nation, but of a political agenda.  It is not a party of ideas, of new notions, or suggestions and creativity, but of chalk-white, stark terror.  Fear seems key, and for a short time, fear works.  Men and women can only be afraid for so long, then, when the other contemptible shoe never falls, the fear abates, the anger boils out, and you are left with a political body that, instead of having a legislative history to stand on, has a thin layer of ideas held up by a bilious gas.  Ladies and gentlemen of the right.  Welcome to the first political bubble of the 21st century.  I can’t wait to see this one burst.

An extended hiatus and forthcoming apologies followed by vitriol


It is not enough to do good; one must do it the right way.
John Viscount Morley, of Blackburn

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So, I’ve been gone for a bit.  School, as it turns out, is a little more arduous than expected this semester.  Planning is now coming together, and I should have my acts in order now.  Apologies to those who have read what little I’ve written and found interest.  My intention was never to leave you wanting, or to wander off into the dark expanses of the internet to never be seen again.  In a shorter phrase, “shit happened”.  Now,  on to more pressing/interesting matters.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/189844/did_a_school_use_webcams_to_spy_on_students_at_home.html

So, the remote desktop feature, something available on pretty much every Mac computer and, in several unique cases, was used to locate missing or stolen hardware, was apparently used to observe a student in his home.  The laptops are school issued, but, according to ever report I’ve seen on the matter, there is nothing in the contract the parents and students sign regarding off-campus observation.

So, now we have a young man who was approached by an Assistant Principal on a matter in which he was apparently doing something she did not approve of.  This would venture two questions:1) how long were they observing him doing whatever it is they are displeased with, and 2) were they informed that he was doing something illicit or did they just magically turn the webcam on to find him in a compromising position or role?

The second is statistically improbable, and the first implies a hideous revelation about how long those who have been abusing this technology have been at the game.  I believe the parents concerns are warranted regarding the possibility of students being observed in compromising positions or possibly, as one article put it, in “states of undress”.  Now the FBI is investigating and there are records of 42 remote access actions to recover 28 missing laptops.  The number of unrecorded webcam activations could be in the low hundreds.

To be frank, a question needs must raised about the intellectual capacity of the Principal and Superintendent on the matter.  As the invasive capacity of technology grows, the inclusion of technology into the educational environment must come at the pace of educating those who will be responsible for said technology.  The remote desktop feature could have been modified to exclude the webcam, as well as not relying on the webcam at all.  Rather, utilization the webcam as an anti-theft and item recover device work on the principles that the laptop is online, and that the offending individual hasn’t left it in a bag or similar carrying case.

No, software like Lo-Jack, designed specifically for the purpose of locating stolen equipment, was not used to my knowledge.  Furthermore, Lo-Jack only sends out communication signals daily unless the school reports the item stolen, then every 15 minute updates are issued until the laptop is recovered.  The use of the webcam as a device by which they ‘locate’ goods is a half-ass excuse at best since most stolen laptops, I imagine, are going to be closed off, and possibly active.  Lo-Jack will tell you where a laptop is if it is connected to the internet.  A webcam on a shut laptop will give you a black screen that tells you jack all about your position.

The simple fact that they managed to recover 28 of 42 reported missing laptops speaks to the level of responsibility and due diligence of a student to not forget their laptop at home rather than to track a thief.

Lastly, while the school feels it is necessary to ‘track down’ thieves that might try to lift their property, it is not their job to hunt down thieves and brigands.  A computer goes missing, a report to the police is generated, and then, and only then, is the webcam activated to locate the equipment.  Anyone operating outside the realms of their job as an information technician or as an administrator of an educational facility should be sacked on the spot.  Leave the law enforcement to those who wear the badges.