Tom Woods writes on his Facebook page: “Communists in government jobs? Eliminate the jobs, said the great Frank Chodorov in the 1950s. Corruption in the IRS? I favor the Chodorov solution.”
Category Archives: The State
He Shot the Hostage
This is the necessary consequence of a policy that places officer safety above all other considerations. A veteran police officer shot a hostage in the head yesterday, killing her, when a kidnapper raised his weapon at the officer. In total, the cop fired eight rounds, also killing the kidnapper.
The police investigation is ongoing, and we can hope that more details will emerge in the near future. However, this much is true: you can’t be heralded a hero, selflessly putting your life on the line, while at the same time operating under the assumption that your life is more important than those around you.
If getting home at the end of the day is your primary concern, and not ensuring that the lives of others are protected first, you’re not a hero, and you should find another line of work.
Good Enough for Government Work
Updated below:
Members of the news media — at least in the Kansas City area — are expressing shock at some of the revelations coming from the kidnapping case in Cleveland. According to some of the stories, police failed to follow-up on reports that women were seen tied up and nude in the Castro home, that a little girl could often be seen peering from an attic window, and at least once women were heard yelling for help.
The police were called to investigate the cries for help, but left after no one answered the door.
There has also been criticism of the 9-11 dispatcher who took the call from one of the victims. He seemed uninterested in helping the victim, and attempted to end the call less than a minute into the conversation.
Why is this a surprise, though? The police officers and dispatchers are government employees; their employer runs a monopoly and isn’t threatened by competition, so the incentive for these agencies to provide excellent service is virtually nonexistent.
Update:
Another case that highlights this problem is unfolding near Kansas City. From The Kansas City Star:
When Kortni McGill went to check on her friend Andrew Sout (sic) at his farm just outside Ottawa, Kan., on Sunday, Stout was nowhere to be seen.
[...]
But McGill spotted a clean pair of baby socks folded up in the driveway near a set of footprints in the mud. She also smelled a terrible odor coming from the house, near her friend’s bedroom, and the garage.
So McGill called Franklin County deputies, who looked in the garage and house.
The “smell of death poured out of the house,” McGill said. “It reeked.”
Yet deputies concluded the stench was from trash and “living dirty,” McGill said. They didn’t seem to be interested in the socks or footprints, either, McGill said.
But McGill couldn’t let it go. She and two friends returned to the farm in the 3100 block of Georgia Road on Monday. They inspected the garage and found a decomposing woman’s body under a blue tarp with a drum set and other items piled on top of her.
How did the sheriff respond to questions of why his deputies failed to act?
“’I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback at this time,’ he said. ‘So after this is all said and done, we’ll review everything that happened in this case.’”
‘But Who Would Ignore the Terrorists?’
Despite having gathered information related to the 9/11 attacks prior to September 11, 2001, certain agencies failed to share this intelligence within the national security complex. The result? Some three thousand people died and hundreds of millions of dollars in private property was destroyed.
In order to rectify this glaring deficiency — one that would no doubt have bankrupted a private security agency — the federal government vastly expanded its role in national security.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act were quickly established. Aggressive wars were undertook, in which millions of innocent people were killed and displaced abroad, while government power domestically expanded greatly. The TSA was established to nationalize airport security, and its role continues to expand.
In other words, a vast expansion of military, security, and law enforcement powers was allowed to take place. Everything was supposed to be fine, or so we were told. And then this.
