We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Samizdata quote of the day If you’re calling for FBI resignations or firings you still don’t get it. Same with the CDC, IRS, CIA, and all the others.
They “resign” and go work for MSNBC for $500k a year. That’s not punishment. Until there are trials and prison time for government people, nothing changes.
– Jesse Kelly
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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A very good friend was a Fibbie for decades. Completely into the legend, honorable and upright guy who only ever wanted to fight bad guys. Quit recently. He was completely dumbfounded that he could now go into a trial to testify and be considered one of the bad guys by the jurors.
“But most of us are still what we always were!” he’d tell me. But the others killed the legend, I’d tell him. Now you’re just one more gang.
He finally got it, realized that the great, hard-won legend of the FBI – the implacable vigilance of goodness – had been squandered for venal personal gain by those bad guys.
Those people looted tradition and merit and, once that well was dry, took their venality on to the media so they could be well paid to crow about their theft.
If you ever hear of high-up fibbies being assassinated by an ex-agent, it’ll be him.
One of the things I was thinking about during the Trump Presidency is that old saying “The buck stops here”. This is the idea that the President is ultimately responsible for all the decisions the many (many, many, many) executive departments make since he is the ultimate head of them all.
But that isn’t true. The buck stops with the President only insofar as he is able to control the decision, and the simple fact is that the civil service is so lawyered and unioned up that it is extremely hard to make them do what the boss wants. They are, effectively, their own shadow government. When I had employees the buck did stop with me. Why? Because I told them what to do and they did it, and if they didn’t I sanctioned them or fired them. And they knew that if they didn’t follow my instructions that there was a threat of getting fired, so they did what I asked.[*]
But if you can’t be fired, and really can’t be punished for insubordination, your boss isn’t really responsible for your actions. And if that isn’t terrifying I don’t know what is.
There is a great deal of talk of “the threat to democracy”, but the simple fact is that the political class only control a small percentage of government decisions, the rest are controlled by a vast array of unelected, unaccountable, unfireable, sovereign immune bureaucrats. And their will is enforced by a huge array of spooks, dishonest lawyers, and corrupt cops who will bring the hammer down on you if you get too far off the plantation. They will use the full force of their power to crush you even if there is not a shred of evidence you did anything wrong, or even if they entrap you. The examples of this under Trump are replete. But it isn’t about Trump, it is just that Trump revealed the truth of it all because he dared to go against them.
BTW, @bobby b, you might want to remind your FBI friend that the agency was formed originally by J Edgar Hoover, a man who kept secret files on tens of thousands of people, including Presidents, and used them to get his way effectively via blackmail. I don’t doubt there are some really decent guys in that agency, but from its very foundation it has been part of the corrupt state.
I remember when the whole Trump Russia hoax was going on we were told that 11 intelligence agencies indicated it was Russian interference. My reaction was “why the f*** do we have ELEVEN intelligence agencies.”
[*] which makes me sound like a tyrant, which I am not. Moreover, the way employment law is going this is getting more and more watered down, which is why I don’t have employees any more.
You can deal with upper-level abstractions. I dealt with street reality. Back when I did that work, if you had the FBI against you, you knew the work they did was very good, and also very ethical. If you had evidence that helped your client, they looked, and acted justly in response to it. (Not so with most other agencies.) Their word was good. Their intent was not to roll up a big number, not to impose their power, but to investigate and stop crimes. Of all LE, they got my respect – as a defense lawyer. That was then . . .
“But their agency was built on Hoover’s corruption!” Yeah, and your country was helped along by slavery. May I not respect you because of that?
Fraser, twasn’t 11 intelligence agencies, it was 17. Seventeen. Nobody ever said what they were, but if you looked it up you found it included the Coast Guard intell folks, and (from memory, check for yourself) the USAF foreign technology assessors, Marine Force Recon, indeed anybody who would have an opinion on Trump/Russia. In short, it was nonsense, but how many media outfits bothered to check?
These seventeen, according to the LA Times..
1. Office of the Director of National Intelligence
2.Central Intelligence Agency
3. National Security Agency
4. Defense Intelligence Agency
5. Federal Bureau of Investigation
6. Department of State – Bureau of Intelligence and Research
7. Department of Homeland Security – Office of Intelligence and Analysis
8. Drug Enforcement Administration – Office of National Security Intelligence
9. Department of the Treasury – Office of Intelligence and Analysis
10. Department of Energy – Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence
11. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
12. National Reconnaissance Office
13. Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance
14. Army Military Intelligence
15. Office of Naval Intelligence
16. Marine Corps Intelligence
.17. Coast Guard Intelligence