I just became aware of the growing practice in the United States of charging prisoners a fee for each day they stay in prison. The fees are not just for room and board but extend to visitors who are charged for visits. Medical care is billed to the prisoner. Increasingly aggressive bill collection agencies are being used to force prisoners and their families to pay these bills.

Apparently this has been going on for some time now but in recent years the fees have gone up quite a bit. The story describes a man who was attacked in prison and lost an eye. When he sued, the prison hit him with a lawsuit asking for his three year accumulation of fees, $55,000.

There are so many problems with this practice that it simply boggles my brain.

The first thing that immediately comes to mind is that as we continue to make prison a profit center we incentive putting people in prison. It’s clear this is working because you can go to prison in the United States for just about anything these days. Police forces and local governments fund themselves through seizures.  Private prison companies make millions by cutting as many corners as possible and often brutalizing prisoners.

The next thought is if we actually want to release prisoners back into society where they can become productive citizens, having them owe an impossible debt will clearly drive them straight back into crime. It means we don’t really want to release them at all. It’s essentially a Ponzi Scheme. We need more and more prisoners to fund the prison system, eventually, of course, we run out of people to imprison and who is left holding all the debt? The usual suspect, taxpayers. Meanwhile everyone else absconds with all the money. Do they go to jail? Hardly.

Then of course is the simple question of how is a prisoner supposed to earn money to pay for incarceration, while incarcerated? It’s nonsensical.

The only possibility is that the loved ones of the prisoner, who have committed no crime, are going to have to pay. We have now criminalized being related to or friends with a criminal! Take that in for a moment. Think about it.

The larger point here is that we are destroying our nation from the inside. We don’t need terrorists and foreign invaders. Almost 3% of people in this country are under correctional supervision. One in thirty-five*!

CORRECTION: Originally I put 1 in 3 instead of 3%.

At the rate we are going it will soon be more normal to be a criminal than to not be so. It’s already that way for segments of our society.

This must end. In a system that so brutalizes people, often for minor or drug offenses, who is truly the criminal?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

The Federal Trade Commission just shut down an organization called Vemma Nutrition Company because the government claims Vemma is operating a Pyramid Scheme. Vemma argues they are a legitimate Multi-Level Marketing company and have done nothing wrong.

I’m not much interested in the legal niceties that separate a Pyramid Scheme from a MLM company. It’s all pretty much the same thing. They prey upon false hopes. People are told they will make a great deal of money and then forced to purchase products and recruit other people into the company to do the same. All MLM companies make the vast majority of their money not from selling products to the public but in selling to their unwitting dupes.

Most studies show that around 99% of sales representatives for such companies make very little or no money at all. The information about MLM businesses is readily available for anyone caring to do even a cursory search of the internet. The FTC strongly warns people to stay away from such companies.

The question I ask is if the government should be shutting down such businesses? The reason largely given for government intervention is that the owners are committing fraud by telling potential sales people they can make a lot of money and forcing them to purchase more and more product. To some degree I agree with this point, fraud is a crime. If someone lies in order to steal your money they are behaving in a criminal fashion. However, if the lie is obviously a lie and you are simply a hopeful fool, it is my opinion that law enforcement should not be trying to protect you from your own foolishness.

I fully support the FTC in their warnings about MLM schemes. I think that is one of the things that government should be doing for us. They should investigate such employers and publicly warn people against working for such as them. That being said, I think there comes a time when the government shouldn’t be trying to save us from ourselves.

What happens is that MLM companies soon learn the legal boundaries of their deceit and operate within those limits. Thus companies like Mary Kay, AmWay, Herbalife, and dozens of others keep their policies just above the illegal threshold.

So when the government shuts down Vemma for a short period of time we get the impression we are safe; that Mary Kay is not a Pyramid scheme but a legitimate company because they are allowed to continue to operate. Meanwhile Vemma tweaks a couple of policies, pays a fine, and returns to once again fleece gullible college students across the world.

What has the government accomplished?

Don’t get me wrong. I think MLM companies are despicable in their deceit and their willingness to take advantage of the desperate. I just don’t think the government can save us from them. That’s up to us. The information is there.

Don’t work for an MLM and don’t help your friends out by purchasing their products. You’re just hurting them.

That’s the only long-term solution.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

There’s an incredibly interesting story in the news involving the daughter of celebrity Rosie O’Donnell. The reason it is so interesting to me is that it illustrates the struggle between those who advocate the power of the state and those who argue for the rights of the individual.

Most of my Libertarian and Anarchist friends and acquaintances are pretty strongly in the camp of the individual and while I am as well, I do recognize the state has a role to play in a civil society. Police have an important and useful function as does government.

The particulars of this case are that Chelsea O’Donnell is a seventeen year old girl which puts her right on the verge of adulthood and emancipation. She voluntarily went to the home of a 25 year old man. She has been described in various media outlets as having an undisclosed mental illness.

The man in question, Steven Sheerer, has now been arrested and charged with distribution of obscenity to a minor and endangering the welfare of a child. He apparently sent obscene material to Chelsea and lured her to his home.

From a Libertarian perspective the fact that Chelsea is almost an adult and went of her own free will is a compelling argument. We Libertarians and Anarchists don’t think the state should be in the business of protecting us from ourselves. The reality of this case is that Chelsea, while close to having reached her majority, is still legally a juvenile. There is also the important factor of her mental illness. This story resonates with me, I have a niece who is developmentally disabled. It would be easy for an unscrupulous person to convince her to do something that is not in her own interest.

It’s clear to me that people who are not capable of making decisions must be protected from those who would use them for their own nefarious ends. While the idea of a society in which everyone leads their own lives free of the state is very appealing, we Libertarians and Anarchists must remember that there are not only those among us incapable of making good decisions but also those who prey upon the weak.

Even those who have reached their majority and are of sound mind can be tricked, duped, lied to, preyed up, and even physically coerced into doing things that are not in their interests.

Where does the state intervene? When is our folly the business of the government?

I don’t think the lines are crisp and there will always be difficult situations. I largely argue on the side of individual freedom, but not always.

In this situation I think the state has a compelling case. I insist they prove it in a court of law but I do not condemn them. I praise the excellent police work of the Rockland County Sheriff’s Department who sent officers door to door. I applaud the officer who thought Sheerer evasive in his answers and eventually found Chelsea.

What do you think?

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Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

A young man opened the door to a moving car and yelled “Pigs” at nearby officers. They chased him down and arrested him for Disorderly Conduct.

To Protect and to Serve on full display.

Read my take on events here.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition
Next Release: The Gray Horn

I’ve been railing against the War on Drugs for a long time and against the seizure laws used in said war. I really don’t know that I can say anything else.

Read the story of Charles L. Clark and tell me that you support the War on Drugs. I dare you.

He may or may not be guilty of anything. He had a lot of cash he claims he had saved up. They stopped him because his luggage “smelled of marijuana”. When they found a pile of cash in his luggage, $11,000, they took it. They charged him with resisting arrest when he tried to stop the officers from taking his money although those charges were dropped. They couldn’t charge him with anything else because he had committed no other crime.

They suspected that because he had a one-way ticket and cash that he had earned it selling drugs. They had no proof of such and so they took his money. Now he has to sue the government to get it back. They stole it from him legally.

Meanwhile thirteen different law enforcement agencies have asked for their share of the $11,000.

If you don’t think something is wrong with this then I suggest that you cannot believe in the ideals upon which the United States of America was founded. You cannot believe in freedom.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition – Release date: late August 2015

There’s a lot of debate in the last few weeks about flags. The flag of the United States and the second flag of the Confederacy.

In many southern states the Stainless Banner is still used in many public places and by private citizens. It is strongly associated with a history of slavery. It’s very creation is steeped in the idea that the white race is superior to the black race. Many people see it thusly. Others see it merely as a symbol of southern pride and do not think of it racially.

In most of the United States people consider the Stars and Stripes a symbol of national pride. Others see it as representative of atrocities that this nation has inflicted upon others and of general tyranny.

What I find most interesting about the debate is the complete lack of consistency on both sides of the argument.

Both groups seem to think that the government should not be able to ban its chosen flag while absolutely thinking the government should be able to protect the same flag.

As I Libertarian I think the both sides are incorrect. The government has absolutely no say in how any person treats a flag. If a person wants to hang it from their porch in pride the government should in no way prevent them from doing so. If a person wants to burn it on their porch then the government should in no way prevent them from doing so.

When the government makes a law telling citizens of this country how they are allowed to display or destroy their flags I will stand up and decry it. I will shout from the tallest tree that this law is wrong.

If a business, a governor, or a private citizens chooses to display a flag of their own accord, that’s their legally protected decision. If they choose to destroy it in any manner, that’s up to them.

If the governor of Alabama wants the Stainless Banner removed from the statehouse, then so be it. But if the federal government orders it so removed, that’s a problem.

If someone burns their flag in a public display of dissatisfaction with the government of the United States and gets arrested, that’s a problem.

We cannot simply support a law when it works to our benefit. We must support the law even when it works against us. Then we are consistent. Otherwise we don’t really support the law at all. If we don’t support the law then how can we expect anyone else to do so?

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition

There is not a group of nine people that I respect more in this world than the Supreme Court Justices. I certainly do not agree with all their decisions. That being said, I find them to be intelligent and interesting. Their ability to work with one another even when they disagree vehemently is a model that I only dream Congress members might emulate.

They appear to largely and genuinely like one another. This attitude seems to have been fostered largely by former Chief Justice Rehnquist and continued on under Chief Justice Roberts. I read Supreme Court opinions on cases I find interesting and their humor and passion always shines through. Some Justices write in a more legalese fashion that my non-legally trained mind finds difficult to follow but I try my best.

Justice David Souter is a personal hero and I loved reading the clean and dispassionate logic of his thought processes which appear in what we call opinions. It was like reading a great philosopher.

Justice Elana Kagan just wrote the opinion on a copyright case involving Marvel Comics and a fellow who invented a web-shooting device. The company began marketing a similar tool and agreed to pay him a great deal of money and a percentage of sales. They agreed to payment in perpetuity but only later came across a ruling that limited payment to twenty years. They tried to enforce this limit while the inventor, predictably, wanted to continue with the original agreement.

Kagan wrote the majority opinion joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. Justices Alito filed a dissenting opinion, in which Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas joined.

As Chief Justice; Roberts gets to decide who writes the opinion, and knowing Justice Kagan was a comic book fan, kindly allowed her the opportunity. This is a classic example of the congeniality of the court.

In any case, Justice Kagan got to slip several Spider-Man references into the opinion including the classic with great power comes great responsibility line that is the center of Peter Parker’s philosophy.

This story makes me happy. Good for Chief Justice Roberts. Good for Justice Kagan for grabbing the opportunity with both hands.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition

The case of baby Bou-Bou has been settled. Freedom loses.

I wrote about this situation back in December of 2014 but I’ll recap quickly in case you don’t want to read it again.

A man, his wife, and children moved in with relatives because of financial difficulties. The relatives had an estranged son who hadn’t been seen in months. An informant told police the son was selling drugs. The police learned the address of the family. A judge wrote a “no-knock” warrant (kick in the door without warning). The police made no determination that children were in the house and the supposed criminal hadn’t lived there in months. During the raid a flash-bang grenade was thrown into the baby’s crib. The resulting medical bills were in excess of one million dollars. The family sued.

A summary of the defense was written by a fellow named William Griggs and sums it up pretty well.

The act of sleeping in a room about to be breached by a SWAT team constituted “criminal” conduct on the part of the infant. At the very least, the infant was fully liable for the nearly fatal injuries inflicted on him when Habersham County Sheriff’s Deputy Charles Long blindly heaved a flash-bang grenade – a “destructive device,” as described by the ATF, that when detonated burns at 2,000-3,500 degrees Fahrenheit – into the crib.

Merely by being in that room, Bou-Bou had assumed the risk of coming under attack by a SWAT team. By impeding the trajectory of that grenade, rather than fleeing from his crib, Bou-Bou failed to “avoid the consequences” of that attack.

In any case, Bou-Bou, along with his parents and his siblings, are fully and exclusively to blame for the injuries that nearly killed the child and left the family with more than one million dollars in medical bills. The SWAT team that invaded the home in Cornelia, Georgia on the basis of a bogus anonymous tip that a $50 drug transaction had occurred there is legally blameless.

The case was settled for less than the medical bills and split between all family members. No officers, judges, or anyone else was charged with a crime. The settlement money is paid directly from tax-payer revenue. So, taxpayers of Georgia, you are party to this disgusting travesty.

The War on Drugs is, at this point, nothing more than a series of vile schemes to enrich judges, lawyers, law-enforcement officers, private prisons, and a host of others at the expense of our freedom. Let’s end it.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition

There’s an interesting case that was just resolved in France where a bartender was sentenced to a suspended sentence and ordered not to work in a bar for a year after serving a patron fifty-six shots of alcohol in a single sitting.

In the United States it’s largely illegal to serve habitual drunks or clearly intoxicated people so this could well have happened in the United States as well. I wanted to examine the law and the ruling from a Libertarian perspective. It’s clear that Renaud Prudhomme willingly and eagerly consumed the alcohol. He was trying to break a record for the most shots of liquor taken in a single sitting, the previous record being displayed in the bar. That seems to have been the crux of the legal case against Gilles Crepin who was the bartender on duty and who posted the record on a notice board.

I think it’s pretty clear that by posting the record Crepin and the establishment were encouraging patrons to try and break the record. It’s also fairly obvious to me that anyone who drinks fifty-six shots of alcohol in a sitting is putting their life at risk. Still, should it be illegal for bars to encourage drinking to excess? Should it be illegal for a restaurant to offer all you can eat buffets? That is also clearly unhealthy. Should it be illegal for governments to sell lottery tickets, which largely serve as a tax on the people who can least afford it? These are interesting questions in my opinion.

I do think there is legitimacy to the idea that a business should endeavor to make their environment safe for patrons. We have guard rails on overlooks to prevent people from falling and nets at baseball stadiums to prevent foul balls from harming spectators but this is somewhat different than rules about protecting people from themselves. If someone wants to drink themselves to death or at least into a dangerous state is it the job of the bartender to prevent it?

I absolutely don’t think bars should be posting information about the record number of drinks taken in a sitting but I’m equally convinced it shouldn’t be illegal. Any establishment that does so is encouraging people to drink too much and this leads to drunken behavior. I’m not a fan of being around people vomiting, stumbling around, erratically driving their vehicles, and all the other attendant problems with too much alcohol. If a bar proved to be full of people like that I’d stop going.

It’s my opinion that in the end we must allow people to make their mistakes in life. When we try to make the world a better place with such laws it inevitable makes the situation worse and the establishments in question find a way to defeat the rules.

There is no doubt that humans are often weak of will in many ways and that they can be taken advantage of by unscrupulous people. But, as long as the person so manipulated was not a victim of fraud and simply chose, of their own free will, to behave in a self-destructive fashion, so be it.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition

Any sex story that involves a woman with younger men immediately garners headline attention and I’m not opposed to having a minimum age for consensual sex but why is it a crime if the boy involved was passed that age?

In this case a woman named Rachel Lehnardt had sex with an eighteen year old boy and apparently allowed her sixteen year old daughter and friends to drink alcohol and smoke marijuana in her home. Lehnardt has had her other children taken from her by the state of Georgia and is being charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor for allowing people to drink in her home.

Lehnardt denies allowing anyone to drink in her home although apparently admitted to her Alcoholic’s Anonymous sponsor that she did engage in sexual acts with several boys over the age of 18. Who cares? Apparently everyone because the comment sections are filled with horror and outrage at her behavior.

Personally I have no problem with a parent who allows their child to drink alcohol in moderation at home. I certainly sipped beer and drank wine in my household from a young age. What is freedom if we cannot have sex with other adults no matter the age difference? What is freedom if we cannot allow our own children to have alcohol in our own homes.

The only possible criminal activity I see here is the allegation that she allowed minors not her own child to drink alcohol in her home. If we’re going to charge every person who is under 21 with possession of alcohol or marijuana I guess our jails just aren’t full enough with people who committed nonsense crimes.

It’s not like she forced these kids to drink. They drank because they wanted to drink. The boys had sex with her because, gosh, people like sex.

The state has taken her four children from her. Do we think placing them in foster care is really to their benefit?

Lehnardt admits a problem with alcohol and is in treatment. That’s where her sponsor ratted her out for being honest about what was going on in her life.

This is one where I know outraged moralists are going to yell at me and tell me how wrong I am. How the state must “save” those poor children from their evil and out of control mother.

I completely disagree. If she wants to let her kid drink at her home she should be allowed to do so. If she wants to have sex with people who are passed the age of legal consent then more power to her. Freedom means being free, not being free to tell everyone else how to live their lives.

Tom Liberman
Sword and Sorcery fantasy with a Libertarian Ideology
Current Release: The Black Sphere
Next Release: The Girl in Glass I: Apparition