Seymour MO town council meeting – November 10th

Well it’s Thursday November 10th 2011 and the city council meeting agenda for tonight is not posted as it should be. Not the end of the world but is just indicative of what government is. They take money by force from people and then in return return substandard services because there is no incentive and no competition.  I saw this illustrated earlier this week when I had to use the Tax payer supported Seymour library computers (The city just bought them computers. God only knows why this is governments responsibility.) .  I first noticed that flash was not installed on the FireFox browser that I was using, there is no WiFi, and you can not use a memory card to actually store a download and take it with you, or use the USB to facilitate the upload, printing, or editing of a file you bring with you.  The computers are next to useless for many purposes and substandard to what would have to be offered in the free market. Why? Because government is providing the service, stealing the money to do this, and have no competition.

The meeting started promptly at 6 pm there were a whopping 5 people present tonight. The very first order of business seemed to be the approving of last weeks minutes which explains why they were not there when I went to post a link to them last week. (I say seemed because to a  city council neophyte like me that many things are not every clear but that will change in time I am sure.)  Minutes leave out so very much BTW and an audio or video record is very much needed.

I will get better as time goes on as I am very poor with names, but perhaps this is a blessing as I do not want to make my criticisms seem personal, it is ideas and institutions that I wish to criticize. I mean to attack the message and not the messenger.

There was mention of  putting in a bid for a “depot” on a high speed train line that is being planned. The time to get into Springfield will be about 10 minutes.  I do not see why this is an issue for government at any level or  why my tax dollars are paying the salary of anyone to spend time on this issue. I think this train may be a great thing, IF conceived and carried out in the free market I would support it. The  end never justifies the means and it applies in this case.

As part of the police report an incident on Halloween a masked in costumed individual came into the “Hot Spot” and had a knife.  I was not there personally but no  mention of this individual threatening anyone was mentioned, yet the local police and the sheriffs office was called. To make a long story short a K9 tracked this person home and they are now involved in the legal system.  All I can say is what a complete waste of resources and tax money. Like I said I was not there but the modus operandi of government seems as Ayn Rand predicted in Atlas Shrugged is to criminalize every thing and make everyone a criminal.  Is this incident as reported to me different in substance from me using a knife in my kitchen or possibly during a cook out at a city park?  I found the following story about the insane criminalization of everything in America.  Kidnapping and Ransom Rampant in the US

A man stopped for not stopping at a stop sign was arrested for a DUI with a blood alcohol of 2.37.  Let me state that I drive a motorcycle and am not a fan of people driving while impaired. I am still concerned about the disingenuous nature of these laws. Let me explain: The  DUI  BAC (blood alcohol content) limits are forever being lowered. For what reason I have to ask? If you have a commercial driving license they even give you a totally different BAC even when driving in your personal car. The test itself is inaccurate at measuring impairment as it only measures BAC and does not take into account the blood brain barrier, and built up tolerance. It is being used like  the “War on Drugs”  to justify illegal check points on our roads that throw the 4th amendment under the bus. Other  behaviors such as texting, having unruly children in the car, not having enough sleep, a diabetic having low blood sugar, have been shown in some experiments to create as much or more impairment as a 0.08 BAC but it is not politically correct to prosecute these other behaviors.  Why the double standard?  Trying not to drive under the influence is discouraged in the arrest of people that sleep in their cars for DUI. In many places just the act of sleeping in your car is illegal.  If one wants to walk somewhere and drink a beer on the way somewhere, one is arrested so the obvious choice is to drive where you can hide the fact that you are drinking. The building codes if not outright prohibiting  bar owners from providing a place to “sleep it off” – drive the price so high that it is not cost effective to do this.  Also with alcohol having an insanely high tax rate, taking advantage of the poor IMHO, none of it is used for things such as providing say a free cab to someone that has drank too much. Youth learn to drink and drive because drinking in a park or otherwise safe place is the best way to get arrested. Youth also learn to throw their cans on the road to avoid the insane “open container laws” that would fine them at the very least for an empty can in their vehicle. Lastly there is a steady stream of stories in the press about breathalyzer machines not being properly calibrated with no end in sight. Perhaps if those administering these tests with mis-calibrated  machines were threatened with long jail terms things would change. But I  almost forgot… our protectors are above the law unlike we mundanes.

A book could be written on the hypocrisy of the system on this issue, perhaps I will touch upon this at a later time. There are obviously more unanswered questions than answers with the, knee jerk implemented, federally dictated, war on DUI. The DUI laws are a study in contradictions and stupidity.

DUI Task Force Cop Admits Falsifying Breath Test Readings  How do we protect ourselves against this?

The city is going to buy 2  new Chevy Tahoe’s for the police department for $60,000. When discussing the traction on the 2 wheel version it was mentioned that the “armor” put a lot of weight onto the rear end. If I am not misunderstanding this – I find the extra cost of armor plus the degraded gas mileage to be an issue. Police are not even in the top 10 of dangerous jobs and this statistic includes big cities where things are much more dangerous that in Seymour MO.  (There are other areas where what exactly is occurring  are unclear. Due to time constraints, and my strengths and weakness’s I leave it to others to track down these possible misunderstandings.)

A fire engine was in for annual maintenance and passed with flying colors. The town also is sending new employees to fire 1 & 2 school. Cost was not mentioned. As you may have guessed I don’t think government belongs in the business of fire protection. No one has a God given right to having their house fire put out much less a right to steal off of his neighbors to pay for it. Also in the free market there would be a huge difference in the cost to provide  fire protection for a small poured concrete home with a sprinkler system and a 3 story, 5000 square food, balloon framed, home 3 miles from the nearest fire hydrant. Government provided fire protection turns  the proper free market distribution of cost on it’s head.

There was recently a small earth quake that separated the brick veneer from a building  and was in danger of falling on the sidewalk. The city was proud that they had recently changed the building codes so that they did not need the property owners permission to take this brick down.  My thoughts are, that with cities track record of never ending usurpation of property rights, through mala prohibita building codes, that this is a very dangerous slippery slope and that some other more freedom respecting solution should  be sought out. The trend is clear: you own nothing, using your property is just a permission granted to you and it gets worse every year. Again the end does not justify the means.

The city (I know I have been inconstant with the terms city and town. I  apologize.) is going to spend $3800 for a drive up window at the new city hall, so people do not have to get out of their cars.  I think this could be proper for a private business to do but a town by definition is spending  extorted money that is not theirs and should be very frugal. I am unsure how this window is enabling government to accomplish it’s one and only mission and that is to protect my God given inalienable rights.

Something was said about problems with the schools backhoe. You can read what I think about government involvement in education here.

There was talk about buying a  bobcat to dig graves at the cemetery. I surely feel like I just fell off of the turnip truck because for the life of me I do not see how protecting my God given rights has anything to do with digging graves and buying a bobcat with my money!

Lastly I discovered that town council meetings used to be recorded but someone filmed an executive session (Sounds like a star chamber to me.) and released it to the public, therefore they stopped filming town councils meetings. That logic sounds an awful lot like suspending the whole class when the teacher finds some bubble gum on the floor. Very contorted collectivist logic.

*Note on executive sessions:  When our government operates in secret and out of earshot of those that attend city counsel meetings -there is a good old boys network where certain goings on are leaked to the privileged members of the mainstream press. Take this article by Bob Anderson of The Webster County Citizen. I guess if you don’t suck up you are kept in the dark as to what goes on in the Star Chamber.

Besides I as told by a council member that divulging what goes on in the Star Chamber is a crime. As usual our owners are exempt from laws that apply to us mundanes.

I don’t  like the idea of the town filming themselves (we the citizens need to do this) as it always brings to mind malfunctioning government cameras when you need them the most, as was the governments story at the Oklahoma city bombing.

And how much does a film of the public meeting really mean when our employees get to meet in the dark in their executive sessions? I really don’t care how acceptable this is as slavery was once and still is acceptable in certain places. I don’t care how legal this is, remember that the genocide of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were all legal under their laws also. These private meetings of our government are an abomination.

As you can see there is very little that our local government does that fits under the definition of what government should be when this country was founded as espoused by the writings of Locke, Paine, and Jefferson. This is a perfect example of the tyranny of the majority. (democracy) The majority seems to support the trampling of their fellow mans rights, stealing from him, locking him in a cage, or even killing him if he protests the theft and usurpation’s. For the life of me I do not understand how people that call themselves Christians can do this and  can look in the mirror in the morning.