Hello Everyone,
Thanks for your patience as I continue to develop the new show, and thanks for your emails in the meantime. Since the new show is taking much longer than I’d originally expected, I decided to post this lengthy update on my experience in Minnesota so far, in the meantime. This could probably serve as a Third World American episode in it’s own right, if I recorded it. But that show is in the past, so I’ll post this as a (very long) blog entry instead.
My work on the new podcast abruptly ceased when my new employer in St. Paul terminated all three shifts, and gave many American jobs to low-wage workers in India instead. They gave no advanced notice–I just showed up for work one day like any other, and was sent home. That’s the second time in 12 months I’ve been rewarded by American corporations for doing good work, by having my position eliminated with no advance notice. The first time was in California, eleven months ago, when my employer’s new “partner”, Goldman Sachs, demanded deep reductions in employed Americans..
You may want to view this video and this video at YouTube, which show the Pittsburgh (American) law firm, Cohen & Grigsby, teaching American companies how to avoid hiring qualified American workers, in favor of hiring low-paid immigrants instead, while presenting the appearance of seeking American workers in accordance with the law.
No, this isn’t hyperbole; this is almost verbatim from the law firm’s own seminar, recorded on video: “Our goal is clearly NOT to find a qualified and interested U.S. worker”. They are not referring to cherry-pickers, janitors and fast food chefs; they are talking about well-educated, highly skilled labor, like computer programmers. They’re talking about the group of Americans that were formerly known as the “middle class”. Take a look, and see a live, real-world example of what I’ve been warning Americans about for years. There is nothing inherently wrong with being rich, until you use your wealth to betray the very nation, and the same citizens, whom you depended upon in order to become rich in the first place. That is when your wealth, and the sheer power that derives from that wealth, become illegitimate.
I also recommend that you read this article from the Observer UK, which is the first time apart from my efforts on Third World American that I’ve heard anyone seriously suggest that the United States is declining toward third world, or developing nations status. You will likely see the American news media give this all-important topic the consistent coverage it deserves only at the end our our nation’s descent, when the United States of America finally crashes. The American mainstream media is too pre-occupied with Paris Hilton, “Global Warming” and sports right now. Or, in the case of National Public Radio, it’s too concerned with every human being on the planet who is not an American citizen, to bother serving its own “National” constituency.
Also, be sure to listen to episodes #100 and #101 of the Common Sense With Dan Carlin podcast. In the first episode (#100), Dan responds to a foreigner who wonders why Americans revere the Constitution and our Founding Fathers so much, and Dan’s response is by far the most lucid and entertaining I’ve ever heard on this topic. In the second episode (#101), Dan has some equally profound things to say about how much of our humanity we are really losing to the nanny state, which I also discuss below. Don’t miss these two extraordinary episodes of Common Sense With Dan Carlin.
THE GREAT STATE OF MINNESOTA
In the eight months I’ve been here, it has become rather obvious to me that the state of Minnesota fancies itself to be the “Little California of the North”, and it seems committed to repeating California’s mistakes. This has become even more apparent during my recent job search in the Twin Cities area, where the overwhelming percentage of options fall into one of five general categories:
1. Service (fast food, waiting tables, running a cash register, etc.)
2. Low-paid general labor (warehouse, etc.)
3. Scams and sleaze (multi-level marketing, work-at-home, telemarketing, collections, etc.)
4. Financial services (which usually belongs in #3 above)
5. So-called “Health Care”, which runs the gamut from mere office/administrative work at a health care company, to lobbying government officials, to providing medical assistance to… well, not the people who need it most.
Other (skilled) jobs do exist in both states, of course, but the categories above represent the overwhelming character of employment opportunities that are visible to the typical job hunter in the Twin Cities metro area.
Meanwhile, as the quality of employment opportunities and compensation declines, I am paying rent that is fully twice as high, and automobile insurance that is six times higher than it was when I last lived in the in the Midwest, just seven years ago. Yes folks, rent in the Twin Cities rivals that of Southern California, and my car insurance living in the relatively sparse Twin Cities area is even more expensive than it was when I lived in the San Diego-Los Angeles metro area, where no less than 30 million violently angry drivers could be found within a two hour drive in any direction– many of whom (“immigrants”) did not even have insurance coverage.
Why is auto insurance so expensive in Minnesota? Not because it’s more dangerous here (not by a long shot). It’s more expensive because the Minnesota state government has mandated far greater liability minimums than are necessary. That’s what happens when the people who make laws live so comfortably, that they cannot comprehend how devastating the financial burden of increased taxes, insurance premiums, gas prices, fees, fines, etc. are to their fellow citizens. It’s the twisted logic of the American elite: “If no one at the country club is suffering from it, then no one must be suffering from it.”
This is a far cry from the nation I lived in when I graduated from high school in nearby Michigan, where even a high-school graduate could find a job that was ethical, providing some dignity, paid enough to meet your basic expenses, and offered legitimate opportunities for advancement on merit. Those days are all but gone in the United States.
As you know, I have little use for cult-mentalities like “liberal” and “conservative”, “left-wing” and “right-wing”, except when describing those who proudly proclaim their own adherence to one of these cult mentalities. My only concern is what actually works in practice, regardless of which direction it leans. So I could care less if Minnesota regards itself as a “blue” state or a “red” state (for the record, Minnesota considers itself a “blue” state). I fear for the future of Minnesota residents because this state has committed itself to an agenda that just doesn’t work, period, regardless of the political ideology behind it.
I’ll happily concede that Minnesota does some things quite well. For example, it has the highest rate of volunteerism in the country. It’s emergency response to the recent I-35W bridge collapse was about as good as it gets. Moreover, there is absolutely no comparison between California and Minnesota when it comes to the number of programs for the poor and homeless. And believe it or not, many people in Minnesota still wave “hello” as you drive past them, in the great tradition of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry. It took me a few months to get used to seeing that again, after so many years in California, where I only drove past people who ignored me completely, gave me the finger, or waved a gun. I even saw tractors in a local parade recently. Tractors! How American is that?
Indeed, as near as I can tell, Minnesota today pretty much fits the glowing descriptions I heard from lifelong California residents of what California was like… two or three decades ago. And that is what terrifies me, because today California is about as close to hell on earth as a U.S. state can become, without seceding from the Union entirely, or abandoning the U.S. Constitution altogether. Deprive California of the Pacific Ocean and it’s famous “great weather”, and you’re left with little more than a good vision of what Nazi Germany would have looked like a few generations after Hitler died, if he had won the war: a nation where more reasonable leaders long ago abandoned the extreme horrors of holocaust, while the general population had long since become accustomed to “normal” life under the iron fist of fascism.
Having lived in several states, and visiting dozens more, and observing each of them carefully, it is evident to me that the movers and shakers in Minnesota seem hell-bent on emulating California, if for no better reason than to satisfy the only thing Minnesota really has in common with California: their “liberal” or “socialist” tendencies. It’s a terrifying spectacle to witness, for one who has experienced the very best, and very worst that the United States has to offer.
You see, the charming examples of contemporary Minnesota life I just cited only describe the last remaining remnants of a truly unique ethos that once dominated the American Midwest—a way of life that is disappearing fast, more by design than anything else. This wonderful way of life–the only way of life I have seen in my travels that actually works–is rapidly being overwhelmed by the California ethos of social fascism, where arrogant nannies dictate every aspect of citizens’ lives, while the tried and true rules of small own economics are being replaced by the one and only rule of globalized economics: “every man for himself”. My Twin Cities employer recently made this latter point clear by exterminating so many American jobs in order to boost the economy of India, on the opposite side of the planet, while retaining all the legal privileges and protections of being incorporated under an American charter. The Minnesota state government probably isn’t even aware of what this local employer did, much like it failed to pay attention to bridge integrity, because elected officials here were too busy searching for personal behavioral choices to ban, long-standing civil liberties to eliminate, non-U.S. citizens to assist, and other irrelevancies.
California Uber Alles? Nope, the Dead Kennedys already had their run. It’s time to sing Minnesota Uber Alles.
Having been raised well into adulthood in the Midwest before moving to California, I’m quite familiar with the way of life in both places. I can only ask that you trust me on this–the Midwestern way of life is infinitely superior, at least for anyone who believes that the United States, based on Enlightenment principles, was conceived in order to finally move humanity beyond medieval practices, where the masses of ordinary citizens were dominated by a relative handful of arrogant, “elite” individuals, who presumed themselves to be uniquely worthy of dominating every aspect of their fellow humans’ lives.
And that is why I’m so saddened to watch Minnesota abandon the American Midwestern ethos, in favor of a return to a more medieval ethos, right before my eyes. I have no idea how to stop it, either. What I can do, is try and explain what is happening to Minnesota.
THE CALIFORNIA INFLUENCE
A quarter of a millennia after its founding, the United States is no longer a new nation. It has long ceased to experience the trauma of birth pangs and adolescence, and it has entered what can only be called “young adulthood”. Because of California’s powerful economy (one of the largest economies in the world), California has taken on the role of “elder sibling” in our union of independent states, despite chronologically being a middle child among the states. The situation resembles the household of a 16-year old teen idol who records a platinum-selling album, and suddenly finds that her (relatively poor) parents are only concerned with maintaining HER approval, rather than being good parents and mentors, which effectively makes the child head of household.
In a similar manner, less financially successful states like Minnesota are now clamoring to emulate and seek the approval of California, the rich, famous and glamorous “elder sibling”, which itself has not yet passed into experienced adulthood (and is in fact, nearly bankrupt). Like a child or young adult, California thinks it “knows everything,” and it behaves accordingly. Yet it is merely repeating the sins of our fathers—the very sins our ancestors revolted against in the Revolutionary War–by replacing modern American civil liberties with an endless deluge of laws, restrictions, bans, and prohibitions, the likes of which the western world hasn’t seen since pre-Enlightenment Europe, while pursuing economic policies that obliterate the American system’s source of strength and credibility: the American middle class.
Consequently, California has become more militant–a virtual police state in many respects–in order to enforce all those thousands of tiny rules and regulations that invade nearly every aspect of Californians’ daily lives. I am not referring to Rodney King; I’m describing police officers who joyfully resort to brutal force against ordinary, unarmed citizens, using weapons like tasers at the slightest provocation—or with no provocation at all. I’m talking about the police being arrogant and rude, and truly frightening, rather than being source of comfort to honest citizens. I’m talking about something entirely different than public servants, like the constable in It’s a Wonderful Life. The police in California today do not “keep the peace”. It is a heavily-armed, quasi-military outfit that enforces laws, using any means available to accomplish this goal (with the exception of humanity), because there are now so many laws to enforce in California that it is nearly impossible for even the most honest citizen not to violate at least one of them.
Only when you comprehend this reality of daily life in California can the prevalence of police brutality there be seen in its proper context: it is not so much a function of racism as it is a natural consequence of granting the government authority over every aspect of citizens’ daily lives. It’s the same phenomenon that transformed the British Empire’s individual “peacekeepers” into gangs of thugs, the same reason that our own good and decent soldiers in Iraq often become arrogant and oppressive toward the very people they ostensibly are there to help.
Power corrupts, and the government of California enjoys a degree of power over its citizens that is more typical of another, less enlightened nation, than a U.S. state. Hence, the natural tendency toward brutality and military mentality.
Where the “California” influence is most evident in Minnesota, I feel like an agonized 40 year old parent watching his young adult offspring repeat devastating mistakes from his own early adulthood. Children and inexperienced adults do not often listen to reason. Why should they, when they already know everything? The problem is, unlike a child who will eventually mature and recover from earlier fumbles, once Minnesota loses that admirable Midwestern way of life, it will never get it back, because it arose organically out of freedom in the first place, not as a pre-planned result of social engineering.
Losing that Midwestern ethos will be a great loss to humanity itself. Having traveled around this nation fairly extensively, I really believe that the people of the American Midwest display the finest human character in the nation–possibly the finest overall human character that the world has ever seen. Can you think of any other group of several million people who coexisted harmoniously for 250 years, living together as friends and neighbors, despite their differences, and leaving each other alone the entire time, rather than attempting to dominate and oppress each other, or waging war against their neighbors? Show me where that has happened before in human history? Perhaps it has. But I’m not aware of it. Historically, empires have risen and fallen in less time than American Midwesterners have already lived together peaceably.
The Midwestern ethos works because it is based entirely on one very simple principle: leave everyone else alone. Don’t fight against your neighbors. Don’t try to “protect” one neighbor from potential future harm by realizing oppression against another neighbor today. Don’t raise taxes on one segment of the population because you fear their behavior presents an unfair expense to you, because you will certainly do things that creates an expense they must cover for you. Leave everyone alone, and it all evens out in a stable society.Just leave everyone alone. When everyone leaves everyone else alone, all is relatively peaceful and good. But the instant one person starts trying to force another person to live and behave in a certain way–for any reason–you begin a slippery slope toward social discord, resentment, fear and suspicion of your own neighbors. From what I could tell speaking with many lifelong California residents, this is precisely what turned California from a free paradise into an oppressive hell on earth, within a few short decades. In California today, it is considered perfectly “normal” for citizens to tell other citizens how they should think, believe, and behave–and to use every means available, both legal and extra-legal, to force these attitudes, beliefs and behaviors onto others. This opposes the Midwestern ethos in every way.
For all the reputation California has for “tolerance” and “diversity,” I witnessed nothing but intolerance and clan mentality (if not Klan mentality) there. Those who would tell others how to live their lives are so numerous, and have so many different conceptions of how people “should” live, that the population in California is now fragmented into a large number of isolated subcultures that refuse to interact with each other–often within the same suburban area. Each of these groups bitterly resents, fears, and even hates the others. Neighbors suspect each other, and report anything they don’t like about their neighbors’ behavior to the authorities. Social services has a greater right to make decisions that affect children than their own parents enjoy. Sleazy attorneys slither and slink from one household to the next, like so many rattlesnakes, promising the wealth of Solomon to Californians who are willing to sue one of their neighbors for doing something that they perceive as “wrong”. Meanwhile, wealthy opportunists have taken advantage of this social discord, where no truly cooperative opposition to their goals can exist, by transferring Californian’s wealth into their own pockets at the expense of the middle class.
And the worst part is, after so many years of this, Californians no longer mind. This is their way of life today, and they think this is a perfectly normal way to live. They don’t see anything wrong with it. But I sure as hell did.
And that is where Minnesota is headed.
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation.”
-James Madison
“The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedients, and by parts….”
-Edmund Burke
THE STATEWIDE SMOKING BAN
The recent passage in Minnesota of a statewide smoking ban represents the most blatant example of this California-style backwards slide from enlightened tolerance to medieval intolerance. I have identified only one Minnesota state legislator so far (Thomas Neuville-R) who even bothered to research the matter before voting on this ban, and of course it didn’t take him long to discover what so many other people already know: the second-hand smoke scare is a politically and financially motivated fraud, perpetrated by a 500-year old hate group that, until recent decades, was no more influential than any other minor religious cult.
You may read the results of Senator Neuville’s own investigation into the matter here.
Contrast this sincere attempt to discern whether “second-hand smoke” is even harmful to non-smokers in the first place, with the best that proponents of prohibition had to offer: rhetorical gibberish like “[this bill] is modeled after successful smoke-free laws in California, Delaware and New York that fully protect the right of people to breathe clean indoor air at work and in public places.” (from the Minnesota Smoke-Free Coalition website).
I have read the U.S. Constitution, dozens of times. It’s only four pages long, after all. And I don’t recall reading anything about “the right of people to breathe clean indoor air at work and in public places.” Creating brand new “rights” out of whole cloth (which necessarily restricts and limits existing/Constitutional rights)–no matter how benevolent they might sound–is the goal of medieval mentalities. It is the work of arrogant, “elite” individuals, who presume themselves to be uniquely worthy of dominating every aspect of their fellow humans’ lives, and uniquely qualified to determine what is “right”.
In the old days, Midwesterners would have taken to the streets, dancing, singing, smoking, and drinking in joyous celebration of the fact that people today enjoy an average lifespan roughly twice as long as our ancestors were limited to. But instead, Minnesotans today gather into small, elite groups, and lock themselves inside cold, sterile rooms, seeking ways to fight against the awful diseases that naturally accompany an unnaturally long lifespan in a polluted, industrialized world. It’s as if they were engaged in a war, where the loss of civil liberties represents mere “collateral damage”. This “blue” state, with it’s twisted logic, has a lot more in common with the neo-conservatives in Washington than it dares to admit, even to itself.
“When we’re talking about war, we’re really talking about peace.”
- President George W. Bush
Long ago, when I was growing up in the Midwest, you could count on a fair number of legislators to at least try and seek the truth before passing legislation that undermined essential liberties that Americans have enjoyed since the nation’s founding. But I’ve found no compelling evidence that the majority of Minnesota legislators relied on anything except the mainstream mass media, public opinion, and lobbying efforts by anti-smoking organizations, before passing the statewide smoking ban. It probably didn’t hurt that they were emulating their “elder sibling”, California, either. They obviously did not take an objective look at the scientific evidence, which discredits the “second-hand smoke” fraud so completely, that it’s difficult to imagine how this urban legend remains alive at all.
[To summarize: The 1993 EPA report on “second-hand smoke’ was invalidated in 1998 by a federal court, where the judge determined that EPA had intentionally cooked the books to arrive at a conclusion it had decided upon before the study even began, and the World Health Organization has repeatedly tried–and failed–to duplicate these results independently ever since. Visit Dave Hitt’s website to learn how many people have really died from exposure to “second-hand smoke”. From the anti-smoking leaders’ own mouths, the answer is zero. Hitt asked anti-smoking leaders to provide just three names of people who have died from exposure to “second-hand smoke”, out of the tens or hundreds of thousands of people they claim are killed each year. They could not provide even one name. Musician Joe Jackson’s well-researched pamphlet, “Smoke, Lies, and the Nanny State” is another good layman’sprimer on the “second-hand smoke” scam, and does a great job of showing why it’s inexcusable that even non-scientists should fail to recognize this fraud, let alone legitimate scientists. But then again, even Scientology continues to endure a half century after its founding because, after all, it’s founded on “science”….]
After a few years of special interests pushing for a statewide smoking ban, the Minnesota state legislature debated the issue for only eight hours before passing a law that ultimately serves no one except a 500-year old prohibition movement that has employed all manner of lies, deceit, coercion and violence to achieve its ends. And where did the anti-smoking movement begin it transformation from an irrelevant centuries-old hate group into a powerful and influential for-profit industry? California.
The Minnesota news media, rather than serving Minnesotans by exposing this unconscionable scam, conformed to popular opinion and engaged in advocacy journalism, by praising the legislature for “finally accomplishing something significant” in the current legislative session. Meanwhile, the four-lane I-35W bridge over the Mississippi River, connecting the Twin Cities, was preparing to collapse under the burden of four decades of alternating freezing and heating, far more traffic than it was designed to carry, and total neglect from government officials who were too busy accomplishing “significant” feats like reversing civil liberties, to concern themselves with threats to public safety that actually exist.
This is vintage California behavior. It reminds me of when I lived in the state capitol, Sacramento, and observed well-dressed California state legislators literally stepping over the bodies of homeless people lying outside the capitol building, without breaking their stride or missing a word in their cell-phone conversations–conservations that probably concerned California’s latest attempt to legislate, ban or prohibit something, in order to “protect” the people (i.e., to turn a profit for some special interest). The city of Sacramento is such a wasteland of boarded up American Dreams, graffiti, and human bodies lying in the streets, that even Governor Schwartzenegger refuses to live there. He rules from Hollywood instead, traveling to the state capitol only when necessary for publicity purposes.
But the neglect of official duties in favor of prohibition I’m talking about here occurred in Minnesota, not California.
More important, Minnesota legislators never even considered the intangible, long-term societal effects of a statewide smoking ban, which requires first-class critical thinking skills, and abandonment of all bias, prejudice, and cult mentalities. Let’s take a closer look at that, because nothing related to this issue could be more important, regardless of your opinion of tobacco.
Although the civil rights movement led to a lot of legalized behavior modification in California, it was the statewide smoking ban that truly began to transform Californians from close neighbors into isolated groups that feared, hated, and suspected one another. That’s what happens when the government sanctions sending one-quarter of the entire population to the back of the bus, singling out one segment of law-abiding citizens as uniquely inferior and dangerous to their fellow citizens. This is also how so many lives were ruined, and so many careers destroyed, during McCarthyism. This kind of government-sanctioned segregation is what justified human slavery in Southern States. It justified the holocaust in Nazi Germany. There is simply no way to single out one large segment of the population for unique prohibition of a perfectly legal activity, without setting a course for social disintegration.
Even worse, like it or not smoking is a major social lubricant, like alcohol. Prohibiting a social lubricant magnifies this effect of segregating and dividing citizens. Look at the chaos that ensued after prohibition of alcohol…. Indeed, there is perhaps no better way to guarantee the breakdown of normal social interaction than to ban a major social lubricant—especially when it’s a perfectly legal activity.
The first casualties in California wer smokers and non-smokers. They were no longer integrated, but segregated. Non-smokers stayed indoors, and smokers were forced outdoors. They weren’t allowed to interact normally, in a manner where reasonable and tolerant people learn by trial and error how to accommodate each other, and to live together harmoniously (the Midwestern ethos). Instead, smokers gradually became the objects of bona-fide hatred and fear. Rush lyricist Neil Peart described this type of mass hysteria in his song, “Witch Hunt”,
Quick to judge, quick to anger
Slow to understand
Ignorance and prejudice
And fear go hand in hand
Once Californians got their first taste of state-sponsored segregation, fear, and hate, it was all downhill from there. Today, in California, drivers aren’t just annoyed by bicyclists–they HATE them. Residents aren’t just concerned one way or the other about immigration–they either HATE immigrants, or they HATE their fellow citizens who oppose immigration. It’s little wonder that the hate group, Aryan Nation, is headquartered in Temecula (Southern California). Fear, suspicion, hate and (unhealthy) cynicism are the driving social forces in California today. As near as I can tell from speaking with people who were raised there, this didn’t begin until the statewide smoking ban officially legitimized segregation, fear and hate in California. To be precise, it began coincident with the massive propaganda campaign launched by powerful special interests who enjoy virtual domination of the “debate”, in order to vilify tobacco and smokers, which led to Californians voting for a statewide ban.
Incidentally, special interests in California learned an important lesson here: If you can dominate the mass media “debate” over any issue, you can literally lead the masses like sheep to slaughter, and inspire them to “voluntarily” pass any referendum or proposition you couldn’t get past more responsible parties in Congress. In other words, the California smoking ban proposition taught special interests how to subvert the Republic our Founders created, where dutiful and responsible elected leaders ameliorate the emotions of the masses before passing reactionary legislation to solve perceived problems.
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
- Thomas Jefferson
Every election in California now features an abundant set of these propositions. In the last election this included Proposition 86, which not only would have tripled cigarettes taxes, but would have amended the state constitution in order to do so. Reasonable people do not take changes to the Constitution lightly, but I was there to witness the fact that few California voters had any idea that this proposition would amend their constitution! How could they know, if no one bothers to tell them?
“Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.”
- Daniel Webster
“When we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities is [sic] heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.”
- Thomas Paine
Like I said before, a generation after the modern anti-smoking movement came to power in California, California residents have become so accustomed to this, that they believe this is a perfectly normal way to live. Indeed, one of the anti-smoking industry’s strategies is to “de-normalize” the use of tobacco, much like Nazi propaganda meant to “de-normalize” Judaism, communism, and the behaviors that uniquely characterized these ideologies, in order to set the stage for these minorities to be obliterated without popular opposition.
You tell me, how can these kinds of policies—this agenda of “de-normalizing” other peoples’ behavioral choices that one finds personally offensive—serve the public good? After all, Hitler pursued his extermination of ideologies and behaviors on the premise that they really did pose a serious threat to the German people’s well-being, and he justified this perceived threat by appealing to junk “science” (eugenics), which claimed overwhelming and indisputable proof that the Aryan race was superior to the Jews.
Even worse, I was horrified to witness so many transplants to California from other states, who gradually assimilated this same behavior of simultaneous preaching tolerance while being intolerant, without even comprehending their own transformation. The exceptions to this rule became bitter, and many literally fled California without looking back. I encountered several families fleeing California when I worked in Salt Lake City and Kansas, prior to living in California. The one statement I’ll never forget came from the father in Salt Lake City who told me, “There’s no way I’m raising my kids in that lunatic asylum.”
But I did not understand the significance of what they were trying to tell me about California at the time. Now I understand.
I hope you will take ten minutes to listen to this interview, which I conducted last year in San Diego with a Frenchman who had moved to California after being displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Note his reasons for wanting to escape California as quickly as possible. He recognized this fragmentation of Californians into isolated groups almost immediately after arriving, and suffered tremendously from the economic consequences of this social breakdown.
As a young man, I often wondered how the German people could possibly have learned to hate Jews and other groups, since the German people were just ordinary people, like anyone else. How could an entire society adopt hate as it’s primary motivation—and without even realizing it? In a way, I could understand it academically, having studying Hitler’s biography and propaganda tactics. Yet I could never really comprehend how something like that could occur in the real world, among real people. Only after living in California did I finally understand how this phenomenon can happen, anywhere, in any age, to any people.
THAT is what Minnesotans have to look forward to. THAT is the legacy Minnesota legislators are passing on to the next generation of Minnesotans. I’m not a praying man, but I find myself with little recourse but to appeal to a higher power to repeal this politically-motivated, scientifically-unsound, hate-inspired statewide smoking ban, before it’s too late.
Or perhaps Minnesotans should take their cue from a relevant song I once heard:
So vote the nanny state from power,
and put it out to pasture;
a grown-up doesn’t want or need
a meddler for a master.
By the way, this Minnesota statewide smoking ban comes on the heels of a large cigarette tax increase, which devastates impoverished smokers, without causing the slightest amount of financial distress for wealthy smokers, all in the name of “improving quality of life”. This policy effectively mandates a wage-cut for citizens who have decided to engage in one perfectly legal activity, while having no impact on the wages of citizens who have decided to engage in any other legal activity.
My friends, decreasing poor peoples’ incomes, and increasing their poverty, does not improve the quality of their lives. Indeed, the stress that accompanies financial hardship and poverty can be deadly.
“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves is sinful and tyrannical.”
- Thomas Jefferson
THE I-35W BRIDGE COLLAPSE
Next is the I-35W bridge collapse, just three miles from my home. Anyone with common sense who has crossed that bridge should have recognized that a serious problem existed. Indeed, I’ve only been here eight months, yet I recall wondering how these bridges could survive so many extreme temperature changes, almost as soon as I’d arrived, after observing how torn apart the roads were as a result of these same extremes in temperature.
This single-arch bridge was built 40 years ago, was designed to bear far less of a load than exists today, and has been subjected to alternating, seasonal periods of subzero freezing and triple-digit heating for four decades. So have all the other bridges in Minnesota….
The Minnesota state government should have noticed this. After all, this bridge is located a few miles from the state capitol building. Government officials drove across it, lived near it, worked near it, and they should have seen with their own eyes the awful traffic congestion that burdened the I-35W bridge beyond its capacity. Their own homes suffer tremendous wear and tear over forty years. They should have notice this. But they didn’t. They wasted everyone’s time and money instead proposing bans on smoking, toy guns, high-school athletes switching schools, and anything else that occupies the irrational minds of meddling masters.
No citizen can repair a broken public bridge. That is government’s job, and the Minnesota government failed to do that job. Every adult citizen can make their own decision whether or not to smoke, whether or not to allow smoking on their own private property (private businesses), and whether or not to patronize a business that allows smoking. Every adult citizen can make their own decision whether or not to give their child a toy gun. Every adult citizen can make their own decision where to send their own athletic children to school. They don’t need government to help with those decisions. They need government to prevent basic public infrastructure and services from collapsing.
Yet the Minnesota government has devoted it’s time to dictating these kinds of personal decisions instead, rather than focusing on those few and specific functions that justify government’s existence in the first place. It’s exactly the same thing that happened in California, and I shake in fear for what these generally kind-hearted Minnesotans are going to endure in the future because of the current legislature’s twisted sense of priorities.
The only conceivable upside of all this, if you can call it that, is that Minnesotans, like the German people under Naziism, Southerners under slavery, and Americans under McCarthyism, and Californians today, will eventually come to regard their new, oppressive lifestyle as perfectly normal—leaving only posterity to suffer the shame for our current generation’s misguided actions. Ignorance is bliss.
MINNESOTA PUBLIC RADIO
Next is the unusual popularity of National Public Radio in Minnesota, particularly in the Twin Cities area. I can only suppose this originated with the popular appeal of Garrison Keillor’s down-home-style radio show, “A Prairie Home Companion”, which is produced in St. Paul and airs on NPR. The fact that Minnesota is a “blue” state must certainly contribute to NPR’s popularity as well (or did the regional version of NPR, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), transform Minnesota into a “blue” state?). In any event, both NPR and MPR are hugely influential here.
The problem with that, of course, is that NPR makes even a tool like FOX News seem objective by comparison. As a lifelong student of rhetoric, propaganda and human manipulation, I have never found a mass media outlet that even comes close to NPR’s agenda-driven programming, in terms of its overall effectiveness at indoctrinating its viewers. FOX News comes close in a few important respects; it is a very skilled propagandist, after all, and it certainly has an agenda. But FOX News is pretty incompetent as a manipulator. It preaches to the converted well, but it isn’t capable of indoctrinating those who oppose it with brand new attitudes and beliefs, without the target’s awareness, like a cult leader seeks to accomplish. To those who do not share FOX News’ ideology, it is merely a laughing stock, not a credible source of knowledge and new ideas.
This kind of subtle manipulation is NPR’s stock-in-trade, however. Indeed, when I listen to NPR even I have to be very, very careful not to assimilate the attitudes and beliefs they are promoting—and I’m intimately familiar with their tactics! (Here I must confess that even I fell for the “Global Warming” swindle that NPR promotes—until I finally took the time to actually research the matter for myself…). I fear listening to NPR much like a reasonable person fears taking heroin to ease the pain of a broken leg. Which is worse–excruciating pain today, or potentially months or years of utter dependence on a drug that all but annihilates who you are?
Although NPR has some good points that the mainstream media could learn from, NPR is far more dangerous to democracy than a conservative loudspeaker like FOX News ever could be. If FOX News is a propaganda tool, NPR is a well-oiled propaganda machine, if not an entire factory of machines. A war factory.
NPR’s powerful local influence does not bode well for the future of Minnesota.
Let me illustrate, once again using the despicable anti-smoking industry as an example. NPR’s “On The Media” recently featured an interview with anti-smoking leader Dr. Stanton Glanz, whom the NPR host affectionately referred to on the air as “Stan”.
Glanz is one of the prime movers behind so many statewide smoking bans. NPR credentialed him not once, but twice, as “professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.” However, it is surprisingly—perhaps even suspiciously difficult to find information about Glanz’ real academic credentials online, considering that he seeks media attention as a tobacco “expert”, wherever and whenever possible.
After hearing this interview on NPR, which I found too offensive to bear, I researched his credentials online, including visits to the Stanford University (his previous employer) and the University of California, San Francisco websites. The only reference I could find was Glanz’ name among a long text-based list of “Faculty and affiliates of UCSF involved with the medical humanities”, whose sub-specialties within the medical field included “creative writing” and “poetry”. No academic credentials were supplied in this list. For all I could tell, an “affiliate” in “the medical humanities” of UCSF could equally describe anything from a real medical doctor who is well-trained in legitimate scientific research, to an anti-smoking fanatic who does nothing more than bitch about tobacco, and secure funding for biased junk science—funding that ultimately originates from the hard-earned wages of tobacco consumers.
What I did find were third-party reports (albeit, potentially biased reports) claiming that Glanz had actually earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering, and was granted an honorary “doctorate of medicine” by Stanford University only as a reward for bringing so much publicity and anti-smoking research funding to Stanford University during his tenure there. With that new title in hand, despite a lack of actual education or experience in the medical field, Glanz was free to promote himself as a “doctor of medicine,” and the masses would never know the difference. Especially if NPR never told them.
I don’t know about you, but I feel pretty good knowing that one day, I, too, might become a “doctor of medicine”, without ever actually having to study medicine. If nothing else, it will infuriate my brother, who wasted all those years in medical school.
As far as I’m aware, the only operating this “doctor of medicine” does is operating one of the most overtly hateful anti-smoking organizations ever created, the Action on Smoking and Health (ASH). Using both standard techniques of manipulative rhetoric, and powerful variants perfected by the anti-smoking movement over the years, Glanz frames nearly everything he says in terms of “overwhelming scientific evidence” (where no such evidence exists), “protecting the kids” (by which he includes “children” who are married, pay taxes, own and operate their own businesses, and have children of their own), and the evil of “Big Tobacco” (which today is relatively impotent as a government lobby, compared to the tremendous influence of the “Big Pharmacy”-backed anti-smoking lobby).
What Glanz does not do is teach the public how the scientific method works. He also fails to explain why epidemiology is a pseudo-scientific exercise in probability and statistics than resembles astrology more than legitimate science. He does not provide direct references to his “overwhelming scientific evidence,” to allow ordinary people to conduct their own objective, informed analysis of the scientific evidence he constantly refers to as justification for prohibition.
Glanz doesn’t even recommend that the American people read the classic book by Darrell Huff, How to Lie With Statistics, to ensure that they are at least somewhat immunized against fraudulent attempts to manipulate their beliefs using probability and statistics. Nor does he recommend that anyone read the newer book, “Science Without Sense: The Risky Business of Public Health Research”, which provides step-by-step instruction for creating and profiting from your very own public health scare.
Furthermore, nothing Glaz says has ever confirmed my own past experience working for a publisher of professional, “peer-reviewed” scientific journals, where patterns of biased and financially-motivated junk science, if not outright fraud, transformed that job into a source of nightmares for me. The passion of my youth was legitimate science….
I therefore contacted “On The Media” and asked asked them to serve their listeners by publicly clarifying “Stan’s” real credentials, so as not to mislead the public, and because I’d honestly like to finally know whether this man has any real credentials at all. NPR did not respond to my request, and as far as I’m aware, it has not clarified Glanz’ credentials on the air. Perhaps it did, but I do my best to avoid listening to NPR.
Such is the character of Minnesota’s most trusted news source….
“I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility toward every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
- Thomas Jefferson
MINNESOTA “CAR BUYERS BILL OF RIGHTS”
It is my understanding from sources in California that Minnesota legislators are considering a “Car Buyers Bill of Rights”–as usual, based on the California model. If you’ve listened to the Third World American podcast recently, you’re already painfully aware of how this phony lemon law in California protects and serves fraudulent automobile dealers, while placing consumers at increased risk of being defrauded in direct proportion to their poverty. Minnesota legislators, enamored of their “elder sibling”, California, may be seeking to subject their own constituents to this kind of state-sponsored fraud, presumably for no better reason than because California did it. I wouldn’t put it past them. That’s what happens when legislators don’t bother to actually research anything for themselves before passing laws, and merely seek the inspiration (i.e., campaign contributions) of special interests instead.
“It sounds good to me, so let’s impose it on everybody.”
MINNESOTA DRIVER’S LICENSES
Finally, let me present the very best example I’ve found yet that demonstrates where the state of Minnesota is headed in the future.
I was compelled by my auto insurance underwriter to replace my California driver’s license with a Minnesota drivers license, even though my California license didn’t expire until 2009, and I wasn’t even sure I’d remain in Minnesota for more than a few more months. In any event, I visited the Department of Motor Vehicles, completed the application, took the written exam (perfect score!), paid the fee, had my photo taken, and watched as they invalidated my California license with a pair of scissors. They provided a temporary Minnesota license, which was actually nothing more than a copy of my application and a receipt. But they did not provide a Minnesota driver’s license number. That number is what my insurance agent demanded. The Department of Vehicle Services (DVS) told me that it takes a few weeks before you’re assigned a number. Fine then. Two more weeks of waiting.
Two weeks later, I received a letter from the DVS, stating that “Minnesota statutes” require that driver’s licenses display a resident address, and since I had provided my post office box address instead, they could not process my application until I provided my resident address.
This of course infuriated me, because it blatantly discriminates against the homeless (sans domicile fixe–literally, “without fixed residence”), who have no resident address by definition, and therefore have no way to comply with this law even if they wanted to. Their only options are to drive illegally, not drive at all, or perjure themselves by certifying a false address. No one else among the general population is subjected to this Hobson’s Choice. Only the homeless, already the most vulnerable members of society.
At the same time, this policy is logically absurd, because there is nothing to prevent dishonest housed people from perjuring themselves by “certifying” a false address. Does anyone recall the resident address Elwood provided the state of Illinois for his driver’s license in The Blues Brothers. It was 1060 West Addison–Wrigley Field.
If there is no way to verify whether the addresses people provide are correct, other than the (potentially dishonest) applicant “certifying” that the address is correct, then why continue a policy that directly causes harm to one–and only one–specific minority group? I’m not talking about the homeless here. The specific group that this law discriminates against are homeless people who refuse to lie on their applications. Homeless people who lie about their resident address walk away with a shiny new drivers license, just like so many housed persons who either tell the truth or lie on their applications. They may perjure themselves, but no one verifies whether they perjured themselves anyway, so what’s the difference? They still get their driver’s license.
But honest and ethical homeless people refuse to perjure themselves, and in my experience it is these truly ethical homeless people who get screwed more than any subset of the homeless population, precisely because they refuse do what so many housed people do all the time: lie, cheat and steal.
In the decade or so that I’ve pursued the American Debtors Prison, Third World American, and similar projects, believe me, I’ve encountered a lot of asinine rules and regulations, all around the country. I honestly thought I had seen it all when I found a California statute that made it a crime to “own, possess, discard, give away, trade, dispose of, or destroy” any piece of electronic equipment valued at $300 or more, that does not carry a visible serial number. This utterly idiotic law translates into English as follows: “If you have an enemy, they need only rub the serial number off your stereo and call the police, and you will be prosecuted as a criminal, because the law prohibits you from doing anything–or doing nothing at all–with that same stereo, once the serial number has been removed”.
Yes, I thought I had seen it all living in California. Until I encountered this senseless, mean-spirited resident address requirement in order to obtain a Minnesota driver’s license.
Let me make this perfectly clear: if the Minnesota government made the following two changes to the this driver’s license statute, the only thing that would change is a few characters of text that display on some drivers’ licenses, and even then without changing the accuracy of information found on all driver’s licenses. Absolutely nothing else would be different, if the government made the following two changes:
1. Eliminate the requirement to provide a resident address in order to obtain a Minnesota drivers license.
2. Pass a law that prohibits honest and ethical homeless persons from being issued a Minnesota drivers license.
If the Minnesota State Legislature made these two changes to the law, the end result would be identical to the situation that exists today, with the sole exception that some people (both homeless and housed) would choose to display a post office box addresses on their drivers licenses–which is still a valid contact address. That’s it. Nothing else. Those who lie about their address today would continue to lie, and those who tell the truth would continue to tell the truth. The honest homeless would be the only citizens prevented by statute from obtaining a driver’s license, where all other requirements are met. No different than the situation stands today.
The point of this exercise is to show that these statutes are so blatantly discriminatory against the homeless, that you’d think it must have been an oversight, right? An honest mistake. And I’d have no difficulty at all getting this remedied, right?
Wrong.
Before I share my first real experience contacting Minnesota government officials here, I should explain why this “small” detail is so very, very offensive to me. For there’s a lot more at stake here than honest homeless people who want to better their situations without relying on state assistance, by being allowed to legally drive to places like… a job. (Not to mention that many homeless people live in their cars). There’s much more at stake than that, and the key is not found in the Third World American project at all, but in my earlier, American Debtors Prison project.
Since beginning my research on the American Debtors Prison around 1995, I have used post offices boxes on my identification wherever possible, and for good reason: If I move within a region, which I’ve done frequently (Third World American was a traveling show, after all), my contact address remains valid despite the move, making it much easier to receive all my mail, and to update my new resident address with concerned parties, as necessary. Even the great state of California had no problem with this. My California drivers license featured a (valid) post office box address, not a resident address.
But more important, consider for a moment how many times you show your driver’s license to other people during the period that your license is valid (typically four years). When you buy alcohol or tobacco, you often must show your driver’s license. When you get “carded” at a night club, you must show proper ID (typically, your driver’s license). When you conduct a transaction at the bank, you must show your driver’s license. When you write a check, you must show your driver’s license. And sometimes, like when you begin a new job or stay at a hotel, you may have to allow a perfect stranger to photocopy your driver’s license.
One of the greatest threats I warned about in the American Debtors Prison project–long before the mainstream news media bothered to pay attention–is that identity theft was going to pose a serious threat to Americans in the future. To illustrate this point, even as far back as the late 1980’s, one foresighted journalist obtained then U.S. Vice-President Dan Quayle’s credit report, using only personal information that was publicly available to obtain this report. What information was that? His name, and his resident address.
If an ordinary citizen can learn that much about the Vice President of the United States during the technological adolescence of the late 1980’s, using only Quayle’s name and resident address, how much more can a professional criminal learn about you today, when they have your name and resident address in our modern age of computer technology and the internet?
Driver’s license numbers are lengthy for two reasons: 1) it requires several digits to service so many people, and 2) the average person cannot memorize a string greater than seven characters at a glance. In most cases, it is usually more like four or five characters. A driver’s license number, with upwards of eight characters (Minnesota uses thirteen characters), is virtually impossible for the typical person to memorize at a glance.
But one of the tools of an identity thief’s trade is to learn how to memorize longer strings of characters at a glance, much like the Dale Carnegie Course teaches people how to memorize every name in a room fulll of strangers. Thus, if the clerks at your local convenience store are running an identity theft ring along with with some teenage hackers in Russia, it’s not necessarily difficult for them to memorize all the information they need in the time it takes for you to flash your identification and verify your age (ironically, in the case of alcohol and tobacco sales, to “protect” us). And it doesn’t take much more time to transmit that information to Russia via the internet before you’ve even made it back home from the store.
Worse, when you write a check, your ID is in their possession even longer. And when they photocopy it–well, obviously, your privacy has been annihilated completely.
Putting your resident address on a driver’s license is one of the most dangerous things you can possibly do, if you want to prevent identity theft. The only thing that is worse, is to use your Social Security Number for a driver’s license number. With a name and a valid resident address, an experienced and well-connected criminal can access your credit report, your bank records, criminal history, bankruptcy or court judgment information, and just about any other personal information they want to know about you within hours, perhaps even minutes. Or have you never heard of “data breach”?
And that is why even an incompetent state government like California allows residents to display a (valid) post office box address on their driver’s licenses. But Minnesota does not allow this.
Years ago, I worked as a low-paid hotel desk clerk–with a degree in computer science. I photocopied hundreds, perhaps even thousands of drivers licenses. And I was perfectly aware of the damage I could have done with that information, if that had been my desire. There are hundreds of thousands of low-paid bank tellers, cashiers, hotel desk clerks, payday loan clerks, and “human resource” workers in this country. Even the police, who routinely ask for identification, are not compensated very well, given their unusual risks and responsibilities. Which of these people do you feel safe providing your name and resident address to? If you’re a resident of Minnesota, then by law, you must provide this information to any of them who request it, if you are to obtain their services at all. Because your address is right there, on your driver’s license.
There are plenty of other obvious threats that arise when you display your resident address where so many people can see it—burglars who are impressed by the Italian leather wallet that holds your driver’s license, stalkers who are turned on by your driver’s license photo, rapists who are curious where you live, child molesters who would really like to get a few moments alone with your children, and so on. In the state of Minnesota, once they’ve seen your driver’s license, they know where you live….
I hope you now understand why I was not happy the instant I received that demand to provide my resident address.
So I wrote a letter to the Minnesota Department of Vehicle services, providing my resident address (under protest), and requesting some answers to the obvious questions. I copied this letter to relevant government officials, major Minnesota news media, and local advocates for the homeless, to see what kind of response I would get from responsible parties in Minnesota.
After so many years working on the American Debtors Prison and Third World American projects, I knew this response to direct questions would teach me far more about real conditions in Minnesota than I could learn from a year or two of merely living here. I also knew from bitter experience what kind of response I would have received to this letter in California–approximately 80% chance of no response at all, and 20% chance of an evasive and rhetorical, or standard form response instead. I honestly had no idea what kind of response to expect here in Minnesota, however.
It’s important to note that I only asked the Department of Vehicle Services these questions, not the media and government representatives whom I copied on this letter. With them, I merely sought to inform them, and to encourage them to make positive changes, and to see what kind of response, if any, I would receive. So if, say, Governor Pawlenty never answered my specific questions, he would not be evading anything. But if he never responded at all, not even with a simple “Thank you for raising the issue of…”, that would tell me something important about his genuine concern, or lack thereof.
My Minnesota driver’s license arrived about two weeks later–at my resident address. A few days later, the first response to my questions arrived at my post office box. It came from Department of Vehicle Services director Patricia MacCormick. And what do you know, she provided direct, non-rhetorical, non-evasive responses to each and every question. I was damn impressed!
Of course, her answers were not satisfactory, but that’s not her fault. She sufficiently cited and explained policies that Minnesota state legislators had mandated, and that is what I had asked of her. She has no control over legislative issues. I would never have received a response like that from the DMV in California. NEVER. Score one for a positive impression of Minnesota.
A few days after that, I received responses from the State Attorney General, Lori Swanson and my state senator, Satveer Chaudhary. Both responses were direct, complete, and included documentation of the statutes in question. Another score for Minnesota.
At present, these are the only responses I’ve received. (The I-35W bridge collapse has probably occupied most of Gov. Pawlenty’s attention recently). Yet I am now optimistic about receiving similar responses from others I contacted. Also, I was very late in mailing my letters to the media and homeless advocates, because my own attention has recently been occupied with recovering from losing my good-paying Twin Cities job to low-wage workers in India.
So what’s the problem, you might wonder? Well, the problem is a subtle, but consistent pattern that appears throughout each of these three responses.
Consider what the responses were to my specific concern that these statutes are potentially catastrophic to the most vulnerable members of society, the homeless.
Director MacCormick’s response was very informative, but consisted of only matter-of-fact answers to my questions, with no acknowledgment of how she felt about this threat to the homeless. I’m not saying that’s bad, but it is significant, because it was a purely bureaucratic response, albeit, one of the best I’ve ever seen.
Attorney General Swanson’s response was, in many ways, even more comprehensive. It even itemized the various persons and agencies I should contact in order to try and get these statutes changed. She did mention that “[she is] always interested in hearing from citizens who are concerned for the well-being of other citizens”, and I have no reason to disbelieve her. She also made it clear that this is purely a legislative issue that falls outside her jurisdiction, and that her office cannot provide legal advice to citizens.
Senator Chaudhary’s response featured the most direct response to these statutes’ impact on the homeless: “While I understand your concern regarding the homeless, I believe the need for a valid address outweighs other concerns. The Department of Public Safety needs the address to be able to contact a person holding the license regarding notices. In case of an emergency law enforcement needs to be able to know where a person lives to be able to contact family members.”
Each of these responses are admirable. None of them state anything that I find offensive or blatantly objectionable. It is two things they don’t state that concern me.
First, none of them display a sense of moral outrage, or a sense of urgency to remedy this situation as soon as possible. Given what I wrote earlier about the logical absurdity of these statutes as they relate to the homeless, not one response displays the kind of “man overboard!” urgency you’d expect from someone who has just been informed that their most vulnerable neighbors are being prevented, by law, from obtaining a basic necessity in our modern world—in this case, the right to drive legally in a pretty sparsely-populated state. I’m talking about the kind of outrage that was second-nature for me the instant I received the original demand for a resident address. The kind of outrage that inspired me to spent hours writing and mailing letters about it to people all around the Twin Cities, when I would have preferred to do other things.. Nothing that even resembles this kind of outrage is evident in any of these responses. Instead, everything is courteous, professional, and bureaucratic.
Unfortunately, this is one reason that homelessness continues to exist in in the United States in the first place. There is absolutely no sense of outrageous about human beings living on the streets in the most prosperous nation the world has ever know. These responses (and the general attitude toward the homeless in the United States) contain an implicit assumption that homeless people are not as worthy of our protection as, say, “helpless little children”, to borrow a rhetorical chestnut from the anti-smoking movement. If these statutes had posed a comparable threat to the well-being of “helpless little children”, what do you think the response would have been then?
Well, I got news for you, friends, a lot of those homeless people who aren’t able to find gainful employment at a distance because the law prevents them from legally driving, are accompanied by their homeless children.
But the word “homeless” only conjures up stereotypical images of lazy, insane, alcoholic or drug-addicted Vietnam war veterans—something a little less than human, something that isn’t as worthy of our consideration as “normal” and “respectable” people are. The stereotype does not conjure up images of hard-working Americans who lost their jobs because their employers shipped those jobs overseas, or gave them to a flood of brand-new, low-paid immigrants. Nor does it conjure up images of families who lost their homes to predatory financial corporations, whose officers continue to travel the world in luxury and style. It certainly does not conjure up images of so many highly-educated masters and Ph.D.s who today live on the streets because of the student loan racketeering industry. To many people, they’re just “bums”. That’s all.
Second, I never mentioned the risk of identity theft, burglary, stalking, rape, child molestation, etc. in my letter for a reason. I wanted to see if any of the respondents actually thought about the issues I raised enough to recognize these more-than-obvious threats on their own. I understand that driver’s license statutes are not something that the typical person spends all day thinking about. The important question is, once these statutes have been brought to their immediate attention, how much consideration will people really devote to the matter? When it comes to legislators and the news media in particular, I would hope they’d give it a lot of careful consideration.
Unfortunately, so far, none of the responses I’ve received show evidence that the respondents thoroughly considered the implications of these statutes long enough to recognize the obvious: that they put ALL Minnesota households—including those of legislators and members of the news media themselves–at serious risk of all sorts of criminal activities. The DVS response did explain how the government attempts to restrict third-party access to driver’s license information in their internal databases (again, by merely making it illegal to disclose that information, as opposed security measures that make it impossible to disclose that information). Yet nobody thought about this long enough to recognize that hundreds of other third-parties will view the driver’s license itself over the course of its validity, revealing where you live to all manner of potential threats and criminals.
So once again, the pattern that emerges from these responses is not one of malice, incompetence, or even apathy. The pattern that emerges is a consistent lack of critical thinking and foresight.
The same absence of critical thinking that led to passage of a statewide smoking ban, based on “scientific” evidence that doesn’t even exist, with absolutely no foresight toward the long-term societal consequences of state-sanctioned segregation and prohibition of a major social lubricant.
The same absence of critical thinking that allowed Minnesota legislators to become distracted with personal pet peeves and hysterical reactions to perceived problems (banning toy guns that look like the real thing? Giving a damn at all about athletic “superteams” in the public education system??), rather than focusing on government’s relatively few real duties, which includes foresight with respect to the safety and integrity of our public roads and bridges.
The same absence of critical thinking that inspired only one person in Minnesota, so far as I can tell, to recognize when NPR (almost certainly) misrepresented an anti-smoking leader’s real credentials on the air.
The same absence of critical thinking may be leading some Minnesota legislators to consider emulating a California lemon law that has accomplished nothing, except to strip consumers of their rights, while protecting fraudulent auto dealers.
There is nothing in the responses I received that makes me dislike these people, nothing that makes me think they are “bad” people. As I said before, I’m quite impressed with their responses, and I see no evidence of malice.
However, the evidence does show that they failed to consider my concerns thoroughly enough to reach certain conclusions that simply should have become obvious to people in their positions of authority, if they had considered the matter carefully at all. I’m not trying to “blame” anyone here. I’m just seeking to point out a fundamental malfunction of our system that needs to be remedied.
Likewise, not one person suggested the obvious solution: pass a statute that allows Minnesota drivers to display either a valid resident address or a valid post office box address on their driver’s license, at their own discretion, while holding the resident address on file at the Department of Public Safety in the event that law enforcement needs to contact them. This would immediately allow each citizen who is concerned about identity theft, stalkers, etc., the opportunity to withhold their resident address from the hundreds of third-parties who will view their driver’s license, while presenting no hindrance whatsoever to the Department of Public Safety or law enforcement when they need to contact someone. This solution may even provide some additional income to the U.S. Postal Service in the process, which might delay the next postage hike.
As for the honest homeless, if “certification” of a valid address under penalty of perjury is the only verification that Minnesota has to ensure that the addresses they’re given are real, what is so difficult about showing just a little humanity, and allowing the homeless to certify that they are homeless when they apply for a drivers license, in lieu of providing a resident address? At the very least, what is so difficult about allowing the homeless to provide a resident address that is not their own, but where they may still receive mail (e.g, a homeless shelter), without them being guilty of false certification?
All it takes is a little thought, mixed with a little humanity, to prevent Minnesota from losing its charming Midwestern way of life forever, and becoming a fascist state like California. But I don’t see nearly as much evidence today of the kind of reasonable thinking and genuine humanity that defined the American Midwest ethos years ago. The difference is subtle, based on stereotypes, biases, prejudices, and cult mentalities that have gradually crept into the back of Minnesotans’ minds in recent years, without their knowledge. NPR certainly has a lot to do with his, but the mass media in general has become a powerful—if not the most powerful–source of influence in our modern age.
For example, since moving into my current apartment, my neighbor’s television has been turned on (loudly) almost every single time I’ve entered or left my apartment, for six months. There have only been a few times, in the middle of the night, that I have not heard that television turned on next door. At midnight, it’s on. At five in the morning, it’s on. At noon, it’s on. At 6pm, it’s on. So much continuous inundation with mass media influence has to have some kind of impact on peoples’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviors, which used to derive from observation, experience, reading, researching, experimenting, thinking, and engaging one’s fellows in direct human contact.
Speaking of which, in the six months I’ve lived in that apartment building, which has eleven units and one entrance, I have only met three of my neighbors. The chilling effect of social isolation that has ruined California, is already apparent in Minnesota.
And just when The People need reasonable and diverse alternatives to NPR and other mass media propagandists the most, the City of St. Paul is looking at reducing funding for… pubic libraries. God help us all.
I’m trying hard not to be overly pessimistic here. After all, I did receive pretty good responses in my first attempt to contact responsible parties in Minnesota. In a sense, the situation that exists today presents a unique opportunity for Minnesota to succeed, where other states have failed. Democracy (in a Republic) does not mean that government of the people, by the people, and for the people does not make mistakes. Democracy (in a Republic) means that, unlike tyrants and dictators, the government can and will correct itself when it does makes mistakes. The question is, will the responsible parties in Minnesota correct their mistakes in time?
I can only hope that the state government of Minnesota will recognize its many recent mistakes, will possess the foresight to comprehend the dangerous legacy it is passing on to future generations, and will reverse this trend toward medieval policies of meddling in citizens’ personal lives rather than focusing on the essential functions of government, in order to execute those limited responsibilities competently.
One California is more than enough.
. Please provide a phone number if you wish for me to call you back. I will be monitoring my email carefully for the next few days, and will return all media inquiries as quickly as possible. Thank you to members of the media who are giving this important issue the attention it deserves.
