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Government and Just Property Relations An Open Letter by Punkerslut to
Information: CarlaHowell.org Homepage Greetings, Your trademarked slogan is quite interesting. "Small government is beautiful." (TM) But, it does sound very, very familiar. Wait, that's right, I remember a book titled "Small is beautiful," noted as one of the most 100 influential books published since world war 2 according to the Times Literary Supplement. You must've had a crack marketing team to add one single word to that phrase. "Let's see, and it has to be a word that has something to do with politics... I know! Government!" It definitely was worth trademarking, which you have clearly noted multiple places throughout your website. "Both Carla Howell's race for Governor in 2002 and her 2000 Senate race were built on her trademark theme: small government is beautiful..." Another curious part of your message is this: "...Carla Howell intensified her interest in the economy. She experienced first hand how government meddling decimates American jobs and American industries. She became a passionate advocate of free markets unencumbered by Big Government meddling, individual liberty, private charity, and personal responsibility." Your problem with "Big Government meddling," apparently, is with an income tax that is used for social spending. At no point do you bring up that the problem of big business is that they used police, soldiers, and bayonets to guarantee their property. Secret trials, political police, etc., were all used in repressing unions throughout Massachusetts, as you ought to know from the history of Lawrence or Boston. "Small government" is beautiful, but that means small social spending. At no point, though, does "small government" mean property that is established by labor. At no point does "Libertarianism" mean a society where every owner possesses what they have because they labored to make it. Your philosophy of a "small state" is apparently compatible with property relations that are propped up by the brute force of the police. "Big government meddling" is a percent or two in the tax rate -- not a bullet or two into crowds of unarmed men, women, and children. Do you forget that soldiers did summary executions and retribution shootings in the streets of Boston? Do you forget that the gutters ran with blood of the working class? It's very basic history that should be expected in someone running for governor of Massachusetts. If you wanted to abolish big government meddling, you'd give the unionists what they demanded a hundred years ago and would have got, if the state didn't intervene on behalf of big business. And what was it that they demanded? That everyone shall have a right to the land in common and that nobody should be barred from receiving the fruits of their production. Your opposition to big government is in setting a budget at $14 billion, but what we need is a limit on the number of bodies flung into piles in the streets. You fight against the debt of the state, but what we need is to fulfill is the debt owed to justice. Your belief in property extends only to the big businesses, but what we need is the right for every person to own themselves. This isn't ancient history, either. Police roundups, detentions, and arrests were notorious throughout the Democratic Convention of 2004 in Boston. The sidewalk was public property, so long as the public was defined as the business-owning class. If you know about the "free speech zone," then you know they outlawed public land from being used as a protest area, though it was perfectly used by Al Sharpton's security guards in beating and harassing the city's poor, miserable, and exploited population. Freedom for the rich exploiters, slavery for everyone who is poor. Your concept of "property relations" are made very clear. The government should abandon its responsibility to the poor, but it should maintain absolutely its responsibility to the rich. Naturally, the word "Libertarian" actually means "Anarchist-Communist," coined by an Anarchist-Communist, more than a hundred years ago. Too bad he didn't trademark it, though, like your phrases, otherwise its property might be respected. If you want true Libertarianism in terms of property relations, the only thing you can do is fulfill the agreements of the past: every slaving toiler's demand for a world where they can work without a superior above them. Without the state's chains and whips, they would have conquered the conditions that made them poverty-stricken. Their sufferings are decidedly left out of your criticism of the state's use of aggression, though. It is a clear sign of what "Libertarianism" apparently means to you. Thank you, I patiently await a response. Sincerely,
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