General

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

rhys — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 06:00:16 GMT

I read those too. Honestly, I don't know if I really, really believe him about not being the author. I don't think he wrote it all, but some of that stuff was classic Paul. I loved where he said that the LA riot looters were attempting to privatize the welfare state. Don't get me wrong, Paul has earned a significant amount of my trust, but who else but an Austrian economist would call riotous looting the privatization of the welfare state?

I thought it was classic!

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

rhys — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:42:02 GMT

Because the government can tax, it is inherently a Socialist institution. If Paul is a Constitutionalist, then he is a Statist, but I would argue that he is a minarchist.And while he probably won't win, I am voting for him in the primary. I would rather a minarchist be in charge then these Fascists and Socialists. Paul is so much better, for people who are willing to break the anarchist creed, there is no other choice.

As far as immigration is concerned, illegal immigrants do not have my sympathy. I would be against government actively pursuing them, but I have no qualms about denying them the benefits of our welfare state.

If you care about your freedom, there are a lot worse things about which to worry than Paul's immigration stance.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

Kent C — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:17:31 GMT

I did finally look through the newsletters they posted on TNR site. They had a handful to back up their case, which is suprising that for a man who they clam is an angry old white racist, that over a two decade period they could only come up with few cases. And taken in context, I didn't find them that bad (though most were poorly written). When I started on the internet back in 1992, at that time, you'd see much worse on Usenet written by libertarians. Many at the time were rebelling against political correctness and such terms as "femanazi" came into being. People took things to extremes (not me, of course). Actually, I've seen better displays of intolerance on this board, and I won't name names. But given the hoopla this newletters have cause, its pretty clear that political correctness has won.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

Inquisitor — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:43:15 GMT

I'm rather disappointed that Ron Paul has done so badly. On the subject of his alleged racism and the like, here are some recent articles:

http://reason.com/blog/show/124298.html

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/124284.html

And an example of an outright (not to mention ignorant) smear:

http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-ac15-4532a7da84ca

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

Kent C — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 16:37:50 GMT

So, I'm "wondering" who wrote those pieces for the Ron Paul newsletter. I have a strong guess, though I'm hoping I'm wrong. I do see a bit of that attitude among some here (no you, of course).

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

JimS — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 06:36:25 GMT

xahrx:
I have yet to see a country that had no age limit on alcohol purchases.

Then you haven't travelled wide enough. Quite a few countries have no legal drinking age law at all, off the top of my head I can think of Poland, Portugal, Thailand, China and Viet Nam. These countries alone (the ones that I remember off the top of my head) account for 1/4 the world's population. Almost all other countries have lower legal drinking age than the US.

xahrx:
And the causes of binge drinking are social, not the result of the law.

Notice, I didn't say binge drinking in general, but teenager and college binge drinking. It's the rite of passge in the US, as proof of maturity.

xahrx:
There is a clear difference between two positions you want to equate as essentially identical, and totally tyranical,

I never equated the two positions. However, would you support someone who advocates strict enforcement of existing drinking age laws instead of the current state of benign neglect? that any relative serving alcohol to minor, even in private setting, should be hauled off to jail; that parents should lose custody of the minor? and that in order to enforce such a law, every who is about to pour a drink, even in private homes, have to call into a national database to enter the recipient's social security number and biometrics? All in the name of enforcing existing drinking age laws. In the name of controlling immigration, we have come a long way from the days of checking for lice on Ellis Island to today's state of every American citizen seeking a job has to give their social security number (and soon perhaps biometric data) to be verified in a national centralized employment eligibility database. And of course get tracked; yes dear, you need government approval to take any job now . . .better make sure the last girlfriend you ditched didn't work for that database.

xahrx:
Or because the person running who is closest to their ideal,

If someone is for the strict enforcement of existing laws against victimless crimes, laws that are currently being left in a state of benign neglect, that person is not anywhere near "closest to ideal." There are plenty laws that would fit this category: blue laws (no drinking on Sunday; no open business on Sundays), sales tax laws (on mail orders or purchases made across state borders), drinking age laws, laws regarding sex in certain positions, etc. etc. Immigration laws just happen to be one of those. I'm not saying RP necessarily is. However, sometimes it does make one wonder who are these people putting together his campaign ads.

xahrx:
As is the number of husbands/wives who kill their spouses. However when the spouse is killed, common sense and experience points investigators to the other partner and close relatives, as depending on the circumstances it's usually not a 'stranger' who committed the crime.

Your analogy is deeply flawed. When the suspect list is narrowed down from a town of 20,000 people to half a dozen close acquaintances of the victim, that's real progress in investigation. On the other hand, even if the last murder case in town was a woman killed by a man, it makes no sense to advocate locking up all men of the town. Okay, it may make some sense to some man-hating flaming gender-baiter somewhere, but it makes no sense whatsoever to any thinking person. Narrowing the suspect list from 20,000 to 10,000 is not much progress as far as the investigation is concerned, and chances are that you are upsetting 9,999 innocent people in the process. There are plenty ways to draw up a rationally small suspect list that may indeed include more men than women in it using reasonable criteria derived from evidences; explicit policies that upset large swath of people is quite unnecessary.

xahrx:
Part of that is the small subpopulation of suicidal lunatics who want to kill US citizens.

That small subpopulation of suicidal lunatics exist in any culture, not just muslims. Like I said before, I don't have high opinion of Islam, considering it an institution of collectivism. However, the other evening when Giuliani was bashing Ron Paul with the claim that muslim religious fanatics had been attacking us for decades before 9-11, especially citing the Munich Olympic bombing in 1972, I couldn't help wonder what world was Giuliani living in: the "Black September" terrorists were atheistic socialists, part of the secular PLO, and they were mad at the west for the latter's support of King Hussein's suppression of PLO that killed thousands of PLO members and their families. Those despicable Munich murderers were not religious at all, much less any aspieration for a muslim caliphate. "God" only came into play in that episode when the forceful Israeli retaliatory attack was called "Operation Wrath of God." In case anyone is wondering if that kind of suicidal lunaticism is unique to the middleast, the answer is probably no. The Japanese bushido worriors fighting to the last man, the Hitler Youth wasting his last breath biting on some Canadian soldier's combat boots, and the soviet infantry fed into the relentless meat grinders of the east front, well they were all suicidal fanatics. If we appoint ourselves to the grand task of fighting every suicidal lunatic anywhere in the world, it will be a long and bloody road ahead for ourselves; makes one wonder, if we are suicidal lunnatics ourselves for taking up that task :-)

xahrx:
It is anti terrorist, and anti let's get another few metric assloads of people into the country and sucking off the government teet, making our wallets lactate more as opposed to hemorrhaging.

It's just the same xenophbic pig with some lipsticks applied. None of the terrorists crossed the southwest desert. There are 47 million uninsured Americans and 50 million under-insured Americans, many of whom are sick with existing medical conditions (hence can't afford to buy insurance). There are only 12 million illegal immigrants, many of whom passed the desert endurance test :-) The math should be quite obvious: people notice and get alarmed at the emergency rooms because the immigrants look different. Frankly, I'm not even sure how they come to the statistic conclusion that it's the illegals not the legals doing the mooching; realisticly, the system is simply broke from all the 8 times as large number of Americans not buying enough insurance and not paying their medical bills, thanks to the collectivist medical system that our political establishment has set up.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

JimS — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 05:26:20 GMT

Kent C:
Was immigration a red flag?

Absolutely. Government control over the mobility of populance is incredibly costly, both in terms of resources and civil liberty. That's the stuff the dark ages of feudalism was made of.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

xahrx — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 04:05:58 GMT

JimS:
Drinking age law hasn't exactly been a success. We have far higher rate of teenager and college binge drinking than any country where alcohol is legal and not age-limited.

I have yet to see a country that had no age limit on alcohol purchases. And the causes of binge drinking are social, not the result of the law. And in any event it is beside the point. There is a clear difference between two positions you want to equate as essentially identical, and totally tyranical, because they both involve to some extent government regulation. The effectiveness of the law is directly related to the over reach of prohibition. Limited resources require decisions on allocation of funds. Which is why adults should be left alone, what resources are available on the issue should be geared towards preventing underage sales, and you have less money spent overall so families aren't getting taxed out of existence and parents can teach their kids about alcohol consumption themselves rather than relying on government drone teachers and DARE officers.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, not of utopia. It is the price of liberty because it is up to us, the people, to keep an eye on the government and reign it in when the laws do become to broad in scope and power. But that's not exactly possible if the core of people who want to limit the government are amazing each other with their own rhetoric and brilliance in small cliques, online or in the real world, and not involving themselves in the process of limiting the government. Because they're agorists. Or because the person running who is closest to their ideal, and who at least has more than a snow ball's chance in hell of winning, isn't perfectly in line with their ideals.

JimS:
Perhaps you never bothered to read my earlier posts? Not only do I support RP's candidacy, I have donated money and time for his candidacy; I have even actively converted other people, people who never heard of RP, to consider and even endorse RP. The point I have been making all along is that advocacy of strong anti-immigration enforcement gets in the way of his campaign and his chance of winning what votes he can get.

Then admittedly I have mistaken your overall viewpoint and/or have mistaken you with someone else I was debating with on these boards earlier, for which I apologize. However the point stands regarding immigration. The portion of Muslim men willing to martyr themselves is likely very miniscule in comparisson to the total population. As is the number of husbands/wives who kill their spouses. However when the spouse is killed, common sense and experience points investigators to the other partner and close relatives, as depending on the circumstances it's usually not a 'stranger' who committed the crime. Ergo it makes a hell of a lot of sense to exercise caution when you decide who you invite into your life on an intimate level. People who don't exercise such caution pay a price. Same goes for young Muslim men and terrorism. No one is suggesting an outright ban on all immigration. But the group of people who seem to make up the majority of terrorists? Yes, I want some extra attention paid to them.

Even were we to end all foreign policy tomorrow which infuriates the Muslim world against the US, the hatred will not die over-night. And it is possible to have a two prong approach: to engage the Muslim world and acknowledge their grievences and work to correct them as we can; and while doing so to state clearly that while we understand their point of view and are working to change our behavior to be more noninterventionist, they do have their own problems that they need to deal with. Part of that is the small subpopulation of suicidal lunatics who want to kill US citizens. Put simply, we'll both each get a large bowl and a potato masher and get our collective crap together, and get rid of such measures as have been previously deemed necessary when both groups of people mutually agree it's time to do so.

JimS:
Focus on the issues that people can agree with

Most people agree on this issue to some extent or another, if not on a total ban on immigration then on some more stringent watch on Muslim immigrants. No one but a xenophobe wants to end immigration. However, no one but a fool chances inviting a violent stranger into his house, or his country. The message is not anti immigration. It is anti terrorist, and anti let's get another few metric assloads of people into the country and sucking off the government teet, making our wallets lactate more as opposed to hemorrhaging.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

Kent C — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 01:10:05 GMT

What a day. Was immigration a red flag?

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

JimS — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 17:53:54 GMT

xahrx:
Once more, to use your analogous policies, there's a difference between a legal drinking age and out and out alcohol prohibition.

Drinking age law hasn't exactly been a success. We have far higher rate of teenager and college binge drinking than any country where alcohol is legal and not age-limited. What's more, the drinking age law is routinely ignored by both the law enforcement and society at large. Nobody is proposing strict enforcement of existing drinking age laws: breaking down house parties, arresting parents and relatives who serve alcohol to minors. Nobody is advocating a national ID so that any time alcohol is served, the store clerk or the party hostess in a private home has to dial in the national ID number and check if the person is eligible for alcohol consumption. What little enforcement there is at the store counter has already spawned a thriving fake ID industry.

xahrx:
Is there a particular Libertarian argument for birthright citizenship and all the benefits it comes with right now, some of which are a 'right' to other people's money?

You need to brush up on your libertarianism. Citizenship should not come with the "right" to other people's money. One of the big ideas of libertarianism is that the state should not grant special political advantages to any particular group of people; the "all men are created equal" idea that no one should have special feudal privilege. Personally, I don't think there should be federal citizenship at all that is not derived from state citizenship. However, so long as we have federal citizenship, everyone living in this country should have an equal chance of getting it just like the original state citizenship of "these united states" had. If we are to have any discrimination against newcomers at all, let such dintinction expire at the second generation at the latest, lest we develop a system of hereditory political privileges, which would be tantamount to feudalism. You can't build a libertarian society based on institutions of feudal political privileges. In more practical terms, advocacy of disenfranchising anyone who already has the voting right is political suicide.

xahrx:
Those of us who fight to make the perpetual middle ground we inhabbit resemble more the ideal of voluntarism are 'socialists' and 'collectivists' in your view

Since when did I call voluntarism "socialist" or "collectivist"? If the actions are truely voluntary, there's nothing wrong with it at all. I routinely donate to private charities, and frankly believe that in a truely libertarian society, voluntary charities put together by prosperous and free individuals can do a much better job of taking care of the poor than our current system of tax and redistribution.

xahrx:
RP has a chance. A small chance, one that could have been made larger if, instead of bitching a moaning about one or two sticking points, he got some support from the people on these boards and those like them

Perhaps you never bothered to read my earlier posts? Not only do I support RP's candidacy, I have donated money and time for his candidacy; I have even actively converted other people, people who never heard of RP, to consider and even endorse RP. The point I have been making all along is that advocacy of strong anti-immigration enforcement gets in the way of his campaign and his chance of winning what votes he can get. People with a brain screwed on right will realize that law enforcement is never free and non-intrusive, therefore enforcing laws against victimless crimes is inadvisable; on top of that, the immigrant vote is automaticly in jeopardy, and many of them would have been very receptive to RP's message (after all, men and women like Mises, Hayek and Rand were all immigrants; no reason to suspect the current generation would be substantially different; people who are not enterprising do not pick up themselves and move; remember the joke about inner city delinquents who have never been ouside the six blocks from their place of birth in their whole lives?). Anti-immigrantion has been a recipe for political suicide for the Republican Party for some time: there are gazillions of issues in an election, the single-issue voters on immigration are far more likely to be those who may be hurt by anti-immigration policies than those who might benefit from enforcement. Besides, there are several other republican candidates on the bandwagon already; if a voter wants an "efficient" fascist state to enforce political privileges, Ron Paul can't realisticly get the vote anyway. What's more, I'm not even advocating RP coming out advocating the abolishment of state (and consequently its borders); all he needs to do is keep mum and ambiguous on the issue. Focus on the issues that people can agree with on the message of liberty and freedom; stay away from the issues that are essentially the use of government power to rip somebody off, because the use of government power is inevitably divisive.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

xahrx — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 03:45:17 GMT

JimS:
You missed the point that any single one of the three bottomless pit agendas (socialist war on poverty/inequality; imperialist war overseas; prohibitionist war on "illegal" drugs or humans) will be sufficient condition for building a government of unlimited size.

Of course no one is talking about a bottomless pit. Once more the fanatical BS attachment to a perfect anarchist society leads you to judge any and all positions aside from that as 'socialism' or 'collectivism' or a 'bottomless pit.' Once more, to use your analogous policies, there's a difference between a legal drinking age and out and out alcohol prohibition. Just as there's a difference between saying let's mine the borders, set up gatling gun emplacements every 50 feet along land and sea borders and shoot the crap out of anyone or anything that tries to cross, and saying perhaps young Muslim men should be scrutinized more than other immigrants, even up to denying entry to the country. At least so long as the proportion of people who fly planes into buildings and strap dynamite belts on and explode in discos, trains and buses, and who are young Muslim men, stays curiously high.

JimS:
RP's earlier proposal of revoking birthright citizenship is also far more radical than anything else that has been proposed so far.

Is there a particular Libertarian argument for birthright citizenship and all the benefits it comes with right now, some of which are a 'right' to other people's money?

JimS:
Big Brother will be busy breaking down doors on prohibition raids, and breaking the domestic economy in the process.

True, Big Brother is raiding speak easies as we speak. Oh wait, he isn't. Hmmmmm. One might think that a middle ground is possible. Of course, no middle ground is possible with ideologues. And if no middle ground is possible, then there is no way to reach a specified goal other than instantaneously or not at all.

Middle ground is, in fact, all we have and are likely to ever have. There will never be a perfectly tyrannical state, there will never be a perfectly voluntary anarcho capitalist society. Those of us who fight to make the perpetual middle ground we inhabbit resemble more the ideal of voluntarism are 'socialists' and 'collectivists' in your view because some trade offs are seen as a practical necessity or inevitable. In my view they're a hell of a lot smarter than a bunch of ideologues who constantly *** and moan about how imperfect the world is, and never accomplish anything because when someone who does come along who will at least move our society closer to the ideal, they lambast and denegrate him and nit pick his positionsand *** and moan over how far from their perfect ideal they are. It's a very simple idea to follow: the ideal world would be anarcho capitalist. It's not happening now or any time soon. So your choice is always between degrees of compromise from that ideal. Who are you supporting in the current campaign? Anyone? Who is the Libertarian candidate? Are his views perfect and totally in line with the AC Utopia? If not how do you justify his compromises as better than RPs, especially since the LP candidate's chances of getting elected are about as substantial as a mouse's fart in a hurricane. RP has a chance. A small chance, one that could have been made larger if, instead of bitching a moaning about one or two sticking points, he got some support from the people on these boards and those like them, who it seems prefer to beguile themselves with their own ideological pureness and trivia rather than taking a real and measurable step, however small, toward a better society.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

JimS — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 08:34:13 GMT

xahrx,

" Or if you're a moron and don't understand the difference between an entire category and a pool. All Muslims need not be the target. Only the ones who try to get into this country. So unless the entire Muslim world is planning on emmigrating and showing up here some time soon, the 1/4 the world's population argument doesn't quite cut it."

Yes, we are talking about people trying to get into this country, legally through the visa programs no less, dah! The significance of 1/4 the world's population being muslim means that roughly that proportion of people seeking entry through the visa programs would be muslims, too. That's still a huge number.

You missed the point that any single one of the three bottomless pit agendas (socialist war on poverty/inequality; imperialist war overseas; prohibitionist war on "illegal" drugs or humans) will be sufficient condition for building a government of unlimited size. To the extent that a prohibitionist war is a war waged directly on the domestic inhabitants' civil liberties, it's all the more atrocious. Personally, I have spent quite a lot of resources and time in favor of RP's presidentail bid, so you don't have to lecture me on the least of evils theory. However, this is a make-or-break issue for me because any real hard domestic crackdown on illegal immigrantion will entail nationl ID's, which is a far more dangerous program than anything else that has been proposed so far; RP is against national ID's, but realisticly unless RP is just paying lip service to immigration enforcement, there is no way enforcement can be accomplished without a thorough naitonal ID system. RP's earlier proposal of revoking birthright citizenship is also far more radical than anything else that has been proposed so far. We are literally talking about disenfrachising people. History seems to indicate that if we get started on that slippery slope, it's ony a short time before another group gets its turn, and soon we'd be well on our way to totalitarianism.

It should be noted however, his explanations in today's Town Hall meeting is much more encouraging. The real question is of course, what's his short-term policy instinct before the the problem is solved (if ever) by a more vibrant economy under a smaller government. After all, we are still waiting for the fulfillment of FDR's promise of small government, which was supposed to be in place after the Great Depression emergency passed. If the short-term policy instinct is for more enforcement, then the government will never be small and the economy will never get more vibrant. Big Brother will be busy breaking down doors on prohibition raids, and breaking the domestic economy in the process. While blowing up a bridge in Iraq is expensive, and so is rebuilding the bridge, the redirection of the same resources to breaking up the economic bridge between labor and capital in this country would be far more costly.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

Kent C — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 07:19:03 GMT

I was very satisfied with Ron Paul's explanation of his immigration policy today in his town hall meeting. Still not what I'd consider very libertarian but certainly not mean spirited like his ads.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

xahrx — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:17:23 GMT

JimS:
Perhaps, if you think like a dumb bureacrat or politicians hoping to get dumb votes but will probably lose more votes in reality than gaining:
(1) Muslims account for somewhere around 1/4 the word's population, so in practice it's not much narrowing at all; picking on men only helps to cut it down to 1/8, but that's still way too broad a target for reasonable allocation of resources, not to mention only workable until the next attack by muslim women. Typical government solutions that close the door after the horse has left the barn.

Or if you're a moron and don't understand the difference between an entire category and a pool. All Muslims need not be the target. Only the ones who try to get into this country. So unless the entire Muslim world is planning on emmigrating and showing up here some time soon, the 1/4 the world's population argument doesn't quite cut it.

JimS:
(2) Speaking of closing the door after the horse has left the barn, until about 1989, our dreaded bogeyman was a secular Palestinian terrorist; PLO, PFLP and ANO were all secular socialist organizations. Muslims fundamentalists were our friends fighting the commies in Afghanistan.

Once more making assumptions about my positions. I do not nor did I ever support any foreign intervention.

JimS:
(3) Mahamed Atta did not wear a turban, shaved, and drank like a fish. Aside from posthumerous recognition by the cavemen club, no one really knows if Atta was even a practicing muslim; if ever asked that question by a US immigrant official, his answer probably would have been no.

Ah, I see. Because I favor more stringent constraints on Muslim immigrants I must be one of those mouth breathing hicks who don't know dat dem der Mooslims don't always have dem towels on dar heads. Yuck yuck yuck. See previous post about parsing the word "assume."

JimS:
That's what you think now. Back in the early 1990's, the hysteria was targetted against the IRA; remember "The Patriot Game"? Had IRA not signed up for the Belfast Agreement, there would still be far more effective ways to stop IRA than stopping every Irishmen.

Indeed. I should have known you got your history through the movies.

JimS:
Student visa is usually not related to any invitation by the US government. Obviously, you do not understand how the visa system works. Student visas are typically issued because individuals are invited by private educational institutions; financial sponsorship by private individuals or institutions here in the US are indeed required before student visas are issued.

No sh*t sherlock. And the issuing authority is????? Harvard doesn't write out a visa and get people into the US without oversight. The government has to approve, issue the document and record it. I have to access these documents on a daily basis in my line of work because my employer employs a lot of foreign born citizens. Other institutions can be involved depending on the type of visa, the issuing authority is still the government, and the government can decide not to issue the visa for any number of reasons and no matter who signs off on it at whatever educational institution.

Re: And Ron Paul invented Window-Socialism

xahrx — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 01:04:41 GMT

JimS:
Then why should any of us support RP? Instead of say, any other Republican candidate?

Why should you do anything but curl up in isolation with a copy of Human Action in one hand and your pud in the other? Because he is better than the alternatives and closer to the ideal. If you're in New York and you want to go to Florida, why should you head south? Because that's the direction you want to go in, and immediate teleportation is not an option.

JimS:
(1) Various nanny state programs, the most prominent of which being national healthcare; preferred road to serfdom by the Democrats;

Which RP opposes last time I checked.

JimS:
(2) Waging wars overseas in the name of the American emperialism; a preferred road to serfdom by practically all the other Republicans;

Which RP opposes last time I checked.

JimS:
(3) Waging an unwinnable prohibitionist war against "illegal" immigrants in addition or in lieu of War on Drugs.

One out of three, two out of three in favor. Gee, I guess I do wonder why you would support him rather than Clinton, Rudy McRomney, or even Stalin. After all they are all the same...

As for the rest of your post I have no idea what Falstian means admittedly, so I can't answer. But of course the point arises: unless you want the immediate and total elimination of all government and will accept nothing less, then you must accept its continued existence and your existence under it for some time at least. Which leads one to wonder why you reject the good, lumping it in with every level of bad, in favor of the unreachable perfect.

Or more to the point, if someone has you cornered and gives you two options, a kick in the balls and a whack on the back of the hand with a ruler, you could pontificate about how it's all coersion and thus all the same, or you could take some time to consider the true, practical different between a foot to the nuts and a slap on the wrist.