Category Archives: Business

Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream

Business, Classical Liberalism, Democrats, Government, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, The State

“Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

“The ‘Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act (S.744)’ is statist through-and-through.

This is one thing one can state unequivocally about the Gang of Eight’s immigration Bill. The same goes for those who support it. The ‘libertarian’ Independent Institute, for one, whose scholars claim that the ‘Positive Aspects of Immigration Bill Outweigh Its Flaws.’

This is nonsense on stilts—true only if an expansion in the size and power of the federal government is a net positive.

If you’ve enjoyed the ‘work’ of Department of Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano, you’ll love her successor (rumored to be the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk Ray Kelly). The Marco Rubio immigration Bill concentrates even more power in the office Kelly may inherit. Such power includes the ability to adjust the status of a ‘registered provisional immigrant’ (RPI) to that of ‘an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence’ on satisfying a few ridiculous conditions, one of which is the RPI’s ‘continuous physical presence.’ In other words, for being in the country illegally, the RPI may get his illegal status reversed at the pleasure of The Secretary.

Is this not Kafkaesque? It is for any American who imagines that government ought to, at the very least, stand sentinel against unsolicited and unjustified trespass.

Almost all powers specified in the Bill are the prerogative of the Secretary of DOHS, although DOJ will get a chance to bolster its banana-republic credentials. Eric Holder’s Department of Justice gets bigger and badder under the Gang of Eight’s plot to reel-in more ‘undocumented Democrats.’

For instance, were an employer to hire, fire or verify an RPI’s employment eligibility in a manner that might be construed as a discriminating ‘immigration-related employment practice,’ the proprietor is in hot water. In defending their rights of private property, ‘foreign labor contractors’ will be, moreover, going up against tax-paid litigators, to whom the amnestied will have access.

You’d think that an expansion of the frivolous and counter-intuitive grounds upon which private-property owners may be prosecuted goes against libertarian sensibilities.

Another burden business will bear is …”

Read the complete column. “Rubio’s Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is now on WND.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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Seattle Parasite-To-Resident Ratio

Business, Government, Taxation, Technology, The State

In SEATTLE, the parasite-to-resident ratio (public-sector workers per population) is one to 56. To give you an idea of how big a government workforce Seattle labors under consider the bankrupt Detroit, at one to 61. I find this a remarkable statistic for Seattle. What it tells me is that despite the drag that is “the Evergreen State’s Profligate Oink Sector”—an oink sector, in places, comparable to Detroit’s—there are other variables even more powerful, which, against all odds, overcome the economic drag imposed by the unproductive, “public” sector.

Washington State’s prosperity is a function of the quality of the state’s productive sector. The state attracts a highly productive cognitive elite that works in the high-tech industries of Microsoft, Boeing, Amazon and other great companies.

Public sector workers, of course, are net wealth consumers; they do not produce wealth. They do vote themselves exorbitant salaries (averaging $81,488 in Seattle) on the backs of the productive (one of whom is my own).

A breakdown of parasite-to-resident ratios in other cities, many worse than Detroit, is courtesy of EPJ (read my weekly column, also on the Economic Policy Journal).

Pray For MORE Chaos; Let ObamaCare Implode

Barack Obama, Business, Constitution, Economy, Government, Healthcare, Private Property, Socialism

When the law itself is naturally illicit—in violation of our individual, natural rights—we should not care one bit that its perverse provisions are being violated, flouted or delayed by the law’s enforces.

Such a strategic delay in the implementation of a key part of ObamaCare was authorized by the almighty Obama Executive. Economic Policy Journal picks up on a point made, in this context, by FDR slayer Amith Shlaes. “It is a trick similar to the type FDR pulled with regard to Social Security.”

Or, as Shlaes tweets it, “Timing of Obamacare requirement: New Deal passed Social Security in 1935, but [Social Security] tax was collected only in 1937, also after key election.”

When the “Republicans challenge [Obama’s] authority to delay, ‘ignore’ ObamaCare provision,” they look like the rudderless idiots they are. Do Republicans want to repeal the law or not? Then let it implode. Let it collapse like a black hole under its own onerous weight.

Barack Hussein Obama’s interloper government is no longer pretending it’s doing the people’s business. The second term is about displays of raw power and wanton lawlessness.

Duly, and in the quest to recruit even more Democratic voters, this government has also waved “a provision in the Affordable Care Act meant to protect against fraud.” Not that these “safeguards” ever work, given the nature of state-run systems, where there is no incentive to protect scarce resources because these resources are not privately owned. (Well, they are privately owned, but, to be precise, these resources have been stolen from their rightful private-property owners.)

Via Beck’s The Blaze:

“Days after delaying health insurance requirements for employers, the Obama administration has decided to roll back requirements for new state online insurance marketplaces to verify the income and health coverage status of people who apply for subsidized coverage,” the report reads.
President Barack Obama’s health care requires that applicants applying for tax subsidies for health insurance prove that their income was somewhere between 100 percent to 400 percent of the federal poverty line. The bill also requires that applicants prove that they weren’t receiving employer-provided insurance.
But HHS decided last week to suspend these anti-fraud measures.

This chaos is a logical consequence of perverse central planning. Pray for more creative destruction. Let ObamaCare implode.

MORE Background In Mercer Archive:

The Survivalist’s Guide to ‘Obammunism’ And Beyond
3/8/2013

The Ass With Ears And His Ali Baba Thieves
8/10/2012

A Romp Down Memory Lane With Justice Roberts
7/6/2012

Heeere’s Health-Scare
3/19/2010

They All Lie For Someone
9/18/2009

Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured
8/7/2009

Code Blue! How Canada Care Nearly Killed My Kid
7/31/2009

Obama’s Politburo Of Proctologists

The Authentic Ass-troturfers
8/14/2009

Click on “Socialized Medicine.”

The Voluntary Free Market: An Extension Of Life Itself

Business, Capitalism, Economy, Free Markets, libertarianism, Propaganda, Regulation, The State

“The voluntary free market is a sacred extension of life itself. The free market—it has not been unfettered for a very long time—is really a spontaneously synchronized order comprising trillions upon trillions of voluntary acts that individuals perform in order to make a living. Introduce government force and coercion into this rhythm and you get life-threatening arrhythmia. Under increasing state control, this marketplace —this magic, organic agora—starts to splutter, and people suffer.”—ILANA (April 23, 2010)

The market place brings plenty; the state does the opposite. Yet not a day goes by when the masses, ignorant of the forces that feed, clothe, cure, employ, entertain them and innovate for them, do not demand that those who’ve done nothing of the kind—the McCains, Obamas, Bushes, Clintons, Keith Alexanders, Lois Lerners, Eric Holders of the world—proceed with force against those who do nothing but.

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