Category Archives: Law

Train The Cameras On Police And First Responders

Crime, Economy, Fascism, Free Markets, Government, Law, Private Property, The State

Police and state-employed firefighters must be tethered electronically by video cams. The cameras worn on the helmets of weaponized government workers—they have enormous license to use their weapons—serve to keep them accountable. Business (say, free-market firefighters hired by an insurer) already polices its workforce, as it is in the business of pleasing, not killing, those it serves. Preventing fraud and abuse on the job is integral* to the job. (Guess why.) When will people get that the incentives that are at work in private property are missing from state-run systems?

Twelve or so minutes into “The Five” on Fox News, a heated airhead debate ensued over the suggestion of removing cameras from the helmets of cops and first responders. Airhead Bob Beckel said cameras must go. Kimberly Guilfoyle (not an airhead, but a bona fide statist) agreed. Poor Dana Ditz. She got it right but by default. She wants to give the boys in blue all the power in the world “to protect us.” Because Dana Ditz can’t reverse a situation in her not-so-nimble mind, she failed to see that cops filming also means cops being filmed, and abuses more likely exposed. (* Today, our Dana discovered the word “integral.” But in pronouncing it, she placed the emphasis incorrectly on the second syllable. Here’s the right way to say “integral.”)

Remember the only victim of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash, last month? She was killed not by the crash, but by our brave first responders.

FSGate:

The San Francisco Fire Department supervisors who took charge of the Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crash scene were not alerted by firefighters that a 16-year-old passenger had been found near the plane, leaving them powerless to prevent the girl from being run over by a rig after she was covered by fire-retardant foam, footage of the incident shows.

In the case of state employees, the incentive is absent to be really, really, really careful. After all, responsibility for damages and deaths is collectivized; taxpayers pick up the tab; lawmakers enact laws that shield the perp from responsibility, even protecting identities. (That’s why I say name and shame the pimps at TSA.)

Film them. The many good cops won’t mind

Welfare For The World Even When The Law Says ‘No’

Barack Obama, Foreign Aid, Foreign Policy, Law, Welfare

Even US law on occasion provides a way out of welfare for the world. Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act is a case in point. But not on Obama’s watch:

“Many laws are complicated, but Section 508 of the Foreign Assistance Act isn’t,” explains Noah Feldman at Bloomberg. “It reads: ‘None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available pursuant to this Act shall be obligated or expended to finance directly any assistance to any country whose duly elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.’ In other words, money spent to aid a foreign country such as Egypt can’t be spent if there has been a coup. There is no loophole in this language. … ” MORE.

Isn’t it time the ponces of the press compile a comprehensive survey of all the instances in which this president has flouted the law of the land? Of course not. What was I thinking?!

Holder Messes With Texas Because … He Can

Barack Obama, Federalism, Law, Racism, States' Rights

This administration is obliterating what’s left of the federal scheme: Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department is moving against the states and end-running the Courts, first in the Zimmerman case and now with respect to the Supreme Court’s decision regarding election rules in Texas.

Apoplectic over the high court’s weakening of laws that privilege protected groups , Holder, reports Fox News, “asked a San Antonio-based federal court to force Texas to get permission from the federal government before it can make any additional changes to its voting and election laws.”

Other than Fox News, the news and cable networks appear not to be reporting this.

The administration has a tradition to uphold. In 2010, The Hildebeest herself announced the intention of the Obama Administration to sue Arizona and Gov. Jan Brewer for insisting it had a right to pass Arizona’s immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070.

What Ever Happened To Debtor’s Jail?

Affirmative Action, Britain, Debt, Government, Justice, Law

Judge Rosemary Aquilina is hoping to suspend reality in Detroit with her gavel.

Aquilina is “an Ingham County Circuit judge,” who “ordered Friday that Detroit’s federal bankruptcy filing be withdrawn,” reports the Detroit News. “Aquilina said the Michigan Constitution prohibits actions that will lessen the pension benefits of public employees, including those in the City of Detroit.” (Imagine: The state’s constitution works against Michigan taxpayers.)

The Library of Economics and Liberty remarks that “Early English bankruptcy laws were designed to assist creditors in collecting the debtor’s assets, not to protect the debtor or discharge (forgive) his debts.”

This was the wise, ancient common law. The latter is not the concern of Wikipedia, when it talks about the “debtor declaring bankruptcy to obtain relief from debt,” which “is accomplished either through a discharge of the debt or through a restructuring of the debt.”

That the US even allows Chapter 9—“municipal bankruptcy; a federal mechanism for the resolution of municipal debts”—says a lot.

Governments should not be availed of the legal instruments meant to protect private-property owners. How about debtor’s jail for politicians who defraud taxpayers?

Perhaps Aquilina worries that the fat cats (Detroit’s political class) will obtain relief at the expense of the little guy (public-sector workers) to whom the politicians and the unions promised the world?

The sooner the oink sector is disabused of its delusions, the better.

Last week’s column introduced readers to the Colosseum of courtroom cretins. In a word, a dumbed down courtroom commentariat that is incapable of separating politicized constructs (racism) from facts admissible in a court of law.

Judge Rosemary Aquilina is another of this idiocracy’s many exhibits.