Category Archives: Private Property

May Day Moochers

Elections, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Private Property, Socialism, Welfare

The habitual “Protester,” celebrated by TIME Magazine as PERSON OF THE YEAR in 2011, is to be distinguished from the Worker. The May Day Marxist marches “in Midtown Manhattan,” saw these layabouts picket the industrious workers inside “the offices of major corporations and dozens of smaller targets, including restaurants and bank branches.”

Tired of listening to mealymouthed left-libertarians laboring to find commonalities with the Occupy Wall Street “sleepover”? You should be. I know I am. I have no sisterly solidarity for socialists.

Here’s the stark reality of these extravaganzas: Within the buildings are people beavering away, working for a living. Railing against them without—sitting idle in the parks, streets and on sidewalks—are individuals who trash, scream, sleep for hours on end, loiter, strip down and publicly body-paint each other, copulate and defecate.

This habitual protester does not work for his living; he wants YOU to do that for him.

Personal notice: I’m on the road, traveling to the Junto gathering. The WND column will return next week, May 10/11. RT’s Paleolibertarian Column will be featuring a Golden Oldie on May 4, so do click to Like, Share, and Tweet it.

BAB’s moderated Comments Section will be closed until next week. Please comment on the Facebook Wall and beyond.

UPDATED: Organized Vs. Disorganized Crime (US Vs. China)

China, Criminal Injustice, Government, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, Liberty, Private Property, Regulation, The State

Statists stateside have come down harshly on me for even suggesting that your average Egyptian under Mubarak or Libyan under Gadhafi was probably less likely than his American counterpart to be jailed, harassed or have a threatening encounter with the state’s emissaries.

Do you think these former dictators retaliated against “Their People” with diabolical efficiency for selling raw milk and homemade lemonade? Or unintentionally violating Honduran law of which the Hondurans themselves were ignorant? Or attempting to erect a structure on their land?

It’s the difference between organized and disorganized crime: Uncle Sam runs an organized criminal syndicate; Third World despots run disorganized criminal endeavors. It is not unreasonable to suggest that it’s easier to live off the grid in those tin-pot dictatorships America is forever overthrowing, than in the USA, the land of the “free.”

“Illegal Everything,” as John Stossel sees it. He “argue that America has become a country where no one can know what is legal.”

Kids who open lemonade stands are now shutdown by police. I tried to open a lemonade stand legally in NYC. That was quite an adventure. It takes 65 days to get permission from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
With government adding 80,000 pages of rules and regulations every year, it’s no surprise that regular people break laws without even trying.
A small businessman spent 6 years in federal prison for breaking Honduran regulations (and, to make it worse, the Honduran government said he didn’t). A family in Idaho can’t build a home on their land because the EPA says it’s a wetland-but it only resembles a wetland because a government drain malfunctioned and flooded it.

MORE.

UPDATE: “The US Is More Authoritarian Than China,” writes Lew Rockwell:

China is nowhere near as authoritarian as the US, and where authority is exercised it appears to be with more restraint. There is no TSA at Chinese airports. My son has entered the country when the customs and immigration checks were simply closed (because it was outside normal working hours) and walked off the plane and into Beijing.
On the surface, there are a lot of “rules” in China, but no one pays any attention and the authorities don’t enforce them.

As I’ve written, “US In The Red And Getting Redder”:

It’s time we came clean about our economic system. The Chinese are honest about theirs; they call it “socialism with Chinese characteristic.” We call ours free-market capitalism, when in fact it is a Third Way system too: “Socialism with American characteristics.”
The picture of China to emerge from behind those pretty Chinese screens is complex. The embodiment of feng shui it is not. The trend, however, is unmistakable: China is becoming freer, America less free. The devil is in this detail.

UPDATE III: Planet IRS (Police State USA)

English, Europe, Human Accomplishment, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Literature, Media, Private Property, Regulation, South-Africa, Taxation

The following is excerpted from my new, weekly column, “Planet IRS”:

“You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!” Those are the chorus lyrics to Hotel California,” the haunting rock classic by the Eagles.

Americans who try “running for the door”—in the evocative words of Glenn Frey, and the Dons Felder and Henley—soon discover that they “are all just prisoners here …”

Prisoners of Uncle Sam’s device.

If he can tolerate TSA assaults as he departs the country, an American who chooses to live and work overseas cannot escape the Internal Revenue Service. The United States is perhaps the only country “to tax its citizens on income earned while they’re living abroad.”

To loss of privacy and property, add the prospect of prison—and you get why, as Reuters has reported, droves of Americans are “renouncing their U.S. citizenship or handing in their Green Cards.”

On pain of criminal charges and “penalties of up to $100,000 or 50 percent of undeclared accounts, whichever is larger,” the expatriate must report his own bank accounts and all conjoint accounts—a spouse, a client, or business partners.

The victims of this shakedown are residents who have foreign bank accounts (the Canadian equivalent of a small USA 401K, in this scribe’s case), in addition to “an estimated 6.3 million U.S. citizens living abroad.” The aims of their pursuers, the IRS, are control and compliance. The rogue agency’s source of revenue, in this context, is derived primarily from penalties for forgetfulness or faulty filing.

All fear bankrupting fines, even imprisonment.” …

Click on the link to read the complete column, “Planet IRS.”

If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

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UPDATE I: On Facebook, Anthony Michael Miceli writes this: “You’re one of the most honest writers that is publicly known. This and a lot of your work SHOULD be carried by major newspapers but when most are controlled by just a handful of corporations the writing and thought pool becomes the same incestuous crap ppl haven been exposed to for years.”

I reply: It takes concerted pressure from readers like yourself, AMM, to sway the editorial gatekeepers across the country. What should irk you is not that opinion such as mine (also yours) is shunned; it’s the mediocrity and piss-poor, unimaginative writing that is embraced instead. Also, to help restore standards, let us separate writers from TV show men and women. Let us restore the division of labor. Only a few people manage to straddle both worlds (Ann Coulter, for instance, who is a Republican through-and-through). Most TV showmen with a large presence, or politicians, ain’t writers.

UPDATE II: I shouldn’t, but I will. I mean, there is a need to say IT, simply because few know better. And, after all, to a contemporary journalism teacher, instructing the aspiring young writer, creativity equals, “Sharing your passion” (“I love myself, and my dog, and me again”), “showing your feelings (“I feel like Obama is trying to feel for us, but like…”). So, you need to hear this from someone who learned the hard way (from tough veterans):

The lead to this column (used to be written “lede”), the Hotel California segue, is bloody good. Just saying.

UPDATE III: An example of the above necessary division of labor: Judge Napolitano. Great orator; poor writer.

UPDATE III: ‘Three Amigos Summit’ (CANADA IMPERILED BY US ‘PROTECTION’)

America, Bush, Canada, Foreign Policy, Military, Private Property, Trade, War

President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Mexican President Felipe Calderon met for their North American summit. Yes, it’s their get-together; not ours. They spoke a lot about “trade,” managed trade, or, in this context, the “North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which seeks to more closely integrate the economies of the three countries.”

When people are herded by stealth into a supranational arrangements (the EU, or North American Union, for that matter), it is with a vision predicated on rigid central planning, homogenization of laws throughout the continent, and heavy taxation and inflation of the money supply.

Moreover, what was written on April 1, 2006, in the Ottawa Citizen—about a previous Summit in which Vincente Fox and his buddy George Bush officiated—stands.

… state-managed trade is never really free. And NAFTA is nothing but a mercantilist, centrally planned maze of regulations. Whenever I cross into Canada to visit my daughter, I’m compelled to declare and pay taxes on every paltry purchase. That’s NAFTA for you! Governments have only ever ‘freed’ trade by providing law and order, enforcing contracts—and then vamoosing.
… The free flow of goods across borders is not to be confused with that of people across borders. Over 40 percent of Mexicans live below the poverty line, compared to America and Canada’s 13 and 16 percent, respectively. This means that the U.S. is flooded by torrents of unskilled, illegal aliens. The costs to the nation’s schools, hospitals, and environment; health, safety and security are incalculable.
…So long as the U.S. and Canada remain relatively high-wage areas with tax-funded welfare systems, they will experience migratory pressure from a low-wage country such as Mexico.

Naturally, protectionist policies worsen this pressure. If people can’t sell their wares into foreign markets, they’re more inclined to relocate in search of better economic prospects. Unhampered trade, not NAFTA, might diminish this pressure.

UPDATE I: Huggs, Canadians are as socialist as Americans, maybe more. But their leaders are less treacherous than ours. Because of this, “Canada’s balance sheet is healthier than those of other developed nations,” the US included. naturally, Canadians prefer Obama to Harper, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re doing quite well as we struggle.

From the Frontier Center comes news that in Canada, private property rights are better respected than in the US.

The Frontier Centre for Public Policy, along with the International Property Rights Alliance, today released the 2012 International Property Rights Index (IPRI). The 2012 Index, measures the protection of property rights in 130 countries. …On a worldwide ranking of one to ten—the higher scores reflecting a greater protection of property—IPRI scores ranged from Finland with 8.6, to Yemen with a score of just 2.8. In 2012, Canada maintained its position as the highest ranking country in the Western hemisphere and is seen as a model of stability, with increased scores in the Access to Loans sub-component of its Physical Property Rights (PPR) score. Overall, Canada was 10th. (The United States was 18th.)

In Brief:

* 130 countries were surveyed in 2012 IPRI.
* Finland scores highest in protection of property; Canada defeated by Netherlands for 9th place by only 0.1
* Canada, at 12th place, scores higher than the United States (at 18th)

UPDATE II: Canada’s center-right government plans to implement and austerity budget, raising “the retirement age and making major public service cuts. “Ottawa’s debt-to-GDP ratio remains the lowest in the Group of Seven industrialized nations. Canada is one of only two G7 nations to have recouped all the jobs lost during the global recession.” …

UPDATE III (April 3): CANADA IMPERILED BY US ‘PROTECTION.’ ‘Derek’s argument, below, about Canada not having the burdens of defending itself and the world because saintly Uncle Sam carries the load for her is a bogus argument, the premise of which is that American interventions protect Canada and the world from harm and reduce costs for beneficiaries of this ‘protection.’ To the extent that Canada has been our lap dog in war—to that extent it has harmed its standing and safety in the world. By the way, this false argument is routinely made at National Review too.