Category Archives: Regulation

UPDATE II: The TSA’s Trayvon Martin Revenge (Realism Vs. Postmodernism)

Aesthetics, Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Government, Homeland Security, Objectivism, Pop-Culture, Race, Racism, Regulation, Terrorism

Excerpted from “The TSA’s Trayvon Martin Revenge,” now on RT:

“Had a rare video surfaced in which a black toddler was being brutalized by agents of the Transportation Security Administration, President Barack Obama would have enough solidarity, and some to spare. ‘If he had a son, he’d look like the boy whose breeches were breached by adults who should know better.’

I don’t wish the homegrown terrorists of the TSA to become equal-opportunity offenders; I want Congress to call off these attack dogs, now.

Still, I am unconvinced that when they travel, black women, tots, and geriatrics are subjected to the same invasive searches as are whites.

My own experience this month was uneventful. I was spared the rogering I’ve endured in the past, thanks, I believe, to the advice of WND’s Commentary Editor: wear loose clothing. A young TSA agent waved me by.

I did see a tall and handsome TSA worker working-over a little old man (aged 80, perhaps). The agent was black; his victim Caucasian. It looked as though the former was examining the hunched old man’s colostomy bag. It took the agent forever. He appeared to be enjoying himself.

I lingered as long as I could, to bear witness. The cruel ordeal was still underway when I left the scene, some 15 minutes later.

Dare I say it? The girl who—no doubt by fluke—did not violate my constitutional, fourth-amendment rights to be free of “unreasonable searches and seizures” was Caucasian.

A previous flying experience saw me subjected to—what are the odds?—the ministrations of a large African-American woman, who summoned me with a crooked finger for a pat down. In no time at all, her giant digits were on my chest and between my legs.

Amassed online is a critical mass of images in which TSA workers, often minorities, are feeling up and humiliating the most vulnerable members of white America—kids, old men and women, often infirm and incapacitated.

Twenty one and a half percent of TSA employees are black, and 13.1 percent Latino. At 10.5 percent and 10 percent respectively, the equivalent representation of aggrieved groups in the private sector merely mirrors their numbers in the larger population (serving, no doubt, to keep litigation at bay).

Moreover, like most federal agencies, the TSA is known to provide sheltered employment to a segment of the population which Sibel Edmonds, a courageous whistle blower, has described as “low-level, incompetent, scandalous, molesting, abusive, and in some cases criminal people who have been creating one scandal after another.”

TSA action is immortalized in countless YouTube clips. …”

Read the rest of “The TSA’s Trayvon Martin Revenge.”

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The paperback edition (softcover) of “Into The Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa” is out and in stock. It features bonus material, including an Afterword by Burkean philosopher and rising star, Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.

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UPDATE I: The serious Japanese are Laughing (and it takes a lot to make them chuckle):

UPDATE II (June 2): To the repulsive David B, in Comments:

My rational, sane readers know my writing as the kind that cleaves to reality, is objective, and objectivist. Aesthetics, art, music: These are aspects of the culture that I comment on at length. This is nothing new. I’ve commented on my idea of female beauty and manliness. These, like my concept of what constitutes good music, are absolute. These assessments exist irrespective of what I find sexually attractive or politically desirable. I thought Jackie Kennedy was spectacular as a woman. Does that mean I am attracted to her? Does that imply I’m a Democrat? What nonsense. The Don Draper character in “Mad Men” is good looking, objectively speaking. Does that mean I want to jump his bones? Iman the model in lovely. And black.

Crass, stupid racialists see the world through their narrow prism of politics and race. They are postmodernists, in this sense, reducing objective reality to subjective likes and dislikes that serve their personal ego-related and political needs.

I’ll repeat the reality I observed at the Newark airport recently: The black gentleman I observed assaulting the helpless, ancient white man was tall, fit, well-groomed and good-looking (in the sense that he could have obtained employment with a modeling agency). Do these objective observations mean I was attracted to him? How stupid can you be?

Did I despise him for his actions? You bet.

His actions, more than anything else about him, condemned him as a man and human being.

Americans Abroad ‘Banking Under the Mattress’

Media, Regulation, Taxation, The State

Is Big Media catching up with guerrilla writers? In “Planet IRS,” just over two weeks ago, I wrote that “[d]ue to the onerous burdens imposed by the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, foreign banks, as well as hedge and private equity funds are closing American accounts. Barack Obama’s legislative baby (signed on March 18, 2010) is driving Americans abroad into banking under the mattress.”

Today Bloomberg caught up, in “U.S. Millionaires Told Go Away as Tax Evasion Rule Looms.”:

Go away, American millionaires.
That’s what some of the world’s largest wealth-management firms are saying ahead of Washington’s implementation of the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, known as Fatca, which seeks to prevent tax evasion by Americans with offshore accounts. HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Deutsche Bank AG, Bank of Singapore Ltd. and DBS Group Holdings Ltd. (DBS) all say they have turned away business.
“I don’t open U.S. accounts, period,” said Su Shan Tan, head of private banking at Singapore-based DBS, Southeast Asia’s largest lender, who described regulatory attitudes toward U.S. clients as “Draconian.”

Oh dear. We’re usually years ahead of mainstream (as in this September 19, 2002, article).

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.”

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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.