Category Archives: The State

UPDATED: Snowden As A Litmus Test For Libertarians

Propaganda, Rights, Russia, Technology, Terrorism, The State

If you have not been rooting for Edward Snowden to evade his tormentors–you are not a libertarian.

If you have not been praying (it’s a figure of speech, not a statement of religious faith) for Vladimir Putin to stand firm against the biggest bully in the world—you are no libertarian.

Today, those proverbial prayers have been answered. The man who has been the laughing stock in US media (a laughable proposition in itself) for his displays of machismo has manned up.

“Although President Vladimir V. Putin and President Obama both sought to avoid a direct diplomatic clash over Mr. Snowden, Mr. Putin and other officials here made clear they would under no circumstance extradite him, despite direct appeals from Secretary of State John Kerry and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.”

And finally, on August 1, 2013, “Russia Granted Snowden 1-Year Asylum,” reports the New York Times.

Russia’s decision, which infuriated American officials, significantly alters the legal status of Mr. Snowden, the former intelligence analyst wanted by the United States for leaking details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs. Even as those leaks continued, Mr. Snowden now has legal permission to live — and conceivably even work — anywhere in Russia for as long as a year, safely out of the reach of American prosecutors.
Mr. Snowden, 30, departed Sheremetyevo Airport unexpectedly at 3:30 in the afternoon after his lawyer, Anatoly G. Kucherena, delivered to him a passport-like document issued by the Federal Migration Service on Wednesday and valid until July 31, 2014.

Let us hope that this young man remains free, and that “the temporary refugee certificate” is renewed, or is a loadstar for other countries thinking of following Putin’s lead.

UPDATE: “Manning, Snowden and Assange were the ones who took risks to expose crime.” This is a bit of a dumb statement:

Manning’s supporters expressed relief that he was found not guilty of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy, which would likely have carried a sentence of life in prison. He was convicted on 20 of 22 charges, and could face up to 136 years in prison. The sentencing hearing is underway.

Oh For The Privileges Of A ‘Registered Provisional Immigrant’ (RPI)

Classical Liberalism, Government, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, Nationhood, Taxation, The State, Welfare

“Immigration Bill A Statist’s Dream” is now on Economic Policy Journal, which, given its traffic rank and the intellectual vitality of its authors and editor, is fast usurping all others as the premier libertarian site on the worldwide web.

To the analysis offered by the column (always circumscribed by a word count), I’d like to add the following points for your consideration:

What is there to like about the fact that the new, privileged wards of the state will enjoy protections unavailable to nationals or to immigrants who’re in the US on merit?

Ask egalitarians of the libertarian and liberal left.

There is not much you and I can do—much less our corrupt representatives in the House—if General Keith Alexander’s National Security Agency and apparatus sics his spies on us. The same goes for our rights under the successors of Lois Lerner and Sarah Hall Ingram, at the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt division.

But woe betide the NSA or IRS agent who does unto a “registered provisional immigrant” (RPI) what he did to a tea-party patriot. The “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” promises to name and shame this wicked government worker. Caught in the improper use of a registered provisional immigrant’s personal data, the agent will incur a criminal penalty.

The Bill (the lengthy summary of which is linked here) specifies that snooping on beneficiaries of S.744 will be permitted only for the purpose of determining benefits. These, to quote the EPJ column, are “carved out of the hides of taxpaying Americans, immigrants included.”

To prevent any “errant” law-enforcement officer from daring to quiz a suspicious registered provisional Democrat about his status, a “document of special protection while waiting” will be issued to The Protected One.

Oh for the privileges of a ‘Registered Provisional Immigrant’ (RPI).

I suppose that we-are-the-world libertarians can rejoice in the fact that the “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” makes “illegal alien” a thing of the past—not due to the promised defense of this country’s borders, but because of a near abolition of the legal versus illegal distinction.

As this column has written, “Would that the American Welfare State did not exist. But since it does and is, unfortunately, likely to persist for some time to come, it must stop at the Rio Grande.”

The same source has also done the work your US representatives won’t do—can’t we export them?—and that is: Read and honestly distill the Immigration Bill.

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.

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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).