The basis of this last insanity post is the current issue of Reason magazine. Reason is a great source of news and analysis when it comes to freedom and liberties. They provide deeper insights to the ways the political class is continually stripping us of our rights as government’s tentacles reach deeper and deeper into our wallets.
One of their monthly features is a section called ‘Citings” where they give quick hits on what we call political class insanity. The first four hits below are from their January, 2014 issue and the remaining hit is just another broken promise and boast from our current President.
1) It is no secret that the Obama administration, using the National Security Agency, has shredded the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and the protection against unreasonable and unwarranted searches of our lives. This issue of Reason gives a little perspective on just one aspect of this intrusion into our private lives, for no reason:
- According to a report and analysis from the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Security Agency, every 90 days for the past seven years, has obtained secret warrants and orders from the ultra secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that compelled telecommunications carriers to give the Federal government the total telephone calling records, international and domestic, on EVERY American from EVERY day.
- Since 2008, the FBI was given free rein to investigate American citizens that were not even suspected of any crime or wrongdoing. Imagine the potential for abuse from that activity.
- The ACLU found that from 2009 to 2011, the FBI opened over 82,000 of these types of intrusive investigations and found less than 3,500 (only about 4%) justified any further investigation.
- It was not reported how many of those meager 3,500 actually led to any criminal or terrorist arrests or cases.
- Thus, about 80,000 Americans secretly had their private lives violated without cause and without their knowledge.
2) Political class insanity does exist solely at the Federal government level. We have often covered the insanity at the local and state government levels. Consider a law and court case from the state of Texas.
Let’s assume you found that you were really good at braiding hair. You figure you have a skill with minimal overhead that could make some money and possibly a career out of. Great, braiding someone’s hair does not require the use of harsh chemicals, noxious gases, dangerous and sharp instruments, or any other dangerous process. You are just creatively twisting someone else’s hair at their request.
However, the assumption that this type of business has low overhead would be false. According to Texas state law, in order to simply braid hair in Texas, you have to maintain an official “barber college.” This entails having a facility with at least 2,000 square feet of space, you have to have multiple mannequins and associated wash stations, and you have to have 2,250 hours of training, hours that must cost a lot of money. All to braid someone’s hair. Lunacy.
This is what happens when government and the bureaucracy it spawns gets too large. Either unnecessary government agents and employees come up with ludicrous regulations like this to justify their jobs or excessive regulations are used to erect high barriers of entry into an industry, reducing competition and protecting special interests already in that industry. This protection is usually erected in cahoots with the associated politicians who usually get some type of financial reward for erecting the barriers.
Fortunately, a brave citizen in Texas, Isis Brantley is fighting this insanity in court. Best wishes to her as she looks to protect her freedom to earn a living at something she likes to do and is good at it without the political class and bureaucratic government it operates getting in the way. We wish her luck.
3) Let’s combine the previous two affronts to freedom, government snooping without just cause and overreaching and intrusive state government, and see what we come up with. According to Reason, we might come up with the snooping fiasco in the state of Ohio. According to Reason, the political class in that state quietly integrated facial recognition software into a state government website that includes driver’s license photos. Scary development.
Even scarier is the fact that a whopping 30,000 law enforcement officers in the state of Ohio are authorized to access driver license images without audits, warrants, or any oversight. Again, imagine the potential for abuse with such a wide open access to private lives for no reason.
A police officer trying to find the identify of his ex-wife’s new boyfriend. A potential stalker police officer seeing a pretty woman on the street and using her photo to track down her name and address. The scenarios for abuse are large, dangerous, and downright creepy. That is what people in Ohio are facing from a political class that has very little respect for privacy and security of its citizens. And since the FBI research has found that facial recognitions is often wrong at the rate of about 20% of the time, is the risk worth the less than perfect results?
The article points out that Kentucky has a similar system but allows only 34 government employees to access the photos, software, and information. Twelve states do not have such software, the state of Maine forbids its use by any state agency, and several states that have the software absolutely forbid its use by law enforcement authorities.
4) One of the jobs of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Federal agency is to clamp down on black market cigarettes sales. They are probably not doing a great job since recent news reports indicate that about 60% of the cigarettes sold in the state of New York are sold illegally on the black market but that is a topic for another day.
This latest issue of Reason magazine reported on major screw-up’s by ATF when it comes to undercover stings and operations by ATF agents:
- A recent study by the Justice Department found that the ATF may actually contribute to the supply of illegal cigarettes sold on the black market rather than stopping such sales.
- The study looked at “churning” investigations where ATF agents are actually allowed to engage in illegal cigarette sales, I am assuming as undercover sting operations, as long as the money made selling cigarettes in the operations is used to fund the ATF operations.
- Sounds like a nifty idea, let the criminals pay the government money during the stings and the government does not have to turn back the cash paid during the sting. They “theoretically” can use it to fund their operations, reducing the burden on the taxpayers.
- However, the Justice Department found that such operations had lousy oversight and auditing controls in place.
- In one case, the ATF allowed an informer to keep $4.9 million out of $5.2 million in profit that was made by one operation.
- The study could also not account for the location of 2.1 million cartons of cigarettes that churning investigations were supposed to use to catch the smugglers.
- The missing cigarettes are worth more than a whopping $127 million on the retail market.
5) In other insanity, recall this week that we have discussed the fact that General Motors still owes the American taxpayer about $10 billion from their government bailout. They are unlikely to ever repay that loan even though they are sitting on over $26 billion in cash reserves and are investing large amounts of money in China where they will be hiring Chinese workers, not American workers, to build cars.
But now recall the words from President Obama in October, 2012 when he was bragging about what he had done to “save Detroit” and bolster his reelection chances:
“Just a few years ago, the auto industry wasn’t just struggling – it was flatlining. GM and Chrysler were on the verge of collapse. Suppliers and distributors were at risk of going under. More than a million jobs across the country were on the line – and not just auto jobs, but the jobs of teachers, small business owners, and everyone in communities that depend on this great American industry… [we] refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt.”
Well, he cannot make the promise or boast anymore. A judge has ruled that yes, Detroit can go into bankruptcy and will able do so after all of the appeals are heard and the ruling likely upheld. Detroit never had a chance, Obama’s claim last year was fortunate for him that it came a year or so before the eventual reality took place.
In just fifty years, the American political class took the fourth largest city in America, a city with the most prosperous middle class, and turned it into a Third World cesspool that had no other financial options except to seek bankruptcy protection from the courts. That is true insanity and another Obama failed promise, despite shoving tens of billions of dollars into the area, wasting billions and billions of taxpayer dollars in a futile attempt to fix an unfixable mess. Insane.
There you finally have all the insanity for this month. Broken political promises, losing millions and millions of dollars through botched ATF operations, unwarranted invasions of privacy, and erecting barriers to market entry for no good reason. Yep, sounds about right when talking about America’s current political class. Pathetic.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
www.loathemygovernment.com
It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.
Please visit the following sites for freedom:
Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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