Brian Martinez – Page 4 – The Libertarian Standard

The price of employment “fairness”

By Brian Martinez / February 25, 2012 / 2 minutes of reading

If you receive an application for a position requiring a lot of driving or operating heavy machinery, and the applicant has a known history of alcohol or substance abuse, you’d probably be justified in turning the applicant down for the job, right?

You probably already know the answer to this, but: wrong.

A substitute bus driver for the Jefferson County, Colo., school district was cited for careless driving resulting in bodily harm after he struck three teenagers as they crossed the street on Tuesday. The driver, David Shaw, was convicted of DUI in 1992 and according to friends had been in and out of alcohol abuse treatment as recently as 2009.

But even had the school district known this, they could not use it as grounds to terminate him, or even to make a hiring decision:

When asked whether Shaw would have been hired if the district had known he’d been in and out of addiction rehab treatment, a representative cited the American’s with Disabilities Act, which reads “‘It is illegal under state and federal disability laws to deny employment solely on the basis of a history of treatment for alcohol or substance abuse.”

Ignoring the DUI for the moment (which should have been caught in a background check), only the government could come up with employment policies which result in alcoholics driving schoolchildren around in buses.

It’s not that they shouldn’t be hired at all. But the many-headed beast that is the Americans with Disabilities Act has made it virtually impossible to apply common sense when making hiring decisions. And since the ADA has proved to be a potent legal weapon against businesses who have turned down or fired disabled workers, it has actually had the opposite effect it intended: employment of disabled workers have decreased steadily since passage of the ADA in 1989. But as with most other anti-discrimination laws, merely suggesting that the ADA needs to be overhauled (or heavens forbid, repealed) makes one an enemy of the very group of people the law was intended (but failed) to protect.

More from another hater of disabled people, Cato’s Walter Olson, on the occasion of the ADA’s 20th anniversary.

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The crusade to humiliate women takes a sinister turn

By Brian Martinez / February 21, 2012 / 4 Comments / 3 minutes of reading

If a law currently up for vote in the Virginia House passes this week and is signed by Governor Bob McDonnell, it will require many women seeking an abortion to be raped.

No, you didn’t misread that.

The bill, which is similar to laws passed in seven other states, requires women to undergo an ultrasound procedure before an abortion is performed. The ultrasound is not medically necessary; it has not even been rationalized as such by the bill’s defenders. It is simply another tactic adopted by anti-abortion crusaders to humiliate women, in the hopes that they may change their mind about going through with the procedure.

But since most abortions are performed in the first trimester, and abdominal ultrasounds are not able to produce a clear image of the fetus in most cases, Virgina’s law mandates the use of transvaginal ultrasound – that is, a probe must be inserted in the women’s vagina to view the fetus. Women cannot refuse this if they want to get an abortion, and the law does not allow for any exceptions such as rape or to protect the woman’s health.

I can’t even imagine what a rape victim who has become pregnant might think of this, after having already been violated once, and then being told by arrogant politicians that she must be violated again in order to undergo a commonly available medical procedure. It also forces her doctor to perform a procedure that is not medically necessary, and violates their oath not to cause harm to their patient. As one Virginia House Delegate pointed out, the bill may actually require doctors to sexually assault their patients, as it is a crime to vaginally penetrate women with any object without their consent. (To add insult to injury, the woman must also pay for this state-mandated procedure. Where’s Obamacare when you need it?)

It’s not even cognizant of the doctor-patient relationship that is generally so well-respected – except when women’s medical choices are involved. Then it’s absolutely imperative that the government asserts jurisdiction over a women’s vagina, to ensure she’s actually making the best medical decisions for herself. It’s not just humiliating; it is paternalistic in its very worst sense.

Note that I haven’t even addressed the issue of abortion itself. That is because regardless of where one stands on abortion – if one considers it murder, or the right of a woman to make decisions regarding her own property (i.e., her body) – this intrusion by the state into private medical affairs, which would not be tolerated under virtually any other circumstances, is simply not justifiable. And perhaps anti-abortion crusaders are aware of that, and are adopting these tactics to set up a constitutional challenge that leads to a Supreme Court review of Roe v. Wade, hopefully this time to overturn it for good.

Regardless of the anti-abortion camp’s motives, their degrading and humiliating tactics are despicable.

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Do it for the children (and troubled pop stars)

Drug Policy, Pop Culture

By Brian Martinez / February 12, 2012 / 2 Comments / 2 minutes of reading

I suppose it’s only logical – in that twisted, perverse way unique to the state – that if the president can now detain citizens indefinitely without trial for suspected terrorist activities committed on U. S. soil, the government would be able to arrest them for merely talking about suspected drug activities abroad:

The House Judiciary Committee passed a bill yesterday that would make it a federal crime for U.S. residents to discuss or plan activities on foreign soil that, if carried out in the U.S., would violate the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) — even if the planned activities are legal in the countries where they’re carried out.

(At this point it should shock no one that the sponsor of this bill is Lamar Smith, the Republican senator from Texas who also backed the free-speech-crushing Stop Online Piracy Act.) So that means if you casually mention to someone that you can’t wait to go to Amsterdam to try some hash – which is completely legal there – you might find yourself detained by DEA agents even before you’ve left the country. It would also conceivably apply to any publications, including blogs, which discuss future drug activity, or even advice about drugs aimed at overseas audiences (such as growing marijuana).

So now the country’s lawmakers are reduced to enacting thought-crime legislation, in the state’s futile attempts to prevent anyone from ever getting high. The only thing that surprises me is that they haven’t named it Whitney’s Law. Because nothing drums up popular support for terrible, unlibertarian laws like naming them after dead people.

(Cross-posted from A Thousand Cuts.)

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The Myth of Anti-War Democrats

Anti-Statism, War

By Brian Martinez / February 8, 2012 / 3 Comments / 2 minutes of reading

Of all the policies of the Barack Obama administration – one of many which began under the Bush regime and has been continued, even expanded, by his successor – I think the use of predator drones sickens and angers me the most. Especially with the revelation that the drones also target first responders, and even people attending funerals. Imagine if a suicide bomber had attacked police and firefighters as they arrived at the World Trade Center on 9/11, or the funerals of the victims. That is essentially what the CIA’s predator drones are doing.

But what’s really infuriating, though not surprising, is how quiet liberals are about this, given how loudly they spoke out against war during the Bush years. Yet this is arguably worse in terms of its sheer violence and callousness: worse than Abu Ghraib, worse than the Haditha massacre. If any other country’s military engaged in such acts, they would be denounced by the U. S. government (and others) as war crimes, and rightly so. And as the report cited by Glenn Greenwald makes clear, government officials have been lying about the civilian casualties from the attacks. But from most Democrats, the response amounts to at best a shuffling of feet and an uncomfortable silence. In fact, most of them support the use of drones, and even keeping the Guantanamo Bay prison camp open, according to a Washington Post poll. This despite Obama’s campaign promise to close Gitmo. I guess Democrats suffer from memory loss as much as Republicans do.

How anyone can vote for a man who gives orders to commit mass murder is simply incomprehensible to me. And please spare me the counterpoint that the Republicans are just as bad. Of course they are. That just further proves the point that the major parties are virtually indistinguishable in their lust for mass murder, bigger government, and more control over people’s lives. Voting Republican or Democrat is voting for the imperial warfare/welfare state, and all of the blood and treasure it demands.

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A drug warrior falls on his sword

Police Statism, Victimless Crimes

By Brian Martinez / December 2, 2011 / 1 Comment / 2 minutes of reading

I would not expect libertarians to have much sympathy for agents of the state when they are ensnared by the same webs they help create. And yet I do have some sympathy for former Arapahoe County, Colo. Sheriff (and one-time “Sheriff of the Year”) Pat Sullivan, who was arrested Tuesday on charges of methamphetamine distribution. Investigators say Sullivan offered meth to men in exchange for sex, and that he had also been “taking care” of meth addicts, going so far as to claim he was on a drug task force and was working for the Colorado Department of Public Health’s meth treatment program, which doesn’t exist.

It’s a dramatic fall from public grace for a man whose name adorns the very detention center where he’s being held on $500,000 bail. Sullivan served nearly 20 years as Arapahoe sheriff and ironically served on a statewide meth task force in 2000. His department undoubtedly arrested thousands on drug charges during his tenure. For his work he was named “Sheriff of the Year” by his colleagues in the National Sheriffs’ Association in 2001.

So it’s hard to feel sorry for someone who’s run afoul of the same unjust laws he once enforced. But consider this: Sullivan engages in some honest, peaceful, consensual trade for once, and ends up in an orange jumpsuit and shackles on national television, shattering a decades-long legacy as a tough and ethical law enforcement officer. It’s moments like these that makes one want to appreciate cosmic practical jokes.

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