Fourteen years ago, former NBA basketball player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf set off a firestorm of controversy by refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. He refused to stand for the national anthem because “the flag represents tyranny and oppression” and he added that standing for the anthem was a form of nationalistic worship forbidden by his religion. He was suspended by the NBA, but served only a one game suspension. He worked out a compromise in which he would stand, but he could close his eyes and look downward. He was booed and jeered by fans in a March 1996 game against Chicago. The former No. 3 overall pick never quite recovered from this:
Abdul-Rauf was traded to Sacramento in the offseason and played for the Kings for two seasons. He then played in Turkey in 1998-99 before returning for his final NBA season with Vancouver in 2000-01. The anthem stance seemingly taken a toll as his numbers declined each of his final three years in the league, and he never quite lived up to the expectations of being a No. 3 pick.
Enough signatures having been gathered for The Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010, Californians will have the chance to vote on legalizing marijuana next November. The measure, known popularly as the “Tax Cannabis Act,” would decriminalize the plant and its psychoactive uses statewide, leaving it to the state’s counties and cities to tax and regulate . . . or continue to prohibit. (If passed it would also severely test the two weakest Amendments to the United States’ Constitution, the Ninth and Tenth.)
Though this could be a major step forward against the barbaric war on drug use, may I express some sadness at the measure’s title, and the way some folks argue for it? “Legalize it so we can tax it!” What a depressing mantra. This binding of freedom to eternal victimhood by the state irks me. It’s the giving of a base reason to do a noble thing.
Of course, nobility of thought is the last thing on most people’s minds. …
As you work on your taxes this month, here’s something to raise your hackles: Some of the world’s biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do–that is, if they pay taxes at all.
The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.
Avoiding taxes is nothing new for General Electric. In 2008 its effective tax rate was 5.3%; in 2007 it was 15%. The marginal U.S. corporate rate is 35%.
Actually I am less than pleased with GE, but that’s because they possess hefty military contracts that allow our brave freedom fighters to slaughter poor brown people overseas, or whoever else refuses to submit to the empire. They are, in Lew Rockwell’s words, true merchants of death, one of the worst examples of corporatism in the American economy.
The economy gained 162,000 jobs for the month of March and the President, of course, has attributed this success to his stimulus package. He was in Charlotte, North Carolina today discussing the economy at a manufacturing company that received $50 billion in stimulus money to expand one of its facilities and open another elsewhere in the State. Regarding the future of the economy, the President said:
Government can’t reverse the toll of this recession overnight, and government on its own can’t replace the 8 million jobs that have been lost….The true engine of job growth in this country has always been the private sector. What government can do is create the conditions…for companies to hire again.
Just how government can create these conditions for companies to hire again is left unsaid. I seriously doubt the nationalization of the banking sector and the government takeover of GM are favorable conditions for the private sector. In fact, if Robert Higgs is correct about regime uncertainty, these government actions create unfavorable circumstances for investors. Investors who are unsure that their private property rights are going to be respected in the future are loathe to invest in any long term-projects. If the government is willing to take over an entire sector of the economy by passing such legislation over a weekend, clearly investors would be fearful that the government might takeover any sector it wishes in the future. This lack of real investment means that there will be less jobs in the future and ultimately less consumer and producer goods. Our standard of living will fall. …
You can’t trust the state, even when it appears no one else can save you. And now survivors of the terrible earthquake in Haiti are learning the same, painful lesson:
More than two months after the earthquake that devastated Haiti, at least 30 survivors who were waved onto planes by Marines in the chaotic aftermath are prisoners of the United States immigration system, locked up since their arrival in detention centers in Florida.
These are not criminals — just people overwhelmed by the quake and subsequent aftershocks, looking for food, water and shelter. When the Marines evacuated them, they were under the impression that they could join relatives already in the U. S., but instead they were immediately arrested and held for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement — despite a current suspension of deportations to Haiti. All of this, because they didn’t already have a piece of paper from the U. S. government granting them permission to come here. And yet more immigrants have all but disappeared into ICE’s detention center network, with family unable to find them. Some that were lucky enough to be freed were granted tourist visas, allowing them to stay for a short while, but not to work.
But even when their loved ones are put in cages for no reason by the government, people can’t seem to let go of their implicit trust of the state:
The government’s actions have been especially bewildering for the survivors’ relatives, like Virgile Ulysse, 69, an American citizen who keeps an Obama poster on his kitchen wall in Norwalk, Conn. Mr. Ulysse said he could not explain to his nephews, Jackson, 20, and Reagan, 25, why they were brought to the United States on a military plane only to be jailed at the Broward center when they arrived in Orlando on Jan. 19.
The cognitive dissonance of that paragraph is almost dazzling: an Obama supporter who doesn’t understand why the Obama-led government jailed his nephews. Even with the boot on their neck, people still look to the state to save them. Will they ever learn?
