Borders, boots and bearing arms

Immigration, Police Statism
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As Michael Barnett points out, government can’t do anything efficiently, at least not without spending enormous amounts of tax dollars and violating our rights.  The border wall is one example of a project the Federal government will never be able to complete to anyone’s satisfaction: for closed-border advocates, it won’t be effective in keeping out illegal immigrants; for open-border supporters, it will be a monument to government waste and tyranny.  The only way it might work at a reasonable price (reasonable for government, anyway) is to put a lot of armed guards along the wall.

Arizona is now seriously considering another application of the brute-force approach, in the form of a “papers, please” shakedown of anyone who doesn’t look, well, legal:

The Arizona House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a wide-ranging bill that, if signed by Gov. Jan Brewer, would cement the state’s reputation as the leader in tough and controversial immigration-control measures.

Senate Bill 1070 would, among other things, make it a state crime to be in the country illegally and bar what its proponents call “sanctuary city” policies.

Most disturbing among the bill’s provisions is granting cops the ability to arrest an immigrant without a warrant if they have “probable cause” to believe the person has committed an offense for which they can be deported.  And inviting an illegal immigrant over for dinner could land even legal residents in hot water, if they know their guest’s immigration status.

Just imagine how Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who holds illegal immigrants, criminals and civil liberties in equal disdain, might utilize these new powers.  Given that his uniformed thugs already routinely round up Mexicans in sweeps and were so abusive of their authority that ICE stripped the sheriff of some of his immigration enforcement powers, the Arizona legislature has effectively granted Arpaio a license to perform “enforcement” actions akin to ethnic cleansing.  The state will protect you from the brown menace!  And never mind the boot on your neck.

It’s all the more outrageous for the fact that it’s so unnecessary.  The same week the Arizona House was debating this evil bill, Governor Jan Brewer signed a far more laudable measure that will do more to improve her citizens’ safety than an entire file cabinet of anti-immigration statutes: allow residents to carry a concealed weapon without a license.  If Arizona residents are truly worried about violence from Mexico’s U.S.-backed drug war spilling over the borders, I can’t think of any better security measure than arming themselves.  And Brewer’s spokesman said that the governor did not believe that residents needed permission from the government to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms.  I’ll wholeheartedly agree with that!  Now if only she was as consistent on people being free to go about their daily business without being harassed by the cops for having a suspicious skin color.

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Drugs Without Patents: Profit and Cornucopia

Business, Drug Policy, Mercantilism, Science, Technology
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pattent applicationProponents of intellectual property rights and patents say that without them, drug companies could not profit. They’d just be undercut by generics, which would lead to a downward spiral of decreasing innovation, undercutting the entire industry. Furthermore, socialists argue that a truly free market would not get drugs to the poor. These arguments fail for several reasons: research costs, trade secrets, incentives for continuous innovation, and incentives for rapid worldwide distribution.

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Mandate. You keep using that word.

Corporatism, Health Care
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But I’m not sure it means what the Democrats think it means:

The penalty [for not carrying insurance as required by the new health care bill] is assessed through the Code and accounted for as an additional amount of Federal tax owed. However, it is not subject to the enforcement provisions of subtitle F of the Code. The use of liens and seizures otherwise authorized for collection of taxes does not apply to the collection of this penalty. Non-compliance with the personal responsibility requirement to have health coverage is not subject to criminal or civil penalties under the Code and interest does not accrue for failure to pay such assessments in a timely manner.

So the IRS might gaze at you sternly and maybe wag a finger or two, but there’s nothing they can do at this point to collect the non-compliance penalty. Megan McArdle lays out the possible consequences:

It would mean that in practice the mandate would only apply to people who get tax refunds; otherwise, just write the IRS a check for everything except the mandate. And since you don’t have to get a tax refund–you can have your employer change your withholding–anyone who doesn’t want to pay it, wouldn’t have to.

But it’s not clear that this is what’s actually going to happen. If the IRS can reorder the priority of the tax dollars they take from you, then they can simply put any funds towards the mandate first. That way, if you attempt to go without insurance and then pay the IRS everything except the mandate penalty, you’ll end up with a tax liability the exact size of the mandate penalty . . . for which they can now garnish your wages, put tax liens on your house, and otherwise do all the nasty stuff that they are authorized to do under Subtitle F.

Naturally I’m all for not providing government revenue agents with more authority to steal money from me, although I suspect that the enforcement problem will be fixed sooner than later (the personal responsibility clause itself doesn’t begin until 2014).  But just imagine how much revenue the IRS would collect, if it could not threaten taxpayers with imprisonment.  It might just be enough to cover the printing costs on Obama’s health care bill.

In the meantime, to paraphrase Captain Barbossa, consider this rule more like…a guideline.

Mandate. You keep using that word. Read Post »

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