Monthly Archives: January 2015

Because We’re Not Being Spied on Enough

Posted on by
Reply

The Justice Department has acknowledged constructing a database to track the movements of millions of vehicles across the U.S. in real time.

And

A Justice Department spokesman told Fox News that the tracking program is compliant with federal [law]… claiming it “includes protocols that limit who can access the database and all of the license plate information is deleted after 90 days.”

Perhaps (although with this Justice Department or this administration, that’s hard to see), but that doesn’t make it right, or consistent with the precepts of our Constitution. And how do we know the information is “deleted after 90 days?” We don’t know when it was collected, starting that clock. We have only the Eric Holder DoJ’s word that the data are deleted. We know from experience with IRS “lost emails” that “deleted” doesn’t necessarily mean deleted.

Another kicker:

It is not clear whether the tracking is overseen or approved by any court.

The Wall Street Journal had this from its original tale:

The primary goal of the license-plate tracking program, run by the Drug Enforcement Administration, is to seize cars, cash and other assets to combat drug trafficking, according to one government document. But the database’s use has expanded to hunt for vehicles associated with numerous other potential crimes, from kidnappings to killings to rape suspects, say people familiar with the matter.

The program’s current scope is this:

[It] collects data about vehicle movements, including time, direction and location, from high-tech cameras placed strategically on major highways. Many devices also record visual images of drivers and passengers, which are sometimes clear enough for investigators to confirm identities, according to DEA documents and people familiar with the program.

The documents show that the DEA also uses license-plate readers operated by state, local, and federal law-enforcement agencies to feed into its own network and create a far-reaching, constantly updating database of electronic eyes scanning traffic on the roads….

That’s the problem with a government program—it grows, it never shrinks, it never is eliminated. When the program is a secret one, its expansion is hard to discern, and the program is even harder for a free people to control. When the program is used to spy on the citizens, it’s extremely dangerous to our liberty.

What will happen when the program is further expanded—because anonymous donations to this or that political organization is viewed, by government, to be inimical? What will happen when the program is used to harass groups of Americans of whom the men in government disapprove, or of whom the men in government especially favor? Think that can’t happen? Look no further than this Justice Department and white voter intimidation by New Black Panthers and this DoJ’s avowed policy of not going after voter crimes involving white victims and black perpetrators. Look no further than this administration’s use of the IRS to go after political groups the White House doesn’t like.

The Left’s War on the Poor

Posted on by
Reply

It’s exemplified by California’s egg-laying chicken cage requirement. In 2008, California voters

required the state’s poultry farmers to house their hens in significantly larger cages. The state legislature realized this would put home-state farmers at a disadvantage, so in 2010 it compounded the problem by requiring that eggs imported from other states come from farms meeting the same cage standards, effective Jan 1, 2015.

That’s an expensive requirement: $40 per egg layer.

The number of egg-layers in California has fallen by nearly a quarter in the last two years, and quite a number of egg producers outside California have declined to meet the California standard and so to stop selling their eggs in that state.

As a result,

the average price for a dozen jumbo eggs is $3.16, up from $1.18 a dozen a year ago, and in some parts of the state it’s more than $5.

Who’s paying those outlandish egg prices? Among others, it’s the financially poor citizens of California.

What’s humane, exactly, about this cavalier inflation of the cost of food for those poor? Does anyone seriously think the highly intelligent folks behind this cage law—especially the state legislators who thought it would be a good idea to compound the problem—didn’t know this sort of outcome would result?

An Implication of the Greek Elections

Posted on by
1

Greece is nearly bankrupt, it has defaulted on one round of national debt since the global Panic of 2008, it has received two bailouts from the rest of the European Union and from the IMF in partnership with various EU institutions (one of which included that default), and it’s demanding another round of…debt relief…against which the current troika of the IMF, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission are refusing to certify that Greece is ready and able to handle another loan. This current crisis reached its fullness last fall, and the then Greek government collapsed, necessitating Sunday’s snap elections.

Against that backdrop, the Syriza party won those snap elections resoundingly, coming from being a back bench party of growing influence to winning 149 seats in the 300 seat Greek Parliament—two short of an outright majority and the ability to govern alone. Syriza has been, throughout the post-Panic crisis, very much opposed to any sort of bailout other than outright debt forgiveness (the polite word for default), while the EU has been just as opposed to any alteration of the terms beyond stretching out payments in return for the Greeks submitting to ever higher taxes and ever reduced government spending. The result of acquiescence to the prior rounds of raising taxes and cutting spending has been an economy that’s varied between stagnation and collapse—driven especially by the combination of cutting spending (which, alone, would have been beneficial) and raising taxes. Hence the appeal of Syriza.

Lacking two seats, though, the party had to form a coalition government; if no one would join, the government would collapse again, and new elections would be necessary. The party thought most likely to join was To Potami with its 16 seats, a generally centrist party, but one also generally opposed to yet more taxing and cutting. Instead, Syriza formed the needed coalition with the Independent Greeks Party, which won 13 seats Sunday.

Either coalition party would have given Syriza sufficient cushion over the 151 seats needed to govern, so why the Independent Greeks? Syriza is a far-left party of Marxists, and the Independent Greeks are far-right party formed two years ago explicitly to oppose the EU’s austerity impositions on Greece. They’re also opposed to immigration and…multiculturism…and they want Greece out of the EU altogether. To Potami, not so much on any of those accounts, and although they oppose further “austerity,” they’re not hard over on it; they’re more malleable.

Now, what happens next? The new Greek Prime Minister, who should be Syriza’s Alexis Tsipras, has said he will force renegotiation of Greece’s existing “bailouts,” worth €240 billion ($268 billion), “or else.”

The EU is just as adamant about not renegotiating. German Chancellor Angela Merkel:

We believe Greece has accepted terms that are not off the table after the election day[.]

President of the Eurogroup [of eurozone finance ministers] of the Board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism [of financial assistance programs for eurozone members in “financial difficulty”] Jeroen Dijsselbloem on the prospect for “leniency” for Greece regarding its debt:

I don’t think there is a lot of support for that in the eurozone[.]

The most likely (the plurality of a plethora of options) “or else” from this potential impasse would be Greece’s departure from the eurozone—to use its own currency—and possibly from the EU altogether. With the Independent Greeks joining Tsipiras’ coalition, he got the political backbone to hold out for exactly that as the only alternative to debt forgiveness.

A Greek departure has been projected to be a disaster for the eurozone, the euro, and the EU. It certainly would shake them, but even in the extremity of those three falling apart, it would hardly be a disaster. And it would be, in the longer run, good for Greece, too.

Foolish

Posted on by
Reply

Amazon will start collecting sales tax from Illinois consumers next month to comply with a new state law, the company said.

The Seattle-based e-commerce giant will be required to collect the 6.25% tax starting Feb. 1….

And

State retailers supported the legislation to level the playing field for brick-and-mortar businesses.

Foolish. The better way to level the playing field, the more economically efficient way, the way that actually would raise revenue for the verge-of-bankrupt Illinois government would have been to lower the sales tax charged to Illinois brick-and-mortar retailers. After all,

The Illinois Department of Revenue estimated uncollected taxes in 2013 from online purchases from Amazon and other retailers at $212 million.

Think about the effect on Illinois’ brokeness from withdrawing an additional $212 million from its economy.

Illinois collected $12.77 billion in sales tax in 2013 from a sales tax rate of 6.25%. Think about the boost to Illinois’ economy from a drop in the state’s rate of just one per centage point to 5.25%, which would leave a skosh over $2 billion in the hands of Illinois’ citizens.

But this is Illinois.

Obama and Iran’s Nuclear Weapons

Posted on by
Reply

Jeff Dunetz, at The Lid, posted parts of an interesting exchange between Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Deputy Secretary of State Anthony Blinken regarding the nuclear weapons deal that President Barack Obama is about to conclude with Iran and at which Obama is desperate that Congress not look too closely. The three-hour hearing during which this exchange occurred can be seen on C-SPAN.

The set up question (from my perspective):

Menendez: So let me ask you this, isn’t it true that even the deal that you are striving towards—is not to eliminate any Iranian breakout capability, but to constrain the time in which you’ll get the notice of such breakout capability. Is that a fair statement, yes or no?
Blinken: Yes, it is.

The kicker [emphasis added]:

Menendez: Okay, so we’re not eliminating Iran’s ability to break out. We’re just getting alarm bells, and the question is how long are we going to get those alarm bells for. Now, isn’t it also true that the administration cannot lift sanctions, that it can only waive them under the present law, yes or no?
Blinken: That’s largely correct.
Menendez: So now the Iranians are going to make a deal in which this president may waive sanctions but the next president of the United States, whoever that may be, may decide you know what, this is not in our interests because it’s only going to give us a limited period of time and they’re going to go ahead and say sorry we’re not waiving the sanctions anymore. And that the Iranians are willing to make the hard decisions that they agreed to make that they have been unwilling to make for 18 months because I heard this movie’s been played before.

What this makes clear to me is that the Iranians have successfully used “negotiations” to stall and delay to the point that they’re now within two years of just that breakout. Having reached that point, does anyone really think resumed/additional sanctions will matter to the Iranian government?

No, having reached breakout, Iran will break out, will build their nuclear weapons. It’s a short step from there to use (they’ve long held that Israel must be wiped from the map) and deployment to terrorist clients and terrorist purchasers for their use.

 

h/t Power Line