Tag Archives: government

Who Works for Whom?

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John Curtice, writing in The Guardian, in the land where John Locke was borne, seems confused on the question.  His proximate piece is his missive on the nature of referenda in Great Britain.  He began that piece with a false premise of very large proportion, and that—as false premises are wont to do—set the tone for the rest of his op-ed.

In the Commons debates on Brexit during the last fortnight, many MPs have found themselves voting for something they do not believe in. Instead of being their constituents’ “representative”, they now appear to be no more than the people’s “delegate”.

Yet, what else can a representative of constituents be but their delegate?  Unless Curtice means an MP must be the front for their constituents—to “represent” by doing in Parliament what he deems best for them regardless of what they might think is best for themselves.

The thing went downhill from there; he identified four aspects of the referendum on Great Britain’s choice to go out from the EU or to remain within its confines that he considered “cause for concern.”

First, the promise to hold one [the Brexit referendum] was only made because David Cameron found it politically convenient to do so.

Because that motive somehow invalidates the concept of the British people having a voice.  Sure.

Second, the campaign period was relatively short. Only five months….

Because a mere commoner is just too ignorant or stupid to understand a simple question like “Do you want to stay in the EU or go out from it?” unless their betters, their…MPs…and the Curtices of the nation complexify the thing and then “explain” it to them.

Third, unlike most previous referendums, voters were being invited to endorse the status quo rather than a proposal for change.

Yeah, that’s a confusing change-up.  Uh, huh.  Oh, and no plan for going out were that choice voted up despite the confusion?  That’s part of the Betters’ effort at complexifying.  The question was go or stay, not what to do if the choice selected were go or stay.

And this:

Fourth, though often forgotten, the EU vote was the second referendum bite at the European cherry. The issue had supposedly been settled by the referendum Harold Wilson called in 1975.

Because once taken, a decision can never be changed.  The grandchildren must never be allowed to change from their grandparents’ path.  Well, I suppose that’d be one way to decomplexify the thing.

…it is time to lay down some systematic rules about when a referendum should be held – and should not.

How else to have the commoners’ Betters keep control of the outcome, after all?

Not allowing referendums to take place when there is no detailed proposal for the change in question might be a good place to start.

Who gets to decide the adequacy of the “detailed proposal?”  Who gets to demand that there be voice of the people, no referendum, until a satisfactory “detailed proposal” is sufficiently in place?  And sufficiently debated (by whom)?

You know who.  Because the people exist just to give the Betters in Government something to do.

Definitely Not the People

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The British Supreme Court has thrown a monkey wrench into Great Britain’s going out from the European Union, but in the process, it has thrown a double handful of sand into the gears of liberty in the birthplace of John Locke.

The Court has ruled (by an 8-3 margin; it certainly wasn’t wishy-washy in its attitude) that Parliament must agree to invoke Article 50 and trigger negotiation over terms of separation from the EU.  David Neuberger, President of the Supreme Court, reading the judgment:

The referendum is of great political significance, but the act of Parliament which established it did not say what should happen as a result, so any change in the law to give effect to the referendum must be made in the only way permitted by the UK Constitution, namely by an act of Parliament[.]

So much for consensual government, government by the people, the sovereignty of the people over their government.  The citizens of Great Britain cannot be permitted to change their own law, and never mind that no change was required in the present case, anyway, since the outcome of their referendum, saying as it did, “We want to leave the EU,” was quite clear as to what should happen from their vote.  The Court claimed this was not instructive.  The people did not say to Government, “Mother, may I?”

Naturally, Gina Miller, who’d brought the suit with intent to force Parliament into the decision, agreed, insisting (as paraphrased by the AP) that

[l]eaving the EU will change the fundamental rights of citizens and this can’t be done without a vote of lawmakers[.]

Nor can the people be permitted to define their rights for themselves and instruct their government as to those rights.  That’s for their rulers to do for them.

The people of Great Britain are not sovereign in their nation.  Government is sovereign, and the people are subordinate.

Failure of Hate Laws

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The failure stems from an inability to define hate, but mostly it fails from the irrelevance of hate as anything other than a motivator for committing a crime.  Motive, though, belongs solely in the jury box during the punishment phase given a conviction of a crime; it should not be foreordained by a Government’s attempt to define the hate or by Government’s more evident attempts to discriminate among groups of Americans and single some out for favorable treatment at the expense of other groups of Americans.

That’s demonstrated by Illinois and Ohio law, which comes up from case of the four blacks who attacked a white disabled man and live streamed it on Facebook, as discussed by Eugene Volokh in his Washington Post article.  For instance,

The focus, then, isn’t on “hate.” For instance, if a thief selects a physically disabled victim simply because he thinks it’s less likely that the victim will fight back, that too is covered as a hate crime under Illinois law.

And

Similarly, the Amish beard-cutting case was prosecuted as a hate crime on the theory that the targets were chosen by fellow Amish perpetrators because of the targets’ dissenting religious beliefs within the Amish community.  …  Choosing someone for attack based on his religion would be a hate crime whether the motivation is hatred, theological disagreement, or whatever else.

You see the irrelevance of hate in such crimes, yet Government, in these instances Illinois’ and Ohio’s, arbitrarily tacks it on, just because.

As Volokh put it,

But the Illinois statute and the federal statute [another of his example laws], like most other hate-crime statutes that I’ve seen, focus on discriminatory selection, not the underlying emotion behind the selection.

Indeed.  I pick you for my crime victim because I think I’m more likely to get away with it than if I’d selected someone else or because I’ve decided (legitimately or not) that you’d done me wrong, and I was determined to get you back, and I do the crime.  But if you happen to belong to a government-favored group of Americans, my crime—completely unchanged in its nature or motivation—becomes much more serious solely because of Government’s own discrimination: it has chosen to favor your group over other American groups and so to discriminate against those other American groups.

Which also is an argument for doing away with Governments favoring, for any purpose, this or that group of Americans over other groups of Americans, which Government has decided should be disadvantaged by that favoring.  That’s hate crime by Government.

Snowflake as Murderer

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Dylann Roof has been convicted of the murders of nine good men and women, people he butchered in his rampage through a Baptist church.

Now he’s crying over the…unfairness…of the penalty phase of his trial.  At the risk of repeating things known to those of you following along at home, Roof is defending himself during this phase, and he’s chosen to offer neither witnesses nor mitigating evidence during this phase.

In the punishment phase of a felony trial, the prosecution has to go first, which gives the defense the better position of having its presentation fresher in the minds of the jury.  In Roof’s trial penalty phase, the prosecution has presented a number of witnesses, who’ve offered “heart-ripping testimony,” to use The New York Times‘ phrase, concerning the devastation Roof’s rampage caused.  As the prosecution finished its examination of each of the 20 witnesses (so far, as of the date of the NYT‘s piece), Roof was offered opportunity to cross-examine; he declined—”no questions”—each time.

Roof ultimately argued the unfairness of this phase:

It is not fair to allow that much testimony to be heard by the jury when I am not presenting any evidence—from my family or anyone else—in mitigation.  If I don’t present any mitigation evidence, the victim-impact evidence will take over the whole sentencing trial and guarantee that I get the death penalty.

That’s just a bit of too bad.  The prosecution isn’t bound by the decisions, tactical or otherwise, of the defense.

Full stop.

Intelligence Community Refuses

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When the House Intelligence Committee called intel community directors—the CIA’s management, for instance—before them to testify about alleged Russian hacks and leaked CIA claims that the hacks were intended to sway the election toward the President-Elect, they refused to appear.  They also refused at the last moment, forcing the committee to cancel an already scheduled hearing into the matter.

This is unacceptable.  The committee should subpoena these men and women, and the subpoenas should be delivered by the House’s Sergeant at Arms.  If these men and women ignore the subpoenas, the House should find them in contempt (and do so again after 3 January so the contempt finding will be in effect, allowing the new DoJ which will appear after 20 January to enforce the citations).  Were it up to me, I would have held the hearing anyway, with questions addressed to the empty chairs in which those personnel would have been seated for their testimony.

On top of that, since these men and women are refusing to do their jobs, which includes testifying before the House committees with oversight of their organizations, the new budget should zero out budgets for intel community personnel in paygrades of GS-14 and above and equivalent levels—with effect from 14 December, clawbacks required.  We don’t need to spend taxpayer money on paying people who refuse to work.

Nearly as bad as this is the silence surrounding the matter.  Of the television sources, only Fox News is reporting the intel community’s refusal to testify and the House committee’s hearing cancelation.  Not CNN, not NBC, or CBS, or ABC or their online news arms are touching this.  Further, only Republican Congressmen are up in arms about this insubordination.  Not even the Democrats who insisted that hearings be held are upset over this.

That speaks volumes about bias.