Tag Archives: morality

A Waste of Legislative Energy

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…and a potential First Amendment violation.  Especially in a conservative environment, this is surprising.

The North Carolina House is set to vote on a bill that would

amend the state’s indecent exposure law to expand the legal definition of “private parts” to explicitly include “the nipple, or any portion of the areola, or the female breast.”

And if such exposure were to be deemed

for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire

the evil miscreant could convicted of a felony and locked away in a North Carolina jail for six months.  “More mundane exposures” (whatever those are) could be guilty of a misdemeanor—and still locked up, now for 30 days.

Of course, it’s hard to discriminate such exposures from political speech, but that apparently doesn’t concern those good legislators.  And a woman’s breast is, perforce, an obscene thing, to be kept hidden away—and state legislators are far better judges of such morality than are the rubes of the villages, towns, and cities who’ve already made their choice on this matter.

Which brings me to the state’s…rationale…for this exercise.

Co-sponsor Rep Rayne Brown, R-Davidson, told members of the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday that her bill was triggered by topless rallies promoting women’s equity that were held during the last two years in Asheville.

Oop—there’s that tacky free speech thing.

No matter; she added in all seriousness,

There’s some confusion about the law.  I think our state deserves clarity on this issue.

Never mind that there is no confusion.  The police of a town know their town’s ordinances.  They have no need of knowing the differences with another town’s ordinances; they have no jurisdiction over there.

Nor is there any confusion on the part of the state police.  They have no jurisdiction inside the town limits unless they’re enforcing a state law.  Oh, wait—let’s make a state law, and give them jurisdiction.

Cowed by Terrorism

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Apparently, terrorism works in Europe.  With Bulgaria having officially determined that Hezbollah was behind the terrorist bombing of an Israeli tour bus in Burgas on the Bulgarian Black Sea last summer, we’re getting some…interesting…responses in the rest of Europe.  These responses center on European continued hesitancy to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization, as other nations outside of Europe (and one and a half within the EU (the UK is only willing to designate, euphemistically, the “military arm” of Hezbollah a terrorist organization) have done.  We’re getting, for instance, things like the following.

The European Union’s Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (!), says,

The terrorists who planned and carried out the Burgas attack must be brought to justice…the High Representative underlines the need for a reflection over the outcome of (Bulgaria’s) investigation.

She can’t say the word “Hezbollah,” and since it was only Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian (the bus driver) who died, there’s still time, and need, to “reflect” on the meaning of the murders.

EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove, expanded on this reluctance:

There is no automatic listing just because you have been behind a terrorist attack…It’s not only the legal requirement that you have to take into consideration, it’s also a political assessment of the context and the timing.

It’s true enough that terrorist butchery has political overtones in the terrorists’ purposes, but responses to such murders have no politics at all involved—there are only morality and the duty of a government to protect its citizens.

Former French intelligence official Claude Moniquet adds

Calling it terrorist would limit France’s ties with Beirut and put French targets and personnel in Lebanon at risk of retaliation.  The Bulgarian report doesn’t alter this realpolitik. There were always plenty of smoking guns.

It’s important to avoid annoying terrorists, lest the latter turn their ire on us.  And there’s the standard offer of excuses for this carpet knightery.

Even the newspapers seem more interested in ducking and covering than in meaningful response.  Sylke Tempel, editor of the German magazine Internationale Politik, told the New York Times,

There’s the overall fear if we’re too noisy about this, Hezbollah might strike again, and it might not be Israeli tourists this time.

There it is again: don’t offend the terrorists; they might hurt us next.

All of this reminds me of Spain’s withdrawal from the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in direct response to a terror bombing of a Madrid railroad station.

Indeed, Europe’s reluctance to angrify Hezbollah is an old and venerable policy.  Spiegel International Online notes (the first link above),

For decades, European governments have preferred to avoid confrontation with Hezbollah as long as its terrorism was not directed at continental targets.  In spite of a 1983 Beirut bombing that killed 58 French peacekeepers and 241 American Marines, deadly attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 (which Argentine prosecutors pinned on the group), and its military support for the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar Assad (whom the EU has repeatedly called upon to step down), Brussels has resisted naming Hezbollah a terrorist outfit.

The problem is that this timidity does not affect only Europe.  Like paying the kidnapper’s ransom, it puts the rest of us at risk, also.  It rewards the terrorists for their actions rather than contributing to their destruction.

Progressive Gun Control Agenda

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Here are some of their thoughts.  A more complete listing of their proposals is at The Dailey Caller:

Reinstate and strengthen a prospective federal ban on assault weapons: These weapons are designed to fire a large number of rounds in a short period of time.  They constitute a lethal threat to law enforcement and other first responders.

This is…foolish.  There is no such thing as an “assault” weapon, other than a carefully manufactured-by-legislation definition.  Not even the military has “assault weapons.”

Moreover, the threat to law enforcement and first responders from this sort of mythical weapon, or the semiautomatic rifles on which this mythology is purported to be modeled, is far less than is the threat of pistols, knives, clubs, fire (especially when responding to arson fires), drunk drivers, and so on.  This excuse fixes a nonexistent problem.

Reinstate a prospective federal ban on assault magazines: These magazines hold more than ten rounds and allow a shooter to inflict mass damage in a short period of time without reloading. Banning them will save lives.

This, too, is nonsense.  There is no such thing as an “assault magazine,” other than a carefully manufactured-by-legislation definition.  Here, too, even the military has no such things.

Moreover, the threat to lives from these artifices pales compared to the real causes of killings, some of which were enumerated just above.

Both of these, also are useful—critically so—in allowing private citizens to defend themselves.

There are these, too:

Require a background check for every gun sale, while respecting reasonable exceptions for cases such as gifts between family members and temporary loans for sporting purposes: It is estimated that four out of ten gun buyers do not go through a background check when purchasing a firearm because federal law only requires these checks when someone buys a gun from a federally licensed dealer.

The rest of this item is a red herring; I’ll ignore it here.  Four out of ten sales don’t go through a background check because they’re private sales from one citizen to another.  With the cost of a background check running to hundreds of dollars, this serves only to suppress those private sales.  On top of this, requiring a background check for a private sale represents an atrocious invasion of privacy for the purchaser by the seller—even if the seller has no intention of the invasion other than an arbitrary, superfluous law requires it.

Strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database: Immediate action is needed to ensure the information in the NICS database is up to date.  Many federal and state agencies remain deficient in transferring important records to the database.

No.  This is simply Progressives demanding government compile dossiers on honest American citizens on the off chance that a small number might prove unsavory.  This is nothing more than a presumption of guilt without due process—without even probable cause.  The United States isn’t France.

Some of their thoughts are on the right track, though.

Pass legislation aimed specifically at cracking down on illegal gun trafficking and straw-purchasing: Straw-purchasing is when a prohibited buyer has someone with no criminal history walk into a gun store, pass a background check and purchase a gun with the purpose of giving it to the prohibited buyer.

Nice idea, but it’s not necessary, and we already have too many mostly redundant laws on the books.  And the areas of non-overlap are nothing more than sources of confusion and litigation.  Moreover, this is a law honored in the breach, as DoJ’s Fast and Furious illustrates.

Prosecute those prohibited buyers who attempt to purchase firearms and others who violate federal firearm laws: Federal law bars nine categories of people—including felons and those prohibited because of mental illness—from buying guns.

Absolutely, enforce the laws on the books, including applying the sanctions the laws supply.

Close the holes in our mental-health system and make sure that care is available for those who need it: Congress must improve prevention, early intervention, and treatment of mental illness while working to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness.

This is on the right track, but government involvement must be absolutely minimal.  In the Soviet Union, the government defined disagreeing with the government as a form of mental illness.  We don’t need the USSR’s gulag reborn here.

Support responsible gun ownership: Congress should support safety training, research aimed at developing new gun safety technologies and the safe storage of firearms.

Certainly. As soon as Congress has reformed our tax code to simplify it and lower rates in parallel with greatly reduced Federal spending, so our economy can finally recover and we as a nation can afford this sort of expenditure.  At that point, Congress should begin jawboning with the States to do this sort of thing.

Given the active interference with individual freedom and responsibility represented by those first few items, though, I have to ask: what problem are the Progressives actually trying to solve—disarming the population they wish to govern, or reducing violence?

Obama’s Minimum Wage

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In his Tuesday State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama, among other spending demands, called for a boost to the Federal minimum wage from the current $7.25/hr to $9/hr.

Obama insists such a wage boost will “take millions of Americans out of poverty.”  However, this 24% increase in hourly wage represents a 24% increase in the cost of labor to an employer or potential employer.  This hinders employment; it doesn’t help it: that 24% is money with which an employer could do a number of other things: more product development, more advertising, more capital plant improvement, all of which lead to more hiring, or more hiring directly.

Worse, a government-mandated minimum wage increase is a permanent drag on employment and on our economy.  The ones who are the most hurt by this thing—the ones who will be laid off because the value of an hour of their work doesn’t reach $9 or those who won’t be hired in the first place, because the job available isn’t worth $9—are those who can least afford the damage.  Our youth, teens and early-20-yr-olds, already are suffering 20%-plus unemployment (almost 38% among black teens, a sharp increase during Obama’s administration), and have done for a number of years.  This is experience and job skills these people are not accumulating, and so future wage gains—even future jobs—they’re denied for that lack of experience/skill.  They’ll always be behind where they could have been had they been employable at a wage an employer could afford (which is based not just on a company’s top line, but also on those alternative uses for the money).

That lack of experience, with its concomitant loss of income potential, virtually locks those folks into their poverty condition—which represents an additional drain on our nation’s resources in the form of higher welfare support costs.

It also represents lost opportunities for our society, our nation, in the form of foregone creativity, productivity, innovation that these folks might have been able to provide had they only been employable early enough in their lives that they could have developed the knowledge base and the skills to generate these.

No, instead, we don’t have enough people employed, so we’ll raise the price of employment.  Yeah.  That’s the ticket.  We’ll go with that.  And we’ll ignore the inherently racist nature of minimum wages (or don’t disparate outcomes apply here?).

This is Why

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…unions have lost their usefulness and now are anathema to free markets and to freedom generally.

A December memo from Michigan Education Association President Steven Cook to his local union officials, that the West Michigan Policy Forum got hold of, lays out a series of steps for unions to mitigate Michigan’s just-passed the right-to-work law.  For instance:

Members who indicate they wish to resign membership in March [Michigan’s RTW law takes effect 1 March], or whenever, will be told they can only do so in August.  We will use any legal means at our disposal to collect the dues owed under signed membership forms from any members who withhold dues prior to terminating their membership in August for the following fiscal year.

Workers can’t resign from the union when they want to, even though they can resign from their jobs at will.  And they’ll be haled into court for exercising their right under the new law not to pay the union’s vig.

And

We’ve looked carefully at this and believe the impact of RTW can be blunted through bargaining strategies[.]

The union will bargain—in their members’ name, yet—for contracts that trap their members into paying the vig, even though RTW says they don’t have to.  Which lines up well with the union leadership insisting that members can’t leave at convenience.

Hmm….