Monthly Archives: January 2018

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“Treatment We Associate With Regimes We Revile as Unjust …”

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Silk Road Seized
 

On January 29, US District Judge Katherine B. Forrest ordered the release of immigrant rights activist Ravi Ragbir from pre-deportation detention.

Ragbir, who came to the US from Trinidad in 1991 and got his “green card” in 1994, has been fighting deportation over a fraud conviction since 2006.  Earlier this month, while checking in with immigration authorities to renew his annual extension, he was detained and jailed.

Ragbir’s is an interesting and compelling story, but this column is about Forrest and the elegant hypocrisy of her words in ordering his release:

“It ought not to be — and it has never before been — that those who have lived without incident in this country for years are subjected to treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust, regimes where those who have long lived in a country may be taken without notice from streets, home, and work. And sent away. We are not that country; and woe be the day that we become that country under a fiction that laws allow it. The Constitution commands better.”

Where, I wonder, was Forrest’s devotion to the Constitution when she sentenced Ross Ulbricht to life in prison without the possibility of parole in 2015?

Ulbricht’s crime was, simply put, operating a web site — Silk Road, on which users bought and sold things both legal and illegal — without permission from the regime Forrest serves.

Ulbricht’s trial was a farce from beginning to end. The  prosecution poisoned the jury pool with claims that Ulbricht had hired out multiple murders. It then withdrew the accusation before trial — but Forrest included them  as part of her justification for the harsh sentence.

The prosecution hid the fact that two government agents working on the case were under investigation for (and would eventually be convicted of) wire fraud and money laundering charges for using their investigative power to steal Bitcoin from Silk Road. A third agent was later accused of tampering with evidence.

Forrest forbade the defense to present its alternative theory of who ran Silk Road. There’s a term for a trial in which the defense is forbidden to defend the defendant. It’s called a “show trial.”

Ulbricht’s defense team has appealed his conviction to the US Supreme Court. Hopefully that appeal will be successful. The trial administered by, and the sentence handed down by, Katherine B. Forrest, deserve to be repudiated as what they are: Treatment we associate with regimes we revile as unjust.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Protectionism: Trump’s Tariff-ic Attack on Your Wallet

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English: (left) and meeting shortly after the ...
Willis C. Hawley (left) and Reed Smoot in April 1929, shortly before the Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act passed the House of Representatives. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On January 22, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer fired the first shots of the Trump administration’s 2018 trade agenda: Tariffs of 30% on imported solar panels, and tariffs starting at 20% on imported residential washing machines. In the name of “protecting” jobs — “America First!” — the administration is dead-set on making you poorer.

Yes, the tariffs may benefit a few people (stockholders and employees of American solar panel and washing machine makers), if foreign governments  don’t retaliate in kind and then some with their own tariff schemes. That’s a big if.

For everyone else, the effect is very simple: It will now cost you more to do your laundry, or to abandon expensive electricity for cheap electricity, than it otherwise would have. And since you’ll be spending more money on those things, you’ll have less left over to spend on other things, including American goods and services.

Writers on on economics, from Frederic Bastiat to  Henry Hazlitt, have emphasized looking at policies not just for their intended effects but for unintended ones. That is, not just for the “seen,” but also “the unseen.”

In this case, the “seen” is that workers at a few American companies may remain working and even get raises instead of being laid off; and that stockholders in those companies may see the value of their shares rise, and perhaps collect dividends, instead of taking losses when they sell their shares.

The “unseen?”

The restaurant staff who lose hours, or even their jobs, because you aren’t eating out as much.

The makers of manufactured goods that you didn’t buy because that washing machine or solar panel cost more than you counted on.

The mechanic who missed out on overtime because you put off that brake job (hopefully you won’t have an accident!) … oh, and that meant he had to cancel a planned vacation. Sorry about those empty rooms and your lost hours, hotel workers.

Tariffs help a few people visibly and in a big way, while harming a lot of people far less visibly and far less noticeably. Politicians typically love policies like that because such policies allow them to rack up votes and campaign contributions from some constituencies without enraging others. Donald Trump wasn’t supposed to be a typical politician, though.

David Hannum was right: There’s a sucker born every minute. On tariffs, is Donald Trump the sucker, or is it his supporters who are getting conned? My guess: Both.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Veterans in Politics: It’s Not About Honor

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A LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarks troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) wading onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach (Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France) on the morning of June 6, 1944. (photo credit: Wikipedia)
A LCVP (Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel) from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembarks troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) wading onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach (Calvados, Basse-Normandie, France) on the morning of June 6, 1944. (photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Atlantic’s Ronald Brownstein reports that a new political organization, With Honor,  “has launched a major effort to elect to the House more recent military veterans who commit to working across party lines. … a bipartisan core of House Members who are inclined to seek common ground, whatever their personal views.”

The idea that veterans are particularly well-suited for political office — in part because of  “their experience working in diverse teams that pursue common goals under great stress,” as Brownstein describes With Honor CEO Rye Barcott’s view — is not a new one. Nor is the expectation of a ready and waiting bloc of voters, many perhaps veterans themselves, who are inclined to support veteran candidates.

Perhaps that was once the case, but it isn’t any more. The notion is anchored in a bygone age.

From 1952 to 1992, there was no point in bothering to run for president if you weren’t a World War Two veteran (the lone exception, Jimmy Carter, was about to graduate from the US Naval Academy when the war ended).

In 1992, non-veteran Bill Clinton,  slammed by some as a draft-dodger, defeated incumbent World War Two veteran George H.W. Bush. In 1996, that same non-veteran beat World War Two veteran Bob Dole.

In 2000, George W. Bush, technically a veteran but thought a deserter by many, beat an actual Vietnam veteran, Al Gore — and in 2004 he again won versus Vietnam veteran John Kerry.

In 2008,  non-veteran Barack Obama defeated veteran and former POW John McCain.

In 2012 and 2016, neither major American political party bothered to run a veteran for president. Why would they? Their most credible veteran candidates had lost five times in a row to non-veterans or to politicians with disputed claims as to the character of their military service.

I’ll let you in on three little secrets:

First, the only thing all veterans have in common is that we’re former government employees. Clerks. Cooks. Cops. Mechanics. Truck drivers. And, yes, some combatants.

Second, we all joined the military for our own reasons. For college money. Because there weren’t a lot of good jobs in our towns. To learn a marketable skill. And, yes, some of us out of our own personal notions of duty or patriotism.

Third, we all have our own political convictions, from staunch conservative to bleeding heart liberal to social democrat to radical libertarian. Put three veterans in a room and you’ll get four answers to whatever question you ask them.

Forming a political organization around veterans is like forming a political organization around restaurant workers, stamp collectors, or avid kayakers.  If it ever made sense, it stopped making sense a long time ago.

Political organizations should be formed around principles and policy proposals, not around people who have the same former employer.

I’m not looking for politicians who “work across party lines” to “find common ground.” I’m looking for candidates who will defend our liberty and reduce the size, scope and power of government. And I don’t care who those politicians used to work for. Neither should you.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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