In a September 10 speech to the Federalist Society, National Security Advisor John Bolton offered “a major announcement on US policy toward the International Criminal Court.” The US government, per Bolton, considers the court “fundamentally illegitimate. … We will not cooperate with the ICC. We will provide no assistance to the ICC. We will not join the ICC.”

Bolton threatened sanctions against the court and those who resort to it or cooperate with it in investigations of war crimes involving the United States or Israel. He also announced the first such sanction, closure of a Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington in retaliation for the state of Palestine’s referral of charges against Israel for actions in the West Bank and Gaza.

What’s with this sudden interest in the court and its jurisdiction?

Why is Bolton suddenly so concerned with protecting notions of “sovereignty” (he uses the word nine times) that the US government itself routinely ignores at its convenience, claiming global jurisdiction over individuals and organizations outside its own borders in matters ranging from the 17-year “war on terror” to its financial regulation and sanctions schemes?

The answer, in a word: Afghanistan. The regime installed by the US after its 2001 invasion of that country, and maintained in power by the US since then, ratified the Rome Statute in 2003. Crimes committed in Afghanistan since then, regardless of the perpetrators’ nationalities, therefore fall under the ICC’s jurisdiction.

Bolton finds it unconscionable that an American — in particular an American soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, or politician — accused of crimes committed in Afghanistan might be tried in a court Afghanistan’s government has duly accepted the authority of. So much for “sovereignty.”

Bolton wants it both ways. On one hand, the long arm of US law must reach everywhere, be it to a bank in Switzerland, to a hacker’s keyboard in the United Kingdom, or to a battlefield in the Middle East. On the other hand, no foreign arm of law must ever reach a US citizen, regardless of the alleged crime or where it was committed.

Pretty messed up, but there’s a simple solution. All the US government has to do is close its embassies and consulates in, withdraw its troops from, and advise its citizens not to travel to, any of the 120-odd countries which recognize the International Criminal Court as their judicial authority for war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity.

Starting with Afghanistan.

Problem solved.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On September 5, the New York Times published an op-ed supposedly written by an anonymous official within president Donald Trump’s administration. The snobbish and self-serving hit piece paints Trump himself as dangerously immature, incompetent, and unstable, while reassuring us that “adults in the room” are working tirelessly to keep his worst impulses in check and save the republic without tedious formalities like invoking the 25th Amendment and removing him from power.

The op-ed itself was a jejeune and mediocre example of a time-honored American pastime, talking smack about one’s boss behind his back. On its own terms, it deserved at most a brief period of public mockery before fading away to something less than an historical footnote.

But then Trump responded swiftly and decisively from his favorite bully pulpit, Twitter.

“TREASON?” he thundered. “If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!”

In a few short outbursts, Trump managed to confirm all the op-ed’s worst characterizations of his temperament and mental state.

As for the alleged internal “resistance” the anonymous writer claims to belong to, it seems to have fled the scene. Cabinet secretaries quickly lined up to plead their innocence of any involvement, playing  Bukharin to Trump’s Stalin. Who wrote the op-ed? Someone by the name of “Not Me.” An internal administration manhunt (womanhunt?) has allegedly launched to unmask the evil-doer.

Worse, key administration figures, including vice-president Mike Pence and presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, are doubling down on Trump’s  initial take. They’re softening the risible “treason” line to mere “criminal activity,” but still pushing the line that this whole episode may involve “national security.”

Treason is defined in the US Constitution in terms of levying war on the United States, not in terms of claiming to be your boss’s babysitter. As best I can tell, the rest of federal criminal law is also silent on the media-boosted equivalent of disrespectful water cooler talk.

Nor does any plausible version of “national security” extend to punishing speech of this sort.  Calling the president names and affirming an already widely held impression of his fitness for office may further damage his personal reputation (if that’s even possible), but it doesn’t damage the US as such.

These over-the-top responses from Trump and his loyalists, on the other hand, suggest that the cancerous growth long decried as “the imperial presidency” is metastasizing into even more dangerous form before our very eyes. It’s the Reichstag fire, minus even the excuse of an actual fire.

The 25th Amendment doesn’t sound quite so over the top now as it did a week ago. Unfortunately, its beneficiaries would be the same gang minus their current leader.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Public Domain, Link

On September 5, US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and US Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) announced a new bill  intended to claw back $150 billion per year in public assistance costs as tax revenues. Because all laws must come with catchy acronyms these days, and because this one targets Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, it’s called the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies — Stop BEZOS — Act.

According to the press release from Sanders’s Senate office, Stop BEZOS “aims to end corporate welfare by establishing a 100 percent tax on corporations with 500 or more employees equal to the amount of federal benefits received by their low-wage workers. For example, if a worker at Amazon receives $2,000 in food stamps, the corporation would be taxed $2,000 to cover that cost.”

Let’s consider the desired effect, and the more likely actual effects, of the Sanders/Khanna scheme.

The desired effect, of course, is that Amazon, Walmart, and other large employers will pay their workers “living wages” such that those workers needn’t turn to food stamps, subsidized housing, etc., to get by.

The more likely effect is that Amazon, Walmart, and other large employers will 1) speed up their adoption of labor-saving technologies such as robotics, and 2) change their hiring and employee policies.

Robots don’t need food stamps. Or housing. Or healthcare. Or public transit. They’ll work 24/7/365 without complaint, vacation or overtime pay. They don’t get mad and walk out. They seldom “call in sick.” And they’re already increasingly cost-competitive with even low-wage human labor.

Job applications will include questions like “do you receive any of the following forms of government assistance?” Applicants who answer “yes” won’t get interview callbacks. Employee policies will make it clear that accepting any of the tax-triggering programs will result in immediate termination.

Yes, those policies will reduce the pool of workers available to work for those companies. That might force wages up some. But it’s also likely to increase the length of time that people who NEED  government assistance CONTINUE to need that government assistance. Not because they don’t want to work, but because the wage deals they’re able to drive won’t exceed the lost benefit dollars.

If the programs in question are going to exist — as a libertarian I would prefer to see them phased out in favor of voluntary charity and  of the higher wages that companies with lower tax burdens can afford to offer, but I don’t expect that any time soon — the smarter option is to scale down benefits as a fraction of increased earnings.

Like: For every $3 an assistance recipient earns in the labor market, the benefits are decreased by $1, reaching zero when his or earnings reach  a “living wage” level.

Perfect idea? No, but better than Bernie’s bozo BEZOS boondoggle.

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY