Op-Eds

Negative Social Preferencing, ICE Edition

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By U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Department of Homeland Security) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
On June 19, New York based artist, programmer, and activist Sam Lavigne published a list of 1,595 Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees and publicly available information about them (remember those two words: “publicly available”).

Lavigne provided a public service that in anything resembling a free society would be completely uncontroversial. Instead, moral panic ensued.

Github deleted the information from its repository. Twitter suspended accounts calling attention to it. It eventually found a home at WikiLeaks.

On June 24, the US Department of Homeland Security (of which ICE is a subsidiary) claimed “heightened threats” versus its employees and reiterated recommendations (per CBS News) “including not displaying work badges in public, being careful with public conversations and using caution on all social networks.”

Donald Trump’s Internet base — which loved WikiLeaks when it released emails exposing corruption in the Democratic National Committee — exploded with rage, calling for a raid on Ecuador’s UK embassy to drag Julian Assange to America for “justice” (he’s been held incommunicado for months and presumably had nothing to do with this project) and for charging Lavigne as an accomplice in any attacks on ICE employees.

To see what a tempest in a teapot this is, remember the “publicly available” angle.

The sources for Lavigne’s database are the ICE employees’ own public LinkedIn profiles, on which they openly state who they work for. Their reasons probably run to networking with others in similar jobs, and seeking other employment, but once you put something on a public-facing web space, the public gets to notice.

Lavigne didn’t hack into an ICE computer. He just took information that anyone with a web browser could have found any time they cared to look, and organized it into a more convenient format.

But let’s just suppose that Lavigne had instead built his database from, say, a leaked ICE personnel list. If so, so what? These people receive their salaries from taxpayers and claim to work for “the public.” On what grounds can they claim a right  to have their employers not know who they are?

As far as “threats” are concerned, the real but largely unspoken one is well-deserved negative social preferencing.

If decent people know that the guy next door abducts people at gunpoint for a living (or conspires with others to facilitate such kidnappings), they probably won’t invite that guy to their next backyard barbecue. Especially if some of the other guests may speak Spanish.

Until ICE is abolished, which can’t happen soon enough, the next best thing is to make it an unattractive employment option.

If you work for ICE, you should be denied service at restaurants, denied communion at churches, and have to explain to your kids why they aren’t invited to other kids’ birthday parties or play activities. And thanks to Sam Lavigne, we know who you are.

If you work for ICE, give your two weeks notice, find a job in the productive sector, and work hard to redeem yourself and live down your sordid past. This is an opportunity. Seize it.

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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The Libertarian Party: Bringing Good Ideas to America Since 1971

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“‘Abolish ICE!’ is the new rallying cry for progressive Democrats,” reports NBC News’s Alex Seitz-Wald. It’s “a radical idea and one that was confined to the fringes just months ago,” but one that “left-wing insurgents can use to differentiate themselves from more established rivals in Democratic primaries.”

Good idea. So good, in fact, that I wrote a column advocating exactly that three months ago. Welcome to the right side, Democrats.

Like most Libertarians, I’m amused when our ideological opponents see a parade forming around one of our ideas and try to hustle their way to the front to “lead” it.

Unlike some Libertarians, I don’t follow up amusement with getting down in the mouth about being “co-opted.” I’m just happy to see good ideas gain steam from any source.

The Libertarian Party has supported same-sex marriage rights since its founding in 1971. Hillary Clinton finally joined us on that one in 2013. Better late than never.

It’s not just the Democrats we’re a leading indicator for. We began calling for elimination of the federal income tax decades before the (even worse) “Fair Tax” idea embedded itself in the Republican Party as an alternative (unfortunately that terrible proposal — a 30% national sales tax coupled with a monthly cradle-to-grave welfare check for every man, woman, and child in America — has fooled some Libertarians as well).

Marijuana legalization? That was us too, fighting both old party establishments to get medical, then recreational, cannabis off the list of victimless “crimes” from the early 1970s on. Glad we’re getting there.

We’re not always quite so far ahead of the older parties. We beat the Democrats to putting abolition of the death penalty in our platform by mere weeks in 2016. It should have been there since 1971.

The perceived gold standard for a political party’s success is winning elections, and I wish that Libertarians won more of them. But a better standard is successfully pushing our values, our ideas, and our proposals into the public conversation and seeing them adopted. I’d like to see that happen more often as well, but I’m glad when it happens at least occasionally.

Unlike the old parties, the Libertarian Party holds its national convention every two years instead of every four. Ours starts on the last day of June and ends on July 3 in New Orleans. Drop by, or tune in on C-SPAN, to see our next batch of great ideas for America.

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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Op-Eds

Taxed Enough Already, You Say? Trump Disagrees.

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Hundreds (RGBStock)

On June 14, the Trump administration announced that it’s raising your taxes by $12.5 billion. On June 18, President Trump followed that announcement up with the threat of another $20 billion tax hike.

Trump didn’t put it that way, of course. Instead, he described both the actual and threatened tax increases as “tariffs” on “Chinese imports.”

Don’t be fooled. No matter how he gussies them up as correctives for “unfair competition” and “trade imbalances,” tariffs are taxes on American consumers, and that’s all they are. They aren’t paid by Chinese manufacturers. They’re paid by you, at the cash register, in the form of higher prices on the goods you shop for.

You can’t avoid the effects of those taxes by “buying American,” either. One of the main effects of tariffs — in fact, one of the primary PURPOSES of tariffs — is to let domestic producers jack up their own prices without worrying that foreign competitors might undersell them.

Nor is China the only front in Donald Trump’s war on your wallet. MarketWatch reports that Trump’s 20% tariff on Canadian lumber is beginning to hit the American housing market with rising lumber costs surpassing labor costs as the biggest pricing problem. If you’re thinking about buying a home in the near future, prepare to pay more for it than you should have had to.

For reasons I’ve never understood, protectionism almost always successfully disguises itself as “populism.” Foreigners, we’re told, are screwing us by selling us stuff cheap instead of charging us extra. American workers shouldn’t have to compete with foreign workers who accept lower wages. Trump, man of the people, is doing us a favor by making everything we buy more expensive.

In fact, tariffs and other protectionist policies are the very essence of elitism and the very opposite of populism. They benefit the stockholders of politically connected corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans. A few American workers may get (or keep) jobs in the affected industries, but as consumers those workers (and the rest of us)  take it in the shorts to buy new yachts for the beautiful people with friends in Washington.

Some characterize Trump’s ascendance as a comeback victory for the “Tea Party” movement that briefly flourished during Barack Obama’s administration before establishment Republicans co-opted it and returned to business as usual.

One acronym powering that movement was TEA: Taxed Enough Already.  True then, true now. Perhaps someone should remind Donald Trump.

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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