#ReleaseTheMemo — And Then Some

Free Stock Photo from MaxPixel

On January 29, the US House Intelligence Committee voted to publicly release a four-page memo on the “Russiagate” inquiry, authored by committee chair Devin Nunes (R-CA).  Republican sources tell The Hill  that the memo alleges “‘shocking’ surveillance abuses” by the Department of Justice. By the time you read this, we’ll  all know much of the memo’s contents, as President Trump has reportedly signed off on the decision to release it with redactions.

While the memo may be a bombshell, whats more interesting is the rigmarole surrounding its release and the non-release of a competing memo from the committee’s Democratic minority.

We live in an age of unparalleled transparency, thanks to heroes and martyrs like Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange. It’s getting harder and harder for governments (and political parties and individual politicians) to keep secrets. That’s a good thing. The more we know, the more effectively we can attempt to hold the political class  ever so slightly accountable.

Yet  the jokers in Congress continue to arrogantly assume that they’re entitled to hide what they’re up to from the rest of us whenever they decide we don’t need to know.

On the campaign trail, they tell us that we’re their employers and that they’re just humble “public servants.” But once elected, they go to work behind closed doors and hide their hearings, their discussions, their memos and their other work product from us at will.

What kind of employee gets to tell the boss “you don’t need to know what I’m up to?” In the private sector, the kind of employee who quickly finds himself look for another job, that’s what kind.

The trend of legislative and executive activity in the 21st century has, thus far, been in the opposite direction. These days, it’s all about politicians giving themselves more power to pry into our private lives while hiding their own affairs from us  any time someone says the words “national security.” The Fourth Amendment has become a shadow of its former self as the surveillance and national security states grow like Topsy with Congress as their rubber stamp.

It’s time to return to a strong presumption that congressional hearings and work product are by their nature in the public domain and must be preserved and made available for “the bosses” to view, with felony penalties for bad behavior. All the legitimate secrets in Washington would fit in a single file cabinet.

Congress won’t be easily persuaded to impose such restraint on itself. But every member of the US House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate is up for re-election  or replacement this November. Maybe it’s time to have a word your “employees” about what you expect from them.

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

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

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

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

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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY