A Mockery of the Bill of Rights

Cross-posted from the Tenth Amendment Center blog:

If ever one needed a cogent example of why relying on the federal government to comply with the constitution and protect the liberties of the people is hopeless, the senate just gave one. Robert Wenzel reports over at his EconomicPolicyJournal that in a 79 to 12 vote, the senate rejected an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012 (the actual name of the bill!), H.R.5949, that would have extended 4th Amendment protections to electronic communications.

Prior to the vote Rand Paul spoke on the floor urging passage of the amendment:

The Fourth Amendment guarantees that people should be secure in their persons, houses and papers against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Somewhere along the way, though, we became lazy and haphazard in our vigilance. We allowed Congress and the courts to diminish our Fourth Amendment protection, particularly when our papers were held by third parties.

I think most Americans would be shocked to know that the Fourth Amendment does not protect your records if they’re banking, Internet or Visa records. A warrant is required to read your snail mail and to tap your phone, but no warrant is required to look at your e-mail, text or your Internet searches. They can be read without a warrant. Why is a phone call more deserving of privacy protection than an e-mail?

This amendment would restore the Fourth Amendment protections to third-party records, and I recommend a yes vote.

Now, forget for a second that only 12 senators agree that warrants (which are of dubious merit in practice anyway) should be required for government agents to read your e-mail correspondence. Just consider the need to write laws in order to enforce existing laws. The Bill of Rights is a farce, as this episode clearly shows. If the 4th Amendment meant anything, there would be no need to amend an act amending another act, to protect the 4th Amendment!

Instead of hoping this kind of chicanery is going to do anything to defend the liberties of the people, states and local governments should interpose on behalf of citizens. Refusal to provide logistical support to federal authorities during investigations and raids will go a long way in combating this sort of breach of due process. If nothing else, it will send a strong message that such machinations are unacceptable.

City Bureaucrats are Slum Lords

Writes the Kansas City Star’s editorial board:

Vacant, nuisance properties have become Kansas City’s latter-day plague, a kind of urban gangrene that can create a chronic downdraft in property values. In neighborhoods where the problem is severe, vacant houses draw rats, squatters, drug dealers, vandals and midnight dumpers.

Just how many of these “nuisance properties” are there?

Thousands.

Thousands of dilapidated properties are currently held by the city; estimates range from 4,000 to 12,000. Rotting, falling apart, and sitting idle, most were seized after the “owners” failed to pay rent to the government, or maintained the property as they saw fit, rather than follow a bureaucrat’s arbitrary plans.

Apparently kidnapping the “owners” hasn’t worked, because a few months ago KCTV5 reported that: “Kansas City, MO, police, along with the city, are cracking down and arresting homeowners who ignore repeated warnings to clean up.” Basically, if bureaucrats didn’t like your lawn they’d just kidnap you and hold you for ransom, the logical conclusion of such a policy.

The city government framed this in terms of fighting crime, namely drug use and prostitution, but if these two vices weren’t criminalized to begin with, there would be no such problem with abandoned homes. Michael Rozeff explained why this is true in a blog post on LRC regarding the city of Buffalo conducting SWAT raids on so-called “drug houses.”

So absent all of the problems created by prohibition, the only issue remaining is that dilapidated homes tend to reduce home values. This is another reason city governments regulate such items as where garbage cans may or may not be stored, what hours they are allowed to be on the curb, where and how RV campers are kept, and a whole host of issues related to aesthetics. But as Walter Block would argue, people don’t have a right to a nice view. This is where voluntary associations and neighborhood contracts can protect other property owners, but in no way should government become involved, which, as we see, knows only violence.

The city is now phasing out its Land Trust, the agency formerly in control of the properties. It was marked by “corruption and favoritism” and “strayed from the mission of improving city neighborhoods,” but city officials are hopeful that an even more powerful entity, the Land Bank, will solve this mess once and for all.

The supposed purpose of seizing these run-down properties was to preserve the neighborhoods’ aesthetics and maintain property values. But as has been clearly demonstrated, things have only deteriorated, and expanding the program will surely make things worse. Instead, city officials should publicly apologize to residents for aggravating the situation, and the remaining properties should be auctioned off, with proceeds going to restitution for the former owners.

The Left Finally Courting ‘States’ Rights’

It’s been a long time coming, but some on the Left are starting to see that promoting “States’ Rights” is not an unequivocal endorsement of racial segregation and the policies of Bull Connor.  The Atlantic ran a piece by Conor Friedersdorf a while back, in which he charged progressives with considering the merits of federalism, a bold move, considering they’re some of the least tolerant to decentralized power structures.

I congratulated them in a column at the Tenth Amendment Center, which ran last week. I also suggested they extend this view to the drug war, environmentalism, and, if the Left ever goes back to opposing wars of empire and occupation, to that as well.

Soak the Rich, Hurt the Poor

With the Fiscal Cliff™ fast approaching — the one the U.S. government went over a long time ago — the kabuki in Washington and its media have largely ignored the effect tax increases will have on the economy. A few Republicans have alluded to the problem, but as I noted a few weeks ago, the conversation has centered on what each group must do to pin blame on the other.

Peter Schiff and Tom Woods have each pointed to the fallacy of the blessings provided by the 91% tax rates of the ’50s. In short, few Americans actually paid those rates, so any benefits supposedly brought on by them must have some other cause. But there’s another component to taxing the rich that should be considered, along with the 91% myth. Taxing the wealthiest members of society ultimately harms the poorest.

Because the wealthy overwhelmingly invest in capital goods — which make the production of consumers’ goods possible — reducing their income will tend to lower the overall amount of capital investment. The effect of diminished capital investment is that fewer consumers’ goods will be brought about, and therefore the standard of living for all income levels will be lower than they otherwise would be.

This will disproportionately affect the poor, who will have to spend a higher percentage of their income on things like food, clothing, energy, etc. While it’s true that wealthy individuals will also have to spend more on these items, they can more easily afford to do this without sacrificing other necessities.

Consider the price of gasoline. CNN reported last year that the average American spent $368 a month on gasoline, or 9% of their annual income. Decreased investment in gasoline production will mean, all else equal, that prices will stagnate and, in the long run tend to rise, as capital wears out and is replaced at lower rates. This is particularly true as long as global demand for fuel continues to increase. Rising gasoline prices always harm those with lower incomes before they affect wealthy individuals, who have more disposable income with which to spend on transportation.

The same will be true of other industries; lower amounts of capital investment will put upward pressure on prices as demand continues. It’s also important to note that increased capital investment often leads to the lowering of prices, which allow for everyone’s standard of living to improve. Increasing taxes on the rich creates a barrier to this rise in living standards, so for anyone who wants to help the poor, advocating lower taxes for everyone is a sure way.

Scrooge the Benefactor

A few weeks ago, one of the moderators on the “I bet Ludwig von Mises can get more fans than John Maynard Keynes” Facebook page, posted the following analysis of Charles Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge:

So, an alternative take on A Christmas Carol [...] is that it’s actually a thinly veiled, trenchant critique of the corrosive effects of welfare statism and instead argues for, and celebrates individual [acts] of charitable giving. 

Recall that in the beginning of the Dickens novel, Scrooge disparages individual charity because, he reasons, “are their no prisons, are there no workhouses?” – [suggesting] that since he’s already having a portion of his wealth forcibly extracted for these programs that address the effects of poverty, there is no need for him to be individually charitable. Dickens no doubt was observing this change in attitude in many as government welfare programs were set up. Not only does welfare statism encourage passivity and victimhood in it’s recipients, it provides a (cheap) moral excuse for the more well-off amongst us to avoid extending true acts of charity towards others…. leaving aside from the fact that welfare statism in the end impoverishes us all.

I think it’s pretty clear that Dickens was not using A Christmas Carol to critique the state’s welfare programs and promote private charity in its place. This doesn’t detract at all though from the fact that such intervention would tend to distort voluntary contributions to charities. Those who are concerned for the poor needn’t worry that in a free society the impoverished would go without.

First, it’s not clear there would be such poverty in a free society. This is not to suggest that an umhampered market would mean an end to all wants, but it’s erroneous to assume the same level of poverty would exist absent the state. Many of the poor are made so because of distortions such as price inflation, minimum wage laws, and myriad barriers to entry. It’s evident that a free market is more conducive to rising standards of living for the masses, so there would no doubt be less poverty for a free society to address.

But assuming there is still a sizeable poor population, private charities need not fear running out of resources.

Murray Rothbard notes in Man, Economy and State that “one of the most popular objections to the free society” is that “‘it leaves people free to starve.’” He then quips that ”from the fact that this objection is so widespread, we can easily conclude that there will be enough charitable people in the society to present these unfortunates with gifts.”

As for alternate perspectives on the classic Christmas story from Dickens, Michael Levin’s “Scrooge Defended” is my favorite. In it we see Scrooge, who is sadly painted as the villain, for what he truly is: a great benefactor of society.

Scrooge apparently lends money, and to discover the good he does one need only inquire of the borrowers. Here is a homeowner with a new roof, and there a merchant able to finance a shipment of tea, bringing profit to himself and happiness to tea drinkers, all thanks to Scrooge.

Dickens doesn’t mention Scrooge’s satisfied customers, but there must have been plenty of them for Scrooge to have gotten so rich.

Despite his surly disposition, Scrooge might be one of my favorite characters. It’s a shame he wasn’t given better treatment before his hauntings by those three ne’er-do-well apparitions.