The Real Problem with Police Violence in America

My last post was a fairly pessimistic epistle entitled "The End of the World as We Know It" in which I lamented the fact that the four greatest decades in human history were over and we were at risk of throwing away everything we had gained. But even I could not have predicted what has transpired over the last month. I imagined the Covid-19 lockdown would see a newfound respect for individual freedom and the wonders of free enterprise as the most important factor in improving human wellbeing over the last two centuries. I was wrong - the pandemic has only served to give strength to the arms of those who believe that the only way to improve human existence is for them to impose their authoritarian will on the rest of us.

The death in the United States of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer, was the match that lit a tinder-dry kindling of carefully-nurtured resentments and manufactured grievances. Under the banner of "Black Lives Matter", thousands of protestors took to the streets not only in Minneapolis, where Floyd was killed, but in cities across America and the world. Even Auckland had a mass gathering. Political leaders, reading the mood of the crowd, turned a blind eye to the massive flouting of the Covid-19 lockdowns that they had hitherto enforced with pedantic officiousness. In some places the protests turned violent, with vandalism and looting of shops (the targets invariably being the stores with the most desirable consumer products), and assaults on innocent bystanders and property-owners. 

I think a degree of outrage is justified by the death of Floyd and others at the hands of American police, but the problem is not, as claimed, primarily one of institutional racism. When you examine the statistics, as Heather MacDonald does in this Wall Street Journal article [sub. required], white Americans are as likely to be killed in a encounter with police as blacks, and in this article, Coleman Hughes lists many cases of white victims who died in equivalent circumstances to George Floyd in recent years. In this part of the world, we were appalled to hear of the case of Justine Damond, the Australian women who was also shot by a Minneapolis police officer after she had summoned the police to investigate screams she had heard near her house. The case demonstrated that anyone, even a law-abiding Antipodean, could be the innocent victim of police violence in America.

The real problem is the unrestrained nature of the US Government. Other countries may have far more authoritarian regimes, but America's position as the most powerful state on Earth means it can bring to heel not only its own citizens but any person, anywhere in the world. It can force other governments or global institutions to comply with its wishes and has come to regard the entire world as being subject to its jurisdiction. The result of this virtual omnipotence is that American officials have an arrogance that is rare even in totalitarian regimes. Like the great imperial powers of history, the American state regards itself as towering above the people it rules, and its satraps and panjandrums are so estranged from those they are meant to serve that they act like a separate tribe - and as is customary in tribal engagements, violence is the norm.

I have been to the United States many times, and every time I go there I am more incredulous at the attitude of officialdom to the public. There is none of the courtesy or humour that is characteristic of public officials in New Zealand. The normal demeanour of American officials is haughty high-handedness and surly suspicion. The last time I went to the US was on the way to Mexico, and in spite of the latter country's immense problems with violent crime, I felt safer talking to a Mexican police officer than any of the American officials with whom I had to deal.

Notwithstanding the merits of the original cause, it is apparent that the outrage over George Floyd's death is being exploited by some pretty cynical and dishonourable groups for their own political ends. The more extreme protest actions on the streets of American cities have been organised and coordinated by the loose affiliation of extreme-left-wing groups known as Antifa. Today's Antifa is the philosophical successor to the original Antifaschistische Aktion, which was an offshoot of the Communist Party of Germany in the early 1930s. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Antifa "proactively seek[s] physical confrontations with [its] perceived fascist adversaries" and should not be confused with other, non-violent, anti-fascist groups.

I have always been able to imagine the sort of society the likes of Antifa want to create, but you don't need to imagine it - this week they have created a small example of it in Seattle. The so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone or "CHAZ" was formed after police and city officials abandoned the East Precinct area of Seattle to the protestors. It didn't take long for a leader to emerge - a former rapper named Raz Simone, armed with an AK-47 and accompanied by equally well-tooled paramilitaries, announced that he was the police now and was filmed allegedly assaulting multiple protestors who disobeyed his orders. The citizens of CHAZ began to experience economic life as it would inevitably be in their imagined utopia - they were soon begging for donations of food (vegan fare, no less) from supporters outside the zone. Communism always looks like this - violence and starvation - although not even I expected that that they would get to the end state so quickly.

Protestors are now calling for the abolition of the police, and in Minneapolis the city council has acceded to their demands, but if the alternative is the sort of anarchy that now exists in Seattle, I think most people would vote to stick with the devil they know. And besides, the city council is responsible for the police and must accept blame for its dysfunction - I would be more impressed if they were to vote to abolish their own council.

Robert Peel, the British prime minister who established the Metropolitan Police Service, which is considered the template for the modern civilian law enforcement authority, said, "The police are the public and the public are the police." He meant that they should be an integral part of the community to which they belong, and he would have been horrified at the division that has arisen between his progeny in America and the people they are meant to serve. We shouldn't stand for an out-of-control police, but we should realise that it is merely the symptom of an out-of-control government.

Irwin Schiff demonstrated the true nature of taxation

Irwin Schiff died last Friday. He was 87 years old, legally blind and had skin and lung cancer. He ended his days shackled to a hospital bed guarded by federal prison officers, having been incarcerated since 2003. His family had appealed in the last few months for his release on compassionate grounds, so he could die with them around him, but the Federal Government denied their request.

What was Irwin Schiff's crime that was so heinous the US Government still considered this terminally-ill, completely incapacitated old man too much of a threat to release? Was he a terrorist or a serial killer? No, he was nothing of the sort - his crime was that he had refused to file an income tax return. The accounts I have read previously about Schiff suggested that he probably did not even owe any income tax (although his convictions included tax evasion for an arbitrarily assessed amount of income).  His refusal to file the return was based on his sincere belief that the Federal Income Tax was unconstitutional (he believed the constitution only for allowed corporate and sales taxes) and that the demand to file a tax return was a violation of the Fifth Amendment prohibition on self-incrimination.

Schiff was almost certainly mistaken in his interpretation of the legality of the income tax (even his lawyers argued in court that he was conscientiously mistaken) and, much as I support his cause, even I think he was foolish as his treatment at the hands of the US Government was entirely predictable. But Schiff made a stand on principle and you have to admire him for that. More importantly, he demonstrated a very important point - that the moral basis for taxation is entirely questionable.

Taxation is the forcible expropriation of people's income and wealth - and the key word is 'forcible'. Politicians of all political persuasions like to refer to taxation euphemistically, as President Obama does when he says we should "ask for the wealthy to pay a little bit more" or "give something back", but there is no asking or giving involved. Taxation is not voluntary - it is extorted from the population with threats of violence, and they are not idle threats, as we see in Irwin Schiff's case and the many jail sentences handed out to New Zealanders for tax evasion in recent years.

I don't expect the vast majority of people who accept the need for an income tax system will change their views on the basis of Irwin Schiff's experience, but I think they should understand and accept that what was done to Schiff was entirely consistent with their view on the morality of income tax. An elderly, incapacitated man chained to a hospital bed is the obvious end state for anyone who choses to defy the rapacious tax-gathering state and people should be honest enough to admit it.

If you would like to know more about Irwin Schiff, read the fitting tribute written by his son, Peter Schiff, on Zero Hedge or Not PC's blog.

FBI Director Wants Everyone to Leave Backdoors Unlocked so He Can Search at Will

The director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, James Comey, has called for technology companies to build 'backdoors' into their encryption systems so that the US Government can access anyone's digital communications. The most obvious flaw in his plan, as outlined in this article, is that any backdoor created for the US intelligence agencies can also be exploited by America's enemies. The vulnerability of US Government systems to hackers has been repeatedly proven, most recently with the hacking of the US Office of Personnel Management in which the confidential records of 21.5 million people who had been required to go through background checks for US government jobs were stolen, probably by the Chinese Government.

The naïveté of Comey's intentions is secondary, however, to the more important considerations of which he appears to be ignorant. It seems almost quaint to discuss the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights, given how utterly those documents have been philosophically shredded in recent decades, however the Fourth Amendment states that,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It is pretty unambiguous, isn't it? What part of that statement says that the US Government can require everyone to leave the digital equivalent of the backdoors of their houses unlocked so that one of its agencies can enter and search at will? Even the US Supreme Court, which has been only too willing to ignore James Madison's plain English and allow all sorts of unwarranted searches and seizures in recent decades, has to its credit upheld the rights of the people in respect of smartphones searches in two recent cases.

James Madison and many of his contemporaries originally thought that the powers granted to the Federal Government in the original seven articles of the US Constitution were implicitly limited, but they came to realise that the reverse was true. They understood that government power and individual rights were inherently in conflict and that for citizens to be sovereign (which is the most fundamental tenet of the US Declaration of Independence), government powers had to be explicitly limited. This is why the Bill of Rights was written.

James Comey believes the opposite to James Madison. The former believes the citizenry lives at the pleasure of the government and that therefore it is the right of the government to know everything about each and every one of its citizens, irrespective of whether there is reasonable cause to believe that a citizen has committed a crime. In James Comey's eyes, we are all guilty until proven innocent. This is why his view is so fundamentally wrong. It is why James Comey and his type that are the greatest threat to liberty today, rather than the threats from the likes of terrorist groups like ISIS that he uses to justify his demands for ever-greater power over our lives.

Governments are useless at most everything

It has been amusing, if somewhat predictable, watching the unravelling of the 'Obamacare' healthcare legislation in America. The US Government spent $200m on a health insurance website that doesn't work, but that is the least of the problems. The penny has finally dropped for most Americans that their existing health insurance plans will have to be abandoned and a more expensive scheme purchased, giving the lie to the name of the legislation, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The British National Health Service is held up by Britons and by all advocates of socialised medicine worldwide as the exemplar for state-run healthcare, even to the extent of it being the centrepiece of the London Olympics opening ceremony (in a disgusting misappropriation of the supposedly politically-neutral Olympics for political ends). God knows why - as this Forbes article reports, you are 88% more likely to die of breast cancer in the UK than in America and less likely to survive all other major forms of cancer. So, why would Americans want to give up private medicine for socialised medicine?

In my consulting business in recent years I've been doing a lot of work for the New Zealand Government, much of it quite important stuff in terms of delivery of the Government's main policy initiatives. I work for government because Wellington, my home town, does not have much of a private sector any longer (and I've blogged on Wellington's economic situation before). In my work I see many public servants who are dedicated to their work and who genuinely strive to serve the public to the best of their ability. But I see a great deal of incompetence too - monumental computer systems failures like the Obamacare website, construction projects that produce buildings that are faulty from the day they are finished and ships that can't serve the purpose for which they are acquired.

The problem is that some of those who work in government believe that there is no limit to their role and moral mandate, that they can poke their noses into any area of citizens' lives that they see fit.  Any problem, be it social, economic, scientific or environmental is not so daunting that our elected representatives and unelected officials don't think they can fix it. Never mind that they have no expertise in the field concerned - there is always some patsy 'expert' (usually an academic with no practical experience of the subject) ready to support their view that the problem can be fixed by more government interference in citizens' lives.

The truth is that government can never compete with the market in terms of providing solutions to human problems. The reason for this is obvious - the market is the collective result of millions of people applying their knowledge to achieve individual goals, whereas even in the largest government agencies there can be only ever a fraction of the effort and wisdom applied to the problem. The market will always beat the bureaucrat and those who work in government should have the humility to accept this.

Americans Choose Greater Depression

It has been interesting watching and listening to the commentary on the US budget stand-off, which has been resolved, at least for another few months. Democrats and Republicans have blamed each other, naturally enough, and the overwhelmingly left-wing mainstream media have blamed the Republicans, also naturally enough. But an interesting fact arose during the debate, which the media did not play up because it shows perhaps where the weight of blame really lies.  The US Senate has not passed a budget resolution since 2009.  Every budget appropriation bill since then has been what is called a "continuing resolution," in effect an emergency measure to keep the government running for a short period, as indeed is the case with the latest funding bill (which only funds the government until January 2014).  

The real blame for the lack of a proper budget does not lie with Congress, however.  The reason there has not been a proper budget bill since 2009 is that President Obama's Office of Management and Budget has not proposed one.  The United States follows the procedures of its Westminister origins in the executive branch putting up a budget, which the legislative branch votes on. So you can't blame the Republican-controlled House of Representatives or the Democrat-controlled Senate for failing to pass a budget, because there hasn't been one to vote on for the last four years.  The blame lies fairly and squarely with President Obama.  This article, from the (liberal, pro-Obama) Washington Post, tells why.

Irrespective of the blame, there is a lack of political will to address what is actually an expenditure crisis.  The US Government spends around a third more every year than its takes in revenue and without expenditure cuts, massive tax increases, or a significant surge in economic growth, this will continue to grow.  The federal debt stood at a little over $10 trillion when President Obama took office and he has now increased it by two-thirds to over $17 trillion.  It will almost certainly have doubled by the time he leaves office in 2017. Democrats say George W Bush was just as bad but this is not true - the debt rose 38% under Bush (and 34% under Clinton).  

How is the US federal debt funded?  For the most part, new debt is funded by issuing Treasury Bonds. Who buys the Treasuries?  Well, last year 70% of them were bought by the Federal Reserve. And where does the Federal Reserve gets its funds from?  It creates the money out of thin air through entries in its accounting systems. This is the modern-day equivalent of rolling the printing presses to create more money. We all know what happens when you do that - there are plenty of examples such as Germany in the 1920s and Zimbabwe in recent years.

So why is the US not suffering from hyperinflation? The answer is twofold.  Firstly, actual inflation is not as low as the US Government claims it to be.  If we use the same methodology to calculate inflation as in 1980, current US inflation would be nearly 10% rather than the official rate of 1.5%. Secondly, prices are being held down by a combination of consumer behaviour, which is to pay off debt rather than increase spending, plus artificially low interest rates (ordinarily the latter would discourage the former).  Interest rates are being held down by precisely the situation discussed above - the Federal Reserve buying Treasury Bonds at the low interest rates.  The reason the Federal Reserve is buying most of the T-bonds is that no one else will take them at such low rates.  Chinese investors, for example, who were the main purchasers of T-Bonds up until a couple of years ago, are no longer interested in buying them at the current coupon rate of 1.9% because they believe the risk premium is a lot higher than that.  To get some idea of how the market views the risk of US government bonds, one only has to look at the longer term yields, which are up to 4%.

The US Government can get away with this 'borrowing from Peter to pay Paul' scenario just as long as the US Dollar continues to be regarded as the world's primary exchange currency.  In other words, it can continue to 'print' Dollars to lend to itself because other countries still regard the Dollar as sound. But under this scenario the US Dollar must start to fall, as indeed it is has been doing for the last few years against more stable currencies such as the New Zealand Dollar.  Many commentators believe there will come a tipping point at which confidence in the US Dollar will be eroded sufficiently to see it plummet, and when that happens US inflation will rise and US interest rates will soar.  Of course, that will mean the US deficit will increase even further as the interest on Federal debt rises and the whole vicious circle will send the US economy back into significant decline, a scenario that some commentators are calling the 'Greater Depression'.

The US is unlikely to grow its way out of its current economic situation through more of the same policies. Government borrowing to drive consumer spending has not worked. The alternative is encourage greater capital investment to grow production, jobs and incomes, and the way to do this is to lower taxes, reduce disincentives to investment such as government regulations, and to significantly decrease government spending to balance the Federal budget. Unfortunately, we have a socialist in the White House, who would rather see his country suffer further economic decline rather than free up the economy.  A proper budget that showed the true state of the government's finances, would be a good start.

US Intervention in Syria Will Fail

You would think the US Government would learn. Just when they are finally managing to extract themselves from Iraq and Afghanistan, they are doing their best to involve themselves in another insoluble conflict in the Middle East. You would think that they would have learned from the events in Libya and Egypt, where the best hopes of the Obama regime for peaceful transitions to democratically elected governments have become completely unstuck, resulting in a great deal of bloodshed and misery for the people of those countries.

America's ill-judged foreign policy produces the most deliciously ironic unintended consequences.

It was recently revealed, for example, that the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the 1953 military coup that overthrew the government of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq.  Of course, that really worked out well for the Americans when, a quarter-century later, Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the US puppet regime of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ensured Iran became America's arch enemy for the next three decades.

One could also look to the earlier example of US support for Ibn Saud's conquest of the Arabian peninsular that resulted in the establishment in 1932 of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are the proponents of the particularly extremist Wahhabi form of Islam that inspired the brutal Taliban government in Afghanistan, which gave sanctuary to the Al Qaeda leadership that was responsible for the 9/11 attacks.  Long before 9/11, America funded, armed and trained the Afghan Mujahideen during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and it was these rebels that eventually seized control and became the Taliban government.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that America's good intentions to promote its founding principles of individual freedom and human rights around the world has led to the abrogation of those principles at home. Anyone who has been to America in recent years will have seen the deterioration of personal freedom in that country. America has become a surveillance state that in many ways would be the envy of Soviet bloc governments, all in the name of protecting its people from attack by the very people it has armed.

Which brings us to Syria. The Obama administration is planning to bomb Syrian government targets in retaliation for President Bashar al-Assad's alleged use of chemical weapons. I say "alleged" because at the time of writing the Americans cannot say with absolute certainty that Assad was responsible. Some commentators have speculated that the Islamist rebels could have used the weapons to provoke exactly the response against Assad that Obama is contemplating. One should not forget that these rebels have admitted committing appalling outrages of their own.  Another scenario, perhaps more likely, is that Assad has lost control of his own military leaders, one of whom chose to use the chemical weapons.

What is clear is that the situation in Syria not clear. If Obama orders cruise missiles launched at Syria, he will be throwing gasoline onto an already incendiary situation. He has admitted that he doesn't have an objective in mind for such a strike against the Assad regime. That being the case, he should not be surprised if the outcome turns out to be very much to the detriment of America's interests in the region and at home. America has done some dumb things around the world but this will surely be one of the dumbest.

The Right to Bear Arms

I've read much in the last few days about the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms and how this should be limited in view of the terrible events at Newtown, Connecticut.  I am as appalled as anyone about the shooting of teachers and schoolchildren at Sandy Hook Elementary School (see the post below) but I think much of the comment about gun control in the US is poorly informed.  It is important to understand why Americans have the constitutional right to bear arms when considering whether and how to further restrict their ownership and use.

The right to bear arms is contained within the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. The words, in the final version ratified by the States and authenticated by Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, are as follows:

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The amendment made it into the Bill of Rights along with the right to freedom of speech and religion (the 1st Amendment), protection from unreasonable search and seizure (4th) and due process under the law (5th).  Why it is there amongst other unquestionably moral rights is an interesting story.

In 1789 when the Bill of Rights was being written, the United States was a brand new country that had only recently defeated the British in the War of Independence and adopted the US Constitution.  There were concerns that the Federal government would become too powerful and abrogate the rights of the States and the people, in the same way as the British Crown and Parliament had done before the Revolution.  Congress was divided between the Federalists, who believed that there should be a strong federal government, and the Republicans, who believed in a small federal government that was effectively subservient to the States.

The United States did not have a standing army until 1789.  The Continental Army that was led to victory in the War of Independence by George Washington comprised the militias of the thirteen states and was disbanded upon the final defeat of the British at Yorktown except for a small general staff of no more than a few hundred soldiers.

By the time the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 there had been both external and internal challenges to the unity of the United States.  The risk of renewed war with Great Britain and with revolutionary France, plus the internal Whisky Rebellion and Northwest Indian War, meant many in Congress supported the idea of a strong, standing Federal army.  But in order to garner the supermajority of States needed to pass the Constitutional amendments, those promoting the idea had to offer the States something in return.  That something was the right to bear arms.  The 2nd Amendment was the right demanded by the States to ensure the Federal Government would not be able to use its armed forces to tread upon their rights.  Of course one could say the assurance did not work - after all, the American Civil War was primarily about that same issue: whether the Federal Government had the right to over ride the States on the important issue of slavery.  And in that case it was a very good thing that the Federal Government won.

Today the issue of Federal vs States rights is more salient than ever.  Washington DC and the state capitols are arguing over many important issues - drug enforcement, immigration, health care, etc.  The Federal Government has taken upon itself more and more power, including in recent years the power to torture and kill people without any form of judicial process.  Many Americans think their government has well-overstepped the constraints that the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison intended to impose upon it and in view of this, it is understandable that they would be reluctant to give up the right to bear arms.

Seen in this light, the Second Amendment becomes something more noble and reasonable than merely the right of Americans to defend their person and home against criminals (although that, too, is hardly an ignoble right in my opinion).

All of the above doesn't change the fact that American civilians kill far more of their fellow citizens with firearms than any other country on Earth.  I agree that America needs to debate the issue but I don't think stricter firearms control alone will do much to address the problem (after all, New Zealand has some of the strictest firearms ownership laws in the world and we have had our share of mass killings).  If President Obama wants to introduce tougher gun laws, perhaps he should start talking in the same conversation about limiting the unbridled power of his Government - then more Americans might be more receptive to greater gun control.

Dotcom Decision Shows Rule of Law Still Alive in NZ

Just when all right-thinking New Zealanders thought the rule of law was well and truly dead in this country, replaced by the all-powerful and unfettered authority of the Nanny State to do whatever it sees fit, Justice Winkelmann of the High Court has proved that vestiges of ancient legal rights remain.  I am referring, of course, to Winkelmann's decision that that search and seizure of Kim Dotcom's Auckland property, under the direction of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, was illegal.

When this case broke with an avalanche of international media coverage and comment, I was immeidately concerned on several levels.  I am not an international law expert but I know something about copyright law, having been involved in many contract negotiations for IT software and services, and it seemed to me that even in the United States, the primary offence that Dotcom was being accused of - that of hosting illegal copying services - was a very grey area of the law. 

Fristly, even if Dotcom's Megaupload service has been used for wholesale copyright infringement, it is yet to be conclusively established in US courts that he can be held accountable for the actions of his clients. 

Secondly, even if he is proved to have knowingly colluded in copyright infringement, there is considerable doubt as to whether criminal sanctions can be applied or whether that is something that should be dealt with through the civil courts.

And thirdly, given his services were hosted in Hong Kong and not New Zealand, there is doubt as to whether New Zealand authorities have any legal interest in the case.

If proof were needed of the dubious nature of the offences alleged against Dotcom, the New Zealand authorities only needed to apply the time-tested rule of international extradition treaties - is it something that is illegal in New Zealand?  Dotcom is charged with racketeering.  Racketeering is one of those catch-all offences that United States authorities are fond of applying when no other charge seems to fit.  It is usually used for incarcerating murderous gangsters.  It is not an offence under New Zealand law and therefore would not be able to be used as grounds for extradiction.

All of the above means the New Zealand authorities should have had pause for thought before charging into Dotcom's house during a social event, arresting Dotcom and his employees, and seizing a whole raft of property, including cars, that had little or no connection to the crimes being alleged.

It is highly likely now that Dotcom will walk away from all this a free man, at least in New Zealand.  He will, however, be forever damaged by the illegal actions of the New Zealand authorities.  His business has been largely destroyed and he, his family and his employees are unlikely to get any compensation for their assault by the agencies of the New Zealand Government.  The US Government will never back down and apologise or stop trying to hound him, wherever in the world he may end up (as he will almost certainly be expelled from New Zealand for immigration issues).  Such is the nature of law enforcement in America these days.  The normal mode of operation for the FBI and other US agencies these days resembles the tactics of the gangsters or the terrorists they pursue. New Zealand authorities should not be drawn into this sort of intemperate, thuggish, so-called law enforcement. 

I am grateful for Justice Winkelmann's wisdom.  We might all need it one day.