Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Month: April 2012

The US does not have justice or even the rule of law

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On April 19, 2012

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and whether the public approves or disapproves is irrelevant.  Black letter law, on the books, makes most of what the banks did leading up to the subprime crisis illegal.  It was fraud.  Black letter law makes the war on Iraq a war crime, and no one went to jail for that.  Black letter law does not allow freestanding resisting arrest charges, and those happen all the time.  Basic law states that an accused has a right to face their accuser and see the evidence against them, that no longer occurs in many cases.  Basic justice says that you can’t punish someone without a trial, and the “no-fly list” indicates that is no longer true (along with being unable to face your accusers and see the evidence against you.)  The US Congress retroactively made wiretapping without a warrant “legal” and if I have to explain why retroactive immunity is wrong I give up.  Basic justice says that secret laws and secret courts are unjust, yet the US has plenty of both.

This is not just an issue with the US.  During the G20 up here in Toronto the Ontario government used a SECRET LAW to strip civil liberties from anyone in the downtown Toronto core.  Of course, it must be said that the public couldn’t give a shit, it was not an issue in the next election.

In Britain, after the riots, family members of those convicted of crimes were evicted from public housing.  Collective punishment of family members is unjust

And, in most countries today, the rich and powerful are not even charged with crimes that their “lessers” regularly do jail time for.

It is done.  It is over.  The US is not a nation of laws, it is a nation of men, and the law does not treat everyone equally.  You do not even have the right to a trial before punishment, to see the evidence against you or to face your accusers.  And virtually every other nation in the so-called developed world is walking down the same road.

The police state of the future

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On April 13, 2012

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forget the problems of spy agencies, this is the stuff of pure police states.  The Stasi only wished they had it so good.

When the revolution comes, if it comes, the first job is going to have to be to destroy all of this stuff, and to inculcate a visceral understanding that this and all types of constant surveillance are, simply, the hallmarks of evil regimes.

Of course, in time, the descendants of the revolution will forget.  The hallmark of evil regimes for our forefathers was torture, after all.

Is the individual mandate really the hill progressives want to die on?

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On April 2, 2012

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Really?

The individual mandate is lousy policy.  It always was.  It is especially lousy policy without a large (100 million +) public option.  The health care plan is, for all intents and purposes, a 90’s Heritage plan.

This?  This is what progressives want to fight for?

BMaz has a good article up on whether the bill is Constitutional.  Me, I don’t know if it’s Constitutional.  But what I do know is that if I were a conservative Justice, I’d want to just strike down the individual mandate and leave the rest in place, because I would laugh myself sick every night watching Obama have to kill the bill himself, getting rid of guaranteed issue, community ratings, and so on.  Because Obama would have to, and would.  He made a deal with the health insurance companies.  In exchange for some concessions, what they received in exchange was every American being forced to buy their shitty product.  And while Obama doesn’t keep promises to left wingers, he does keep promises to people like the CEOs of health insurance companies.

Still, watching “progressives” defending the individual mandate is just another reminder of why I don’t call myself a progressive.

Go and die on a hill, for forcing Americans to buy shitty insurance from evil companies which aren’t properly regulated.

I’ll just sit here on the sidelines laughing myself sick.  With progressives like these, who needs right wingers?

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