As Federal Crime List Grows, Threshold of Guilt Declines
For centuries, a bedrock principle of criminal law has held that people must know they are doing something wrong before they can be found guilty. The concept is known as mens rea, Latin for a "guilty mind."One need look no further than the kerfluffle over Gibson guitars to see this front and center. In fact, the folks at Gibson have evidence that not only did they not know they were doing something wrong, they were in fact doing everything legally - and taking serious measures to insure they kept everything legal. And still they had armed federal agents storm their plant and shutter their business for over a month. Over the wood used in their guitars.
This legal protection is now being eroded as the U.S. federal criminal code dramatically swells. In recent decades, Congress has repeatedly crafted laws that weaken or disregard the notion of criminal intent. Today not only are there thousands more criminal laws than before, but it is easier to fall afoul of them.
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted and you create a nation of law-breakers." -Ayn Rand, Atlas ShruggedWritten 54 years ago, and becoming more and more real every day. Three felonies a day isn't just a book, it's a sad template for life under the new American dream. TJIC shows us that you don't even have to be charged with a crime to suffer. Every time a politician proposes a new law, we should rightfully hear jail cells closing in the background. Instead, we view it as a freakin' football game, opposing Clinton's Echelon project yet supporting Bush's Patriot Act. We support - or oppose - laws based on the color of the ass of the ape proposing them. If this isn't sheer and utter lunacy, I don't know what is.
Two things need to happen if we hope to regain freedom and restore some sense of order and attention to the law. First off, every single new law proposed must come with an expiration date. No exception. If the law is a good one, then put it up for a vote in five years. If it passes, it stays another five years. After a while, the politicians will be too busy voting on restoring old laws to pass any new ones. Secondly, there's a very simple test that should be applied to any proposed law: would you trust your political opponent with this law? If we started passing laws with the idea that someday our worst political enemy would be able to use them against us, I suspect we'd be a little more reticent to pull out the "there outta be a law" card.
Err on the side of freedom, always.
That is all.
10 comments:
One of the fears with having bills renewed every X years is that instead of giving each bill its due amount of review and debate they will simply write a giant omnibus bills stating "all bills due for renewal this year are hereby declared renewed permanently" or some other flavor of that.
Maybe I shouldn't give them any ideas...
Set of jumper cables and a car battery will take care of that...
Acytually, Gibson did know they were doing something wrong, and hence the raid. They were served warnings in prior years for their knowing violations of the Lacey Act.
The timber provisions added to the Lacey Act in 2008 were done so at the testimony of many figures from the U.S. timber & wood products industries.
My wife works in the high-end lumber import/export business. That industry alone is quite happy that Gibson got served. It's kind of hard for an American to make a living at a trade where folks overseas are doing the same thing in a shady or cutthroat manner, and when a U.S. company that is a customer of such products is told several times with warnings that they are doing something wrong, then the rest of the people in that industry have no tears either for that company when the fuzz come calling.
I have no tears for Gibson the company - they knowingly broke the law, and the rest of the industry know it, too - but I do have sympathy for the employees left shut out due to the criminal actions of the company owners.
> TJIC shows us that you don't even have to be charged with a crime to suffer.
Thanks for not forgetting!
@Stan:
> One of the fears with having bills renewed every X years is that instead of giving each bill its due amount of review and debate they will simply write a giant omnibus bills stating "all bills due for renewal this year are hereby declared renewed permanently" or some other flavor of that.
EXACTLY!
I had the same idea a while back, and later that day realized the loophole that would inevitably get used.
Politicians, like rats, can smell holes, and create them if they're not already there.
Recall that for years they used the Committee of the Whole
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_of_the_Whole#United_States_Congress
to allow the "observer" representatives from Puerto Rico to cast votes in a committee, the results of which were already pre-ratified by the entire House...thus giving non-states an effective vote in our congress (until this one loophole was shut down).
@Ancient Woodsman said...
> The timber provisions added to the Lacey Act in 2008 were done so at the testimony of many figures from the U.S. timber & wood products industries.
>
> My wife works in the high-end lumber import/export business. That industry alone is quite happy that Gibson got served.
These two paragraphs make it clear that the big players in the timber import sector, like most other big players, will not hesitate to push for more stifling illegitimate regulation because it serves to further entrench them in their position.
I bet the timber importers cheered when Gibson was raided - their thought is that now Gibson will have to go through an extra set of middle men.
These regulations are utter nonsense, and anyone who endorses them reveals him or herself to be a rent-seeker, trying to use government to stifle competition.
Oh come on Jay. How are they supposed to fill up all those privatized, corporate run jails?
Those shareholders have to eat. They only increased the incarceration rate like 30-49% in the past 15 years. They going to need more new criminals from somewhere.
So what American industry - industry being the work of people - is worth saving from foreign competition?
In the purely capitalist ideal everything is worth the lowest price, so why not let it all go overseas?
At some point we must protect the American industry, or there are no Americans. Or does one desire to have a utopia where there is no production, but prosperity? Such cannot happen.
Down lower, there is a post regarding protecting our borders and getting the illegals out of our country. I cannot demand to protect our borders and in the same breath demand to let a company like Gibson ignore those same borders - in this case, of law. And I do demand that we protect our borders in all ways.
err on the side of freedom, always.
Words to live by, indeed!
Reminds me of a sobering and thought-provoking bit I read once, called "the Jews In The Attic test". Check it out if you're interested; it's not very long.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
@ Ancient Woodsman:
> So what American industry - industry being the work of people - is worth saving from foreign competition?
Wait just a second.
We've turned from
ORIGINALLY: arguing that the gov is targetting Gibson and big American wood manufacturers are cheering gov on because these unfairly enforced illegitimate laws (enforcing an interpretation of an Indian law that even the Indian gov doesn't agree with)
to
NOW: arguing that we need to have protectionism to keep Americans doing inefficient jobs.
I'll let you move the goal posts, but let's take it one step at a time.
First, let's get back to to the original point:
* Any lumber importer that is upset that Gibson is importing on their own and wants to insert themselves as a middle-man (delivering no extra ACTUAL PRODUCTIVITY, but merely taking some dollars along the way and jacking up the prices of domestically made guitars) is just a gov-loving rent seeker unable or unwilling to compete on their own skills.
* The government EXPLICITLY told Gibson that they wouldn't be in trouble if they had bought FINISHED fretboards from India, but were only in trouble because they bought raw materials and then had Americans do the finish work.
Second, on to your newer goal-post-moving point:
There is no country (besides North Korea) that doesn't specialize in something. Each specializes in stuff based on what their populace is skilled at, and what their natural resources support.
Iceland doesn't grow many tomatoes. It exports fish, music, etc. (which are easy to generate in Iceland) in return for tomatoes, bananas, and other things that are very hard to create in the Arctic circle.
Chad exports metals and imports fish (which are hard to catch in the desert).
Japan exports electronics and imports oil (which is hard to find in a country with no oil).
China, with a poorly educated workforce that is so desperate for work that they'll put in long hours in dirty factories exports low-quality machine tools.
The US exports software, movies, machine tools, robots, and more (all made in comparatively palatial work conditions), and imports tropical hardwoods and low-quality machinery.
> At some point we must protect the American industry
Aside from the current recesion which was created by stupid Washington D.C. policies, Americans have a very low level of unemployment.
There are things that we're good at (bc of demographics and geography) and things that we're not so good at.
You're arguing that we should erect trade barriers to make it harder to import things that we're bad at and other people are good at.
We could do that.
...and then we'd suck talented folks away from jobs that they're good at and put them into jobs that they're bad at.
That's a really foolish policy.
A final point: the anti-Gibson tirade you went on is explicitly trying to export decent skilled American jobs overseas. Given the rest of your beliefs you probably want to rethink your stance on the Gibson issue.
If I were king...
The next law signed into the books would be Give and Take, where every new law created results in an existing law being removed.
Post a Comment