Licensed to Live: Occupations

Author's Note: Just below the masthead at the top of the page you'll see a new Contents link. The linked page lists all Tireless Agorist columns, arranged loosely as a table of contents or reading list by category. I hope you find it useful for exploring The Tireless Agorist.

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In 1787 one could get most any job or open most any business without seeking the government's permission to do so. Today, nearly one in three U.S. workers needs a license to pursue their chosen occupation, and starting a new (legal) business without the involvement of both a state-licensed attorney and a state-licensed accountant is a fool's errand. Two recent studies do much to explain the rapid growth of the underground, apolitical economy that we explored in The Apolitical Economic Superpower and the rest of the Phoenix Society series of columns.

Occupational Hazards

The Institute for Justice recently released Occupational Licensing in 50 States and D.C., a study examining the impact of licensing on 102 low and moderate-income occupations. In 1950, only one in 20 U.S. workers needed a license to pursue their chosen occupation. Today, the ratio approaches one in three.

Criminalizing Dissent

In First Amendment (1791-2012) R.I.P. we discussed H.R. 347, the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act, that further criminalized the First Amendment. Slate concisely summarized the new law like this.

It is a federal offense, punishable by up to 10 years in prison to protest anywhere the Secret Service might be guarding someone. For another, it’s almost impossible to predict what constitutes “disorderly or disruptive conduct” or what sorts of conduct authorities deem to “impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions.”

Instead of turning on a designated place, the protest ban turns on what persons and spaces are deemed to warrant Secret Service protection. It’s a perfect circle: The people who believe they are important enough to warrant protest can now shield themselves from protestors. No wonder the Occupy supporters are worried. In the spirit of “free speech zones,” this law creates another space in which protesters are free to be nowhere near the people they are protesting.

Among others, three major upcoming events will test the impact of this new law on First Amendment activities. First comes Chicago's NATO Summit, May 20-21. The Presidential nominating conventions follow this fall, first the Republicans in Tampa, August 27-30, then the Democrats in Charlotte, North Carolina, September 3-6.

Killer Cattle Prods

According to a new report published on Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, the electrical shock delivered to the chest by a Taser can lead to cardiac arrest and sudden death.

The study, which analyzed detailed records from the cases of eight people who went into cardiac arrest after receiving shocks from a Taser X26 fired at a distance, is likely to add to the debate about the safety of the weapons. Seven of the people in the study died; one survived.

The New York Times reported the statements of two prominent doctors who concurred with the results of the study.

“This is no longer arguable,” said Dr. Byron Lee, a cardiologist and director of the electrophysiology laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. “This is a scientific fact. The national debate should now center on whether the risk of sudden death with Tasers is low enough to warrant widespread use by law enforcement.”

Dr. Robert J. Myerburg, a professor of medicine in cardiology at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, said that the study "had persuaded him that in at least some of the eight cases, the Taser shock was responsible for the cardiac arrests."

CISPA: What's Next?

Author's Note: I've covered the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act thoroughly in three previous columns you may want to read if you're not up to speed on the issue: CISPA Keynotes Cybersecurity Week, Who's Buying CISPA and Selling Us Out? and CISPA House Debate Starts Tomorrow.

Congress is currently considering CISPA – the Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act – a bill that purports to protect the United States from “cyber threats” but would in fact create a gaping loophole in all existing privacy laws. If CISPA passes, companies could vacuum up huge swaths of data on everyday Internet users and share it with the government without a court order. I oppose CISPA, and I’m calling on Congress to reject any legislation that: Uses dangerously vague language to define the breadth of data that can be shared with the government. Hands the reins of America’s cybersecurity defenses to the NSA, an agency with no transparency and little accountability. Allows data shared with the government to be used for purposes unrelated to cybersecurity. Join me in opposing this bill by posting this statement on your own page and using this online form to send a letter to Congress against CISPA.

CISPA passed the House of Representatives on Thursday, with a vote of 258-168, even after this Tireless Agorist's impassioned pleas. I guess I don't run the world... yet.

Red Hat, Blue Hat, Which Hat, No Hat

There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern.
They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
Daniel Webster

Another of those infamous political discussions at the premier writer's site, Absolute Write, forced me to spend some time thinking about the differences between political groups, particularly those here in the US.

The political narrative in the US is between the left and the right, liberals (or progressives) and conservatives, or as I prefer to put it, the nanny state and the daddy state.

CISPA House Debate Starts Tomorrow

Author's Note: If you haven't been keeping up with CISPA, here are two earlier Tireless Agorist posts about CISPA: CISPA Keynotes Cybersecurity Week and Who's Buying CISPA and Selling Us Out?

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The ACLU is asking that you contact your representative today because tomorrow the House of Representatives will open debate tomorrow on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, including more than 40 potential amendments. The first link above includes a lookup for your representative's phone number and even a sample script for the phone call.

Have you made that phonecall yet? Don't disappoint the ACLU, Tim Berners-Lee, Ron Paul, this Tireless Aorist, and a large group of other people. Go make your call, then come back and read what those people, and others, have to say about CISPA.

Who's Buying CISPA and Selling Us Out?

Congress is currently considering CISPA – the Cyber Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act – a bill that purports to protect the United States from “cyber threats” but would in fact create a gaping loophole in all existing privacy laws. If CISPA passes, companies could vacuum up huge swaths of data on everyday Internet users and share it with the government without a court order. I oppose CISPA, and I’m calling on Congress to reject any legislation that: Uses dangerously vague language to define the breadth of data that can be shared with the government. Hands the reins of America’s cybersecurity defenses to the NSA, an agency with no transparency and little accountability. Allows data shared with the government to be used for purposes unrelated to cybersecurity. Join me in opposing this bill by posting this statement on your own page and using this online form to send a letter to Congress against CISPA.

For those who haven't yet read my previous column, here's a brief analysis from CNET. Others can skip ahead to Who's Selling Us Out?

CISPA Keynotes Cybersecurity Week

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), H.R. 3523, is Congress' most recent incarnation of the SOPA/PIPA battle that the Internet community fought and won handily in January of this year.

Congress is set to act on cybersecurity legislation that has been making its way through committees in both chambers for several years. The House is set to vote on these bills during the week of April 23, dubbed "Cybersecurity Week." The Senate will take action soon after.

The House is expected to kick off Cybersecurity week by taking up HR 3523, a bill sponsored by Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.).

The House Intelligence Committee approved the bill in a secret session held one day after the bill was introduced and without a single public hearing on the legislation.

The Rogers bill creates a sweeping "cybersecurity exception" to every single federal and state law, including key privacy laws---the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Wiretap Act, the Privacy Act—allowing private companies holding our private communications to share them with each other, with the National Security Agency (NSA), and with other intelligence and defense agencies, and all other agencies of the federal government.

...under Rogers, once your personal information is in the hands of the government, all bets are off. It can be used for any national security purpose, including to track patterns of communications to decide whether to seek authorization to wiretap you. In can be used to prosecute you for any crime, provided an intelligence agency also finds at least a significant national security or cyber security purpose for the information.

“Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.”

“Turn around,” Mr. Florence recalled being told by jail officials. “Squat and cough. Spread your cheeks.”

The New York Times informs us that the Supreme Court ruled on Monday " that officials may strip-search people arrested for any offense, however minor, before admitting them to jails even if the officials have no reason to suspect the presence of contraband."

The majority opinion was written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who declared "every detainee who will be admitted to the general population may be required to undergo a close visual inspection while undressed."

Kennedy gave three reasons to justify routine searches — detecting lice and contagious infections, looking for tattoos and other evidence of gang membership and preventing smuggling of drugs and weapons.

The opinion of the four dissenters, authored by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, declared that strip-searches improperly "subject those arrested for minor offenses to a serious affront to human dignity and to individual privacy” and should be used only when there was good reason to do so. Breyer said jailers should have a reasonable suspicion someone may be hiding something before conducting a strip-search.

In his dissent, Breyer also pointed out that inmates in the two New Jersey jails already have to submit to pat-down searches, pass through metal detectors, shower with delousing agents and have their clothing searched.

California's Broken Sex Registry

Meet Joe. Joe is a convicted sex offender. He will remain on the California Sex Offender Registry for the rest of his life. His crime? Consensual sex with the woman who is now his wife. He was convicted of statutory rape, defined as lewd and lascivious acts with a child, because he had sex with his underage girlfriend.

Her parents found out about their relationship and chose to press charges. She was just shy of 16. He was 18. After his jail term, and the three-year period when they were not allowed to see each other for fear of his reincarceration, they were married. They are still married ten years later. Joe and his wife deal with the issue every day. They've had to put a restraining order on a neighbor who was constantly harrassing him. Because registered sex offenders are not allowed to live within 2000 feet of a school or a park, even finding a place to live was extremely difficult. Joe and his wife now live in a trailer park, and Joe hasn't been able to find a stable job since he was required to register.

"We're together, we're married, he did everything he was supposed to do... and it's sad to live this way. I'm scared all the time." says Joe's wife. Having been declared a victim by the state, she is still being victimized by the state ten years later.

Emily Miller Wins Another Battle

The war is far from over, but Emily Miller has won her second battle for the Second Amendment in Washington, DC.

As I described in Shall Not Be Infringed?, the Senior Editor of The Washington Times Editorial and Opinion Pages first fought and won a four-month battle to legally possess a hand gun in the District of Columbia. I followed up with DC's Plantation-Like Gun Control, a look at the District's unequal privilege of protection between the politically-connected and the lower classes, including crime statistics and demographics, finally noting "The disadvantaged of the District are legally kept as defenseless as the slaves on Southern plantations."

Now, thanks to Emily's continuing efforts, the first steps toward sanity are on the horizon.

Hijacking the General Welfare Clause

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. - Preamble to the United States Constitution

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; - Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution

It is held as common wisdom, and even as a matter of law, that the "general welfare," as expressed in the Constitution, provides justification for the federal government to involve itself in any area of society which it so desires. Although the Supreme Court has ruled with that understanding for nearly 80 years, as with so much common wisdom, the story is much different when closely examined.

First Amendment (1791-2012) R.I.P.

Lady Liberty, in her guise as the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and specifically "the right of the people peaceably to assemble," has been dragged to the gallows by the Senate, the rope placed around her neck by the House of Representatives, and awaits only the President's signature to drop into the abyss of history.

On February 6, the Senate passed S.358 by Unanimous Consent, moving it on to the House of Representatives, where it became H.R.347.¹ On February 27, it passed the House by a vote of 388-3.

The only "no" votes were from Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.), and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). Forty-two Representatives were absent for the vote.

The bill makes it a federal offense to enter a building or grounds without permission or with the intent to disrupt a government function if "the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting" or if said area is "restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance."

Shouting and/or waving signs of protest can easily be construed as disruptive conduct.

DC's Plantation-like Gun Control

[Granting Negroes the full rights of citizenship] would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union... the full liberty... to keep and carry arms wherever they went. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856)
In my recent column Shall Not Be Infringed, I summarized the four-month ordeal that Emily Miller, the Senior Editor of The Washington Times Editorial and Opinion Pages, underwent in her efforts to legally obtain a handgun as a resident of Washington, D.C. Here's her one-sentence summary.

"Law-abiding citizens have to take a five-hour class that is only taught outside of the District, pay $465 in fees, sign six forms, pass a written test on gun laws, get fingerprinted, be subject to a police ballistics test and take days off work."

After all that, Emily ended up with permission to keep, but not bear, arms. There are no provisions for either concealed carry or open carry within the District. Its citizens must perform their jobs and conduct their daily travels defenseless; only those ordained by the establishment to keep the peace may travel armed. Of course, this includes private, licensed security firms, so the wealthy can travel fully protected by bodyguards; only those not on the top rungs of the economic ladder need be vulnerable to rampant crime.

Shall Not Be Infringed?

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.
Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
Merriam-Webster defines right as something to which one has a just claim; the power or privilege to which one is justly entitled, and defines infringe as to encroach upon in a way that violates law or the rights of another. Keep those definitions in mind. ¹

Also keep in mind that violent crime in Washington D.C. is more than three times the national average of 403.6 reported offenses per 100,000 people in 2010.

Now, on with our story.

Emily Miller is the Senior Editor of The Washington Times Editorial and Opinion Pages, and, not inconsequentially, a resident of Washington DC. On October 5^th of last year, she made the decision to legally own a handgun. On February 8^th of this year, over four months later, she finally took possession of her handgun, with the caveat that she carry it directly home and keep it there, transporting it only when she takes it out of state to practice, since there is no place in Washington where she can legally fire it.

As she explains in her February 8^th column, "The bad guys buy guns off the street in five minutes, and the city has no record of the transaction. Law-abiding citizens have to take a five-hour class that is only taught outside of the District, pay $465 in fees, sign six forms, pass a written test on gun laws, get fingerprinted, be subject to a police ballistics test and take days off work."

Uncle Sam's Clogged Arteries

There are many reasons for the listless, if not moribund, state of the US economy. Today, this Tireless Agorist would like to tackle the topic of the clogging of the arteries of commerce. I'm not referring to the continual degradation of the physical infrastructure on which commerce depends; the roadways, railbeds, waterways and airways along which products move, the systems that bring us clean water and carry away our waste, or the pipelines, electrical generation plants and transmission grid that power our industry, although that would be a good topic for a future posting. In this essay, we'll address the impact of ever-growing regulation on economic production, innovation, and competition.

The Code of Federal Regulations totaled 165,494 pages as of the end of 2010, the most recent data according to the Office of the Federal Register. This is an increase of 132% from 71,224 pages in 1975. These regulations are enforced by more than 50 agencies, and a 2005 study by the Small Business Administration found that the cost of all these rules seven years ago was more than $1.1 trillion dollars a year, more than Americans paid in federal income taxes in 2009. That figure includes only the direct burden placed on consumers. Constraints on innovation, new inventions or products that never reached the marketplace cannot possibly be measured, since they are by nature undefinable.

And note we're speaking only of federal regulations; for businesses involved in interstate commerce, there may be as many as 50 sets of state regulations they must adhere to. Nor does it stop there. Many counties and municipalities have their own sets of rules and regulations that must be strictly adhered to under the risk of financial penalties or even permission to continue operations.

You Might Be a Terrorist If...DHS Edition

Having apparently learned absolutely nothing from the Missouri Information Analysis Center fiasco of 2009, when their report "The Modern Militia Movement" leaked and stank up the blogosphere for a while, the Homeland Security Science and Technology Human Factors/Behavioral Sciences Division (now that's a great bureacracy name, isn't it?) has issued a report titled Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008.

Of course, the fact that it's 2012 doesn't speak too well as to the timeliness of the report. But give them a break, they're a massive bureaucracy, after all, and can't be expected to react to myriad threats in a timely manner.

The report is actually produced by START, otherwise known as National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, based at the University of Maryland. Aren't those government acronyms cute?

After a thorough reading I am now completely convinced that the authors were paid by the word (why else all the redundancy and round-about modes of expression?) and per scholarly cite, as well as a hefty bonus for colorful charts and graphs.

I think this report is certainly worthy of reasoned, scholarly analysis in the manner of Jeff Foxworthy, so to that I dedicate these humble efforts. Now remember, after reading each of these bullet points aloud, you should encourage those around you to join you in the chorus: "you might be a terrorist!" It will provide the most entertainment if you read it in a library, on public transportation, or beside an open window in a crowded apartment or office complex.

The Santorum Theocracy

In 1940, noted science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein's short novel "...if this goes on" was first published. The story was set in a future theocratic American society ruled by a "Prophet." The first of these "Prophets" was Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods preacher elected to the Presidency in 2012. No elections were held in 2016, the Constitution having been disposed of in the meantime.

Perhaps equating Rick Santorum with Nehemiah Scudder is a bit harsh. He's no backwoods preacher, after all. He's a big government (voted for No Child Left Behind), big spending (voted twice for Congressional pay raises, voted to increase the national debt limit five times and voted for the Bridge to Nowhere), liberal (opposed right to work legislation and repeal of Davis-Bacon, voted for the prescription drug entitlement), buddy of Wall Street (supported the airline bailouts), but he's no backwoods preacher.

Whitney Houston - Drug War Victim

It was no secret to anyone that Whitney Houston had a major drug problem. If drug abuse were treated like any other illness, family and friends would have encouraged her to check herself in for treatment and stick with the recommended regimen just as anyone faced with a life-threatening disease is prone to do, and perhaps she would have taken to heart the magnitude of her disease.

Instead, we've made criminals out of drug users, and consequently, out of addicts who are in the grip of a disease they can't fight on their own. The poor ones end up overdosed in an alley somewhere, but the rich ones earn an outlaw cache, an attitude that some have expressed as "I don't have a drug problem. I can afford all the drugs I want."

As long as we have a criminal attitude toward drugs, we're going to treat drug addicts as criminals, the rich ones will achieve outlaw status, and we're going to continue to lose people with an illness because as a society we treat them like criminals.

It's reminiscent of the early days of AIDS, when the assumption was that if you got AIDS you were engaging in illicit if not illegal behavior. The stigma that created in the minds of the public delayed serious response to the AIDS crisis and cost the world dearly. Yet today we invest drug use with the same stigma and fail to see that it's costing us much more than AIDS ever did, in sheer volume of victims alone.

RIP, Whitney. You chose the path you chose, but we failed you as a society as well. You were ill, but we invested you with outlaw chic and splashed your illness across our media, treating it as entertainment. Perhaps we should have listened when you sang.

Everybody searching for a hero
People need someone to look up to
I never found anyone to fulfill my needs
A lonely place to be
So I learned to depend on me

...and that's all I have to say about that.

If You Build It, They Will Come

If you drive a car, I'll tax the street, If you try to sit, I'll tax your seat.
If you get too cold I'll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I'll tax your feet.

Don't ask me what I want it for If you don't want to pay some more
'Cause I'm the taxman, yeah, I'm the taxman

- The Beatles -
Seven-year-old Carter King likes to fish with his dad. He likes it so much that he and his dad built a fourteen-foot wooden boat in the garage together so they could go fishing more often. Being good citizens, (or knowing they'd get nabbed by the state if they didn't have a bunch of ugly letters and numbers painted on the side) they properly registered the boat, paying the appropriate fees.

Not long after, Mr. King began receiving letters from the Tennessee Department of Revenue, informing him that because he was a boat dealer and manufacturer, he owed an additional $539 in taxes on the boat.

Of course, Mr. King assumed it was a mistake, so he contacted the auditor assigned to his case. Nope, there was no mistake. The state knew the boat was built by Carter and his dad in their garage, for their own use. Indeed, the state doubled down, warning that the family could face injunctions or misdemeanor charges if they don't pay up.

The Department of Revenue isn't talking. Requests for interviews are rejected, not only for this particular case, but about the issue in general.

When you have the guns and cuffs, own the courts and hold the keys to the jail cells, why be reasonable about $539?

Mr. King, instead of focusing on the piddling $539, should be preparing his operation for an onslaught of other government agencies, now that he's been declared a boat dealer and manufacturer.