Squashed

Three Stories about Government Overreach

First, Benghazi. As the story goes, the Obama administration tried to pass off a terrorist attack as an anti-American protest in order to secure reelection and/or coddle our enemies and/or persecute Christians. And it turns out that there’s no actual evidence for that story. So the real story is why the Obama administration hasn’t given us the evidence we demand. Or maybe the real story is the Republicans prioritization of political gamesmanship over any pretense of sound government. This is not a scandal. It’s an obnoxious distraction—and most people have figured this out at this point.

Second, the AP phone record subpoenas. Perhaps somebody else could explain this to me. It sounds like some information leaked that was both extremely newsworthy and extremely sensitive for legitimate national security reasons. There was an investigation into the leak—and I don’t think anybody disputes that a leak of that type was worth investigating it. Holder recused himself from the investigation. AP and the press are angry that they were drawn into the investigation and feel that they should get extra protections. (It’s not an unreasonable request). And the Obama administration is now asking for a press shield law to provide the extra protections. I don’t believe there is any allegation that any laws were broken. Nor do I think anybody is even claiming an attempt to intimidate or harass the press. I see a controversy—but not a scandal.

Of course, it’s also a story about percieved encroachments on press freedom … so there are some reporters who are really into it. I get that. And I’m not trying to say that the entire media is composed of entitled whiners. At least, I’m not trying to say it expressly.

Third, the IRS flap. Okay. This one was bad. And as more details emerge, it’s starting to look like at least a couple IRS employees may have had a political agenda. And there’s a good story in here for any libertarian seeking an anecdote about public officials abusing power.

The Republicans want answers. They expect people to be fired. They want criminal prosecution. On Wednesday, John Boehner asked who was going to go to jail over this scandal.

Except … the Justice Department had announced a criminal probe in the matter on Tuesday. The acting head of the IRS has already been asked to resign—not because he personally targetted the groups, not because he directed people to target them, not because the targetting happened on his watch, but because he knew that the targetting and didn’t immediately blow the whistle. So this looks like a case of something bad happened on Obama’s watch and he brought the hammer down before the Republicans could even get their talking points together. This is a scandal—but I don’t think it’s the Obama Administration’s scandal.

So … right. The new narrative is that these three stories are some kind of perfect storm of scandals that is going to plague Obama’s entire second term and relegate his Presidential library to the log next to the sewage treatment plant. I don’t buy it. I count one Republican fabrication, one fight over the balance between press access and national security, and one legitimate scandal in a politically isolated agency that Obama has aggressively responded to.

Of course, there is a real scandal. This whole sequestration thing. Cuts in programs are okay … until they start annoying wealthy people. So the Federal Aviation Administration cuts get reversed. But massive cuts in emergency unemployment benefits have gone largely without comment.

Persecution, Persecution Complexes, and the Press

Some phone records of the AP were subpoenaed in response to a massive intelligence leak. The AP has highlighted concerns that it might chill future sources from turning information over to the press. Of course, since this involved the illegal leak of a highly classified information, perhaps chilling that sort of leak is the entire point of the investigation (and whatever prosecution follows).

This is all something to be concerned about. But … be wary of systemic bias when reading about press reports. If the press is reporting that the press is angry, its probably not a neutral arbiter of how you should interpret that information.

Or, to put it differently, if I published classified information on my blog, I would expect some type of inquiry into how exactly I got that information. That inquiry might include subpoenas. It might involve everything you would expect a potentially criminal breach of national security would involve. And if I said, “Hold on. Leave me out of this. I’m, um, a journalist,” everybody would laugh at me. Especially the AP. Because I’m a guy with a blog, not a journalist.

The real question is what level of special deference old media journalism is entitled to beyond what everybody is entitled to as freedom of speech.

Targeting the Tea Party

On one hand, targeting Tea Party groups for extra scrutiny looks like a massively and systemically unfair abuse of power by the IRS.

That said, it’s important to keep this in context. Additional scrutiny was given to “various local organizations in the Tea Party movement…applying for exemption under 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4).” A 501(c)(3) organization is a charity of the traditional sense that cannot support political candidates and gets massive tax benefits. So if a Tea Party group is applying for 501(c)(3) status, extra scrutiny is warranted. The only problem would be if left-leaning groups were routinely let through.

There has been an explosion of 501(c)(4) groups—which allow all sorts of dark money into politics. While they are nominally supporting “issues,” some of them are pushing even the relatively lax legal boundaries. And, yes, most of the new ones were conservative groups last time around. Additional scrutiny can both makes sures the laws are upheld from the beginning and prevents people from the facing the extremely unpleasant consequences of inadvertently breaking them.

This is worth investigating—but I suspect that the findings should be relatively benign. Somebody was trying to save time by a clumsy, albeit impermissibly partisan, shortcut. As a matter of accountability, it’s important to take this sort of thing seriously. Of course, insisting that there is a corruption scandal regardless of what the investigation shows is another way of not taking the investigation seriously.

Am I a conspiracy theorist to speculate whether Israel’s strike in Syria was linked to the U.S.’s claim that Assad’s regime had used chemical weapons?

I don’t know how things work—it just strikes me that agreeing to provide diplomatic shelter for a serious attack by Israel on Syria strikes a calculated middle ground between military intervention and doing nothing.

Trading Privacy

In the esteemed words of the founding fathers, whomesoever tradeth privacy for security deserveth not a pot to piss in. Or something like that. I’m paraphrasing. The point being that all good denizens of the Internet know that that the occasional terrorist attack is a crummy reason to go around tapping phones, snooping into library records, putting nudiscanners in all the airports, peeking into emails, or archiving that browser history that you thought you’d diligently deleted. I agree with all this.

But what if giving up a bit of privacy could create a more functional social safety net? OUr national anti-poverty efforts is a study in benevolent bureaucracy. By the time you navigate one lengthy and intimidating process to get help, the problem is two or three times worse than it was. Half of the problem is gathering information. What is your income? What is your medical history? Employment status? Family status? Immigration status? Do you have any assets? Are they exempt? Are we in Florida where we need to drug test you as punishment for being poor?

It could be done differently. It could be that if you lose your job on Thursday, by Monday you’re recieving unemployment. You could automatically start recieving SNAP, WIC, Medicaid, or whatever else you’re eligible to recieve. The utility companies (or even mortgage lenders) could get a heads up that the next payment might be a bit dicey and slot you into whatever program you might be eligible for. You could concentrate on getting your life together rather than on navigating unfamiliar agencies.

Except … it requires a certain loss of privacy. Is that a trade worth considering?

Dzokhar Tsarnaev and the Public Safety Exception (for people don’t want to be lawyers)

In the United States, you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself. You have a right to remain silent. This right isn’t worth much unless you know that you have the right to remain silent. So when you’re arrested, you’re supposed to be “read your rights,” “given your Miranda warnings,” or just “Mirandized”. You see this in cop shows.

The one exception is the “Public Safety Exception.” The police don’t need to read you your rights immediately if there is an imminent threat to public safety. For example, the police might ask, “What’s the code to deactivate this time bomb?” without mentioning to you that if you admit to knowing the code it could be used against you in court. The police can ask some brief questions about a public safety concern. Then the police need to read you your Miranda rights.

In the case of Dzokhar Tsarnaev, it is reasonable to ask a few questions about whether there are other bombs or other accomplices. Except the Department of Justice official said, “We plan to invoke the public safety exception to Miranda in order to question the suspect extensively about other potential explosive devices or accomplices and to gain critical intelligence.” The Public Safety Exception does not permit “extensive” interrogation. Maybe the Department of Justice is trying to look tough on terror. Posturing is unseemly, but okay. But the Department of Justice should not set a precedent of gutting constitutional protections as part of its posturing.

For the lawyers, law students, and people who have patience for lawyers and law students, LettersToMyCountry has a much more detailed explanation here.

It’s Mid-April Again…

Which means a weekend spent wrestling with tax forms. At this point, I’m pretty sure there would be an easier way to do this than the pen, calculator, and postage stamp method. But I enjoy the limited insight into our tax system that this method offers.

For example, why don’t we tax capital gains in the same way we tax earned income? (I mean, aside from the obvious bit about how it lets rich people pay fewer taxes.) And if we’re really pretending that there’s something that should be incentivized with “at risk” capital, why don’t we give the same reverence to unearned income at the lower end of the income spectrum? We keep it real there. Are you receiving unearned income while on SSI? Bam. Benefits gone. Want to claim an EITC for it? You’re joking, right? Preferential treatment of unearned income is only for rich people.