Enforcing The Law Is NOT 'Extreme'
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2024-07-11 07:22 by Karl Denninger
in Editorial , 362 references Ignore this thread
Enforcing The Law Is NOT 'Extreme' *
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Have a look at this tweet:

htps://x.com/HalSnarr/status/1805571973612716109

Humphrey–Hawkins Full Employment Law stipulates that inflation should be 0% but the @federalreserve has set its inflation target at 2%.

Humphrey-Hawkins was passed in 1978.  It amended The Federal Reserve Act to require semi-annual reports to Congress and explicitly calls out stable prices as part of The Fed's mandate.

Stable is not 2% inflation, it is zero inflation.  That is the legal mandate passed into law by Congress more than four decades ago.

Not only has it never been enforced The Fed explicitly brags that it intentionally violates said law each and every time they release a statement and have a press conference in which they tout their "intent" to target 2% inflation.  They literally have stuck the middle finger up in the face of the American people and Congress at every single meeting and press conference in the modern era without a single scintilla of punishment being leveled against any of the Fed Governors or the chair.

When I was on the Florida EC for the Libertarian Party we had a state party chairman who was very upset with the "Real ID" law.  He went on the radio and literally told everyone he considered the law unconstitutional and essentially dared the cops to cite him for refusing to renew his driver license.  While it is certainly true that many people drive without a license and if you're never stopped and checked you probably won't get caught announcing in public your intent to break the law usually draws a response.  It did, the local gendarme laid in wait for and stopped him with him ultimately abandoning his challenge (I presume he paid the fine and other costs associated) rather than appeal when he lost the original attempt in court.  (At the time I advised that I believed the argument he was raising to be fatally-flawed in that once you cede that driving is a privilege then the government has a reasonable argument in the necessity of forcing you to prove your identity but in fact there was a clear argument and case law that licensing drivers of non-commercial vehicles used for personal purpose was unconstitutional on its face as personal travel via means and methods common to people in a given time is in fact a protected right.  The case law establishing this was old but had stood unchallenged since but he decided to go the other way with his line of argument and lost.  Oh well.)

Note the difference; one is a law that might impact one or two people other than yourself if you, as an unlicensed driver, cause a wreck.  The other screws 99% of the public each and every day, with absolute certainty, with only a handful of people at the top of corporations and other "important" folks getting the benefits while you get hosed.  One was and is punished, the other ignored.

The recent Supreme Court decision to dismiss a lawsuit by state AGs over the Biden administration censorship drive during Covid, claiming that the states lacked standing, may be technically correct.  Standing has long held that individual and particularized injury and its connection to the conduct sued over (that is, the party sued must have done it) must be shown.  This isn't a new thing; it in fact underlies basically all of civil law.  If you fail there the actual conduct is never addressed because you haven't proved the entity you sued was the cause of the insult.  We can argue whether such should be an absolute requirement or not when it comes to the Constitution or whether, in the context of the government, intent is the point.  I'd argue it should be but that's not only not the world we live in today its not a recent change either.  This belies the limits of "sue sue sue" when it comes to going after the government, where injunctive relief (e.g. "stop doing that") rather than money (which is usually the goal of a lawsuit) is the point.  This decision ought to underline the limits of suing and make clear that other means of redress, which the courts can neither enforce OR ENJOIN, are the ONLY way you will get results in such cases.

Similarly enforcing 8 USC 1324 against all who aid, harbor or employ illegal immigrants will end illegal immigration and force those who are here to leave with those outcomes beginning in literally one day.  Within a very short period of time -- weeks to months -- there will be no illegal immigration or problem with it other than those who come with the express intent to break the law and those people we can easily deal with since by definition that's all who will be left.  Why?  Because nobody is going to do 10 years in federal prison to assuage their "feelings" about illegal immigrants or to assist them. Not one farmer will spend 10 years in the pokey so he can have cheaper labor, nor will one roofing company.  They'll either hire Americans or legal immigrants because the alternative is that they do 10 years in the Graybar Motel and their business is destroyed. Likewise every US based entity or person of a foreign entity who is here in the US will stop aiding these people with clothing, food and shelter because none of them are going to willing do 10 years in the slammer either, nor will they risk that becoming a life sentence if they choose poorly on who they help and that person kills an American.  These penalties, by the way, have been on the books since the 1950s and as such enforcement is all that is required to absolutely resolve the illegal immigration problem and remove every person who is here illegally as virtually all will, if this occurs, leave on their own.  Doing this would also instantly resolve the housing cost problem because it will put five years worth of housing supply into the market immediately.

Finally, enforcing 15 USC Chapter 1 will absolutely resolve the entire budget problem within months.  Why?  Because CMS, Medicare and Medicaid, are the entire problem and its not just a federal issue either as Medicaid is partially state-funded so the impact reaches into State budgets as well.  If you enforce that law then all disparate pricing between consumers of like kind and quantity and all insurance schemes that lead to 2x, 5x, 10x or more discrepancies in pricing and paid costs for one person .vs. another including drugs that are sold across national boundaries and are priced in some cases at 100x the price in other nations here in the US ends in an afternoon because all of it is illegal under that law and for those who claim there's an exemption due to insurance no there's not as that was decided in the late 1970s and early 1980s at the Supreme Court, twice in both Royal Drug and Maricopa County.  For those medical entities that have been buying up practices and then "consolidating" them, resulting in constrained supply and higher prices it will be reversed in one day because if they don't everyone involved, including the physicians themselves, does 10 years in the slammer.  The cost of medical care, all-in, will drop by 80% and the budget deficit will, as a result, be nearly zero.  (Yes, it will also be true that some "new and marvelous" things won't be offered unless you're very wealthy; but let's be frank here: The facts are that in nearly every case they don't work all that well in the first place and, if they do when the patent(s) expire they'll be cheap and available to everyone by which time there will be enough evidence to prove that.)

Now how about if we were to enforce the point of Hal's complaint, that is, that black-letter law requires The Fed to set policy that targets zero inflation and demand they unwind their abuses of the last, oh, 25 years?  What would that do?

Well, for one thing it would collapse all the various asset-stripping schemes at both the state and federal levels run by private parties.  If you couldn't get a cheap car loan or capitalize a cheap lease cars would have to dramatically come down in price which means all the expensive nanny crap would have to be an option that 1 or 2% of the population who could afford to pay for them in cash would have.  In fact that might not be enough market share for anyone but Porsche, for example, to offer it at all.  The price for the rest of us would plummet because we'd take a literal $5,000 off the price of a car simply by going back to halogen headlights and ordinary tail-lamp bulbs instead of $1,000 for each of the four assemblies!

All of the "roll-up" schemes in various parts of the economy such as AirBNB, PE buying up veterinary practices and housing along with the insane ramp in the cost of college (all caused by constraining supply and being able to wildly increase prices due to uneconomic "financing") would become instantly uneconomic, loss-making acts and thus would stop.  Prices would go back to where the market clears them in all those areas of business along with many moreThose who have feasted on these schemes would be damaged or even bankrupted but you, the common consumer, would no longer pay 3x as much for Fido to get his annual inspection at the vet and the peddling of "add-ons" you don't really need but are sold as "required" would cease.  So would the entire justification for so-called "pet health insurance" which is being driven by this illegal collusive practice.  Your kid's college education would cost one fifth of what it now costs and so would your doctor, hospital bills and medications, all of which you could buy for cash.  If you needed or wanted a house it would be one third of today's price as well and if you already own one no, you don't get "screwed" because while your current one is 1/3rd of its present value so is the new one when you move.  The younger generation, which currently does not own one, can buy and thus they can form families and between all this they can also afford to have and raise children.  All of this is wildly good for the vast majority but yes, it does force those who have been screwing you for decades to eat a big steaming pile of shit and will bankrupt many of them.

Contemplate this tweet for a minute or two that I aimed at Thomas Massie:

htps://x.com/tickerguy/status/1805942742024933850

So when do you demand that if the government wishes to continue to operate it actually enforce laws against everyone equally? You know, like 8 USC 1324 (ends illegal immigration in an hour) and 15 USC Ch 1 (ends the budget problem in a week.) Never, right Thomas?

Do remember that Obama famously said when he signed the DACA E/O that he knew what he was doing was illegal as there was no governing law to permit it and Congress would have never passed it, which is why he didn't go that route.  His justification was that the number of people would be large enough that nobody would impose the penalty of deportation on them down the road.  Biden got told by the Supreme Court that he had no authority to force the taxpayer to eat college loans and he has now ignored that ruling and did it again anyway with the expectation that telling a couple million people that "oh, that notice you got that your debt was canceled - it was illegal and you still owe the money, pay up!" would generate such an outrage that nobody will do it, even though the act was blatantly against settled law. This equivalent to saying that because lots of gang-bangers shoot people in Chicago we won't bother enforcing the law against murder by gun in Chicago as we'd have to jail too many people and throwing them all in jail would generate outrage!

Once that sort of decision is taken by the government on a serial basis and neither the DOJ or Congress will put a stop to it how do you change it as a citizen?

You can't vote to change this because, as you can plainly see, we've tried that for decades and no matter who we elect, even those claiming to be "absolutely conservative" don't do anything other than fund-raise on it and then screw you themselves.  Note that Congress can always stop any agency from refusing to act in accordance with law by zeroing their appropriation and thus shutting them down, forcing all their employees to go unpaid until they comply and preventing them from doing literally anything including turning on the lights in their buildings.  There is no means within our Constitutional system for such an act of enforcement to be overridden yet Congress NEVER does it.

The government, in these cases, has told you in advance they don't believe they can take a given action by changing the law or they'd have done that and yet here we are four, five even ten decades later and the law has not been changed or repealed.  Therefore they know, by definition, that there is no stomach in the population nor among their colleagues to repeal or change said law.

Such rampant and malicious lawlessness has no answer within the boundaries of being "nice" nor is there a political answer any more than you can solve a problem with drug gangs shooting up neighborhoods by asking them nicely to stop -- or voting.

If there was never an arrest, by policy, of someone robbing a bank the only reasonable and immediately-effective way your local bank could defend against being robbed would be to shoot the first person who comes in the door and tries it.  If the cops unwisely attempt to detain the person who shoots the robber you make clear that the price of doing that is the cop will get shot too and his or her house will be burnt. The first time around robbers and DAs might not take that too seriously (especially when you've made a lot of noise for 50 years but never followed through) but after a few dead bodies minus the back half of their heads are dragged out onto the hot summer sidewalk to rot, and a plastic sheet is placed over the carpet in the bank to make cleanup easy so anyone in the vicinity knows what the price of trying to rob the bank is word would get around and your bank would not be robbed.  Soon public outrage would get to the point that the government would have to lock up bank robbers in accordance with said long-standing law because every other bank would start arming their tellers and inviting armed citizens into the bank to stand guard, since if they didn't they'd get robbed instead of yours and the ones that did so wouldn't, never mind the mess on the sidewalk and outrage not acting to stop it would generate for the local cops and DA.  You might get a few municipalities that would try to stop the dead-robber parade by arresting a teller but after the first two cops got added to the pile of bodies along with two smoking holes where their homes stood that strategy would be abandoned since there are always far more citizens than cops.

You might not like facts but it is a fact that the only way to stop someone intent on robbery, rape, murder or for that matter any other crime is to either instill in said person a legitimate fear of punishment that is both severe and certain enough that they judge the crime to not be worth the punishment risk and severity and, for those who are psychotic and don't care about being punished (yes, there are people who are that insane) stop them using whatever force is necessary, including permanently disabling their CPU, as soon as their intent and the fact that they don't give a crap if you jail them and will commit the offense anyway becomes clear.

Well?

Does this means there's no other option than violence?  Not at all.  There is another option I have advocated for years and as I pointed out up top there's no way for the courts to either reverse or enjoin it either.  You can eject anyone who is involved in, benefits from or promotes the conditions that lead to these problems from polite society.  Yeah, that includes your kids, your parents, your so-called friends and others.  If they got a "college loan" forgiveness slam the door in their face.  If they work in the medical system and take insurance at their employer write 'em out of your will and slam the door in their face and so on.  If you openly and freely associate with those who support or even worse are involved in or benefit from repeatedly fucking you in the ass you have little room to complain when your butthole is full of bleeding hemorrhoids.

You do not have to follow the Supreme Court's rules on "standing"; if someone is contributing to your buttfucking in a diffuse and indistinct manner, but clearly is involved in the various rackets and abusive schemes since association is a voluntary act you can choose not to, and, I remind you, you don't have to be quiet about it either.  Blackball them in all respects, blackball their family members and yes, this includes their children.  It is their choice to screw you so why would you associate with someone who has clearly demonstrated that they hate you and wish to, will and have, repeatedly screw you?

The only difference between sex and rape is consent and since petitioning our government has proved to be of no use our choices are to either re-instill the fear of consequence in all involved in these unlawful schemes and those in the various organs of government who deliberately stand aside despite long-standing laws and thus directly enable and in fact both solicit and profit from such conduct or accept that we are consenting and thus there is no offense to be pissed off about in the first place since you can't rape, rob or murder those consenting to said event.

Which shall it be, America?

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