There's Nothing More Frightening Than Rule By The "Smart"

Just a few short days ago I was pointing out that if you consider who some of the "smartest" people are (as measured by top credentials from top universities), you will quickly realize that allowing such people to have significant political power is "very frightening."  As a couple of examples, I used late 1970s top MIT Economics Ph.D.s Paul Krugman and Olivier Blanchard, who have used their credentials and their respective perches at Princeton/NYT and MIT/IMF to perpetrate on the world every kind of economic fallacy to justify expansion of government,  to undermine world economic performance, and to keep the people in check.

And now in this weekend's Wall Street Journal we find the prime real estate in the Review section given over to one Kenneth Rogoff for a lengthy piece advocating that the governments of the world phase out the use of cash.  The title of the article is "The Sinister Side of Cash."  It seems that Rogoff is just out with a new book ("The Curse of Cash"), and this big article gives him the chance to peddle it.

Who is this guy Rogoff?  You've already guessed correctly:  he is yet another contemporary of Krugman and Blanchard in the MIT Economics Ph.D. program of the late 70s.  (Rogoff actually took a year off -- to play chess! -- and got his Ph.D. in 1980.)  He's also a big-time professor of economics at Harvard.  And also one of Blanchard's predecessors as Chief Economist of the IMF.  Hard to be more of a genius than that, right?

And of course, what geniuses like Rogoff know more than anything is that their great genius gives them the ability to envision a far more perfect world than this imperfect thing we've been suffering with so far.  Naturally the visions of these geniuses are all variations of the same thing, namely some kind of government program to more closely monitor and/or control the people.  The geniuses know that there is no downside in such programs, first because the programs have been designed by themselves, and second because government programs are administered by all-knowing and perfect government functionaries, who are people like us and can always be trusted to do the right thing.

So what is the reason given to phase out the use of cash?  It's that the government money laundering laws, introduced in 1970 and tightened multiple times since, just haven't succeeded like they were supposed to in wiping out all crime involving money.  Now we learn that it wasn't the "laundering" of the money that was allowing crime to flourish, but the very existence of money in the form of cash:

There is little debate among law-enforcement agencies that paper currency, especially large notes such as the U.S. $100 bill, facilitates crime: racketeering, extortion, money laundering, drug and human trafficking, the corruption of public officials, not to mention terrorism. . . .  Cash is also deeply implicated in tax evasion, which costs the federal government some $500 billion a year in revenue.

I have previously covered the subject of criminalizing money laundering in two posts, The Joke Of Criminalizing Money Laundering (June 2015) and The Joke Of Criminalizing Money Laundering -- Part II (April 2016).  The short version is that the money laundering laws -- principally the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970, and amendments to same in the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 -- were supposed to stamp out crime involving large amounts of money through deputizing the banks to spy on their customers 24/7 behind their backs and thereby enabling the authorities to "follow the money" to track down the crooks.  Forty-six years in, at a cost of massive expense to financial institutions and equally massive loss of freedom and privacy to the people, the government hasn't made the slightest dent in the big-money crimes (the biggest of which are the illegal drug trade and illegal gambling).  Indeed, it seems that a brand new heroin epidemic is exploding right now beneath their very noses.  Meanwhile they regularly prosecute banks and other financial institutions for failing at the impossible task of figuring out which of their customers are crooks, and they periodically prosecute some poor slob who had the temerity to use cash in large amounts for an otherwise perfectly legal purpose without reporting it to them (famous example: Denny Hastert).  And they cynically use the cry of "terrorism" (see, e.g., Rogoff quote above) to justify continuing and expanding the money laundering laws, as if those laws could be of any use catching terrorists (whose activities involve relatively small amounts of money) when they are useless in catching big drug dealers (whose activities involve much larger amounts of money).

And of course the answer of the geniuses like Rogoff to total government failure is always the same: double down!  We can finally succeed in stamping out this financial crime thing if only we hand over to the government yet more massive new powers, here the ability to track and trace everything the people do 24/7, down to the the smallest transaction.  (OK, in the article Rogoff says he would be willing to allow the continued existence of bills of $10 and smaller.  Thanks, Ken!)  All behind their backs, of course.  

To anyone with the slightest understanding of human nature and incentives, the results of Rogoff's program are completely predictable.  The professional criminals involved in big-time financial crime will find a substitute for cash.  Maybe it's Bitcoin.  Maybe it's another crypto-currency.  Maybe it's some other currency than dollars.  Maybe it's gold.  Maybe it's existing dollar bills in circulation (which could gradually become more valuable as they become scarcer over time.)  Maybe it's all of the above.  The big-time crooks have the need and the time to find the substitute.  You do not.  So the government gains absolutely nothing against the big-time crooks, but gets the ability to track and trace everything the regular people do.

So is your thought, so what?  What do I have to worry about if the government gets my monthly credit and debit card statements?  I'm law abiding!  That's what you think.  There are said to be over 4000 federal crimes alone (nobody has an exact count!).  Criminal defense attorney Harvey Silverqlate has a book titled "Three Felonies a Day," the title reflecting the number of crimes you are likely committing on a regular basis without knowing it.  For a small sampling of crimes that you may be committing, see this article "8 Ways We Regularly Commit Felonies Without Realizing It."    

Government flunkies would never do something so evil as flyspecking the financial records of their political opponents to find something to prosecute, would they?  Really, you owe it to yourself to pay attention to this issue -- and to use cash everywhere you possibly can.

The Joke Of Criminalizing Money Laundering -- Part II

Who was it who first came up with the bright idea that if we just criminalize something called "money laundering," and make all the banks involuntary deputies of law enforcement, spying on their customers behind their backs 24/7, we can put a stop to all the nefarious criminality and perfect the world?  The game started with the disgusting Bank Secrecy Act back in 1970, and moved to a new level with the USA PATRIOT Act in 2001.  Today, banks in the U.S. file close to 2 million annual "Suspicious Activity Reports" on their customers.  Did they file one (or a hundred) on you?  You don't know, because they're not allowed to tell you. 

Did you notice that along the way the law enforcement authorities have achieved victory in the drug war?  Yeah, neither did I.  And drug dealing at least involves substantial amounts of real money.  Nobody can even give a coherent explanation of how a money laundering regime that can't make a dent in the multi-billion dollar drug business is supposed to stamp out terrorism, which generally does not involve any substantial amounts of real money.  In this post last June I called criminalization of "money laundering" a "joke" and "an exercise in total futility."  Of course, it may not seem like a joke to people like former House Speaker Denny Hastert, who found himself prosecuted for "money laundering" for engaging in the distasteful but otherwise perfectly legal activity of paying blackmail.  And then there are the banks, who have paid, in the aggregate, in excess of $20 billion in fines over the past decade for supposedly violating anti-money-laundering regulations.  For example, HSBC paid a fine in excess of $1.9 billion in 2012, said to arise mainly out of dealings in Mexico.  (You mean they have drug dealers down there?  Who knew?)

Bringing us up to date on the activities of our genius government, the Wall Street Journal yesterday helpfully carried a front-page article headlined "U.S. Terror-Finance Rules Drive Money Underground."   And guess what?  It seems that after paying the 20 or so billion, the banks have decided that it pays not to take chances, and they have moved to declining to do business with any potential customer who looks the least bit sketchy.  

U.S. banks have closed thousands of accounts held by people and organizations considered suspicious, high-risk or difficult to monitor—including money-transfer firms, foreign banks and nonprofits working abroad. Closing accounts for fear their customers may be up to no good evicts from the financial system the innocent as well as those the U.S. government would most like to watch, a consequence not anticipated by Washington.  Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry this month acknowledged the potential danger. “Transactions that would have taken place legally and transparently may be driven underground,” he told an international conference of bankers and regulators in Washington.  

Really, who could have guessed that such a thing might happen?

The Journal reporter then tracks the activities of one Abdi Warsame, a Somali native who works for a Midwestern money-transfer company.  Seems that the company has been shut out of the banking system.  No problem!  Warsame neatly stacks and wraps some tens of thousands in mid- to high-denomination dollar bills, packs them into his luggage, and flies off to Dubai.  Along the way, he files all the appropriate forms with the U.S. and Dubai authorities and goes through all the security and customs checks.  Upon his arrival in Dubai, the money disappears into the underground system.  Congratulations to our genius government functionaries!  Really, where did they think this was going?

But don't worry -- as reported here just a few days ago, the government geniuses already have the new plan at the ready, namely the abolition of cash.  Yeah, that'll work!  It's like they have never heard of Bitcoin.  Or then there's my favorite, gold.  At the current price of about $1250, $1 million in gold weighs about 50 pounds -- not so much more than $1 million in hundred dollar bills (which weighs about 20 pounds).  OK, it's a little awkward, but still not so much that you can't get it into your carry-on bag for the flight to Dubai. 

Just Think How Neat And Orderly Everything Will Be Once Government Functionaries Can Monitor Everything

Really, it's disgusting how people keep messing up, when left to their own devices and without minute-by-minute guidance and monitoring by perfect and all-knowing government functionaries.  But don't worry, the technology for government to monitor everybody and everything all the time marches forward at an ever-accelerating pace.  Can it be long before the curse of human imperfection has been eliminated?

For example, consider cash.  Can you believe that the government to this day still allows people to conduct economic transactions using this untraceable and unreportable medium?  And the next thing you know, people use it buy and sell illegal substances like drugs, to gamble, to pay employees "off the books," to avoid taxes, and God knows what!  Get rid of it, and immediately everything will be neat, orderly, and in accordance with government-prescribed perfection.  Or at least that is the universal view of the government functionary.  Serious proposals are circulating right now to get rid of high denomination bills (like the $100 in the U.S.) as a step toward perfecting society.  And after the $100, why not just get rid of cash entirely?  Megan McArdle covers this subject in a column at Bloomberg View (that also ran in the New York Post):

The Bank of Korea is planning for a cashless society by 2020. Swedes are making the shift. I am intrigued but also troubled.  There’s a lot to like about the idea of a cashless society, starting with its effect on crime. The payoff to mugging people or snatching their bags has already declined dramatically, simply because fewer and fewer people are carrying cash around. I myself almost never have any of the stuff on hand. . . .  A cashless society would also see a decline in the next level of robberies: stickups of retail outlets. . . .   One step beyond that, there’s the effect on criminal enterprises, for whom cash is key. Making it impossible to transact business while keeping large amounts of money away from the watchful eye of the government will make it much harder to run an illegal operation.

What could possibly go wrong?  Well, for starters, could the perfect all-knowing government ever make a "mistake"?  McArdle:

When I was just starting out as a journalist, the State of New York swooped down and seized all the money out of one of my bank accounts. It turned out -- much later, after a series of telephone calls -- that they had lost my tax return for the year that I had resided in both Illinois and New York, discovered income on my federal tax return that had not appeared on my New York State tax return, sent some letters to that effect to an old address I hadn’t lived at for some time, and neatly lifted all the money out of my bank. . . .  Unmonitored resources like cash create opportunities for criminals. But they also create a sort of cushion between ordinary people and a government with extraordinary powers. Removing that cushion leaves people who aren’t criminals vulnerable to intrusion into every remote corner of their lives.

I would say that that kind of "mistake" is the least of our worries about the government.  What if the government itself is a pervasive criminal enterprise?

Anyway, don't get the idea that monetary transactions are the only thing that the government is planning to monitor.  On Tuesday (the Ides of March) the New York Times reported on a new New York State program, taking effect March 27, under which all prescriptions for pharmaceuticals are now required to go through a state-monitored computer system.  No more paper allowed!

Starting on March 27, the way prescriptions are written in New York State will change. Gone will be doctors’ prescription pads and famously bad handwriting. In their place: pointing and clicking, as prescriptions are created electronically and zapped straight to pharmacies in all but the most exceptional circumstances.  New York is the first state to require that all prescriptions be created electronically and to back up that mandate with penalties, including fines and imprisonment, for physicians who fail to comply.

The stated reason for this is to try to crack down on abuse of prescription opioid painkillers, which have caused increasing numbers of deaths in recent years.  But if that's the reason, why don't they just monitor those prescriptions, and stay away from the millions of prescriptions for medications against things ranging from diabetes to high blood pressure to cholesterol? And the answer is, they take the opportunity to monitor everybody for everything because they can.  Who's going to stop them?  And anyway, the only people with access to the information are going to be the perfect, all-knowing, a-political, expert state functionaries.  So what's to worry about?  (For now, there appears to be an exception to New York's new law for prescriptions that are to be filled out of state.  I guess I'll take advantage of that one.)

In other news, this time from Denver, Colorado, it seems that after several complaints were received, an independent monitor conducted a review of use of the supposedly confidential National Crime Information Center and Colorado Crime Information Center databases by the Denver Police Department, and promptly uncovered several dozens of instances of improper use.  David Kravets at Ars Technica has the story here.  Example: a policeman, on behalf of a friend who suspected his wife of having an affair, provided information to enable the friend to find and stalk the wife's suspected lover.  Or how about this:

[A] female hospital employee spoke with a DPD officer who was at the hospital to investigate a reported sexual assault. The female employee was not involved in the investigation, but the officer made ‘‘small talk’’ with her after his interview of the sexual assault victim. At the end of her shift, the female employee returned home and found a voicemail message from the officer on her personal phone. She had not given the officer her phone number, and was upset that he had obtained it. . . .  During an investigation into the incident, records revealed that the officer had, in fact, used the NCIC/CCIC database (and other DPD databases) to obtain her phone number. . . .

If you're wondering why you don't read about this kind of thing very often, Kravets points out that this review was only conducted in response to a series of specific complaints, and that there is no ongoing routine monitoring of police use of the databases.  Oh, and no police officer who committed misconduct was fired or received any cut in pay or any other meaningful punishment; the worst was a "reprimand."  Hey, the cops are the good guys!  Why should we worry about them doing anything wrong?  I mean, it's not like some government bureaucracy (like say, the IRS) might ever use this accumulating government information to disadvantage political opponents of those in power.  Right?

UPDATE, March 19:  Jeb Kinnison has a post that reminds us of what has to be the largest government corruption of all time, namely the fake prosecutions of banks for alleged wrongdoing in connection with the recent financial crisis -- raising in excess of $100 billion outside of the congressional appropriation process -- and the use of much of those proceeds to give to organizations supportive of the government's side of the political divide.  La Raza, National Urban League, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Neighbor Works America, etc., etc., etc.  He doesn't have a precise figure for how much of the $100+ biillion went to such organizations, but even if it's a relatively small fraction, it could easily equal or exceed all actual bribery that has occurred since our Republic was founded.  All administered by the Department of "Justice," of course -- the very people who get to decide who gets prosecuted for what in this country.  Don't worry, they won't be.  

The Most Insidious Area Of Government Regulation

OK that title sets me a high bar of insidiousness, but I have a very strong nominee: the regulation -- and criminalization -- of so-called "money laundering."  In an article back in December 2012 where I described government money-laundering regulation as "the next big shakedown," I had this to say:

We have allowed the government to deputize the banks to spy on us all 24/7 behind our backs to enable an exercise in total futility.

Few non-specialists pay much attention to money laundering regulation because it takes place behind your back and they don't tell you they are doing it.  Hey, that's what makes it insidious!  Those who give it a small amount of thought tend to think, if you want to get the crooks, it probably makes sense to "follow the money."  Why wouldn't that work?

Like many areas of insidious government regulation, the money laundering thing does not have a long history, and basically began with the badly mis-named Bank Secrecy Act of 1970.  By the time USA PATRIOT Act passed in 2001 the banks (and other financial entities broadly defined -- they even tried to make this apply to lawyers, but the D.C. Circuit shot that down) had become involuntary law enforcement deputies, required to report to the authorities any "suspicious" acts of their customers, whatever that may mean.

So surely, if this gigantic invasion of our privacy and autonomy worked at all, crime involving money should more or less be stamped out by now?  The reality could not be farther from that.  Charles Kenny has an article at Bloomberg News on February 23, titled "Why the World Is So Bad at Tracking Dirty Money."  Some statistics please:

Michael Levi of Cardiff University and Peter Reuter of the University of Maryland have studied the global anti-money-laundering system (PDF) and conclude that it has helped facilitate some criminal investigations and prosecutions. But at best, it snares just a fraction of 1 percent of criminal income flows. A lower-end estimate for global laundering transactions is 2 percent of global gross domestic product—or about $1.5 trillion. Global money laundering convictions involve at the most hundreds of millions. In the U.S., a generous estimate of seizures would amount to a mere 0.2 percent of all laundered funds.

The Levi/Reuter study cited there is from 2006, but Kenny also cites updated research to the same effect.  And how about the particular effectiveness of money-laundering regulation in the war against terrorism?

A system that misses all but a fraction of a percent of criminal financial flows is almost guaranteed to miss terrorism finance in particular, which involves very small sums: The Madrid and London terror bombings cost no more than $10,000 to finance; the Sept. 11 attacks, less than $500,000.

And exactly how many anti-terrorism prosecutions have come from anti-money laundering regulation?   Kenny's answer:  "None."  OK, I can't vouch for the thoroughness of his research, but I've also done some looking around, and I also cannot find a single one.  For this we have deputized the banks to spy on everyone behind their backs all the time?  And the cost:

Though the regulations have limited impact on criminal activities, they still cost money. Tracking illicit money flows requires a considerable bureaucracy. Enforcing the regulations cost an estimated $7 billion in the U.S., and probably far more.

I would call that cost estimate ridiculously low -- it could easily be 10 times that by the time you add in the compliance costs of all the institutions.  But it's real money no matter how you count it.

Meanwhile, what happens to all the money generated in the drug trade, or illegal gambling, or any of the other illegal businesses?  My answer is, essentially all of it ends up in the banking system at one point or another.  I don't see how the banks have any ability to stop that, particularly given the near complete automation of the process of depositing money in banks and the elimination of personal interaction between bank employees and customers after the account opening process.  So the banks are just sitting ducks for periodic prosecutions.  An example of a fairly recent capitulation by a bank was a settlement by HSBC for $1.9 billion in 2013.

Given that any bank can be prosecuted for poor money laundering compliance at any time, you may be thinking that the Feds have been fairly discreet about this one lately, and there's something to that.  But remember, our federal/state system is plagued by dozens of overlapping prosecutors and regulators, each looking to get his name in the papers.  And thus here in New York we have a head banking regulator named Benjamin Lawsky, about as desperately ambitious a buffoon to come along since Eliot Spitzer, making a speech yesterday at Columbia University.  The Wall Street Journal reports on the speech in today's edition:

In his speech, Lawsky also touched on new rules he is considering to better protect against money laundering, including random audits for DFS licensed banks to assess how well they flag suspicious transactions.  Lawsky said he might also start requiring bank executives to certify that their money transaction monitoring is up to snuff to better protect against terrorism and other crimes.  "Money is the oxygen feeding the fire that is terrorism," Lawsky said. "Without moving massive amounts of money around the globe, international terrorism cannot thrive."

Is it possible that Lawsky is so ill-informed that he believes that more anti-money-laundering regulation can actually have some effect on the war on terrorism?  Probably, he just doesn't care about that one way or the other.  What he does know is that it's impossible for banks to tell "dirty" from "clean" money, and thus to keep "dirty" money out.  So if he can force bank executives to "certify" that they keep out "dirty" money, he can then have a lay-down prosecution any time he feels like it where he gets to have some big name executive hauled off in handcuffs and his own picture on page A1.  This is not a pretty game.

Don't know if you caught yesterday's Supreme Court opinion where the Court reversed the conviction of a fisherman under Section 1519 of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley financial regulation law, supposedly because he was someone who "knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object."  The "tangible objects" in question were a small number of allegedly undersized fish.  The majority found it out-of-line to use this financial-regulatory act to prosecute a fishing violation (to obtain hugely enhanced penalties).  Justice Kagan wrote the dissent -- in other words, she would have affirmed the conviction on the grounds that the words of the statute mean what they say, no matter how bizarrely applied.  But then she had this to say:

"[Section 1519 is a] bad law -- too broad and undifferentiated, with too-high maximum penalties, which give prosecutors too much leverage and sentencers too much discretion.  And I'd go further: In those ways, Section 1519 is unfortunately not an outlier, but an emblem of a deeper pathology in the federal criminal code."

I'd only add that it's not just a problem at the federal level, but with many states as well, with New York of course in the lead.

The March Of The Surveillance State

Almost all the news you read on the subject of government surveillance of the citizenry is about the NSA and its programs of broadly sweeping up all emails and telephone metadata.  While I wouldn't say that there's nothing to be concerned about there, the NSA is a tiny tip of the iceberg.  After all, if you ask any government bureaucrat charged with some aspect of the security of the people to do his job better, his answer will always be the same -- "I can just monitor all of the people all of the time."  Today, I'll discuss a few examples of the ongoing march toward the panopticon surveillance state.  Remarkably, all of this is a phenomenon of the very recent years, thirteen at most in the case of the examples below.

• As previously reported by me here, under Section 505 of the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 the government claims the right to send a so-called "National Security Letter" to your bank or other financial institution, requiring it to turn over all information it has about you, and it is a felony for the bank to tell you that it has received the letter or what it is turning over.   In March 2013, in a case called In re: National Security Letter, Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California ruled the "gag" provisions of the PATRIOT Act unconstitutional for failure to incorporate procedures to prevent the imposition of illegal prior restraints on speech.  But the ruling was stayed pending the government's appeal.  Of course they appealed.  According to an update here from plaintiff Electronic Frontier Foundation, the appeal has now been fully briefed, and oral argument at the Ninth Circuit was held on October 8.  There is an audio of the oral argument at the link.  The wheels of justice grind slowly.  Meanwhile you must assume that the government is monitoring all of your financial transactions at all times behind your back.
• Realizing that the idea of instituting a "national ID card" would be a complete non-starter with the American people, the government figured out that the better approach would be to turn the state driver's license into a national ID card by stealth and behind your back.  This process began with the so-called REAL ID Act of 2005.  That one surprisingly got lots of push back, with an actual majority of states stepping up and saying that the feds had no authority to do this and they would not comply.  Actually, of course, the states had only minimal concern for protecting the citizens against government spying and overreach, and were mostly concerned about the cost.  And then you just don't hear about the issue for a long time.  So what do you think is happening?  Of course, one by one the states are crumbling.   Here from the Department of Homeland Security is a state-by-state list of who's in "compliance" with the federal mandate, who is non-compliant, and who has an extension.  Turns out that 48 states and territories either are in compliance or have an extension, which I presume means they are hard at work on complying.  A big seven states and one territory (American Samoa!) are still non-compliant.  One of the non-compliant states is New York, and believe me, in the case of New York it has nothing to do with doing the right thing by citizens and has only to do with cost.  Read the HHS write-up at the link, and you will see that they are threatening to bar your citizens from air travel beginning in 2016 if you don't come into compliance. 
• I've recently been told by extended family members that when they go to a doctor and are getting a prescription, the doctor looks them up on his computer and there is a list of what prescriptions they already have.  How does that happen?  This one, it turns out, is a program of New York State, supposedly to deal with "prescription drug abuse."  According to the web site of the New York Department of Health, all prescriptions for so-called Schedule II, III and IV controlled substances in New York must now be reported to a state data base called "I-STOP/PMP," and "most prescribers are required to consult the Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) Registry when writing prescriptions"  for those drugs.  So 1 or 2% of patients may be abusing some prescription drugs, and to prevent that, everybody gets monitored all the time.  Nothing to it!  Time to find a pharmacy in Canada.  The rumor I hear is that the government is already on to that one and has a plan to ban paper prescriptions and make all prescriptions electronic and thus monitorable by them.  OK, time to find a doctor in Canada! Believe me, none of this will have the slightest effect on the availability of meth or ecstasy or oxycontin or whatever on the black market.  Since they have to know that, the only logical conclusion is that the real purpose is to get more ability to surveil the honest, law-abiding populace. 
• You probably haven't been paying attention to this one, but the big news in the federal tax bar is that all international tax treaties have been held up for several years by Senator Rand Paul.  The reason given by Paul is that, whatever else may be in these treaties, they all contain provisions for information exchange between the tax authorities of the signatories, even in the absence of any specific reason to think the taxpayer has done anything wrong.  (The reason that one Senator can hold up all these treaties is that they are typically cleared by a procedure called "unanimous consent.")  In a speech on the Senate floor on May 22, 2014, Paul said (sorry I don't have a link): "Many of the previous treaties that we have had in the past focused on information specific to tax fraud . . . .  What we are doing is taking the standard down to something [that] 'may be relevant,' which could be a dragnet for getting everyone's information. . . .  I cannot support a treaty that would pave the way for a law that would permit the IRS to share information of customers at U.S. banks with foreign governments."  Bravo to that, but I wonder how long he can actually hold out.  Many of these treaties contain provisions that, for example, eliminate double taxation situations for American businesses.  Some are with not-unimportant countries, like Switzerland.  So will this one go the way of REAL ID?  Anyway, at least this one item of panopticon surveillance is not a done deal -- yet.

The Government Is Not Capable Of Being Apolitical - Part II

A few weeks ago, as the IRS scandal was getting going, I wrote a post titled "The Government Is Not Capable Of Being Apolitical," containing the following statement: 

The corollary is that there is no such thing as a neutral apolitical actor or agency in the government. All government personnel are part of the main project, spoken or unspoken, to grow the government and to attack or destroy its enemies. It's like the sun coming up in the east.

If you think that somehow the government consists of neutral, apolitical experts just doing their jobs, or if you even have any skepticism about my proposition, you might want to take a look at this article today from Robert Anderson of Pepperdine Law School.  Anderson has taken some time going through the Federal Election Commission database to compile some statistics about political contributions of lawyers working for various Federal agencies.  How about the IRS, for example:

The results for the IRS were striking. Of the IRS lawyers who made contributions in the 2012 election, 95% contributed to Obama rather than to Romney. So among IRS lawyers, the ratio of Obama contributors to Romney contributors was not merely 4-to-1 at previously reported, but more like 20-to-1. The ratio of funds to Obama was even more lopsided, with about 32 times as much money going to Obama as to Romney from IRS lawyers.

A chart attached to the post shows that Anderson identified some 40 IRS lawyers in the database as having contributed to one or the other presidential campaign during the 2012 cycle, of whom 38 contributed to Obama and 2 to Romney.  So is it any wonder that when President Obama gave his August 21, 2010 radio address warning of "attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names," his team of supporters at the IRS took that as their cue to go after the government's enemies?

Do you think that maybe the IRS is somewhat unique in this respect?  Don't kid yourself.  Many agencies are even more lopsided, if that's even possible.  For example, at the Department of Education, 47 lawyers contributed to Obama, and not a single one to Romney.  Same thing at the NLRB -- not a single contribution to Romney (and 44 to Obama).   Of 90 lawyers from the EPA identified in the study as making contributions, it was 86 to 4 for Obama.  The only Department or Agency under 70% for Obama is the Department of Defense at 68%.  Justice was at 83.95% for Obama.

I have no doubt whatsoever that every one of the Obama supporters (and probably some of the very few Romney supporters as well) is part of the "main project" -- growing the government and attacking or destroying its enemies.  Do you have any doubt?  On what basis?