The City of Houston (TX) is remarkable for the fact that it’s one of very few (if not the only one of substantial size) city in the U.S. that does not rely on restrictive zoning ordinances to plan the community’s development. Instead, Houston could be considered a poster-child for the success of restrictive deed covenants in accomplishing many of the tasks generally left to bureaucratic central planners. Yet, just as zoning ordinances are imperfect, so too are deed restrictions, as a recent spat between developers and property owners adjacent to a proposed condominium development demonstrates.
no third solution
Blogging about liberty, anarchy, economics and politics
Category Archives: Legalese
Michigan-Mania
Several Michigan lawmakers are now facing recall votes for their role in passing the recent tax hike. I hope they all lose their jobs, but morevoer, I hope nobody replaces them. That’s too much to ask for, though.
After learning he was a recall target, [Steve] Bieda said today: “We’re facing some huge challenges in this state. We’re trying our best to accomplish these changes. Some of them are painful and some of them are uncomfortable to do. But we have the responsibility to balance the budget and the responsibility to put the state back on sound financial footing.”
No, Mr. Bieda. You had the responsiblity to run the State with a balanced budget, a task at which you and all of your colleagues failed abysmally. These changes are only painful for you insofar as you might be recalled, or may not be re-elected next time around.
The Teamsters are, well, being Teamsters. What’s new? The current attempt to exercise unauthorized power over others is happening at the casino down the street from my Alma Mater.
The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe, which owns and operates Soaring Eagle, may take the position that the NLRB has no jurisdiction.
This was my first inclination – that they’re grasping at straws if they think they can get away with this. The Casino is one of the better paying non-manual-labor employers in the entire County of Isabella. Every year, college students line up for lucrative jobs as ushers, dealers, and bartenders at the resort. And the ones who are selected are in turn, paid far more than they’d make elsewhere in town. Unfortunately, the article cites that the NLRB has usurped tribal sovereignty since 1984, effectively allowing for unionization. As if it weren’t bad enough that we gave them all smallpox, and took all their land, and killed all the buffalo…
Finally, the potential libertarian victory – however small – Michigan’s House is attempting to repeal (to an extent, and conditionally) the law which requires motorcyclists to wear helmets. Riders who want their Fabio-esque locks to trail in the wind behind you, you’ll have to pay an annual fee – in addition to your license and registration fees – prove that you carry a certain minimum amount of insurance, have attained 21 years of age, have at least two years of riding under your belt (how this is determined?) and take a safety class. Whew!
Unfortunately, it will probably be vetoed (again) by our Governess. So much for “representative” government.
State Secrets
You’re minding your own business one day, when you’re summarily kidnapped, abused, and detained for months without access to anyone. Of course, when you are eventually freed, you’d certainly hope to seek some sort of justice against your captors – even an unintentional mistake causes real harm for which reparations should be obliged. Of course, when your captor is the State, it needs only invoke it’s trump-card, by refusing to hear your case. And if you can’t get a day in court, what good is any system of justice? First, a little background:
At the height of Cold War tensions between the United States and the former Soviet Union, U.S. presidents used the state secrets privilege six times from 1953 to 1976, according to OpenTheGovernment.org. Since 2001, it has been used 39 times, enabling the government to unilaterally withhold documents from the court system, the group said.
The “state secrets” rule, if you will, permits the State to tell the Courts (which it owns and finances, and whose rulings it enforces) that if a certain case goes to trial, vital national secrets will be brought out into the light of day which just might prove disastrous to the “national interest,” or something like that. Therefore, the court shall refuse to hear such cases which might prove detrimental to the interest of the nation State. Of course, even the courts don’t get to see that information (which is the only way a rational determination of the case’s potential impact can be calculated) on account of it being an alleged “state secret” from which it follows that no such secret need ever exist. Sound like a tin-foil conspiracy theory? In fact this has happened before:
[In 1953 t]hree widows sued to get the accident report after their husbands died aboard a B-29 bomber, but the Air Force refused to release it claiming that the plane was on a secret mission to test new equipment. The high court accepted the argument, but when the report was released decades later there was nothing in it about a secret mission or equipment.
And if what el-Masri says is true – that he was kidnapped, shackled, diapered, and thrown into a clandestine military prison for four months, outside the purview of any semblance of a justice system or humanitarian oversight – someday in the distant future when nobody remembers the name or the circumstances, the “Top Secret” label might be removed from the file, at which time we’ll find no evidence of any wrongdoing, only the implication that there was a fuck-up somewhere in the chain of military intelligence.
For what it’s worth, the perennial thorn-in-the-side German government has issued arrest warrants for the agents alleged to have partaken in the abduction. Of course it then becomes a matter of diplomacy and not of justice. The spurious “state secrets” policy is an absolute abomination – it is the antithesis of justice which allows the accused to present an “argument for secrecy” as a positive defense – it doesn’t even play the charades of a “secret tribunal” where at least, ostensibly, the merits of the allegation of secrecy can be debated and in theory affirmed or denied. It is absolute and unchecked deference to tyranny, and absolute impotence for the people and their judiciary.
Sometimes the State apologists argue that “If you haven’t done anything wrong, what have you got to hide?” Well, it’s high time to flip that fucking script on them.
It is yet another instance in the ever-growing list of instances which support Spooner’s thesis, that the Constitution “has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”
