This Blog Has Moved!

My blog has moved. Check out my new blog at realfreemarket.org.



Your Ad Here

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Will Obama Set Another Record?

President Obama is on pace to set another dubious record. He will probably be the modern President who went the longest before pardoning someone. George Washington still has the record by a wide margin, but there weren't many/any Federal prisoners in 1789.

On Thanksigiving, President Obama made the usual PR stunt of pardoning two turkeys. Humans are not so lucky. Obama has pardoned zero people so far.

There are two types of errors in the "justice" system. There's freeing a criminal. There's wrongfully imprisoning someone. No politician wants the embarrassment of seeming "soft on crime".

That's a bold statement by the President. "There are zero people wrongfully imprisoned in the USA." That's what Obama means, when he hasn't pardoned anyone. "Failing to pardon someone who deserves it." is just as serious as pardoning someone who doesn't deserve it.

For example, Sholom Rubashkin deserves a pardon, or his sentence reduced/commuted to time served. However, a pardon would offend the people who lobbied for Rubashkin's imprisonment. A pardon would offend anti-"illegal immigration" activists. A pardon would offend large meatpackers. Rubashkin's efficient business threatened their meatpacking monopoly, so they lobbied for his arrest/raid/imprisonment.

I've mentioned before that Robert Kahre is wrongfully imprisoned. He invented a gold/silver income tax evasion scheme, exploiting the loophole that American Eagle coins have a legal tender value far less that their metal/melt value. It's economic terrorism, to jail a nonviolent tax resister.

As another example, Bradley Manning deserves a pardon, but won't get one. Did he leak "government secrets"? Did he leak evidence of criminal activity?

Typically Presidents wait until just before leaving office, to issue pardons. Everyone who's jailed has some influential group lobbying for his imprisonment. That makes a pardon politically risky.

It's ironic that Obama has pardoned more turkeys than humans. That's a bold statement. "There are zero people wrongfully imprisoned in the USA." Every jailed nonviolent offender is a political prisoner. All nonviolent offenders deserve pardons. That isn't going to happen.

Obama's "zero pardons" is just as significant a statement as any actual pardons. However, an actual pardon risks criticism. It's politically risky, to pardon someone. That's a common State parasite error. Eager to avoid explicit error A, State parasites instead do nothing.

The Presidential pardon is the last line of defense, for people wrongfully imprisoned. President Obama has pardoned zero people. That removes one of the checks and balances against abuse of State power.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

>exploiting the loophole that
>American Eagle coins

Lawyers and accountants exploit loopholes all the time. They seem to get away with it in broad daylight sometimes in full view of the courts.

Parliament makes statutory law. A lawyer and a greedy client try to stretch the law to beyond anything reasonable. Any normal person would say they are crooks and thieving money.

At most the dodgy lawyers and clients will have to pay court costs. There is no prison sentence for insiders if the crookedness is done in the "right" way.

In the UK, the intention is that everyone pays inheritance tax if a family member dies and the estate is over a certain amount. Unfortunately that amount is below the price of property in London and the rate is an eye-watering 40%. Can you afford 40% of 100, 000 UK Pounds? This is a lot of money. Just think how hard you need to save to save even a year's salary!

The effect for some people is to say that property is London is NO LONGER PRIVATE PROPERTY.

However George Osborne the Chancellor has a family that uses a trust to get around inheritance tax.

This is the man that is ultimately in charge of the tax office.

This is not right.

If he doesn't think he should pay inheritance tax, then he should lift the limit for everyone and not just people rich enough to pay lawyers for complex schemes.

I was a little shocked when a learned that some guy (I think in Scotland) did a do-it-yourself scheme to reduce his tax burden and he got put in jail.

So if a lawyer does something with the same intention it is legal, but if a little guy tries the same thing it is criminal.

The government needs to sort this out.

Anonymous said...

Although the insane, worse than useless Labour party is no longer in power in the United Kingdom, some of the legislation they have drawn up has been adopted by the current lot of clowns (the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition).

The Liberal-Democrats are so insane they say it is fine to break a promise to the voters (their pledge on university fees) because after they made their first promise, they made another promise to the Tories. They are saying it is OK to break a promise because of a promise made to someone else later!!! It is insanity. Do they think we are stupid?

The legislation makes it LEGAL TO DISCRIMINATE AGAINST WHITES, THE BRITISH AND MEN.

THE LEGISLATION LEGALISES DISCRIMATION.

See

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1335054/Employers-given-green-light-favour-women-jobseekers-Harmans-equality-law-adopted-Coalition.html

If you are British it is better you just give up now, don't bother applying to jobs, just leave the country now.

The politicians will just incrementally screw you more and more.

The Scottish and Welsh are exempted from the raised university tuition fees. But the English are NOT.

Blatant discrimination.

The clowns in the European Union profit from taking all the fish from British waters. And we have to pay the EU clowns for the privilege of them taking our fish!!!

Anonymous said...

Obama issues first pardons. You did it. They must be reading you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/03/obama-issues-9-pennyante-_n_791813.html

Anonymous said...

I agree with anonymous above me. You just had to say something FSK.. What else won't they do? Maybe this could work to our benefit? Make another statement on what he WON'T do. Reverse psychology might work wonders.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-coin-pardon-20101205,0,161060.story

This Blog Has Moved!

My blog has moved. Check out my new blog at realfreemarket.org.