Category: Update

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privacy property rights Update

Update: The “No Duh” Element in Private Property

Supreme Court, property rights, rent

In yesterday’s update, we directed your attention to a court decision that showed some progress in preventing the federal government from outright theft via the medieval civil asset forfeiture technique. The Epoch Times reported. But there was a passage we did not quote:

“Plaintiffs do have a significant privacy interest in their safe deposit boxes, given that their conduct indicates they intended their items to be ‘preserved . . . as private,’ and society generally views the privacy expectations of items in safe deposit boxes as reasonable,” Judge Smith wrote.

Yes, Judge Smith, we do have “privacy interests” in our . . . private property.

It is right there in the term, private property.

The conceptual fight to reclaim our rights can be a tough slog through the obvious.

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Fourth Amendment rights Update

Update: The FBI Stole

Government agencies that “fight crime” too often engage in criminal behavior to do so. 

In June of 2021, Common Sense with Paul Jacob reported on an FBI operation that raided safe deposit boxes.

In March, the federal government conducted a raid of a safe deposit box company called U.S. Privacy Vaults. The government accuses the company of abetting drug dealers.

The government accuses the box renters of . . . nothing. But DOJ is trying to use civil forfeiture laws to retain most of what it seized during the raid: some $85 million in cash and valuables.

In August of 2022 Paul returned to the case, wondering whether FBI agents would themselves see justice:

The plot’s been foiled, it appears, but will the culprits within the FBI be prosecuted?

Seems unlikely.

Truth is, the culture at the FBI has never been good. Barring defunding (which would be politically difficult) perhaps FBI agents should be restricted to just investigation, stripped of their weaponry, forced to rely on state and local lawmen — and perhaps the U.S. Marshals — to make any searches and arrests at all. 

In October, the courts failed to back up the Constitution regarding searches and seizures in this case.

Now, according to The Epoch Times, a federal court has indeed found cause to reprimand the FBI and the lawyers that defended the agents who had — without cause — searched all of the safety deposit boxes: 

“We note that it is particularly troubling that the government has failed to provide a limiting principle to how far a hypothetical ‘inventory search’ conducted pursuant to customized instructions can go,” Judge Smith said.

Many of the plaintiffs have already had their belongings returned by the FBI but pressed forward with the case for an opinion in their favor.

The ruling remanded the case back to U.S. District Judge Robert Klausner, who previously dismissed the case, for a ruling that directs the FBI to destroy records the bureau collected on the box renters who are members of the class-action case.

The opinion “draws a line in the sand, to ensure something like this never happens again,” Rob Johnson, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which was representing the plaintiffs, said in a statement. “If this had come out the other way, the government could have exported this raid as a model across the country. Now, the government is on notice its actions violated the Fourth Amendment.”

It took several years, but apparently justice in this case is finally approaching, and the Federal Bureau of Investigations has been reminded that its powers are limited. By our rights.

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Update

Update: California’s Hospitals

Last Thursday, in “The S-Word in California,” the subject was the danger posed to the stability of the Golden State’s medical system by the promise to guarantee service to nearly a million new illegal immigrants.

The S-Word in California

But one mechanism of this instability was not brought up, for reasons of space: the politicians’ past, as well as present, promises do not recompense hospitals at anything like a market rate. Which leads to insolvency. Which does not help the poor:

Across a state with the highest proportion of millionaires in the nation, 1 in 5 hospitals are now at risk of closing, according to a study released earlier this year by the California Hospital Association. Many serve the state’s rural redoubts, whose populations are often disproportionately poor and underinsured, and inner-city neighborhoods such as south-central Los Angeles.

Scott Wilson, “A hospital’s abrupt closure means, for many, help is distant,” Washington Post (November 16, 2023).

Now, the recent legislation discussed ostensibly solves the problem, as the Washington Post puts it:

As part of the final state budget, state lawmakers also approved one of the largest increases in years in the rates that Medi-Cal will reimburse hospitals for services. The move is particularly important for rural counties: While about 40 percent of California’s population is covered by Medi-Cal, the rate in Madera is nearly twice that.

And, beginning next year, all of California’s more than 2 million undocumented residents will be eligible for coverage under Medi-Cal, adding another 700,000 undocumented residents to the state insurance plan, meaning hospitals will no longer have to absorb their costs.

If it be true that the rates of reimbursement from Medi-Cal will now cover actual costs, then, as stated on Thursday, that will be an extra burden on the California taxpayer. But upping the rates is not a market phenomenon — a monopsonistic practice by definition — and the Post does not analyze whether the rate hikes will be enough to prevent more hospital failures. Like Medicare’s rates of reimbursement, these are historically pennies on the dollar, and vary widely by procedure and service, adding to administrative burden.

So of course politicians talk about adding more subsidies upon existing subsidies.

The spiral of burdens and benefits just goes out of control, as we would expect when governments seek to replace actual, effective markets for government “solutions.”

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Update

Milei’s Chainsaw

Among the big stories we have been following is the Javier Milei epic, the tale of of the colorful new libertarian president of Argentina and his attempt to bring prosperity and freedom to the beleaguered South American country.

Once upon a time Argentina — named for the metal silver — was wealthy, its people gaining in prosperity. It was a common phrase, a century ago, to refer to a prosperous person as being “as rich as an Argentine.” But with the rise of fascism and Peronism and “modernism” in general, the old liberal peace and prosperity course of progress became a metastasizing cancer of statism and growing gap between the rich and poor. So the new president has presented a radical new reform bill to the Argentine congress.

The 351-page bill includes 664 articles aimed at deregulating and modifying laws pertaining to several sectors, including labor, commercial, real estate, aeronautics, and health. According to Milei, the omnibus bill contains two-thirds of all of his reform proposals. 

Katarina Hill, “Milei Brings His Chainsaw to Argentina’s Regulatory State,” Reason (December 29, 2023).

A big part of the reform bill is a de-nationalization effort:

The bill mentions 41 companies it proposes to privatize, including the flagship airline Aerolíneas Argentinas, the oil company YFP, the country’s largest bank, Banco de la Nación, the news agency Télam, the water company AYSA, the Argentine mint, and the country’s rail system. 

Hill, ibid.

While granting the president some huge powers for a two-year period, the bill would prohibit the government from engaging in all sorts of regulatory activity, especially in the energy industry:

Argentine President Javier Milei is seeking to extinguish decades of government intervention in the nation’s oil industry by unshackling crude exports and leaving local fuel prices at the whim of market forces.

Milei included such measures in sweeping legislation he sent to congress on Wednesday, the latest move since the libertarian president took office on Dec. 10 with a mission to deregulate Argentina’s tightly controlled economy. While his bill has far-reaching consequences for a slew of industries, it features a chapter specifically addressing oil.

Jonathan Gilbert, “Argentina’s Javier Milei Seeks Free Oil Markets in New Legislation,” Bloomberg (December 28, 2023).

The bill would increase export taxes, but offer a tax amnesty for Argentinians. It would eliminate the presidential primary. Other political reforms include

Changes to Argentina’s proportional representation electoral system would raise the number of lawmakers in each district to one per 161,000 inhabitants, from one per 180,000 inhabitants. This would give more power to the populous province of Buenos Aires in the lower house of Congress, according to a note to clients by consultancy firm 1816.

Lucinda Elliott, “What is in Javier Milei’s sweeping Argentina reform bill?” Reuters (December 28, 2023).

The “chainsaw” is in the hands of legislators now.