The Smoking Argus

In this week’s Texas Straight Talk, Representative Ron Paul discusses the need to end the war in Afghanistan, which has become an occupation, long outlasting the original authorization of force. Issued just after the attacks on September 11th, the war is now approaching a decade with no end in sight. Al-Qaeda has long since left Afghanistan and now sits and waits for America, much like the Russians, to bankrupt itself, whilst simultaneously recruiting Afghans turned off by the American occupation, who themselves have a long and bloodied history of resisting foreign occupations.

Dr. Paul opines that while many in Congress continue to couch their support for an UnConstitutional war in terms of supporting the troops via continued funding of the operation, the simple fact remains, needless deaths of American soldiers in a war long past its original mission is an immoral path to secure their bids for reelection. Further he continues that not only are members of Congress completely blind to their Constitutional duty, members even abdicate Congressional responsibility to enforce the War Powers Resolution of 1973, passed after Vietnam, which attempted to restrict the President to using troops for no more than 90 days without appearing before Congress to obtain a formal Declaration of War.

Source(s): Minnesota Chris YouTube Channel • Official Congressional Website of Representative Ron Paul

Allison Bricker

Jack Hunter and myself will debate is a Supreme Court ruling on the Chicago Gun ban could violate the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution if their ruling does overturn the Chicago ban in place since 1982. After posting  my reply entitled “Essay No. 3″ to Mr. Hunter’s original YouTube video editorial, Kurt Wallace, Editor & Publisher of “The Liberty Pulse” and a mutual friend to both myself and Mr. Hunter suggested that perhaps the best way to further expand upon our points would be for a somewhat impromptu debate.

Thus, after working out the logistics between the three of us last week, Kurt has agreed to moderate and host the half-hour debate which will air live on LibertyPulse Radio this Tuesday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.

Wire Report

(Wire/FFF) – It may be possible to look into America’s future. How? Watch what’s going on in Greece. According to the Washington Post, “Greece needs to raise about €23 billion [more than $31 billion] in April and May to pay debts coming due. Greek officials say that either is impossible, or would require punitive interest rates — making it harder to bring the budget under control — unless Europe helps out.” So the Greek government awaits a bailout from Germany and France, but first it has to impress them that it is serious about fiscal austerity.

The Greek welfare state’s annual deficit is about 13 percent of its GDP and its accumulated debt is 113 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, the U.S. government’s overall debt is now on track to reach 90 percent of GDP by 2020, more than $20 trillion¹. Just last week the Congressional Budget Office said that over the next decade, the annual budget deficit will be $1.2 trillion more than the Obama administration has guessed. The ten-year figure is now projected to be $9.76 trillion. The annual deficit is about 10 percent of GDP.

Government spending is rising — and the new entitlement called health-care “reform” hasn’t passed yet. That’ll be good for a couple of trillion over the next decade.

CBO  estimates, GDP will reach 90% by 2020

The economic consequences of all that are likely to be dire. As the government tries to borrow more money, both to finance its programs and to pay the old debt that’s coming due, it will have to promise a better return to nervous lenders, such as China. But raising the interest rate will push other borrowers’ rates up, which in turn will put a damper on economic activity. Unemployment will grow and revenues will shrink, but entitlement programs, such as Medicare and Social Security, will keep growing. They already face tens of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities and are heading toward bankruptcy. Military spending will also increase, along with most other government spending.

What will the politicians do when they find interest payments swallowing the budget, leaving them less and less money to shower on political supporters? They might resort to higher taxes, which would further dampen economic activity. They might get the Federal Reserve to monetize the debt through inflation; but that would wreak economic havoc. Politicians aren’t likely to cut spending because it would jeopardize their careers. At that point, the government might default on its debts, a step that has much to recommend it.

Thus, the welfare state is a fiscal failure.

The welfare state has long been presented as the viable “third way,” a happy medium between laissez faire — full separation of state and economy — and state socialism — government control of the economy. Advocates of individual liberty have emphasized that the welfare state violates freedom because government takes wealth from those who produce it and transfers it to favored groups. Defenders have responded that the welfare state embodies compassion: people with means give to those less fortunate. But forced transfers through government are not true compassion. A virtue like compassion requires free choice, but government gives you no choice. So the compassion of the welfare state is counterfeit. It’s more about distributing goodies at others’ expense to win votes for politicians.

Historically compassion had little to do with government programs for the poor and social insurance for the working and middle classes. Beginning as far back as Queen Elizabeth I poor laws were intended to control people who were potential sources of social strife; and social insurance beginning in Bismarck’s German welfare state was calculated to make working people dependent on the government. In both cases the free society was subdued for the sake of those in power.

Now it is clearer than ever that the welfare state is not only morally flawed, it is also fiscally unsustainable. Politicians will always have an incentive to spend, while hiding the costs or pushing them onto future generations through debt. But reality doesn’t go away. It comes back to bite in unexpected ways.

We’re seeing it in Greece today. Tomorrow it will be other European welfare states. Then, if nothing changes, it will be America’s turn.

© 2001-2010 The Future of Freedom Foundation. All rights reserved.

Source(s): ¹Congressional Budget Office, The Budget and Economic Outlook, January 2010 •

Sheldon Richman, Editor “The Freeman”

Sheldon Richman is editor of The Freeman, published by The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York, and serves as senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is the author of FFF’s award-winning book Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families; Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax; and FFF’s newest book Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State. Calling for the abolition, not the reform, of public schooling. Separating School & State has become a landmark book in both libertarian and educational circles. In his column in the Financial Times, Michael Prowse wrote: “I recommend a subversive tract, Separating School & State by Sheldon Richman of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank… . I also think that Mr. Richman is right to fear that state education undermines personal responsibility…” Mr. Richman’s articles on population, federal disaster assistance, international trade, education, the environment, American history, foreign policy, privacy, computers, and the Middle East have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Washington Times, Insight, Cato Policy Report, Journal of Economic Development, The Freeman, The World & I, Reason, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Liberty magazine, and other publications. He is a contributor to the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. A former newspaper reporter and former senior editor at the Cato Institute, Mr. Richman is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia.

Wire Report

On Guantánamo, Symbolism Trumps Substance

(WIRE/IndInst) – President Obama has been so chastened by his failure to meet the pledge of closing Guantánamo prison within a year that Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, is trying to negotiate with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to gain Republican support for doing so. In exchange, Graham wants Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other alleged 9/11 attackers tried using a military tribunal instead of a civilian court and also wants unconstitutional legislation allowing the indefinite detainment of terrorism suspects without trial. Closing Gitmo is designed to revive a tarnished U.S. image abroad rather than being a substantive change in policy, and it now apparently may come at the expense of using unconstitutional and discredited means of holding and trying terrorism suspects.

Although closing Guantánamo would be important symbolically, the law-free sanctuary that the Bush administration had achieved there has already been eroded by the Supreme Court’s demand that detainees have some legal rights. And even if the Obama administration closes Gitmo, some of Bush’s unconstitutional policies would continue in prisons around the United States—for example, the use of military tribunals for some detainees and the detention of some former Guantánamo detainees indefinitely without trial. Thus, the world should, and probably will, focus on the U.S. government’s continued violation of detainees’ rights rather than where they are violated—thus negating any positive public relations benefits from closing Gitmo.

But why should suspected diabolical terrorists have rights? Because these are our rights that are being trampled on too. The key word here is “suspected.” No matter how horrendous the crime—and slaughtering innocents for political reasons is about as heinous as it gets—the alleged culprit deserves a fair trial because he or she could actually be not guilty. Governments, including U.S. federal, state, and local governments, routinely make mistakes and jail the wrong people for crimes. According to Anthony Gregory, author of a forthcoming book on legally challenging incarcerations, an academic study of Guantánamo prisoners found that more than half had never committed a hostile act against the United States. And all but a few percent had not been picked up by American authorities, but had been turned over to U.S. forces in Afghanistan by Afghans to claim handsome rewards. In other words, innocent people had been turned in to get cash. Only 8 percent of Gitmo detainees were al-Qaeda members.

And why are military tribunals so bad? Although they have been slightly improved since the Bush administration originally set up its kangaroo military courts, they still lack the procedural safeguards of detainee rights found even in military courts-martial. Even more important, they are unconstitutional. The 6th Amendment in the U.S. Bill of Rights requires a jury trial for all criminal offenses, with no exception for national security cases. Proponents of military tribunals cite their use to try would-be German spies and saboteurs during World War II, but they were no more constitutional then than now. Furthermore, the killing of almost 3,000 people on 9/11 was a shameful crime, and those that allegedly perpetrated it should not be elevated to “warrior” status by trying them in a military tribunal.

Obama is only contemplating abandoning civilian trials for the alleged 9/11 attackers because of political pressure against holding such trials where the attacks occurred—southern New York, eastern Virginia, and western Pennsylvania. It is disheartening that the public in these attacked areas would not leap at the chance to uphold justice and the American legal system in their own communities.

Overseas, people will merely see any use of kangaroo military tribunals for what they are: attempts to shop jurisdictionally to get convictions more easily. Already the Obama administration selected the cases easiest to prove—those against the 9/11 attackers—for pursuit in civilian courts and relegated the more difficult ones to remain in military tribunals. This policy then created the anomaly that the most heinous defendants got the most rights. Of course, throwing the alleged 9/11 attackers’ case back to into military tribunals will correct this anomaly, but at the expense of violating the 6th Amendment. Thus, all defendants in terrorism cases should be tried in civilian courts as potential criminals.

Lastly, the civilian courts—just as they have in other cases with sensitive information, such as espionage and Mafia cases—have an excellent record of obtaining convictions. Civilian trials have resulted in hundreds of successful terrorism prosecutions, whereas the flawed military tribunals have resulted in only a few convictions—and most of those were overturned.

So if a deal is cut with Sen. Graham to close Guantánamo in exchange for tossing the alleged 9/11 attackers’ case back into military tribunals, the Constitution again will have been trampled under foot and the positive symbolism of closing Gitmo will have been offset by the use of kangaroo military commissions, which have been justly reviled around the world.

© 2010 The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He also has served as Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), and has testified on the military and financial aspects of NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee, and on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Eland is the author of Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy, as well as The Efficacy of Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool. He is a contributor to numerous volumes and the author of 45 in-depth studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in American Prospect, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences), Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Conservative, International Journal of World Peace, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. Dr. Eland’s popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Providence Journal, The Hill, and Defense News. He has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight,  NPR’s Talk of the Nation,  PBS, Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, CNN Crossfire,  CNN-fn, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), Canadian TV (CTV), Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, BBC, and other local, national, and international TV and radio programs.

The Smoking Argus

Weekly Address: President Obama to Send Updated Elementary and Secondary Education Act Blueprint To Congress on Monday

THE WHITE HOUSE/WASHINGTON D.C. – In his weekly address, President Barack Obama announced that on Monday, his administration will send to Congress the blueprint for an updated Elementary and Secondary Education Act that will overhaul No Child Left Behind. The plan will set the ambitious goal of ensuring that all students graduate from high school prepared for college and a career, and it will provide states, districts and schools with the flexibility and resources to reach that goal. [FULL TRANSCRIPT]

—END OFFICIAL STATEMENT—

Related Material(s)
	President Obama Weekly Address: Government Education is the Solution TRANSCRIPT (PDF 44.3KB)

Source(s): The White House • White House YouTube Channel

The Smoking Argus

Senator Scott Brown (MA) who was swept into office in large part thanks to “Tea-Party” / Independent voters in Massachusetts delivers this week’s GOP address. During the campaign, Senator Brown relied on the vague platform of “Change”, a tactic originally utilized by President Obama, as his pathway to victory. However, in his short time in the Senate, he has already proved to be disappointing to a large part of his “Tea-Party” base and merely par for the course in terms of Washington D.C.’s status quo. Many analysts inside of the Pro-Liberty and Tea-Party movements correctly forecast that his candidacy was merely a furthering of the false left/right paradigm whereby both parties routinely capitalize on voter discontent with the majority-of-the-moment offering up faux opposition, thereby retaining their stranglehold on power, albeit with different letters, i.e. ‘D’ or ‘R’ for the sake of appearances.

In addition to voting for the President’s “Give everyone a Teaspoon-to-dig-ditches” Jobs bill, Senator Brown has signed on as a Co-Sponsor to Senator McCain’s bill, S.3081 which seeks to grant government the authority to detain Americans indefinitely, with no charges, and solely under suspicion of an Ad hoc group.

Nevertheless, Senator Brown uses his weekly address to urge President Obama to listen to the “will of the People” on health care reform, while simultaneously advocating for big government intrusion into the private-sector as a means “to fix the economy”.
[FULL TRANSCRIPT]

Related Material(s)
	GOP Weekly Address Senator Scott Brown (MA) President Obama Pushes Healthcare Over Jobs TRANSCRIPT (PDF 45.7KB)

Source(s): GOP Weekly Address YouTube Channel • Republican National Committee

Allison Bricker

S3081 Indefinite Detention of Americans Act Contact Sheet (PDF 380KB)

INDIANA – As reported earlier this week, Senator John McCain introduced bill “S.3081 – Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010” on March 4th, 2010 that seeks to wholly usurp the Constitution denying Americans access to ARTICLE III courts. The language of the bill, now available from the Government Printing Office authorizes the indefinite detention of Americans and disallows notification of Miranda Rights, thereby obstructing access to any sort of legal counsel.

Currently the bill has been referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thus we must now undertake the task of ensuring this bill does not make it out of committee in any fashion whatsoever. Therefore, please consider downloading the PDF contact sheet which lists all relevant contact information for all Senators currently on board with supporting such draconian legislation, including telephone number of newly elected “Tea-Party” candidate Scott Brown. Telephone numbers are also provided to both the Majority and Minority switchboards in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Further, the PDF contains hyperlinks to both the GPO text of the bill as well as to OpenCongress and GovTrack which will serve to help track the bill’s lifespan.

Allison Bricker

WASHINGTON D.C. – Senators Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina are meeting today with President Obama to discuss tactics on how best to orchestrate the appearance of bipartisanship regarding comprehensive immigration reform. However, immigration reform is not the sole reason for the Senators’ visit. Also on the agenda is the culmination of the plutocrat’s fetish like desire to track all Americans with yet another attempt at shackling us with a national identification card.

Since the events of September 11th, the aristocrats on the hill have sought a way to effectively track like cattle all U.S. Citizens; however, despite their relentless fearmongering of boogiemen terrorists, the American people have in large part resisted the attempt to achieve “safety” via a mirroring of 1970’s era East Germany.

In a fashion similar to when the FDIC proposed the “Know Your Customer Rule” before public backlash forced a retraction, the statist have returned to their default playbook to achieve their end by swaddling in a national identification card under the guise of “securing the borders”. Then Assistant Director of the FEDERAL RESERVE, Richard Small provided keen insight to the minds of plutocrats when he spoke at the Mid Atlantic Compliance Conference in 1999, quipping that success of “Know Your Customer” depended on simply renaming the provision in order to avoid public scrutiny; the Central Authority hopes to replicate a corresponding trajectory for the National ID.

Whereas, “Know Your Customer” finally became law upon passage of the unconstitutional USA PATRIOT Act, the National ID card has encountered continued resistance thanks both to the new-media and internet-at-large. First as REAL ID, then as the PASS Act, the National ID has thus far repeatedly run up against an ever-growing chorus of Americans awakening to a federal government intruding ever further into our personal lives and business.

As recently reported, efforts are now under way by Imperial Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Scott “Tea-Party” Brown (R-MA), and seven other co-sponsors co-conspirators to indefinitely detain Americans merely upon suspicion and without trial. Further, details remain sparse on the Obama Administration and Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair’s request to be granted authority by Congress to assassinate Americans suspected of committing belligerent acts against the Central Government. Now the seek to saddle us with a biometric ID which confirms identity be scanning the veins in our hands?

These several recent legislative maneuvers by the treasonous statists in Congress are scheming what can no less be described and ought rightfully be referred to as the “New Intolerable Acts”.

While we are fortunate to have a robust and growing body of enlightened pro-liberty advocates, thinkers, and teachers such as Representative Ron Paul, we must not rest upon their hard work to reclaim our quickly atrophying liberties. As his interview with Megyan Kelly of Fox News demonstrates, we must also consider utterly detaching ourselves form what was once referred to as “the fourth branch of government”, ergo the old-media, as it is obvious at least to this blogger, that they are but mere shills for the statists. Her inference that an erosion of our natural liberties is of no consequence and a necessary concession under the current events, shows her to be a cold lifeless traitor to human liberty.

Make no mistake, the world, why undeniably dangerous, has always appeared to be at an unrivaled level of hostility when viewed through the lens of the here and now. Whereas it took close to 2,000 years of human civilization for an imperfect generation to rightfully proclaim the individual as the standard-bearer of liberty, in full possession of our natural rights, and offer the opportunity to form a more perfect Union.

Let us not now shrink in the duty to be ever vigilant defenders of both our own and our posterity’s unalienable natural liberties in the face of this growing tyranny.

Wire Report

(Wire/LP) – The Liberty movement has been looking for a beacon of truth in the mainstream media to stand up for the Founding Fathers vision of patriotism. At CPAC’s Campaign for Liberty event Thursday night, Ron Paul talked about a young man who came to his office to ask the congressman what it would take to get into politics. Dr. Paul encouraged the young man to consider going into the media business instead.

During an interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano promoting his book “A Nation of Sheep”, he told me we need more wolves in the “fourth branch of government,” spreading the ideas of liberty and that will challenge the dominant progressivism-which sometimes goes by the name “conservatism.” The progressive movement has gradually infiltrated the minds of conservatives, through talk radio and other mediums, and such pundits are truly sheep in wolves clothing.

Enter the Neo-Conservative

Talk host Sean Hannity doesn’t even acknowledge Kentucky Tea Party Republican candidate Rand Paul who was even endorsed by Hannity favorite, Sarah Palin. Rush Limbaugh said of Representative Ron Paul’s CPAC victory, that it “put the brakes on Republican progress.” Mike “holy war” Huckabee, claims of CPAC, “it’s not the event it once was”, and in their agreement, Huckabee and Rush are correct–there were actual conservatives at CPAC this time.

Let’s not forget Debra Medina being treated like a joke by Glenn Beck. Beck obviously doesn’t understand himself, the principles of conservatism he preached to the CPAC audience, concerning “progressivism” and “Wilsonianism”. The blind-leading-the-blind, Beck might want to go back to step-one himself and admit he is himself a disease called “Beckaholism”, a not so rare sickness that consists of part liberty rhetoric, part establishmentarianism, and part progressive interventionism.

Though his schizoid mix is a more dangerous form of the disease, there is hope. Mr. Beck, we invite you to join Neoconservatives Anonymous before going off and embarrassing the rest of us who are actually in recovery from the intellectually debilitating disease of neo-con denial. I am willing to be his sponsor as I am the founder of the program and all are welcome. But remember it’s for those who want it, not for those who need it.

My suggestion to Beck and the rest of the war state ostriches:

1. Take the cotton out of your ears and put it in your confused-about-conservatism mouths.
   
2. Start listening to real wolves in the media beginning with the Mike Church Show.
   

Yes, the Mike Church Show! I recently had the honor of meeting Mike Church at CPAC, a true, modern day Patrick Henry, and someone I believe to be an honest-to-goodness, recovering neoconservative. After he spoke Friday night, a small group had dinner with Mike Church, including his brother, sister-in-law, his producer Andrew Guss, author Tom Mullen, The American Conservative’s Kelly Jane Torrance, Jack Hunter (aka the Southern Avenger”), and we discussed what it was like before and after we woke up from neo-conservatism. Mike Church knows both sides of the real conservative vs. neo-con argument, which easily makes him the most dangerous man on talk radio today. It’s hard to neo-con a recovering neo-con.

Mike Church has been doing talk radio for 18 years and was part of what he calls the “talk show mafia”. Mike has the longest running talk show on Sirius Radio and just a couple of years ago he woke up from neo-conservatism and has been helping wake millions since. Mike discovered noted Liberty movement figures Kevin Gutzman and Tom Woods and organizations like the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which led to his producing a wonderful film about the founders and constitutional government called “The Spirit of 76: The Greatest Story Never Told.”

There are those who do speak for true liberty in the forth branch of government. FOX News Judge Andrew Napolitano with his program “Freedom Watch” and a veteran voice on Sirius satellite radio, the great Mike Church. Before it’s over, I expect there will be many others that will join the Church/Napolitano wolf pack. Who knows, perhaps even the schizophrenic Glenn Beck might come around, finally and fully becoming one of “us”. But chances are by the time that happens-it will be viewed along with the rest of the “talk show mafia” through Mike Church’s rear view mirror.

Kurt Wallace, Editor & Publisher, The Liberty Pulse & The Liberty Pulse Blog

Since hosting Wake Up America, Wallace has interviewed many distinguished guests including Judge Andrew Napolitano, Fox News Commentator and Judicial Analyst; Dr. Murray Sabrin, USA Daily; Thomas E. Woods Mises.org and Peter Schiff, Financial Advisor and a regular contributor to Fox Financial Network and Congressman Ron Paul. As Editor & Publisher of LibertyPulse.com, Mr. Wallace offers the Liberty Movement its own news aggregator service filled with a variety of Liberty oriented news stories and editorials updated constantlyfrom around the web.

Wire Report

Census Data Not So Confidential After All -

(WIRE/IndInst) – The current $350 million ad campaign for the 2010 Census, including the much-maligned $2.5 million Super Bowl spots, urges individuals to “Tell your story.” The Census Bureau is particularly eager for minorities and illegal immigrants to do so, as they are traditionally believed to be the most undercounted.

Yet widespread non-compliance, especially among those most likely to be discriminated against by a majority, may not be rooted strictly in the “ignorance” the ads are designed to overcome. History—including very recent history—shows that the information provided to the Census can be used against you.

The most recent examples occurred in 2002 and 2003, when the Census Bureau turned over information it had collected about Arab-Americans to Homeland Security.¹

Data from the 1940 Census was used to intern Japanese, Italian, and German Americans following the U.S.’s entry into the war, and to monitor and persecute others who escaped internment². In addition to providing geographic information to the War Department, the Census Bureau released the name, address, age, sex, citizenship status and occupation of Japanese Americans in the Washington, D.C., area to the Treasury Department in response to an unspecified threat against President Franklin Roosevelt in 1943.³

There may well be other instances of such data sharing of which we remain unaware, as the full scope of the personal information released during World War II has only recently been brought to light.

Thus, while the Census Bureau assures us that “your confidentiality is protected. Title 13 requires the Census Bureau to keep all information about you and all other respondents strictly confidential,” these exceptions negate such assurances. Of course, the release of the “strictly confidential” data was also perfectly legal: during World War II, under the terms of the Second War Powers Act, and more recently, under the terms of the USA PATRIOT Act, now extended by the Obama administration.

In preparation for this year’s census, 140,000 workers were hired to collect GPS readings for every front door in the nation. Such pinpoint precision will certainly simplify the process of locating any individual or group that may be identified as a threat to “national security” in the future. Remember, for example, the 1976 Senate Report⁴ in which 26,000 Americans were slated for roundup by the FBI in the event of a national emergency at the height of the Cold War. Now that the U.S. Government’s Terrorist Watchlist has exceeded one million, the GPS data acquired could be instrumental in accomplishing such a roundup.

Meanwhile, the data is also shared a little more broadly than advertised. Stanford University recently joined UC Berkeley, Duke, the University of Michigan, UCLA, and others in having its very own census data center. As the director of the new center explained, “The Census Bureau is very interested in making the centers more accessible to scholars who can use the data they provide.”

As Henry Brady, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley and principal investigator for the California Census Research Data Centers helpfully added: “We’re trying to make centers where lots of federal agencies will let us use their data.”

While reassurances are repeated that the data is held under the strictest security, and will only be used for innocuous projects like “government programs and solutions to our problems,” do we really want academics to social engineer policy solutions based on sensitive personal data? After all, they may turn out to be no more desirable than the “solutions” provided by government programs like internment and renditioning. Without the protections afforded by a right to privacy, there’s little chance of escaping a political will to enforce discriminatory policies.

This “mission creep” for the Census thus pushes up against a level of discomfort no amount of advertising dollars can likely assuage. Many will no doubt choose to follow former Senate majority leader Trent Lott’s advice to skip any Census questions they feel violates their privacy—which may well include any exceeding the Constitution’s mandate for an “actual Enumeration.” Unfortunately, choosing privacy now costs more: legislation recently passed raises the fine for “anyone over 18 years old who refuses or willfully neglects to complete the questionnaire or answer questions posed by census takers” from a limit of $100 to $5,000—a fact not advertised even in the small print.

Source(s): ¹The New York Times “Homeland Security Given Data on Arab-Americans” By LYNETTE CLEMETSON, Published: July 30, 2004 • ² New York Times “Census blamed in internment of Japanese” By STEVEN A. HOLMES – Friday, March 17, 2000 • ³Scientific American “Confirmed: The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WW II” By JR Minkel March 30, 2007 • ⁴Church Report Book II INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES AND THE RIGHTS OF AMERICANS – April 1976

© 2010 The Independent Institute

Mary L.G. Theroux, Senior Vice President, The Independent Institute

Mary L. G. Theroux is Senior Vice President of The Independent Institute. Having received her A.B. in economics from Stanford University, Ms. Theroux is Managing Director of Lightning Ventures, L.P., a San Francisco Bay Area investment firm, and Vice President of the C.S. Lewis Society of California. She is former Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Salvation Army of San Francisco, and is on the National and San Francisco Advisory Boards of The Salvation Army. Having been a director of nine corporations and three foundations, she was also Chairman of Garvey International, Inc., and Co-founder and President of San Francisco Grocery Express. Articles on Ms. Theroux have appeared in Business Week, Forbes, Savvy, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications.