New Legislation on Money Laundering Doubles Down on Failure

Thanks to decades of experience and research, we now know several things about so-called anti-money laundering (AML) laws.

• They don’t reduce crime or discourage bad behavior.
• They require banks to spy on innocent people and report their transactions.
• They impose heavy costs on the financial sector and boost prices on consumers.
• They disproportionately hurt poor people and poor countries.

It’s not that the theory behind these laws is without merit. The original notion was that perhaps we could reduce crime by figuring out ways to prevent crooks from utilizing the banking system. That’s a worthy goal. But it turns out that it doesn’t work.

For all intents and purposes, AML laws are a misallocation of law-enforcement resources.

So you would think that policy makers would be endeavoring to repeal these counterproductive rules and regulations, right?

But you would be wrong. Some of them actually want to double down on failure. To be more specific, four senators have introduced a bill to make these laws more intrusive and onerous.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, along with Senators John Cornyn and Sheldon Whitehouse, today introduced legislation that modernizes and strengthens criminal laws against money laundering – a critical source of funding for terrorist organizations, drug cartels and other organized crime syndicates.  The Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Counterfeiting Act of 2017 updates criminal money laundering and counterfeiting statutes, and promotes transparency in the U.S. financial system.

It’s quite possible that these politicians actually think this new law will somehow reduce all the bad things they put in the bill’s title (I’m surprised they didn’t add tooth decay and cancer to the list).

But if past experience is any guide, the real-world result will be more abuse of law-abiding citizens.

Writing for the Blaze, Justin Haskins warns how the new legislation can endanger innocent people.

Four U.S. senators have proposed legislation that would significantly expand the power of the federal government to seize citizens’ money when traveling in or out of the United States. …several troubling provisions in the law could put law-abiding American citizens at risk of losing tens of thousands of dollars for doing nothing more than failing to fill out a government form. Under current federal law, travelers transporting $10,000 or more in cash or other monetary instruments are required to report those funds to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Failure to report funds, even if unintentional, can lead to the seizure of the money and criminal or civil penalties.

That approach already produces horrible abuses of innocent people.

And imagine what will happen if this new law is enacted.

The Combating Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Counterfeiting Act would expand “monetary instruments” covered under current law to include “prepaid access devices, stored value cards, digital currencies, and other similar instruments.” This is particularly problematic because digital currencies, such as Bitcoin, are theoretically always transported by the owner of the digital currency account wherever he or she goes, which means digital currency owners with accounts valued at $10,000 or more must always report their funds or risk having them seized. Even more troubling is the law treats all blank checks as though they are financial instruments valued in excess of $10,000 if the checking account contains at least $10,000, which means if a traveler accidently fails to report a blank check floating around in his or her luggage, the account holder could face stiff penalties — even if there is no suspicion of criminal activity.

Some of you may be thinking that it’s okay to subject innocent people to abuse if it achieves a very important goal of stopping terrorists.

But that’s not happening. In a must-read article for Foreign Affairs, Peter Neumann points out that AML laws are grossly ineffective in the fight against Islamo-fascism.

…the war on terrorist financing has failed. Today, there are more terrorist organizations, with more money, than ever before. …Driven by the assumption that terrorism costs money, governments have for years sought to cut off terrorists’ access to the global financial system. They have introduced blacklists, frozen assets, and imposed countless regulations designed to prevent terrorist financing, costing the public and private sectors billions of dollars.

And what’s the result of all this expense?

It hasn’t stopped terrorism.

…there is no evidence that it has ever thwarted a terrorist campaign. Most attacks require very little money, and terrorists tend to use a wide range of money-transfer and fundraising methods, many of which avoid the international financial system. …Terrorist operations are cheap, and according to a 2015 study by the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, over 90 percent of the jihadist cells in Europe between 1994 and 2013 were “self-funded,” typically through savings, welfare payments, personal loans, or the proceeds of petty crime. …many jihadists have used their own savings and welfare payments or taken out small loans; others have borrowed money from their friends or family. …Financial tools cannot stop lone attackers from driving cars into crowds.

But it has imposed major burdens on innocent parties.

…the focus on the financial sector proved ineffective; it has also harmed innocent people and businesses. To address policymakers’ demands, financial institutions have “de-risked” their portfolios, shedding investments and clients that might be linked to terrorist financing. …De-risking, moreover, has resulted in the de facto exclusion of entire countries, mostly poor ones such as Afghanistan and Somalia, from the global financial system. The bank accounts of refugees, charities that operate in regions torn apart by civil war, and even Western citizens with family links to so-called risk countries have been closed. Practically no Western bank now offers cash transfers to Somalia, for example, although 40 percent of the population depends on remittances from abroad.

And what is the author’s bottom line?

Simply stated, the current system is a failure.

Instead of continuing to look for needles in a haystack, governments should overhaul their approach to countering terrorist funding… Otherwise, they will waste time and money on a strategy that cannot deliver security for many more years to come. .. Policymakers need to acknowledge that the war on terrorist financing, as it has been conducted since 2001, has often been costly and counterproductive, harming innocent people and companies without significantly constraining terrorist groups’ ability to operate.

I agree.

Indeed, I wrote an article for Pace Law Review, published back in 2005, that made many of the same points, including a lot of attention on theoretical role of cost-benefit analysis.

Law enforcement policy should include cost/benefit analysis so that resources are best allocated to protect life, liberty, and property. This should not be a controversial proposition. Cost-benefit analysis…already is part of the public policy process. For instance, few people would think it is acceptable for a city of 10 million to have just one police officer. Yet it is also true that few would want that city to have five million police officers. In other words, there is a point where additional law enforcement expenditures – both public and private – exceed the likely benefits. Every government makes such decisions. Cost-benefit analysis applies to aggregate resource allocation choices, such as how many police officers to employ in a city, but also to how a given level of resources are utilized. In other words, since there are not unlimited resources, it makes sense to allocate those resources in ways that yield the greatest benefit. On a practical level, city officials must decide how many officers to put on each shift, how many officers to assign to different neighborhoods, and how many officers to allocate to each type of crime. The same issues apply in the war against terrorism. Officials must decide not only on the level of resources devoted to fighting terrorism, but they also must make allocation decisions between, say, human intelligence and electronic surveillance.

Now let’s shift from theory to evidence.

I argued AML laws didn’t pass the test.

…while anti-money laundering laws theoretically help the war against terror, this does not mean that they necessarily are justified by cost-benefit analysis. A…book from the Institute for International Economics…strongly supports anti-money laundering laws and advocates their expansion. But the authors admit that these laws imposed costs of $7 billion in 2003, yet they admitted that, “While the number of suspicious activity reports filed has risen rapidly in recent years…total seizures and forfeitures amount to an extremely small sum (approximately $700 million annually in the United States) when compared with the crude estimates of the total amounts laundered. Moreover, there has not been an increase in the number of federal convictions for money laundering.” The private sector bears most of the cost of anti-money laundering laws, but the authors also note that, “Budgetary costs for AML laws have tripled in the last 20 years for prevention and quadrupled for enforcement.” The key question, of course, is whether these costs are matched by concomitant benefits. The answer almost certainly is no. …the government seizes very little dirty money. There are only about 2,000 convictions for federal money laundering offenses each year, and that number falls by more than 50 percent not counting cases where money laundering was an add-on charge to another offense.

Let’s close with passages from a couple of additional articles.

First, Richard Rahn explains why all anti-money laundering laws are misguided in a very recent column for the Washington Times.

…what is even more shocking is the extent to which various government organizations monitor and, in many cases, restrict financial freedom, and seize assets without criminal conviction. …The government argues that it must collect financial data and then share it with many domestic and foreign government organizations in order to stop tax evasion, money laundering, drug dealing, other assorted criminality, and terrorist finance — all of which sounds good at first glance, until one looks at what really happens. If you think that the war on drugs has been a failure, look at the war on money laundering, tax evasion and terrorist finance for an even bigger failure. …money laundering is a crime of intent, rather than actions, in which two different people can engage in the same set of financial transactions, but if one has criminal intent he or she can be charged while the other person is home free. Such vague law is both ripe with abuse and difficult to prove. …The financial information that government agencies now routinely collect is widely shared, not only with other domestic government agencies, but increasingly with foreign governments — many of which do not protect individual liberty and other basic rights.

And here are some excerpts from a column in Reason by Elizabeth Nolan Brown.

American and British banks are monitoring customers’ contraception purchases, DVD-rental frequency, dining-out habits, and more in a misguided attempt to detect human traffickers… Their intrusive and ineffective efforts come at the behest of government agencies, who have been eager to use asset-forfeiture powers… The U.S. and U.K. banks RUSI researchers interviewed said they were happy to help law enforcement prosecute human traffickers and had little problems turning over financial records for people already arrested or under investigation. But proactively finding potential traffickers themselves proved more difficult. As RUSI explains, “the often unremarkable nature of transactions related to” human trafficking made finding criminals or victims via transaction monitoring a time-consuming and unfruitful endeavor. Yet financial institutions are boxed in by regulations that threaten to punish them severely should they participate in the flow of illegally begotten money, however unwittingly. The bind leaves banks and other financial services eager to cast as wide a net as possible, terminating relationships with “suspicious” customers, monitoring the bank accounts of people they know, or turning their records over to law enforcement rather than risk allegations of not doing enough to comply.

In other words, these laws are a costly – but ineffective – burden.

Which is what I said in this video for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

P.S. In closing, I should point out that statists frequently demagogue against so-called tax havens for supposedly being hotbeds of dirty money, but take a look at this map put together by the Institute of Governance and you’ll find only one low-tax jurisdiction among the 28 nations listed.

Even the State Department’s most recent list of vulnerable jurisdictions shows only a handful of international financial centers.

Yes, places Cayman and Bermuda are on the list, but so are countries such as Canada, China, India, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, and the United Kingdom. In other words, it’s basically a random list of jurisdictions rather than a helpful guide.

P.P.S. You probably didn’t realize you could make a joke involving money laundering, but here’s one starring President Obama.

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A Glimmer of Common Sense on Gun Rights from the Czech Republic

Defenders of civil liberties have won big victories against gun control in the United States.

The fight certainly isn’t over, to be sure, but most Americans have some degree of freedom to own guns, carry guns, and protect themselves with guns.

By contrast, the situation in Europe tends to be grim. Many nations strictly limit the freedom of people to keep and bear arms. As you might expect, the “sensible Swiss” are an exception, and nations such as Monaco, Austria, and the Nordics are semi-reasonable.

But it’s just about impossible to own a gun in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy. Even groups that are targeted by Islamic fanatics, such as Jews, aren’t allowed to defend themselves.

And that is good news for terrorists. They can plot murder and mayhem with considerable confidence that they won’t meet armed resistance until police show up (just as mass killers in the USA seek out gun-free zones for their evil attacks).

But that passive approach may be changing in some European nations.

According to a column in the Washington Post, the President of the Czech Republic believes an armed citizenry is a safe citizenry.

A couple of months ago, Czech President Milos Zeman made an unusual request: He urged citizens to arm themselves against a possible “super-Holocaust” carried out by Muslim terrorists.

The column notes that he’s almost certainly over-stating the risks.

…there are fewer than 4,000 Muslims in this country of 10 million people.

But some citizens decided it’s better to be safe than sorry.

…gun purchases spiked.

Now the government is seeking to make it easier for citizens to use those guns for self-defense.

…the country’s interior ministry is pushing a constitutional change that would let citizens use guns against terrorists. Proponents say this could save lives if an attack occurs and police are delayed or unable to make their way to the scene. …Parliament must approve the proposal.

The good news is that the Czech Republic already has fairly good laws. At least by European standards.

The Czech Republic already has some of the most lenient gun policies in Europe. It’s home to about 800,000 registered firearms and 300,000 people with gun licenses. Obtaining a weapon is relatively easy: Residents must be 21, pass a gun knowledge check and have no criminal record. By law, Czechs can use their weapons to protect their property or when in danger, although they need to prove they faced a real threat.

Hopefully there are lots of unregistered firearms as well.

Though I’m unsure what the Interior Ministry is proposing with regards to gun use against terrorists. Why would the law need to be changed if Czechs already are allowed to use weapons for self-defense?

In any event, the bad news is that the meddling bureaucrats in Brussels are trying to make it more difficult for law-abiding people to protect themselves.

…much of Europe…has long supported much more stringent gun-control measures.  In the wake of the 2015 terror attacks in Paris, France pushed the European Union to enact even tougher policies. The European Commission’s initial proposal called for a complete ban on the sale of weapons like Kalashnikovs or AR-15s that are intended primarily for military use. Ammunition magazines would be limited to 20 rounds or less. …the EU passed a compromise last month… The final measure bans the sale of most military-style rifles and requires all potential buyers to go through a psychological check before they can buy a weapon. …it’s not yet clear if gun owners will have to turn in newly illegal weapons.

How typical of the French. They want to make it more difficult for law-abiding people to have guns, an approach that presumably won’t have much – if any – impact on terrorists who presumably can get weapons illegally.

And the EU once again ignores its own federalist rhetoric on subsidiarity to push for statist continent-wide policy.

Moreover, Kalashnikovs and AR-15s are no more dangerous or deadly than other rifles, so targeting guns that “are intended primarily for military use” is irrelevant nonsense.

The bottom line is that more gun control in Europe won’t help the fight against terrorism. Instead, it simply means citizens don’t have the right to defend themselves.

So I’m glad the Czechs are trying to do the right thing, in spite of the paternalistic left-wing ideologues elsewhere in Europe. And I hope there will be lots of civil disobedience as more gun control policies emanate from Brussels.

P.S. If you enjoy sarcasm, here’s a clever video showing how leftists think about gun control. And here’s another one.

P.P.S. If you enjoy when leftists accidentally make the argument against gun control, you’ll enjoy the exploding cigars by Trevor Noah and the New York Times.

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More Examples of Terrorism Subsidized by Government Handouts

Whenever there’s a terrorist attack, I automatically feel a combination of anger, horror, and sadness. Like all normal people.

But it’s then just a matter of time before I also begin wonder whether we’ll learn that the dirtbag terrorist was financed by welfare.

Which is an understandable reaction since that’s now the normal pattern. Over and over and over and over and over again, we learn that taxpayers were supporting these murderous losers while they plotted and planned their mayhem.

And it’s not random. They’re actually told by hate-filled Imams to sign up for handouts. And European courts protect terrorist households that use welfare to finance death and destruction.

It’s gotten to the point where I even created a special terror wing in the Moocher Hall of Fame.

And it’s happened again. The piece of human filth who murdered 22 people at a concert in Manchester was able to finance his terrorism with handouts from the British government.

The Telegraph has some of the odious details about tax-financed death and destruction.

Salman Abedi is understood to have received thousands of pounds in state funding in the run up to Monday’s atrocity even while he was overseas receiving bomb-making training. Police are investigating Abedi’s finances, including how he paid for frequent trips to Libya where he is thought to have been taught to make bombs at a jihadist training camp. …Abedi’s finances are a major ‘theme’ of the police inquiry amid growing alarm over the ease with which jihadists are able to manipulate Britain’s welfare and student loans system to secure financing. One former detective said jihadists were enrolling on university courses to collect the student loans “often with no intention of turning up”.

But he probably accessed other types of benefits as well, particularly since he never worked and had plenty of cash.

…the Department for Work and Pensions refused to say if Abedi had received any benefits, including housing benefit and income support worth up to £250 a week, during 2015 and 2016. …Abedi, 22, never held down a job, according to neighbours and friends, but was able to travel regularly between the UK and Libya. Abedi also had sufficient funds to buy materials for his sophisticated bomb while living in a rented house in south Manchester. Six weeks before the bombing Abedi rented a second property in a block of flats in Blackley eight miles from his home, paying £700 in cash. He had enough money to rent a third property in the centre of Manchester from where he set off with a backpack containing the bomb. Abedi also withdrew £250 in cash three days before the attack and transferred £2,500 to his younger brother Hashim in Libya

Time for another example. Remember the piece of human garbage in London who mowed down some innocent people with his car before murdering a policeman?

Well, he also was subsidized by taxpayers.

Khalid Masood, the radical ISIS terrorist responsible for London’s Westminster terror attack, did not have a job and was receiving government benefits before engaging in his attack. …Masood had a violent criminal history, including several knife attacks. …Terrorists receiving government welfare is a common theme discovered in many post-terror attack investigations.

Seems like Abedi and Masood should have had their own episode of “Benefits Street.”

There are also new reports on welfare-subsidized terror from continental Europe.

A story in USA Today offers a depressing summary.

Governments across Europe have accidentally paid taxpayer-funded welfare benefits such as unemployment funds, disability pensions and housing allowances to Islamic State militants who have used the money to wage war in Iraq and Syria, authorities and terrorism experts say. Danish officials said this week that 29 citizens were given $100,000 in public pension benefits because they were considered too ill or disabled to work, and they then fled to Syria to fight for the radical group. …Other countries that also have paid benefits to Islamic State fighters…It took eight months before welfare authorities cut off benefits paid to a Swedish national who had joined the terror group in its Syrian stronghold Raqqa. …Authorities concluded that several of the plotters in the Brussels and Paris terror attacks that killed 162 people in 2015 and 2016 were partly financed by Belgium’s social welfare system while they planned their atrocities. …radical Islamic cleric Anjem Choudary, who was jailed for terrorist activities, urged followers to claim “jihadiseeker’s allowance” — a reference to the nation’s welfare system. His phrase echoes a manual released by the militant group in 2015. How to Survive in the West: A Mujahid Guide advises that “if you can claim extra benefits from a government, then do so.”

By the way, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry about the Belgian government’s response.

Are they reducing the welfare state? Of course not.

But you’ll be happy to know that imprisoned radicals lose access to the government teat.

Philippe de Koster, director of Belgium’s agency that fights money laundering and terrorism financing, said steps have since been taken to prevent that from happening again. For example, those convicted of terrorism can no longer receive benefits while in jail.

I’ve already written about welfare-subsidized terrorism in the Nordic nations.

Here’s another story about developments in Scandinavia.

The report examined hundreds of individuals who left to join extremist groups such as Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) between 2013 and 2016. Commissioned at the request of the Financial Supervisory Authority, it has found that the majority was still receiving living allowance, child benefit, maintenance support and parental benefits while abroad, having other people handle their mail to make it look like they were still at home.

The problem seems especially acute in Sweden.

Close to every person who left Sweden to fight for terror groups in the Middle East received welfare to support themselves abroad, according to a new government report. A study of 300 Swedish citizens who fought in Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2016 shows jihadis are getting increasingly good at getting away with welfare fraud. The individuals often use a person in Sweden to handle paperwork and create the illusion that they’re still in the country. …The most attractive option are government loans to study abroad. The loans are easy to get and thousands of dollars are paid out at once. …The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) recently identified several cases of Danish citizens receiving early pension because they were deemed too sick or disabled to work. They later left the country to fight for Islamic State while the payments continue to get deposited into their accounts. …PET has tried to cut off the benefits since 2014, but current legislation doesn’t allow the payment agency to cut early pensions simply because the recipient is believed to be a terrorist.

Let’s close with something that it either astounding or depressing, or actually both. All of the examples cited above are nations with bloated welfare states. Governments in all those countries consume more than 40 percent of economic output, and more than 50 percent of GDP in some cases.

Belgium is in that latter category, yet one official actually said that it was very difficult to fight terrorism “due to the small size of the Belgian government.”

To me, this is a reminder that the natural incompetence of government becomes worse the bigger it gets.

P.S. Today’s column mocks European government for welfare-subsidized terrorism, but American readers should be careful about throwing stones in glass houses.

The dirtbags who bombed the Boston Marathon were mooching off taxpayers.

And the U.S. refugee program includes automatic eligibility for handouts, making it, in part, a “terrorist-funding welfare scam.”

P.P.S. I suppose a concluding caveat would be appropriate. I’m not making an argument that welfare causes terrorism. That almost would be as silly as the leftists who claim that terrorism is caused by inequality or climate change. Though I do wonder whether people who get government handouts feel a sense of self-loathing that leaves them vulnerable to jihadist ideology.

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Another Welfare-Subsidized Terrorist

Whenever mass shootings occur, some people quickly jump to conclusions before there’s any evidence.

Folks on the right are occasionally guilty of immediately assuming Islamic terrorism, which is somewhat understandable. Folks on the left, meanwhile, are sometimes guilty of instinctively assuming Tea Party-inspired violence (I’m not joking).

I confess that I’m prone to do something similar. Whenever there is a terrorist attack, I automatically wonder if we’ll find out welfare payments and other goodies from the government helped subsidize the evil actions.

In my defense, there’s a reason I think this way. Whether we’re talking about Jihadi John or the Tsarnaev brothers, there are lots of examples of dirtbag terrorists getting handouts from taxpayers.

It happens a lot in other nations. And it’s now happening with disturbing frequency in the United States.

It’s even gotten to the point where I’ve created a special terror wing in the Moocher Hall of Fame. And, as more evidence accumulates, the medieval savage who drove a truck through a Christmas market in Germany may be eligible for membership.

Here’s some of what we know, as reported by the Daily Caller.

Berlin truck attack terrorist Anis Amri used several different identities to claim multiple welfare checks simultaneously in different cities around Germany. Amri, the Tunisian refugee who killed 12 and injured 48 at a Christmas market in Berlin Dec. 19… The investigation was closed in November because Amri’s whereabouts were unknown. …Welfare is a common way for terrorists to fund their activities in Europe.

The U.K.-based Express reveals that the terrorist was very proficient at ripping off taxpayers before deciding to kill them.

Despite being shot dead in Italy just days after the attack, the Tunisian refugee is now under investigation for fraud after conning German authorities into handing over cash to fund his terror exploits. After travelling from Tunisia to Europe in 2011, he used up to eight different aliases and several different nationalities – at times even claiming to be from Egypt or Lebanon. Reports claim Amri carried several different false identity documents and used aliases to collect welfare in cities across Germany.

The story also has details on how welfare payments subsidized previous terrorist actions.

Welfare fraud was key to funding terror attacks in Brussels in March and in Paris last year. Terrorists collected around £45,000 in benefits which they used to pay for the brutal attacks in the major European cities. …Meanwhile, Danish authorities came under fire recently after it emerged 36 Islamic State fighters continued to receive benefits for months after leaving the country to join other members of the brutal regime in Syria and Iraq.

And while I’m not sure RT is a legitimate news source, it says Amri used 14 identities for mooching.

Anis Amri, the Tunisian man accused of driving a truck into a crowd of Christmas market shoppers in Berlin, used at least 14 different identities, a German police chief said. …Among other things, this allowed the man to receive social benefits under different names in different municipalities, the police chief said.

A close associate (and suspected co-conspirator) of Amri also was mooching off the system according to news reports.

A spokeswoman for the office of Germany’s chief prosecutor on Wednesday said authorities have taken a second Tunisian suspect into custody following raids in Berlin on Tuesday. …However, she added that there was insufficient evidence to charge the suspect. In a separate statement, the federal prosecutor’s office announced the man had been charged with committing social welfare fraud and would remain in custody. …the suspect had previously been detained on suspicion of supplying explosives intended for a prospective attack in Dusseldorf. …The 26-year-old suspect allegedly had dinner with Amri at a restaurant the night before the attack, according to Köhler. The suspect allegedly met Amri in late 2015. “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported that the two men traveled together from Italy to Germany that year.

Gee, sounds like a model citizen. Merkel must be proud of her caring and sharing welfare state.

Last but not least, a story in the U.K.-based Telegraph has some added details on the sordid history of welfare-funded terrorism in Europe.

The jihadists suspected of carrying out the bomb and gun attacks in Paris and Brussels used British benefits payments to fund international terrorism, a court has heard. …Zakaria Bouffassil, 26, from Birmingham is accused of handing over the cash which had been withdrawn from the bank account of Anouar Haddouchi, a Belgian national, who had been claiming benefits while living in the West Midlands with his wife. Kingston Crown Court heard how thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money continued to be paid into Haddouchi’s bank account, even after he had left Britain for Syria and had begun fighting for Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil). …On the opening day of their trial, jurors heard how some of the most notorious and wanted terrorists in Europe had used British taxpayers’ money to fund their activities in Syria and elsewhere.

Though I suppose I shouldn’t say “sordid history.” This is more like societal suicide.

After all, we’re not talking about welfare payments for a tiny fraction of terrorists. It really is a theme.

I linked to some examples above, and if you want more evidence, click here, here, here, here, and here.

By the way, I’m not claiming that welfare causes terrorism. Though I do wonder if Mickey Kaus has a point when he does make that link.

…extreme anti-social terrorist ideologies (radical Islam, in particular) seem to breed in “oppositional” cultures supported by various government welfare benefits. …The social logic is simple: Ethnic differences make it easy for those outside of, for example, French Arab neighborhoods to discriminate against those inside, and easy for those inside to resent the mainstream culture around them. Meanwhile, relatively generous welfare benefits enable those in the ethnic ghetto to stay there, stay unemployed, and seethe. Without government subsidies, they would have to overcome the prejudice against them and integrate into the mainstream working culture. Work, in this sense, is anti-terrorist medicine.

I don’t particularly like government-provided welfare of any kind, but I definitely think there should be strict rules against handouts for immigrants. And if that makes them less susceptible to terrorist ideologies, that’s a big fringe benefit.

P.S. It goes without saying that politicians aren’t trying to subsidize terrorism. It’s just a byproduct of bad policy. They do, however, explicitly and deliberately subsidize terrorism insurance for big companies. A rather unique example of corporate welfare.

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More Welfare-Subsidized Terrorism in Europe

When I was young and innocent, I thought that giving welfare handouts to advocates of terrorism was the most perverse and disgusting way to abuse taxpayers.

Now that I’m old and jaded, I’ve learned that governments are so masochistically stupid that they routinely give taxpayer-financed goodies directly to the people who actually engage in terrorist attacks.

The U.K. government provided lots of handouts to Jihadi John, the ISIS psychopath who likes to sever heads.

The French government generously subsidized Mohammed Merah, the thug who executed a little girl.

The Danish and Austrian governments give welfare payments that get used to finance ISIS fighters going to Syria.

And there are plenty of other examples.

So should any of us be surprised to learn that the human scum who planned and executed the recent terror attacks in France and Belgium were mooching off taxpayers as well?

The Wall Street Journal has a very disturbing story revealing the degree to which Islamo-terrorists in Europe relied on welfare handouts as they plotted and schemed to brutally murder innocent people.

Belgian financial investigators looking into recent terror plots have discovered a disturbing trend: Some of the suspects were collecting welfare benefits until shortly before they carried out their attacks. At least five of the alleged plotters in the Paris and Brussels terror attacks partly financed themselves with payments from Belgium’s generous social-welfare system, authorities have concluded. In total they received more than €50,000, or about $56,000 at today’s rate. The main surviving Paris suspect, Salah Abdeslam, collected unemployment benefits until three weeks before the November attacks—€19,000 in all, according to people familiar with the case. At the time, he was manager and part-owner of a bar, which Belgian officials say should have made him ineligible. Many of the participants in a disrupted Belgian terror plot also had been on the dole, according to the judge who sentenced more than a dozen people in the so-called Verviers cell last month.

Unsurprisingly, government officials seem incapable of drawing the right conclusion.

Instead, we get navel-gazing exercises.

The revelations raise a difficult conundrum for Europe. On one hand, the modern welfare state is a primary tool for combating poverty as well as integrating immigrants. On the other, officials are working hard to find and stop potential sources of revenue for those bent on committing terrorist atrocities.

I’m tempted to respond with a word describing the manure of male bovines.

Instead, I’ll simply note that the welfare state is a system that subsidizes and exacerbates poverty, while also hindering assimilation.

And, as the enemies of modernity have learned, it’s a handy way to finance terrorism.

Islamic State itself suggested welfare benefits as a financing source, in a 2015 manual called “How to Survive in the West: A Mujahid Guide.” In a section headed “Easy Money Ideas,” the manual suggested “if you can claim extra benefits from a government, then do so.”

Here are some more details

In Belgium, people exiting prison often receive social benefits to help reintegrate into society. This was the case with Khalid el-Bakraoui,who served two years in prison before blowing himself up in the Maelbeek subway station in Brussels in March. Bakraoui was given jobless benefits in early 2014, after a stint in prison for armed robbery and carjacking. In total, he collected about €25,000 in unemployment, medical and other benefits, according to one of the people familiar with the case. He wasn’t shut off until last December, when Belgian authorities issued a warrant for him in connection with the Paris attacks.

Sounds like Bakraoui used his handouts to reintegrate into terrorism.

Investor’s Business Daily also weighed in on this issue, pointing out that the welfare state in Europe subsidizes terrorists.

Belgium’s government has been extremely generous toward its Muslim population. Most of its welfare goes to Muslims, and it even subsidizes their mosques and imams. Many of these young Muslim men who supposedly can’t find gainful employment don’t want to work. Why would they, when welfare checks are normally 70% to 80% of their income?

The editorial notes that generous handouts hinder assimilation.

Far from being mistreated, Belgian Muslims are one of the most pampered minorities in Western history. Lest it offend its burgeoning Muslim population, Belgium has “de-Christianized” its Christian holidays. The holiday previously known as All Saints Day is now referred to as Autumn Leave, Christmas Vacation is now Winter Vacation, Lenten Vacation is now Rest and Relaxation Leave and Easter is now Spring Vacation…  .Heavily subsidized by Belgium’s overgenerous welfare system, North African immigrants have little incentive to integrate. Instead they turn inward, creating Islamic no-go zones divorced from and hostile to Western society.

The problem may be especially acute in Belgium, but it’s a problem all across Europe.

…welfare is abused by Muslims across Europe — some 80% of Muslim immigrants to Europe are on the dole, and more than half are “economically inactive.” Muslims claim disability more than any other group. In the EU capital of Belgium, as well as neighboring Netherlands, Muslims are roughly 5% of the population yet consume 40% to 60% of the welfare budget. Belgium spends more on unemployment benefits than any other country outside Denmark. European society isn’t oppressing Muslim immigrants. Far from it. It’s coddling them

If those numbers are anywhere close to accurate, the problem of welfare-subsidized terrorism is going to get worse before it gets better. If it ever gets better.

By the way, this also is a problem in the United States.

The low-life losers who bombed the Boston Marathon got handouts.

And the State Department actually has a program that takes “refugees” from countries with terrorism problems and signs them up for government dependency.

P.S. The U.K. government has decided that giving welfare to jihadists isn’t enough. It now sometimes hires them and makes them part of the law enforcement bureaucracy.

P.P.S. Though that’s not as bad as the Danish government, which persecutes people who fight back against attackers.

P.P.P.S. But officials representing the bloated Belgian government surely deserves some sort of prize for claiming that the nation’s government is too small to fight terrorism. Especially when that government is famously incompetent in thwarting obvious terror suspects.

P.P.P.P.S. Unsurprisingly, folks in Texas are smarter than Europeans about responding to terror attacks.

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Fighting Terrorism: Europe vs. Texas

There are no simple answers to Islamist terrorism, particularly when individual nutjobs are determined to kill a  bunch of innocent people.

But I know that some answers to the problem are wrong. So when politicians like Hillary Clinton say we should have more gun control, I side with police chiefs who recognize that an armed citizenry is a much more effective approach.

Simply stated, we’re dealing with evil people who want to maximize death, so they pick out places where they are less likely to encounter armed resistance.

The European response to terrorism is especially insipid. Law-abiding people are disarmed while terrorists have no problems obtaining all the guns they need.

Which leads to terrible consequences with tragic regularity.

I’m not sure how to categorize this sarcastic look at how Europe responds to a terror attack compared to how Texas responds, but it does make the key point that it’s better to shoot back than die meekly.

Consider this the terrorism version of the joke comparing how the governors of Texas and California respond to a coyote attack.

Though this is a deadly serious issue, not a joking matter.

P.S. If you want some genuine terror-related humor, look at the bottom of this post.

P.P.S. And if you want something truly pathetic, look at how statists try to rationalize terrorism.

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Failure in Government Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

In America’s sprawling intelligence network, costing tens of billions of dollars, who got fired after the 9-11 terror attacks for failing to connect the dots?

Who in the military got fired after the Fort Hood terrorist attack for failing to connect the dots?

More recently, who in the FBI or Department of Homeland Security got fired after the San Bernardino terrorist attack for failing to connect the dots?

And who in the government will get fired after the Orlando terrorist massacre for failing to connect the dots?

If you answered “nobody” in response to all these questions, don’t expect special congratulations. Failure in government is both pervasive and without consequences, so any other answer would have required a degree of near-malicious naiveté normally found at Bernie Sanders’ rallies.

And there are lots of dots that should have been connected in Orlando.

Jim Geraghty of National Review gathered several examples.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

…on Sept. 11, 2001. As classmates looked on in shock, Mateen celebrated the terrorist attacks that day… At a barbecue in the spring of 2007, Mateen…told the class he ought to kill all of them…

The Daily Beast reports:

Mateen first came to the FBI’s attention in May 2013, after making a series of “boasts” to co-workers about his various ties to terrorist groups

The Miami Herald reports:

The Islamic Center was also attended on occasion by Moner Mohammad Abusalha, who is believed to be the first American suicide bomber in Syria.

And here’s what CNN has reported:

…he was a security guard at the St. Lucie County Courthouse, often manning the metal detectors at the front of the building.Sheriff Ken Mascara said that in 2013 his staff requested Mateen be transferred from the courthouse because he made inflammatory comments. Mateen’s supervisor notified federal agents, after which, the sheriff said, the FBI investigated the guard.

And here is some amazing evidence from a report by Fox2:

A Florida gun store owner says his employees refused to sell to the Orlando nightclub gunman before the attack. The Florida gun store owner noticed several red flags right away — and alerted the FBI. But, there was never an investigation, and Omar Mateen slipped through the cracks.

It may turn out, of course, that some of these reports are wrong. But most of them, if not all of them, are presumably accurate.

Yet the hordes of paper pushers in the federal government decided that this dirtbag didn’t belong on the no-fly list (though somehow the feds decided an eight-year old cub scout shouldn’t be on planes)?!?

And the bureaucrats didn’t think additional investigations of Mateen were warranted given all the above information, which they had before the attack?

I realize I’m venting because of my anger at the senseless slaughter. Yes, I admit that even an efficient government isn’t going to be able to stop all terrorism. And maybe our government quietly thwarts many attacks and actually does a lot better job than we realize.

But in this case and others, mistakes obviously were made. Shouldn’t there be any consequences for that incompetence?

By the way, other governments are equally feckless. If you recall the terrorist bombing of the Brussels Airport, the Belgian government demonstrated unbelievable and near-malignant levels of stupidity.

The Daily Caller has some of the disturbing details.

Turkey detained one of the Brussels suicide bombers, Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, in June 2015 on charges of being a foreign fighter. …Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said Belgium ignored Turkey’s “warning that this person is a foreign fighter.” …Erdogan said…“We reported the deportation to the Belgian Embassy in Ankara on July 14, 2015, but he was later set free.” …El-Bakraoui, 30, was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2010 for a shootout with police officers. He was released early but subsequently violated his parole and was supposed to be back in prison.

Wow, this is like a perfect storm of government incompetence. First, the Belgian government is told the guy is a foreign fighter in Syria. Second, the Belgian government knew he was a bad guy. Third, they let him out of jail early. And fourth, he violated the conditions of his parole but wasn’t thrown back in jail.

But I guess we shouldn’t be surprised. After all, this is the same nation where an official claimed that it was difficult to fight terrorism because of “the small size of the Belgian government” even though the public sector in that country consumes a greater share of economic output than it does even in Italy and Sweden.

So what’s the moral of the story?

There are three. First, the federal government has become such a sprawling and bloated mess that incompetence seems inevitable.

And it doesn’t matter whether it’s on purpose or by accident. We have a government that does a bad job, even when we want good performance.

Here’s what I wrote back in 2014.

There are some legitimate functions of government and I want those to be handled efficiently. But I worry that effective government is increasingly unlikely because politicians are so busy intervening in areas that should be left to families, civil society, and the private sector.

Mark Steyn made the same point in a much more amusing fashion.

But there’s a second point that needs to be made about the lack of consequences.

If nobody is ever fired for mistakes, it’s obviously much harder to get good performance. The success of any organization depends in part on the carrots and sticks that are employed.

But in the federal government, there are no sticks.

Heck, you can let veterans die by putting them on secret waiting lists and then get awarded bonuses.

From the perspective of bureaucrats, this is a win-win situation. If you do something bad, there are no consequences.

And if you allow something bad, there are no consequences.

For the third and final point, I’m going to partially absolve bureaucrats because some of the problem is the result of politicians misallocating law-enforcement resources.

Think of all the money, time, energy and manpower that is squandered for the War on Drugs. Wouldn’t it be better if the crowd in Washington shifted those resources to stopping people who want to kill us?

And what about the multi-billion cost of anti-money laundering laws. For all intents and purposes, the government is requiring banks to spy on everybody, which results in a haystack of information, thus making it impossible for law enforcement to find any needles. Call me crazy, I’d rather have law enforcement concentrate on actual criminals.

I’m not expecting perfection from Washington. Or even great performance. But it sure would be nice if the government was semi-effective.

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Hillary’s Anti-Gun Agenda: An Attack on the Constitution and an Assault on Common Sense

The Constitution and Bill of Rights exist to protect our civil liberties from government. And that’s true whether the attack on our rights is legislative or bureaucratic. For instance:

• Our 1st Amendment rights to participate in the political process are – or at least should be – inviolate, even if some politicians think they can magically legislate away our rights to political speech.
• Our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms is – or at least should be – inviolate, even though many politicians want to curtail our ability to defend ourselves.
• Our 4th Amendment right to block the government from spying on us without a search warrant is – or at least should be – inviolate, even though it has been unfortunately narrowed.
• Our 5th Amendment rights against the government taking our life, liberty, and property without due process are – or at least should be – inviolate, notwithstanding politicians who want more power for government.

As a lawyer, Hillary Clinton should these simple facts about the Bill of Rights.

But if this tweet is any indication, she must have slept through those lectures while at law school.

It's absurd that people with suspected terrorist links can buy a gun in America, no questions asked. pic.twitter.com/y0yVjO1k1K

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 16, 2016

Yup, her position is that you lose your constitutional rights if some bureaucrat puts you on a secret list. Sort of like the Department of PreCrime from Minority Report.

If you wonder why this matters, check out Congressman Trey Gowdy’s brilliant evisceration of one of Obama’s political appointees.

Though it’s important to note that this isn’t – or shouldn’t be – a partisan or ideological issue. There are some honest folks on the left who very much support the right to due process and are very critical of the White House’s agenda.

For what it’s worth, at least some pro-gun control politicians admit that the Constitution is an obstacle.

As reported by the Washington Examiner, Senator Manchin of West Virginia is honest about his desire to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., said Thursday that due process is one of the “big problems” standing in the way of lawmakers passing legislation that would keep suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms, and argued that the Fifth Amendment is “killing us right now.” “The problem we have, and really the firewall we have right now, is due process. It’s all due process,” he said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Then again, if Hillary and her supporters think that merely being a suspect of wrongdoing is sufficient to take away people’s rights, then perhaps this sarcastic response to Mrs. Clinton should be a serious proposal.

It’s absurd that people under investigation for mishandling classified state secrets can run for president. https://t.co/TULqKcUIU6

— Ashe Schow (@AsheSchow) June 16, 2016

By the way, the Orlando terrorist apparently wasn’t on the no-fly list, according to Bloomberg, so Obama, Clinton, and others don’t even have a factual basis for this latest assault on the Bill of Rights.

Interestingly, the White House admitted late last year that no mass shootings would have been stopped by any of the Administration’s anti-gun proposals, and it appears that is still the case today.

Now let’s look at the practical case against more gun control, especially with regards to the campaign against so-called assault weapons (which, other than some cosmetic features, are the same as traditional rifles).

John Lott and Larry Correia already have produced very powerful evidence in defense of these weapons.

Now here’s a video on the topic from a former Navy Seal.

The Wall Street Journal also is appropriately dismissive of calls for additional gun control.

Hillary Clinton and other Democrats have called for reinstating Bill Clinton’s ban on “assault weapons.” If her version works as well as her husband’s did, the terrorists will have won. From 1994 to 2002 Congress barred the sale of 18 types of rifles and shotguns that had “military style” attributes. This definition was purely political…the ban had a negligible impact on gun crime. So-called assault rifles accounted for about 2% of gun crimes prior to the ban, and the percentage of murders committed with rifles today (2% in 2014) is less than the 3% in the last year of the ban. …numerous studies, including one commissioned by the Department of Justice, …found no link to the ban and reduced crime.

For what it’s worth, places with lots of gun control (such as Europe) don’t get good results.

The media this week are full of stories about gun-death rates, without bothering to note that most of the surge is occurring in cities like Chicago that have the strictest gun laws. …As for stopping terrorism, California is among the states that continued to ban assault weapons after the federal version expired. But that didn’t stop the San Bernardino killers, who used modified rifles that violated the law. France’s strict gun laws also didn’t stop the Paris assailants.

Also writing for the Wall Street Journal, a lawyer from Florida, Ms. Ashley Lukis, is understandably irked by those who want to use terrorism as an excuse for gun control.

Instead of blaming the perverse militants who have formed a “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, who are burning people alive, who are raping and murdering women and children, and who are engaging in an aggressive global propaganda campaign to encourage precisely the murderous behavior that we saw in Orlando, in San Bernardino, in Brussels and in Paris—many Americans are attacking other law-abiding citizens who happen to hold a different interpretation of the Constitution. …We are dealing with terrorism. We are talking about evil individuals who will happily strap bombs to their bodies or hijack a commercial airliner or set off homemade explosives in the middle of a crowded street. And the best solution you can come up with is domestic gun control? …The solution to terrorism is not to pass imperfect laws that will palliate the masses until next time. Nor is the solution to look inward, to make speeches, to tweet about your grief or start a hashtag. The solution to terrorism is not to blame the gun lobby.

Amen.

But let’s not stop there, because there are some people who deserve to be blamed.

Kevin Williamson’s National Review column is must reading. He starts by dismissing the left’s proposals.

The Democrats’…proposal — having police agencies compile secret lists of possible subversives and revoking their legal rights with nothing resembling due process — is plainly unconstitutional, and wouldn’t withstand five minutes’ legal examination. …they’re talking about: keeping a list of people who have been identified by police agencies as possible threats, but who never have been charged with, much less convicted of, any crime, and rescinding their ordinary constitutional rights without so much as a court hearing. We cannot prohibit people from buying guns with no due process for the same reason we cannot subject them to arbitrary incarceration or hunt them for sport. …Study after study after study has shown that the assault-weapon ban had zero effect on violent crime when it was in effect, and it almost certainly wouldn’t have one now, either. …Democrats keep saying that they don’t want to take away our guns, but that is, in fact, what this policy would demand.

But what we can do – but don’t – is actually enforce existing laws.

Such as those against “straw buyers.”

These cases are lots of work and generally don’t ensnare big-time criminals, but rather the idiot nephews, girlfriends, and grandmothers of big-time criminals. Putting those people in federal penitentiaries for ten years isn’t going to win anybody any friends. But they are the people who render our current background-check laws ineffective against the criminals who have turned parts of Chicago into a free-fire zone. Putting a few dozen of them away for a few dozen years might provide a strong disincentive for other would-be straw buyers, particularly those who (as is not uncommon) engage in straw buying as a commercial endeavor.

Or when the government botches the background check.

In tens of thousands of cases each year, the FBI discovers, after the fact, that the sale should not have proceeded. At this point, it issues an alert to the ATF, which in most cases then . . . does nothing at all. In a study of the 2000 data, there were about 45,000 sales that the FBI wrongly allowed to proceed, and in about 38,000 of those cases, no effort was made to recover the firearm. …Picking up wrongly sold guns isn’t that big a chore. In fact, since most of these prohibited buyers have committed a serious crime in buying a gun (though many of them may not have known it — otherwise, why go to a licensed dealer?) a strongly worded letter (“Return your gun to the dealer or go to federal prison”) and a bit of follow-up ought to do the trick.

And that gets us to Kevin’s main point.

The government does a crappy job of stopping bad guys for the simple reason that government does a crappy job of doing anything.

…killers and future killers are on the street committing their crimes because our criminal-justice system, with its vast resources, does not do its job. The police, the prosecutors, the jailers, and the parole-and-probation authorities all must answer for the fact that such a large share of our murders are committed by people already well known to law enforcement. …a fair number of crimes that could be prevented, if the people we pay to prevent them were willing to do the old-fashioned police work necessary: running down criminals, prosecuting unglamorous cases, properly managing parolees. But those jobs are entrusted to government employees, whose unions are irreplaceable benefactors of Democratic political campaigns. …expecting the generously compensated and gorgeously pensioned employees of the public sector to do their goddamned jobs…is, if you’re a scheming, opportunistic lowlife like Chuck Schumer, unthinkable.

Exactly. As Mark Steyn has noted, what’s the point of having a bloated and sclerotic public sector if it doesn’t even do the small handful of things that are legitimate functions of government?

No wonder researchers have found that small government is more efficient.

P.S. In addition to the gentleman cited above, there are other honest folks on the left.

In 2012, I shared some important observations from Jeffrey Goldberg, a left-leaning writer for The Atlantic. In his column, he basically admitted his side was wrong about gun control.

Then, in 2013, I wrote about a column by Justin Cronin in the New York Times. He self-identified as a liberal, but explained how real-world events have led him to become a supporter of private gun ownership.

P.P.S. If you like pro-Second Amendment videos, here’s a great collection.

• Ted Nugent talking about gun ownership and the right of self defense.
• A look at Switzerland’s strong gun culture and the importance of self defense as a protection against oppression.
• And some very powerful testimony to some weasels on Capitol Hill (make sure to pay attention around the 5:00 mark).
• Ice-T talking about the real reason to defend and support the 2nd Amendment.
• A Reason TV video with five facts for Vice President Biden’s task force.
• A look at how a young woman can defend herself.
• Debunking the left’s “black NRA” parody.
• A 15-year old speaking truth to power.
• Bill Whittle looking at global gun data.
• Howard Stern defending gun rights.

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Another Shooting Tragedy in a Gun-Free Zone

It’s happened again. A nut went to a gun-free zone and engaged in a mass killing.

In this example, the perpetrator apparently was an Islamic fanatic upset about gay people.

But let’s set aside the question of motive and ask the important question of why politicians and bureaucrats don’t want innocent people to have any ability to defend themselves (they’ve even adopted policies prohibiting members of the military from being armed!).

The invaluable Crime Prevention Research Center has already weighed in on the issue.

Since at least 1950, only slightly over 1 percent of mass public shootings have occurred where general citizens have been able to defend themselves. Police are extremely important in stopping crime, but even if they had been present at the time of the nightclub shooting, they may have had a very difficult time stopping the attack. Attackers will generally shoot first at any uniformed guards or officers who are present (the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris last year illustrates that point).  …In this particular case the police only arrived on the scene after the attack occurred. That illustrates another point: it is simply impossible for the police to protect all possible targets. It is hard to ignore how these mass public shooters consciously pick targets where they know victims won’t be able to defend themselves.

By the way, if you think that allowing guns in bars is somehow a recipe for carnage, consider the fact that it’s already legal in many states to have concealed carry or open carry where alcohol is served, yet we never read stories about mass shootings in these states.

Among the recent states that allow permitted concealed handguns in places that get more than 50 percent of their revenue from alcohol are:Georgia (2014), Louisiana (2014), North Dakota (2015), North Carolina(2014), Ohio (2011), South Carolina (2014), and Tennessee (2009).  Besides Florida, other states that prohibit them are: Illinois, Kentucky, Nebraska,New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming.  Many of the states that allow one to carry a gun in a bar still prohibit you to consume alcohol.  Here are some other state laws: Alaska, Idaho, Michigan (allows you to open carry if you have a concealed handgun permit), and Montana (allows you to openly carry a gun into a bar), and Oregon.

To be sure, it’s possible at some point that some moron with a gun will do something wrong in one of these states, so it’s not as if there’s no possible downside to having guns legally in places where alcohol is served.

But the really bad people are far more dangerous, and their evil actions are enabled and facilitated by gun-free zones.

For my safety and the protection of my children, I want there to be more well-armed law-abiding people, whether in bars or anyplace else in society.

Including schools.

Professor Nelson Lund of George Mason University Law School explains in the New York Times that gun-free zones on campuses simply don’t work.

…colleges pretend that disarming responsible adults makes their students safer. The university at which I work, for example, forbids faculty, staff and students to bring their weapons to school, even if they have a concealed-carry permit issued by the government. …The university police are unable to prevent violent crimes, and it is heartlessly arrogant to disarm potential victims, leaving them and those they could protect at the mercy of rapists and other predators. Armed citizens frequently save lives and prevent violent crimes, often without firing a shot. Nearly all mass shootings occur in “gun-free zones,” and some of these massacres have been stopped by civilians who intervened after retrieving a gun.

He points out that the evidence favoring concealed carry is overwhelming.

…states have adopted laws allowing law-abiding adults to carry a concealed handgun in public. About 13 million Americans now have concealed-carry permits, and 11 states do not even require a permit. As the number of armed citizens has skyrocketed, violent crime has gone down, not up, and permit holders almost never abuse their rights. In Florida, for example, where permits have been available for almost thirty years, they have been revoked for firearm misuse at an annual rate of 0.0003 percent; even the police have higher rates of firearms violations (and higher overall crime rates) than permit holders.

So what’s the bottom line?

Professor Lund has an understandably low opinion of the “callous” school bureaucrats who think grief counselors are better than self defense.

When murders and even massacres occur, …university bureaucrats will undoubtedly absolve themselves of guilt, wash the blood from their demonstrably unsafe spaces, and call in the grief counselors. Some state legislatures have put a stop to these callous disarmament policies.

The moral of the story is that lawful people should have the right to defend themselves and others.

The police play an important role, of course, but they generally show up after bad things have happened. Which is why the vast majority of cops oppose gun control (and even a growing number of police chiefs, who often are corrupted by being political appointees, now say private gun ownership is important to deter bad guys).

That’s why legal gun ownership is important, particularly for communities that are targeted for violence, such as European Jews, or for people such as teachers who could be in a position to protect others who have no ability to defend themselves.

The good news on this sad day is that more and more states are moving policy in the right direction. Hopefully something good will come out of this tragedy and there will be further moves to help law-abiding people defend themselves from evil.

Of course, I won’t be surprised if the people who can’t pass this IQ test argue instead for more gun control.

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In One Phrase, Everything that You Need to Know about the Failure of Big Government

I realize it’s presumptuous, but I periodically make grandiose claims that a single column will tell readers “everything” they need to know about a topic. I’ve used that tactic when writing about tax loopholes, entitlements, fiscal policy, bureaucracy (twice), tax evasion, France, Greece, corporate inversions, and economic policy.

Sometimes I even claim a single image, chart, or cartoon provides a reader with “everything” needed to understand an issue. Examples include the minimum wage, economic policy, the welfare state, supply-side economics, the tax code, Europe’s fiscal crisis, Social Security reform, demographics, overpaid bureaucrats, healthcare economics, inequality, fiscal policy, and the Ryan budget (twice).

Needless to say, I don’t actually think these columns give readers “everything” on a topic. But I do hope the information makes a compelling and informative point about an issue.

So it’s time to expand this tactic and present one sentence that tells readers “everything” they need to know about the failure of big government. And it’s not even the full sentence, just the bolded portion in this excerpt from a BuzzFeed story about how Belgium is trying to deal with terrorism.

One Belgian counterterrorism official told BuzzFeed News last week that due to the small size of the Belgian government and the huge numbers of open investigations…virtually every police detective and military intelligence officer in the country was focused on international jihadi investigations. …the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said. “It’s literally an impossible situation.”

When I read that sentence, my jaw dropped to the floor. Belgium has one of the biggest and most bloated governments in the world.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Go to the OECD’s collection of data and click on Table 25 and you’ll see that the public sector in Belgium consumes almost 54 percent of the nation’s economy. That’s bigger even than the size of government in Sweden and Italy.

So the notion that fighting terrorism is hampered by the “small size of the Belgian government” is utterly absurd.

The real problem is that politicians and bureaucrats have become so focused on redistributing money to various interest groups that there’s not enough attention given to fulfilling the few legitimate functions of government. Not just in Belgium, but all over the world. Here’s what I wrote on this issue back in 2012.

…today’s bloated welfare state interferes with and undermines the government’s ability to competently fulfill its legitimate responsibilities. Imagine, for instance, if we had the kind of limited federal government envisioned by the Founding Fathers and the “best and brightest” people in government – instead of being dispersed across a vast bureaucracy – were concentrated on protecting the national security of the American people. In that hypothetical world, I’m guessing something like the 9-11 attacks would be far less likely.

What I said about America back then is even more true about Belgium today. Big governments are clumsy and ineffective, and bigger governments are even more incompetent. There’s even scholarly research confirming that larger public sectors are associated with higher levels of inefficiency.

And the same point has been made by folks such as Mark Steyn and Robert Samuelson (though David Brooks inexplicably reaches the opposite conclusion).

The good news is that the American people have an instinctive understanding of the problem. When asked to describe the federal government, you’ll notice that “effective” and “efficient” are not the words people choose.

P.S. On a related note, I argued in a column from 2014 that the federal government should be much smaller so it could more effectively focus on genuine threats such as the Ebola virus.

P.S. It’s worth pointing out that Israel, which faces far greater security challenges than Belgium, manages to do a better job with a government that is not nearly as large.

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Europe’s Moral Bankruptcy

I wrote last year about the moral vacuum that exists in Europe because gun control laws in nations like France make it very difficult for Jews to protect themselves from barbaric attacks.

But the principle applies more broadly. All law-abiding people should have the human right to protect themselves.

Politicians in Denmark don’t seem to understand this principle. Or maybe the do understand the principle, but they are so morally bankrupt that don’t care. Not only do they have gun control, they even have laws against pepper spray. And they are so fanatical in their desire to turn people into sheep that the government apparently will prosecute a girl who used pepper spray to save herself from rape.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the U.K.-based Daily Mail.

A Danish teenager who was sexually assaulted near a migrant asylum centre has been told she will be prosecuted after using pepper spray to fend off her attacker. …she managed to prevent the man from attacking her further by spraying the substance at him. …However, as it is illegal to use pepper spray, the teenage girl is set to face charges.

How disgusting.

And what makes the situation especially frustrating is that the criminals and terrorists in Europe obviously don’t have any problem obtaining firearms.

So the only practical effect of gun control (or bans on pepper spray) is to make life easier for the scum of society.

And the real insult to injury is that a teenage girl who should be hailed as a hero now faces the threat of punishment. Just like the unfortunate British woman who was persecuted for using a knife to deter some thugs.

And here’s some of what the BBC reported about

Italian hospitality for the visiting Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has stretched to covering up nude statues. Italy also chose not to serve wine at official meals

Pathetic. Particularly since the Italians bent over backwards for a truly heinous regime.

Kudos to President Hollande in France, by contrast. The Daily Mail notes that he held firm.

A lunch between the French and Iranian presidents in Paris was scrapped today because France refused to remove wine from the menu.

By the way, there clearly is a role for common courtesy and diplomatic protocol. It obviously would be gratuitously rude for a nation to serve pork at a dinner for officials from Israel or any Muslim nation, just as it would inappropriate and insensitive to serve beef for an event for officials from India.

Moreover, officials from one nation should not make over-the-top demands when visiting other countries. Just as it would be wrong for French officials to demand wine at state dinners in Iran, it’s also wrong for Iranian officials to demand the absence of wine at meals in France. After all, it’s not as if they would be expected to partake.

In the grand scheme of things, though, the kerfuffle about wine and statues doesn’t matter compared to the potentially life-and-death issue of whether Europeans should be allowed to defend themselves.

That’s why Europe isn’t merely in trouble because of fiscal bankruptcy, but also because of moral bankruptcy.

P.S. While having the ability to protect your life or to guard against rape isn’t a human right in most European nations, take a look at some of the things that are “rights.”

• A committee from the Council of Europe claims there is a right to other people’s money.
• Across Europe, a satellite dish is now a human right.
• In Finland, broadband access is a basic right.
• In France, it is against the law to say your husband is under-endowed or that your wife is fat.
• There’s now an entitlement for free soccer broadcasts in Europe.
• In Italy, you have the right to…um…your testicles.

All this is amusing…in a very sad way.

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The White House Swings (and Misses) on Gun Control…for the Umpteenth Time

In my analysis of the best and worst developments of 2015, I suggested that growing resistance to gun control is something we should celebrate.

Particularly since we have a President who is relentless (though fortunately ineffective) in launching ideological attacks on the Second Amendment.

Speaking of which, Obama staged a press event yesterday and announced his latest effort to make it harder for law-abiding people to protect themselves.

John Lott is the go-to person on these issues. Here’s some of what he wrote for National Review, starting with the fact that Obama (gee, what a surprise) is disregarding the law.

…current law is very clear. Only federally licensed gun dealers are required to conduct background checks, and only sellers whose “principal objective of livelihood and profit [is] the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms” are required to obtain a federal license. Anyone “who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms” is specifically exempted from the licensing requirement. But that doesn’t matter to Obama, whose actions today will require many sellers to get a license if they sell even a single gun.

John also explains that background checks are not a panacea.

The current federal background-check system is a mess. …Hillary Clinton claimed that, “Since [the Brady Act] was passed, more than 2 million prohibited purchases have been prevented.” In reality, there were over 2 million “initial denials”… In 2010, the Department of Justice’s annual report on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) showed that 94 percent of “initial denials” were dropped after the first internal fact check. A 2004 review by Congress found that another two percent were dropped when the cases were sent out to BATFE field offices. Many more cases were dropped during the three remaining stages of review. …If a private company’s criminal-background checks on employees failed at anything close to the same rate, they’d be sued out of business in a heartbeat.

And what about the notion of requiring sellers retain information on gun buyers?

Well, this back-door form of registration doesn’t provide seem very helpful in helping the fight against real crime.

Police can’t seem to point to a single instance in which gun registration has helped them solve a crime. During a recent deposition, D.C. police chief Cathy Lanier said she couldn’t “recall any specific instance where registration records were used to determine who committed a crime.” Police in Hawaii, Canada, and other places have made similar admissions.

Lott explains in the article that the system could be improved in ways that would make it harder for the wrong people to get guns, but he says that productive changes aren’t feasible because of the left’s real motive.

…their real aim is to reduce gun ownership, not to stop crime.

This is spot on. Indeed, I don’t trust the left of climate issues for similar reasons. What our statist friends say and what they really want are two different things.

Moreover, their proposed “solutions” don’t even solve the problems that they say they want to address.

Remember the video from last month, which featured a White House official admitting that none of Obama’s proposed policies would have stopped a single mass shooter from getting weapons, and that not a single mass shooter has been on the Administration’s no-fly list or terrorist watch list?

Well, in the words of Yogi Berra, it’s deja vu all over again. These blurbs from an Associated Press story tell us everything we need to know about the President’s latest proposals.

The gun control measures a tearful President Barack Obama announced Tuesday would not have prevented the slaughters of 20 first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, or 14 county workers at a holiday party in San Bernardino, California. …The shooters at Sandy Hook and San Bernardino used weapons bought by others, shielding them from background checks. In other cases, the shooters legally bought guns. …In Aurora, Colorado, and at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C., men undergoing mental health treatment were cleared to buy weapons because federal background checks looked to criminal histories and court-ordered commitments for signs of mental illness.

Since we’re on this topic, here’s my recent interview on gun control.

As you can see, I’m doing a bit of a victory dance. It’s great that the American people won’t go along with the left, even if it means they have to engage in civil disobedience.

By the way, I goofed in discussing the poll on banning so-called assault weapons. The actual margin of opposition is six points (50-44) rather than fourteen points (54-40). Though I guess transposing a couple of numbers is trivial compared to the $16 trillion mistake I once made in an interview.

In my humble opinion, the most important point from the interview is that (as Mark Steyn explained in amusing fashion) you can’t have effective and competent government unless it’s also small government.

Let’s close with some humor. Here’s the NRA’s satirical take on Hillary Clinton trying to put together her resolutions for 2016 (h/t: Washington Examiner).

And here are some excerpts from an article from The Onion about a new gun-sharing program for the people of Chicago.

Touting the program’s convenience and affordability, Chicago officials unveiled Monday the city’s new gun-sharing service, “QuikShot,” which allows individuals to check out a loaded firearm for short periods of time. The municipal initiative, through which users can rent semiautomatic pistols, shotguns, rifles, and submachine guns at more than 250 self-service kiosks, has reportedly been designed to make firepower easily available to residents and tourists alike nearly everywhere within the city limits. …Users, however, are reportedly expected to provide their own protective Kevlar body armor.

Too bad it’s not really true.

If it was, maybe there wouldn’t be this giant gap between Chicago and Houston.

P.S. If you want common sense on guns, most cops have the right idea, as do some police chiefs.

P.P.S. And even some leftists, as you can see here, here, and here.

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The Laffer Curve vs ISIS

Based on my writings, some people may think I’m 100 percent against higher taxes.

But that’s not exactly true. In some cases, I like punitive taxation. Or, to be more precise, I sometimes take pleasure when punitive tax policy backfires on bad people.

Here’s an example. An interesting article in Slate, authored by Adam Chodorow of Arizona State University Law School, looks at how a terrorist group’s attempt to form a government is being stymied by an inability to collect taxes.

Revolution is easy. Governing is hard. And there are few things more difficult than taxes. Operating a country requires money, and that typically requires taxes. … The population in this area is estimated to be between 7 million and 8 million, about the same as the population of Washington state. While ISIS currently collects about $1 billion annually, countries of similar size collect about $16 billion, suggesting that ISIS has a long way to go if it wants to operate like a real state.

But the comparatively low levels of tax are not because of a Hong Kong-type commitment to limited government.

Instead, the terror group is discovering that people don’t like giving their money to politicians and bureaucrats, even ones motivated by Islamic fundamentalism.

…taxes aren’t a great way to ingratiate oneself with the governed. …More than one government has fallen because of its tax policy. ISIS must face these challenges just as any emerging polity does… ISIS may have displayed prowess on the battlefield, but it has revealed that it is as stymied and constrained by the complexities of taxation as the rest of us. …ISIS’s taxes appear to be…no more popular in the territory it controls than they would be here in the U.S. As the Times reported, ISIS’s taxes are now so onerous that large numbers of people, who were apparently willing to tolerate ISIS’s religious authoritarianism, are fleeing Syria and Iraq to escape them. At some point people will either rise up or leave, threatening ISIS’s internal revenue source.

So taxes are becoming so onerous that taxpayers (and taxable income) are escaping.

Hmmm…, excessive taxation leading to less taxable economic activity. That seems like a familiar concept.

Something I’ve written about one or two times. Or maybe 50 or 100 times.

Ah, yes, our old friend, the Laffer Curve!

ISIS is…constrained by a lack of administrative resources and the simple reality once sketched on the back of a cocktail napkin by the economist Arthur Laffer: that tax rates can only get so high before they actually drive down government revenues. Given current conditions, ISIS may be near or at the limits of its ability to tax, even if it can recruit jihadi tax accountants to its cause. Thus, …it’s not clear how much room the group has to grow internal revenues. More important, its efforts to do so may do more to damage its prospects than outside forces can accomplish.

This sounds like the tax equivalent of War of the Worlds, the H.G. Wells’ classic in which alien invaders wreak havoc on earth until they are felled by bacteria.

Tom Cruise was the star of a 2005 movie adaptation of this story, but I’m thinking I could rekindle my acting career and star in a movie of how the Laffer Curve thwarts ISIS!

But to have a happy ending, ISIS has to be defeated. And Professor Chodorow closes his article with a very helpful suggestion.

Rather than send in ground troops, …view our tax code as a weapon of mass destruction… We could make full use of it in the war on ISIS, perhaps by translating it into Arabic in the hopes that the group adopts it.

Sounds like the advice I gave about threatening Assad with Obamacare.

P.S. If they do decide to make a movie about the Laffer Curve and ISIS, maybe Obama could star as tax adviser for ISIS. At least if he’s not too busy in some of the other movie roles people have envisioned.

P.P.S. I like excessive taxes when they lead to the downfall of terrorist thugs. But I also take perverse pleasure when class-warfare tax hikes backfire in places such as France and the United Kingdom. I feel sorry for the taxpayers of those nations, to be sure, but it sometimes helps to have examples of what not to do.

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Good News and Good Laughs for Supporters of the Second Amendment

I almost feel sorry for the gun-control crowd.

They keep trying to convince themselves that people are on their side, but schemes to restrict the 2nd Amendment keep getting defeated on Capitol Hill.

And when a handful of state governments go against the trend and try to trample on constitutional rights to gun ownership, politicians get tossed out of office and gun owners engage in massive civil disobedience.

Now we get to the icing on the cake.

The New York Times just released polling data showing that a majority of Americans are against banning so-called assault weapons. Look at the bottom line and see how the numbers have dramatically moved in the right direction.

These results are especially remarkable because many non-gun owners probably think “assault weapon” refers to a machine gun.

In reality, the types of guns that some politicians want to ban operate the same as other rifles (one bullet fired when the trigger is pulled), and they’re actually less powerful than ordinary hunting rifles. I imagine if people had that information, support for these weapons would be even higher than what we see in the poll.

Another reason I almost feel sorry for our leftist friends is that they must be going crazy that terrorist attacks and mass shootings aren’t swaying public opinion in their direction.

But they’re underestimating the wisdom of the American people. Most Americans may not have strongly held philosophical views on gun issues, but they’re smart enough to realize that bad people almost certainly will be able to obtains guns, even if they have to do so illegally (as is the case in Europe).

So the net result of gun-free zones and gun control is more danger to the public since evil people will have greater confidence that victims will be disarmed. And that rubs people the wrong way because they’re smart enough to pass the IQ test that causes such angst for our left-wing friends.

Moreover, I think folks are getting tired of the dishonest propaganda from the White House.

Normally the establishment media is a willing co-conspirator with the Administration, but – as you can see from this footage from a White House press briefing (h/t: Michelle Malkin) – one reporter actually committed an act of journalism and the net result is that the White House’s spin doctor was forced to confess that 1) none of Obama’s proposed policies would have stopped a single mass shooter from getting weapons, and 2) not a single mass shooter is on the Administration’s no-fly list or terrorist watch list. Enjoy.

You can tell, by the way, that the White House has done some polling on how to sell its approach, referring over and over again to buzz phrases such as “common sense” and “gun safety.”

Yet if common sense actually guided policy,the Obama Administration would be trying to make it easier for law-abiding people to get guns.

Now let’s look at another video.

You may remember that I wrote last week about the White House’s attempt to deny 2nd-amendment rights to people who get unilaterally placed on the no-fly list without any due process legal rights.

Well, that topic came up at a hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Congressman Trey Gowdy took the opportunity to ask one of Obama’s appointees whether they intend to preemptively infringe on other freedoms in the Bill of Rights.

On one level, this video is very amusing. The Obama official is like a deer in the headlights and eventually confesses that she doesn’t have an answer.

But if you think about the issue more deeply, it’s really worrisome that we have a president and an administration that treat the Constitution and Bill of Rights as something that can be cavalierly discarded whenever there’s a conflicting short-term political objective.

Makes me think the humorous image I shared back in 2012 wasn’t a joke after all.

So let’s make something completely clear. The 5th Amendment constitutionally guarantees that American citizens can’t be deprived of their rights in the absence of some sort of legal process.

Which is precisely the point that Congressman Gowdy was making. The Obama Administration wants to preemptively curtail 2nd Amendment freedoms based on the arbitrary whims of bureaucrats.

Here’s the relevant language.

So the bottom line is that the White House is so ideologically rigid on guns that it is willing to run roughshod over the Constitution even though it admits that its gun control proposals would not have stopped a single mass shooter.

But I guess you have to give them credit for being consistent.

Though I guess this is where I confess to once again feeling sorry for statists. Imagine having to defend this approach!

Let’s close with some humor.

Here’s a very clever video featuring a burglar’s perspective on gun control.

P.S. Here’s my collection of other humorous videos mocking the gun grabbers.

• A revealing look at how leftists think about gun control.
• A heartwarming adoption story.
• An amusing cartoon conversation between an anti-gun ideologue and a supporter of the Constitution.
• Joe Biden’s self-defense advice.

P.P.S. Last but not least, I’ll share an amusing joke.

Participating in a gun buy-back program because you think that criminals have too many guns is like having yourself castrated because you think your neighbors have too many kids.

And if you want even more gun control humor, click here.

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Who’s Right on the Best Response to Terror Attacks, Police Chiefs or Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?

A couple of radical Islamists murdered a bunch of people in California and, even before any details were available, some politicians sought – once again – to exploit a tragedy.

Here’s a short excerpt from USA Today about Hillary Clinton’s response.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton took to Twitter on Wednesday to…call for stricter gun control measures.

And Huffington Post reports that President Obama also seized the opportunity to push his gun control agenda.

President Barack Obama commented Wednesday on the shooting in San Bernardino, California… “there’s some steps we could take, not to eliminate every one of these mass shootings, but to improve the odds that they don’t happen as frequently, common-sense gun safety laws, stronger background checks,”

This is nonsense. Terrorists obviously don’t care whether there are laws against guns.

Heck, just look at the evidence from Europe, where there are very restrictive laws, yet radical Islamists obviously are able to get weapons on the black market.

So the net effect of these laws is to make it just about impossible for law-abiding people to defend themselves. Even if they are being targeted by the terrorists!

Fortunately, there’s a growing recognition that it is absurd to disarm good people and make it easier for evil people to wreak havoc. And the government officials who are in charge of stopping mass shootings are among those who are now pushing for a common-sense approach.

The Detroit News reports that the city’s police chief has a very sensible attitude about how to discourage bad people.

The city’s police chief said he believes violent extremists would be reluctant to target Detroit, as they had Paris last month, for fear armed citizens would shoot back. “A lot of Detroiters have CPLs (concealed pistol licenses), and the same rules apply to terrorists as they do to some gun-toting thug,” Chief James Craig said. “If you’re a terrorist, or a carjacker, you want unarmed citizens.”

A local professor also has the same sensible viewpoint.

Oakland University criminal justice professor Daniel Kennedy agreed that terrorists would be reluctant to attack armed citizens.

I hope Prof. Kennedy already has tenure since he may get targeted by leftist students who might accuse him of common sense, which is a “microagression” that makes them feel “unsafe.”

In any event, terrorists surely would have an incentive (if they’re capable of passing my IQ test for criminals and liberals) to seek out a “gun-free zone” if launching an attack in Detroit.

More than 30,000 Detroit residents are legally armed, according to Michigan State Police. There were 6,974 concealed-pistol licenses issued to residents in 2013, more than double those in 2009, and 7,584 issued in 2012, the state police said. …Starting Tuesday, Michigan is making it easier for citizens to get concealed gun permits. …The National Rifle Association has said the new rules will eliminate licensing delays and arbitrary denials. Craig praised the new state law, and said they will help citizens fight back against criminals and terrorists. …“If you’re sitting in a restaurant, and you aren’t allowed to have a gun, what are you supposed to do if someone comes in there shooting at you? Throw a fork at them?”

Which, of course, is why gun-free zones are so foolish. The only people who obey are the law-abiding people. Yet those are precisely the people who could be helpful if some nutjob launched an attack.

After all, terrorists wouldn’t get the chance to do much damage if they tried to shoot up this neighborhood.

So kudos to Chief Craig.

But he’s not the only senior law-enforcement official who recognizes that it’s time to put aside empty political correctness.

Amazingly, the Chief of Police in Washington, DC, also has decided that common sense should triumph. Here’s some of what was reported by the Washington Post.

D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier is urging that civilians confronted by an active shooter in some cases try to stop the gunman before law enforcement authorities arrive, saying quick action could save lives. …“I always say if you can get out, getting out’s your first option, your best option. If you’re in a position to try and take the gunman down, to take the gunman out, it’s the best option for saving lives before police can get there.” …“For a major city police chief to say that is breaking new ground,” said Chuck Wexler, who runs the Police Executive Research Forum… “if you’re dealing with suicide bombers or terrorists, it’s a completely different dynamic,” Wexler said. “I think that because so much can happen in so few seconds, intervention by citizens can make a big difference.”

Remember, though, that an effective response by citizens is only possible if they’re armed.

So the top cop in DC is basically acknowledging that gun control empowers the bad guys.

The chief acknowledged that advising confrontation is “kind of counterintuitive to what cops always tell people.” Cooper said, “You’re telling them that now though?” Lanier answered: “We are.”

By the way, the Sheriff of Milwaukee County in Wisconsin also believes armed citizens are necessary and desirable.

And regular cops overwhelmingly agree that gun control doesn’t deter bad people.

For further information, I invite you to peruse some serious articles on gun control, featuring scholars such as John Lott and David Kopel, along with some very persuasive information from an actual firearms expert.

Most of all, though, I recommend you read what Jeffrey Goldberg and Justin Cronin wrote about guns. They’re both self-confessed leftists, but they also decided that rationality and common sense should take precedence over anti-2nd Amendment ideology.

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Make Up Your Minds, Crazy Statists: Is Terrorism Caused by Climate Change or Inequality?

I’ve admitted before that I have no idea whether global warming is a real problem, but I can say with considerable certainty that there are two reasons why I’m very skeptical of the environmental policy agenda.

First, the serious environmentalists believe in central planning and other forms of statism.

Second, radical environmentalists are nutjobs.

In case you think I’m exaggerating on the second point, consider these examples.

• Environmentalists assert that you’re racist if you oppose their agenda.
• Some environmentalists don’t believe in bathing.
• How about the environmentalists who sterilize themselves to avoid carbon-producing children?
• Or consider the environmentalists who produce/use hand-cranked vibrators to reduce their carbon footprint.
• There are also environmentalist who claim that climate change causes AIDS.
• And environmentalists put together a ranking implying that Cuba is better than the United States.

Then there’s the super-nutty category.

• The environmentalists who choose death to lower their carbon footprints.

Now let’s look at a new development in the field of global warming (or climate change, or whatever term is now being used).

The Washington Examiner opines on the bizarre tendency on the left to say that weather causes terrorism (I’ll let readers judge whether this belongs in the “serious” category or “nutjob” category).

President Obama said ahead of the event that began this week. “What a powerful rebuke to the terrorists it will be, when the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children.” One could hardly blame the leadership of the Islamic State if they had a hearty laugh at this peculiar response to its attacks on Paris last month. The same could be said about the multiple instances in which Obama and high-ranking members of his administration have asserted that climate change poses a greater national security threat than terrorism… The new fad of blaming climate change for terrorism, or treating the two as comparable security issues, is troubling. …Bernie Sanders’ recent assertion in a presidential debate, that “climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism,” was not an aberration, but increasingly a part of left-wing orthodoxy in the U.S.

The Examiner then points out the obvious. Or at least something that should be obvious.

Terrorism is not caused by the weather. …terrorism is caused mostly by radical Islamist ideology. There are appropriate law enforcement, intelligence, propaganda and occasionally military responses to it. But when you hear politicians talk about global warming as the cause of terrorism, take it as an indication that they aren’t serious people, and should not be trusted with complex affairs of state.

By the way, our friends on the left can’t even get their stories straight. While President Obama and others are asserting or implying that terrorism is related to climate change, other prominent statists say terrorism is caused by inequality.

Thomas Piketty, the French economist who is infamous for a theory rejected by the vast majority of economists and a tax plan that would cripple the economy and impose harsh misery on poor people, has now decided to pontificate on inequality and terrorism. Here’s some of what’s being reported by Business Insider.

The new argument, which Piketty spelled out recently in the French newspaper Le Monde, is this: Inequality is a major driver of Middle Eastern terrorism, including the Islamic State attacks on Paris earlier this month — and Western nations have themselves largely to blame for that inequality. …concentration of so much wealth in countries with so small a share of the population, he says, makes the region “the most unequal on the planet.” …Those economic conditions, he says, have become justifications for jihadists… Terrorism that is rooted in inequality, Piketty continues, is best combated economically.

To be fair, there probably is a bit of truth to the notion that young men in the Middle East are susceptible to radical ideologies in part because of economic reasons. They may live in oil-rich countries, but there is very little opportunity because of corrupt statism.

And it’s never good for a society to have young men with lots of free time and very little hope.

But the problem in these nations (above and beyond radical strains of Islam) is that bad government policy cripples opportunity. The resulting inequality (remember, the people connected to government are rich) is largely a consequence of the statism.

So the notion bigger government will make things better is rather naive, to say the least.

Though statist policies will mean less growth, and a smaller economy means a smaller carbon footprint, so maybe our friends on the left actually do have a coherent strategy. Simply make everyone poor. That ways there’s less carbon and less inequality!

Though don’t think for even a nanosecond that Obama, Piketty, and the rest of the elite will suffer. After all, leftists are grotesque hypocrites on environmental issues, as you can see here and here.

And don’t delude yourself into thinking that any of the left’s policies will reduce terrorism either.

P.S. But to close on an upbeat note, we have some decent environmentalist humor here, here, here, and here.

P.P.S. And if you prefer terrorism humor, click here, here, here, and (at the end of the posts) here and here.

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More Odious Examples of Welfare-Subsidized Terrorism

When I wrote earlier this year about “Europe’s suicidal welfare state,” it wasn’t so that I could make points about excessive spending and demographic decline.

Yes, those are very important issues. But I was focusing instead on the fact that Europe’s welfare states have a masochistic habit of giving handouts to terrorists.

So I wasn’t surprised to learn that some of the dirtbags who launched the recent terror attacks in Paris have been sponging off taxpayers.

Here are some excerpts from a story in the U.K.-based Daily Mail.

The former wife of Paris bomber Ibrahim Abdeslam has broken her silence to say he was a jobless layabout… Speaking from her home in Moleenbeek, Brussels, Niama, 36, said: ‘…He often slept during the day...Despite his diploma as an electrician, he found no job,’… Money was tight for the couple. ‘We lived on unemployment benefit which was only €1,000 a month between us so we worried a lot about money.’

By the way, money wasn’t “tight for the couple.” The handouts they got from the Belgian taxpayers gave them an income higher than the world average. And I’m guessing that the unemployment benefit wasn’t the only bit of mooching they did given the destructive lavishness of European welfare systems.

Ibrahim wasn’t the only terrorist with a snout in the public trough.

Here are some details from a story in the American Spectator.

Before he blew himself up outside a French soccer stadium, Bilal Hadfi lived in state-subsidized housing. …Open wallets as much as open borders doom Europe. Harboring shiftless populations alienated from the surrounding culture by religion asks for trouble. Give them blank checks and watch them fill up the blank spaces of indolence with destruction. …They pay back the dole with gunfire.

These are just two of the terrorists, but I’m guessing we’ll soon learn that others also were mooching off taxpayers.

And I can’t help but wonder whether the self-loathing that presumably occurs among some welfare recipients actually contributes to radicalism.

By the way, the Moocher Hall of Fame has a special section for deadbeats who want to kill taxpayers. Members of this Terror Section of the MHoF include:

* Abdul from Australia is an esteemed member of the Hall of Fame’s terror wing, having received 19 years of welfare while plotting to kill the people who were paying for his life of leisure.

* Keeping with that theme, let’s also recognize Anjem, who got elected to the Hall of Fame for collecting about $40,000-per year in handouts while spewing hate and recruiting other “fanatics to copy him by going on benefits.”

* The Tsarnaev brothers are most infamous for the Boston Marathon bombing, but let’s also revile them for being scroungers who thought it was okay to live off the work of others.

* Jihadi John, the ISIS dirtbag who is infamous for beheading innocent people, grew up with a family that sponged off British taxpayers for two decades.

P.S. In a truly spectacular example of government incompetence, a British jihadist actually was employed in law enforcement, ostensibly to fight against Islamic extremism!

P.P.S. American readers shouldn’t get too smug about the stupidity of our terrorism-subsidizing cousins on the other side of the Atlantic. We also have self-destructive policies that subsidize terrorism.

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If Gun Control Works in Europe, Where Do Terrorists Get their Weapons?

Earlier this year, I argued that it was unfair and immoral to deny European Jews from being able to protect themselves with firearms.

They get targeted by terrorists and other thugs who can strike at any time, often with suicidal intent, and even the most effective law enforcement can’t be in all places at all times.

Leftists argue that gun control is nonetheless the right policy because everyone gets disarmed.

But if that’s true, J.D. Tuccille of Reason asks how terrorists in Europe manage to get so many weapons when there are strict gun control laws.

…how did the misfired terrorist acquire his intended implements of destruction in supposedly gun-phobic Europe? Could it be that firearms aren’t quite so unavailable as right-thinking policy-peddlers assure us on their way to insisting that Americans should be disarmed in (supposed) likewise fashion? It’s a question that was also raised in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack by terrorists wielding AK-style rifles, pistols, and submachine guns. Observers were puzzled because France’s gun laws are relatively restrictive, and the terrorists clearly hadn’t bothered to navigate the byzantine red tape to acquire their weapons. So, where did they come from? In both cases, the answer is the same. Black markets thrive where legal availability is restricted or forbidden. …Europe has, by and large, more restrictive firearms laws than most American states. But those laws haven’t had much effect on the actual availability of guns, since they’ve been met by defiance and helped breed a brisk underground trade. And they’re certainly no barrier to small numbers of terrorists who have dedicated themselves to harming others and see the law as no hurdle to achieving that goal. The main impact then of restrictive gun laws may be to strip law-abiding people of means with which they might defend themselves while leaving criminals and terrorists well-armed.

Amen. Bad guys obviously aren’t concerned about obeying laws, so gun control simply makes it difficult for honest people to possess firearms.

But terrorists get the weapons they want. That’s true in France. It was true in the United Kingdom when the IRA was active. And it was true when the Black September terrorists attacked during the Munich Olympics in 1972.

But what about the argument that more guns mean more violence?

Also writing for Reason, Steve Chapman looks at gun ownership and murder rates. Many of America’s safest states have lots of guns and few restrictions.

Vermont has some of the loosest gun laws in America. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence gives it an “F.” The state requires no background checks for private gun sales, permits the sale and possession of “assault weapons,” and allows concealed guns to be carried in public—without a license. … In 2013, it had the third-lowest homicide rate in the country—less than one-sixth that of Louisiana. Utah, which also got an “F” on its laws from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, had the fourth-lowest homicide rate. These places refute the belief that loose gun rules and high ownership are bound to produce frenzies of carnage.

And even when there is a lot of crime, there’s little reason to believe that it’s because of guns.

It’s true that many states have a lot of guns and a lot of killings. But that doesn’t mean the former causes the latter. It’s just as plausible that high murder rates lead more residents to buy guns, in self-defense.

Chapman looks at some of the overseas evidence.

Britain is often cited for having few guns and—therefore—few gun murders. As Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck noted in his 1997 book, Targeting Guns, Britain also has a lower rate of murders with hands and feet. But “no one is foolish enough to infer from these facts that the lower violence rates were due to the British having fewer hands and feet.” Homicide is rare in Israel and Switzerland despite widespread public access to lethal weaponry.

For even more data, check out this video.

But here’s the clincher. Take a look at this data from the National Rifle Association.

Wow, tens of millions of additional weapons and a big drop in crime.

Gee, maybe John Lott has been right all along?

While many nations keep trying to impose more and more restrictions on legal gun ownership, at least one country is moving in the right direction.

Here are some excerpts from an encouraging story about developments from Panama.

…the government is set to lift the ban on firearm imports, in an effort to promote personal safety. Public Safety Minister Rodolfo Aguilera said the country will follow in the footsteps of the United States and Switzerland, where the right to bear arms is believed to lead to fewer homicides. …Aguilera…explained that relaxed gun laws have allowed the United States to reduce the homicide rate over the last 20 years. “…for criminals, anything that is prohibited becomes more attractive,” said Hefer Morataya, director of SICA’s Central American Programme of Small Arms Control.

I’m not sure I agree with the final excerpt. Criminals are attracted to the notion of using force and fraud to do bad things and that means they’ll probably have guns whether they’re legal or illegal. Making guns illegal simply makes it easier for them to engage in criminal behavior since they know that law-abiding people are disarmed.

Which is the point I made when putting together my IQ test for criminals and liberals.

P.S. You can  see some amusing pro-Second Amendment posters here, here, here, here, and here. And some amusing images of t-shirts and bumper stickers on gun control here, here, and here.

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The Deadly Impact of “Gun-Free Zones”

I proposed an “IQ Test for Criminals and Liberals” back in 2012 which asked readers to imagine that they were thieves.

And I then asked them, as they were planning their crimes, how they would react if they knew that a particular homeowner was armed. Would they:

a. break into the house because you once heard a politician or journalist assert that gun ownership doesn’t deter crime?

b. decide after a bit of reflection about potential costs and benefits that it might be more prudent to find another house to rob?

My goal was to help well-meaning leftists understand that criminals respond to incentives. And even the really stupid ones will seek to maximize how much they can steal while minimizing the risk of bad outcomes.

And if you’re a criminal, one potential bad outcome is getting shot by an armed homeowner.

The same cost-benefit analysis applies to mass shooters. Regardless of whether these shooters are motivated by feelings of inadequacy or Islamofascist ideology, their goal is to kill as many people as possible before being stopped.

So it makes sense, from their warped perspective, to seek out “gun-free zones.”

And when these nutjobs start shooting in places where there’s very little likelihood that they’ll encounter immediate armed resistance, that means a higher body count.

Which is what happened at Fort Hood. And in Santa Barbara. And in Newtown, Connecticut. And at the Aurora movie theater. And at Virginia Tech.

And now in Chattanooga.

Here’s a photo from the recent shooting spree by Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez. Notice the sign, right by all the bullet holes, stating that “Firearms Are Prohibited In This Facility.”

Needless to say, this sign didn’t stop the attack. It may have even encouraged the attack.

In any event, the rule did affect one group of people, as Sean Davis explained for The Federalist.

The gun-free zone sign didn’t prevent the shooter from firing a gun at completely innocent individuals within the zone. It did, however, prevent them from defending themselves.

And here’s the really depressing part of this tragedy. The military personnel targeted by the terrorist weren’t unarmed because Chattanooga had bad policy.

They were unarmed because of federal government policy. Writing for Fox News, John Lott explains this bizarre policy.

Army regulations are very clear stating that personnel cannot have firearms during their official duties.  Last year the Obama administration instituted interim rules that clearly prohibit privately owned weapons from all federally leased office and land, including recruiters’ offices. …With the exceptions of military police, military personnel are banned from having weapons on base, in federally leased buildings, or while they are carrying out official duties. For would-be terrorists among us there is an abundance of possible targets. …Allowing military personnel to at least defend themselves reduces the number of easy targets that terrorists/killers can attack.

Amen. Let members of the military have the ability to defend themselves.

And expand concealed-carry laws so that citizens also have greater ability to thwart crime and mass shootings.

P.S. I shared above a great cartoon from Chuck Asay. You can click here to see another. And these two posters make the same point quite effectively.

P.P.S. While folks on the left are one of the targets of my IQ test, not all liberals are misguided on the gun issue. As you can read here and here, there are a couple of them who put reason ahead of ideology.

P.P.P.S. It’s also encouraging to note that some lawmakers realize it’s a good idea to have more protection for schoolchildren.

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Great Moments in Masochistic Government Incompetence

I’ve argued that we’ll get better government if we make it smaller. This is important because government is responsible for some things – such as national defense and protection of property rights – that are genuinely important.

Yet a bloated public sector distracts officials from effectively focusing on those things that matter.

There are some legitimate functions of government and I want those to be handled efficiently. But I worry that effective government is increasingly unlikely because politicians are so busy intervening in areas that should be left to the families, civil society, and the private sector.

This is not a novel observation. Mark Steyn humorously observed, “our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it.”

And Robert Samuelson made the same point in a more serious fashion, writing, “American government has assumed more responsibilities than can reasonably be met.”

Perhaps most important, there’s even scholarly research – including from bureaucracies such as the International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank – that confirms small government is more efficient and competent.

Now keep all this in mind as we look at an amazing example of what happens when a government is so big and bloated that it spectacularly fails in one of its core responsibilities.

Here are some excerpts from a jaw-dropping story in the U.K.-based Telegraph.

For almost two years Abdullah al Andalusi, led a double life… By night, he taught that the terror group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) was “no different to Western armies,” said that “kaffirs,” non-Muslims, would be “punished in hell” and claimed that the British government wanted to destroy Islam. By day, using a different name, he went to work for the same British government at the London offices of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), the official regulator of all 44 forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Yes, you read correctly. A jihadist was employed by law enforcement.

But he wasn’t a low-level cop walking a beat. He was in a high-level position with access to information about the battle against Islamic extremism!

HMIC’s staff, who number less than 150, are given privileged access to highly sensitive and classified police and intelligence information to carry out their inspections. The inspectorate’s work includes scrutinising police forces’ counter-terrorism capabilities and top-secret plans for dealing with terror attacks. It has also recently published reports on undercover policing and the use of informants. HMIC admitted that Mr al Andalusi, whose real name is Mouloud Farid, had passed a security vetting check to work as a civil servant at the inspectorate. He was subsequently promoted to executive grade, a management rank, placing him at the heart of the security establishment.

The good news is that this extremist thug was discovered and then lost his job.

Was this the result of a clever and effective counter-terrorism investigation?

Hardly. It was only dumb luck that his superiors discovered his radical activities.

He was only sacked after bosses spotted him on television defending extremist Islamic positions.

You’ll also be glad to know that British taxpayers were giving him a very generous compensation package. So much money, in fact, that it didn’t make sense for him to take up opportunities to become a full-time hater of western civilization.

…said one former colleague at the Muslim Debate Initiative, who asked to remain anonymous. …“Opportunities came along to do dawah [preaching] as a full-time job, but he was never tempted to do that because he had a stable income and pension with the civil service.”

And taxpayers also helped pay for his expensive housing.

Mr al Andalusi…lives in a subsidised £750,000 housing association flat in Westminster.

Gee, how nice that he gets to live in a nice place at the expense of others. I wonder if his subsidized housing is as nice as the taxpayer-financed housing provided to Jihadi John?

Though let’s give Mr. al Andalusi credit. At least he was employed, even if only as an over-compensated bureaucrat.

Other radical jihadists simply go on welfare so they can devote all their time to hate.

So al Andalusi doesn’t qualify to be a member of the Moocher Hall of Fame. Yes, he got subsidized housing, but we want to reserve this honor for more deserving bums.

But he does deserve membership in the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame. After all, getting a senior law enforcement job while simultaneously promoting terrorism is quite a feat.

P.S. Returning to the topic of subsidizing terrorism, the United States also has a self-destructive habit of giving handouts to radicals who oppose civilization. The Tsarnaev family was on the public teat and there have been lots of Somali terrorists sponging off America’s bizarre welfare-encouraging refugee program.

So maybe I need to update the U.S. vs. U.K. government stupidity contest to reflect the fact that both nations are so masochistic that they give handouts to their enemies.

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Europe’s Suicidal Welfare State

When I write about the “suicidal” welfare state in Europe, I’m generally making an economic argument that involves demographic change, labor participation rates, and fiscal burdens.

And that’s a non-trivial argument, based on very sobering data from the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Today, though, let’s focus on a different version of “suicidal” welfare. This occurs when governments subsidize terrorists who hate and despise modern society.

And while these deadbeats are mostly spreading chaos and misery in the Middle East, one can’t help but wonder what will happen when they return to Europe.

We’ll start by looking at how Danish taxpayers have been underwriting jihad.

More than 30 Danish jihadists have collected unemployment benefits totaling 379,000 Danish krone (€51,000; $55,000) while fighting with the Islamic State in Syria, according to leaked intelligence documents. The fraud, which was reported by Television 2 Danmark on May 18, comes less than six months after the Danish newspaper BT revealed that Denmark had paid unemployment benefits to 28 other jihadists while they were waging war in Syria. The disclosures show that Islamists continue to exploit European social welfare systems to finance their activities both at home and abroad — costing European taxpayers potentially millions of euros each year.

Geesh, makes one think of “Lazy Robert” as a model citizen after reading about terrorists getting welfare. At least he relaxes in the party boat and doesn’t kill people.

By the way, this is not just a problem in Denmark. It’s happening in Austria.

Social welfare fraud of the kind perpetrated in Denmark is being repeated throughout Europe. In Austria, police arrested 13 jihadists in November 2014 who were allegedly collecting welfare payments to finance their trips to Syria. Among those detained was Mirsad Omerovic, 32, an extremist Islamic preacher who police say raised several hundred thousand euros for the war in Syria. A father of six who lives exclusively off the Austrian welfare state, Omerovic has benefited from additional payments for paternity leave.

Hey, maybe the terrorists who blow off their limbs can copy “Footless Hans” and get even more benefits!

And let’s not overlook Belgium.

In Belgium, 29 jihadists from the Flemish cities of Antwerp and Vilvoorde were prevented from receiving social welfare benefits from the state. The move came after an investigation found that the individuals had been accessing their Belgian bank accounts by withdrawing money from banks in Turkey, just across the Syrian border. Per capita, Belgium is the largest European source of jihadist fighters going to the Middle East; up to 400 Belgians have become jihadists in Syria and Iraq.

I’m surprised that Belgium actually cut off the handouts after finding out funds were being withdrawn in the Middle East. Don’t they have a Children’s Defense Fund or American Civil Liberties Union to file suit on behalf of the scroungers?

Here are a few case studies from other nations. We’ll start with the United Kingdom, which has a bad habit of subsidizing jihadists.

…women were increasingly being used to smuggle welfare money out of Britain to fund terrorists abroad, because they supposedly arouse less suspicion. In November 2014, for example, Amal El-Wahabi, a British mother of two, was jailed for 28 months for trying to arrange to smuggle €20,000 to her husband, a jihadist fighting in Syria. She persuaded her friend, Nawal Msaad, to carry the cash in her underwear in return for €1,000. Msaad was stopped at Heathrow Airport. The money she was carrying is thought to have come from social welfare payments.

Here are some more horrifying case studies.

British taxpayers have footed the bill for the Moroccan-born Najat Mostafa, the second wife of the Egyptian-born Islamic hate preacher Abu Hamza, who was extradited to the United States in October 2012. She has lived in a £1 million, five-bedroom house in one of London’s wealthiest neighborhoods for more than 15 years, and has raised the couple’s eight children there. Abu Hamza and his family are believed to have cost British taxpayers more than £338,000 in benefits. He has also received £680,000 in legal assistance for his failed U.S. extradition battle. The cost of keeping him in a British prison since 2004 is estimated at £500,000. Fellow extremist Islamic preacher Abu Qatada, a Palestinian, has cost British taxpayers an estimated £500,000. He has also won £390,000 in legal aid to avoid deportation to Jordan.

And don’t forget Jihadi John, another product of the British welfare state.

The Dutch also are financing enemies of modernity.

In the Netherlands, a Dutch jihadist named Khalid Abdurahman appeared in a YouTube video with five severed heads. Originally from Iraq, Abdurahman was living on social welfare benefits in the Netherlands for more than a decade before he joined the Islamic State in Syria. Dutch social services declared him to be unfit for work and taxpayers paid for the medication to treat him for claustrophobia and schizophrenia.

There are many additional examples and more data in the story.

I wish I could say that this problem is confined to Europe.

But as we saw with the Tsarnaev brothers, the welfare state in America also subsidizes terrorist dirtbags.

Heck, our State Department actually seeks out these people and brings them to the country to sponge off taxpayers!

P.S. Australia and France are guilty of welfare suicide as well.

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Which States Are Most Drunk on Beer Taxes?

Two years ago, I shared a map looking at how heavily wine was taxed in different states.

What is showed was that you shouldn’t sip your Chardonnay or guzzle your Merlot in Kentucky. Unless, of course, you wanted to give politicians a lot more money to spend (or you slip across the border like Michael J. Rodrigues when buying booze).

Now the good people at the Tax Foundation have a related map. It shows which states have the highest and lowest taxes on beer.

Kentucky is still a high-tax state, but the “winner” of the beer tax contest is Tennessee.

At the risk of drawing too many conclusions, it does appear that southeastern states generally have high taxes on booze. Along with Alaska.

Maybe that’s a “Bible Belt” phenomenon. Though I’m somewhat forgiving of Tennessee for high excise taxes since the Volunteer State at least avoids the huge mistake of imposing an income tax on the wages and salaries of residents. No wonder it’s been growing faster than neighboring states.

Returning to the main topic, the Tax Foundation explains, taxes amount to a big share of the final price.

The Beer Institute points out that “taxes are the single most expensive ingredient in beer, costing more than labor and raw materials combined.” They cite an economic analysis that found “if all the taxes levied on the production, distribution, and retailing of beer are added up, they amount to more than 40% of the retail price.”

P.S. Since we’re looking at states, I can’t resist sharing bad news from one state and good news from another state.

We’ll start with some grim news from Minnesota. I’ve already commented on the insanity of using the State Department’s refugee program to subsidize terrorists.

Well, the Daily Caller reports that terrorists also have learned to bilk other programs to finance that hate of the modern world.

Two Somali-American men living in Minnesota are facing fraud charges — in addition to terrorism charges — after they allegedly used federal student loan money to purchase airline tickets to get them to Syria in order to join ISIS. …

This doesn’t quite entitle them to join the Moocher Hall of Fame, but it should outrage taxpayers anyhow.

Our good news come  from California.

J.D. Tuccille of Reason speculates that gun control has basically become impossible in the Golden State because there are simply too many guns.

California is a state where officials pride themselves on tightening the screws on gun owners. …But it’s a losing battle. Even in a political environment where villainizing guns and gun owners is a winning tactic, the ranks of the same are beyond officials’ grasp, and growing. Last year, almost one million firearms were sold in the state…it’s a good bet that California’s gun owners, and their guns, are here to stay.

Here’s a chart he including showing gun sales.

And J.D. reminds us that these are just the legal sales. As illustrated by the amusing t-shirt at the bottom of this post, there are doubtlessly lots of undocumented weapons in the state.

The bottom line is that future gun control efforts in California will probably run into the same problems that have thwarted the schemes of despicable politicians in Connecticut. Three cheers for the Americans who disobey bad law!

And since it’s Memorial Day weekend, it’s a good time to be thankful the all the folks in the military who fought to preserve our freedoms. Including the freedom to engage in civil disobedience when politicians try to trample our rights.

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Jihadi John (a.k.a, Mohammed Emwazi) Should also Be Known as Moocher Mohammed

Bad ideas definitely have the ability to cross borders.

The income tax first appeared in England, on a temporary basis during the Napoleanic wars and then permanently in 1842. It then spread like a cancer to other parts of the world, eventually reaching – and plaguing – the United States starting in 1913.

Government-run Social Security schemes were started by the Germans in 1889 under Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. Similar programs then were adopted elsewhere, including the United States as part of FDR’s misguided New Deal in 1935.

Now we have another example.

I wrote last month about how the State Department’s refugee program is a trainwreck because it is bringing Somalis (many of whom have an anti-Western ideology) to America and trapping them in government dependency with a plethora of handouts (and also creating a breeding ground for terrorists).

Well, our cousins in the United Kingdom also have a refugee program that is similarly counterproductive.

I don’t know which country was dumb enough to first create its program, but the Brits win the prize for subsidizing the most infamous terrorist (and new member of the Moocher Hall of Fame).

Here are some excerpts from a story in the U.K.-based Daily Mail.

Jihadi John and his asylum-seeking family have milked the British benefits system for 20 years, the Mail can reveal today. Housing the Islamic State executioner and his relatives in affluent parts of London has cost taxpayers up to £400,000. One landlord said Mohammed Emwazi’s family were ‘parasites’ and ‘tenants from hell’. Incredibly, they are still believed to be pocketing £40,000 a year in handouts despite there being no sign of them in Britain. …Westminster City Council is still paying the rent on the family’s £600,000 flat even though the rules say housing benefit should normally be stopped after 13 weeks.

So did all these handouts to the Emwazi family turn them into good citizens?

Hardly. One of the kids, Mohammed Emwazi has gone to the Middle East to fight for ISIS and is now infamous at “Jihadi John,” the psychopath that beheads innocent people.

MPs said they were horrified that the child of a family given refugee status, citizenship and benefits had returned the favour by orchestrating the murder of two of its citizens. …In sickening propaganda videos, his son led the beheadings of Britons Alan Henning and David Haines.

But even if Jihadi John hadn’t turned into a nutjob, British taxpayers still got a very bad deal from the Emwazi clan.

The family apparently is still on the dole, continuing an unbroken 20-year tradition of mooching off British taxpayers.

During their time in Britain, neither Jasem nor Ghaneya officially worked. …With a 12-year-old daughter, Hana, they are still believed to be claiming an estimated £7,821 a year in child benefits and child tax credits. That is on top of annual claims of about £23,400 in housing benefit, £678 in council tax support and £5,929 in jobseeker’s allowance.

Looking at this result, logical people might be tempted conclude that it’s time to rethink refugee programs.

Or, at the very least, change the rules that funnel these people into government dependency.

But since many politicians aren’t logical, there are probably British versions of Barack Obama who are urging job training programs or similar nonsense (for a humorous take on that topic, see the cartoons at the bottom of this post).

P.S. Jihadi John featured in one of the most effectively snarky anti-Obama cartoons I’ve ever seen, which is at the end of this post.

P.P.S. Switching to a different topic, I’ve written (some would say ad nauseam) about disproportionately generous pay and benefits for government bureaucrats. Particularly for the gilded class in Washington.

I think the evidence for excessive bureaucratic compensation is ironclad, particularly if you look at “quit rates” by sector.

But now we have yet another piece of evidence that the federal workforce is living on Easy Street. Check out this new polling data from Gallup.

Remember, this is polling data with federal workers describing their own status, not what taxpayers think.

So let’s give 44 percent of bureaucrats credit for honesty, which is ironic because bureaucrats in polls have acknowledged they’re more likely to be dishonest! And lazy as well.

Though the real moral of the story is not compensation. As I explain at the end of this video, the real problem is that many government jobs shouldn’t exist in the first place.

P.P.P.S. If you want to enjoy bureaucrat humor, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

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The State Department’s Refugee Program Shouldn’t be a Terrorist-Funding Welfare Scam

While immigration is a very contentious issue for the politicians in Washington, there’s actually some level of agreement among people in the real world.

Almost everybody agrees that it would be foolish and short-sighted not to allow some immigration, particularly from young, educated people with valuable skills.

Similarly, there is widespread agreement that you can’t have completely open borders, particularly for those who are unlikely to be net contributors to the economy.

So the real debate (and this is where there is a lot of room for disagreement) is who gets to come to America and under what conditions.

I don’t raise this issue because I have any wise words – much less proposed solutions – on the overall issue of immigration.

Instead, let’s look at the profoundly perverse way that the federal government is using the refugee program to expand the problem of dependency.

Here are some excerpts from a disturbing story in the Washington Times.

The State Department has helped to relocate tens of thousands of refugees from the war-torn African nation of Somalia to Minnesota, where they can take advantage of some of America’s most generous welfare and charity programs. …Most of Minnesota’s Somali population started off as legal refugees through a program administered by the U.S. State Department through the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration. Minnesota was selected among the nation’s states for relocation primarily because of its robust entitlement offerings.

Gee, isn’t that wonderful. We’re bringing people into the country and settling them where they can get the largest amount of handouts.

And apparently that’s Minnesota, the France of America.

“Minnesota is exceptional in many ways but it’s the closest thing in the United States to a true social democratic state,” said Ahmed Samatar, a professor of international studies at Macalester College, in St. Paul. “That translates into the way Somali refugees have been received here they’ve been given a secure environment, housing, education, health care, perhaps even some minimum income to sustain them until they can stand on their own feet. That’s all provided by Minnesota,” said Mr. Samatar, who has tracked the State Department’s refugee program. Outside Alaska, Minnesota spends more per low-income person on public welfare than any other state in the U.S., according to a report by the Center for the American Experiment, a think tank located in Minneapolis. The report found Minnesota outspent its average peer state in welfare subsidies by nearly $4,000.

Oh, just in case you’re thinking that maybe the situation isn’t so bad because at least private charities are involved, it turns out that those organizations are simply contractors for the government.

…the…charitable organizations operating within the state with which the State Department contracts …In addition to its generous welfare subsidies, Minnesota also has a number of charitable organizations that contract with the State Department like Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, and World Relief Minnesota.

In other words, taxpayers are getting hit twice, once for official welfare payments and once for coerced “charity” laundered through groups jostling for space at the public trough.

At this point, you may be wondering whether all this spending is having a desirable effect?

As taxpayers, are we getting value for our money?

Yes, but only if you define dependency and unemployment as valuable.

Even though Minnesota has a good job market, that doesn’t seem to have translated into jobs for the Somali refugees. Minnesota’s state demographer’s office reports that only 41 percent of Somali men are working and 54 percent of Somali women are employed, meaning many may rely on the state’s handouts to survive, and are more susceptible to extremists pull. “It seems safe to assume that if they’re not working, then they’re likely receiving public welfare benefits,” said Peter Nelson, director of public policy at the Center of the American Experiment.

Amazingly, the left-wing governor of the state has doubled down on failure, expanding handouts.

Gov. Mark Dayton has expanded the state’s entitlement programs, although he remains mum on the state’s expense at doing so.

Though, to be fair, maybe he doesn’t care because Uncle Sam is the sugar daddy, picking up a big part of the tab.

“The state of Minnesota receives funding through the federal Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement to promote the successful resettlement and integration of refugees in Minnesota,” said a spokeswoman at the state’s Department of Human Services. …Minnesotans have also welcomed them onto their entitlement rolls, with the state’s cash assistance and food stamp programs, skyrocketing in recent years. The number of Somali adults and children who participated in the Minnesota’s family cash assistance program jumped 34 percent from 2008 to 2013, according to the state’s statistics. Likewise, Minnesota’s food assistance participation increased 98 percent, to 17,300 adults and children, which does not include U.S.-born Somalis, in the same timeframe.

At this point, you’re probably very upset. At least if you’re a taxpayer.

After all, haven’t we learned from painful experience that redistribution subsidizes poverty?

But I’ve saved the “best” for last.

…the effort is having the unintended consequence of creating an enclave of immigrants with high unemployment that is both stressing the state’s safety net and creating a rich pool of potential recruiting targets for Islamist terror groups. This population is…being targeted by Islamist terror organizations like the Islamic State and al-Shabab, a Somalia-based group with links to al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials. Among Minnesota-based Somali-Americans, American converts to Islam or Somali refugees, there have been numerous convictions for various levels of collaboration with Islamist terror groups, plus reports of fighting with al-Shabab or other Islamist groups.

Yup, tax dollars for terrorists.

It seems that these bums want a little excitement in their lives.

So they’re joining al-Shabab.

Since 2008, as many as 40 men from Minneapolis have joined Islamist groups after being pulled in by jihadists through social media, federal officials say. Last year, an American youth named Douglas McAuthur McCain died in Syria fighting for the Islamic State. Mr. McCain was recruited in Minnesota, where he lived. In 2009, another Minnesota youth, Troy Kastigar posted a recruiting video for al-Shabab before he was killed fighting for the terrorist group in Somalia. Kastigar and McCain are thought to have been friends. That same year a Somali man who left Minneapolis joined al-Shabab and blew himself up in a suicide bombing at an Ethiopian consulate in Somalia, killing 24 people.

Just like the Tsarnaev brothers. Just like the deadbeat scrounger from Australia, the nutjob moocher from the United Kingdom, and the wacko sponge in France.

So now let’s circle back to our main question. Why is the federal government bringing people into the country, luring them into dependency, and subsidizing terrorism?

Leftists sometimes like to tell us that “Government is simply the name for the things we do together.”

Well, “we” do some really stupid stuff when we act “together” through government.

Instead of a misguided refugee program that steers dodgy people into dependency, why not – with a condition of no handouts or dependency – open the door to Chinese engineers? Romanian software experts? Or Indian scientists? How about Nigerian businessmen? Maybe French doctors?

But I guess people who would assimilate and contribute to our economy aren’t as attractive as welfare recipients who despise our culture.

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European Jews and the Missing Right of Self Defense

Over and over again, I’ve shared evidence showing that gun ownership deters crime.

As I pointed out in my IQ test for criminals and liberals, even stupid criminals don’t want to get shot, so they are less likely to go after victims who may be armed (if you don’t believe me, check out this feel-good story from Ferguson, Missouri).

But what if the bad guys don’t care if they get shot? What if they’re these crazies who want to shoot up schools or movie theaters, fully expecting to kill themselves or get shot when police eventually arrive?

Even in that case, gun ownership by innocent people presumably has a positive impact. Research on mass shootings reveals that these nut jobs gravitate to “gun-free zones.” That way, they figure there won’t be any immediate resistance and they’ll be able to maximize casualties.

Let’s take our analysis to the next level. What if the bad guys are lunatic Islamofascists who think they get a bunch of virgins in paradise if they butcher so-called infidels?

These evil scum presumably aren’t deterred by the possibility of death, but it’s also logical to assume that they want to maximize the carnage they inflict before that happens.

So if potential victims are armed, that presumably will have a positive impact. After all, terrorists generally don’t try to take on Israeli soldiers. Instead, they go after people with far more limited ability to fight back.

In a humane and just world, lawmakers would agree that these folks should have some ability to defend themselves. But that’s not how the real-world works, at least in European nations that impose severe gun control.

Maybe it’s time to change that misguided policy, which is exactly what some European Jews are proposing.

Here are some excerpts from a story in the U.K.-based Daily Mail.

One of Europe’s largest Jewish associations has written a letter to EU ministers asking for gun laws to be relaxed to allow Jews to arm themselves to protect against terror attacks. Rabbi Menachem Margolin, the head of the European Jewish Association, made the request in the wake of the Paris attacks in which four Jews were killed inside a deli in the French capital. …The letter speaks about the need for protection after Islamist Amedy Coulibaly gunned down four Jewish shoppers in cold blood in a Paris deli last Friday before he was shot by armed police. …Police later found he had maps showing the locations of Jewish schools in Paris. …Nobody from the European Council of Ministers was immediately available for comment on the letter when contacted by Mail Online this afternoon.

Needless to say, I’m not expecting European politicians to give the right answer to this request.

Instead, they’ll offer platitudes and assure people that the government will protect synagogues and Jewish schools.

That better than nothing, of course, but why not let individuals have the right to self defense?

John Hinderaker of Powerline adds his two cents to the issue.

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris shed some light on this question. In the case of the Charlie Hebdo murders, two armed guards were present, but were quickly overwhelmed by the well-trained (and no doubt better armed) terrorists. It is unlikely that civilians armed with pistols would have fared better. The kosher grocery attack was quite different. It was carried out by a single terrorist and, rather than being executed rapidly and with military precision, the terrorist held something like 30 people hostage for a matter of hours. This is a good example of a situation where civilians armed with concealed weapons could likely make a difference. If one of the hostages had a gun (or better yet, two or three hostages had guns) he could well have had an opportunity to get off a clean shot and kill or disable the terrorist.

Very well stated, though I’ll disagree in one respect. It’s quite possible that well-armed terrorists would have prevailed in their attack on Charlie Hebdo even if some of the employees were armed.

But if I worked at that magazine, I would still want the option of self defense. Far better to go down fighting than to cower under a desk.

I suspect John would agree, so we probably don’t have any real disagreement.

In any event, John’s has more good information and analysis in his blog post.

…a critical mass of armed civilians can change criminals’ behavior dramatically. In the United Kingdom, burglars generally look for homes that are occupied so that they can force the occupants to direct them to the family’s valuables–and, in the process, commit a rape or other heinous crime. In the United States, burglars almost always seek out unoccupied homes, because if the homeowner is present there is a possibility the burglar could be shot. The American experience suggests that as the citizenry becomes armed, street crime declines. The causes are hotly debated, but violent crime rates have steadily gone down in tandem with liberalized gun carry laws and broader ownership of handguns. …In parts of Europe, it is common for Jews to be attacked by gangs of young Muslims when they are out in public. Such attacks would decline rapidly if it were known that Jews are arming themselves, and if, in only a few instances, thugs attempting to perpetrate such attacks were shot in self-defense. In my view, deterring street attacks would be the largest potential benefit of wider firearms ownership. …if I were a European Jew would I arm myself to the maximum extent permitted by law, and seek legal changes to make self-defense more effective? Absolutely.

Actually, I’ll disagree with another minor aspect of John’s post.

If I were a European Jew, I would arm myself regardless of the law. My family’s protection would matter more than the foolish/evil laws of politicians.

P.S. Don’t forget that Jews were victimized by the Nazi’s gun control laws, visual depictions of which can be seen here, here, here, and here.

P.P.S. On a less somber note, here are two very amusing Chuck Asay cartoons (here and here) about so-called gun-free zones. And here are some more amusing images on that issue.

P.P.P.S. Sticking with the humor theme, here’s an interview featuring a well-deserved lesson for a left-wing journalist (presumably an urban legend, but still funny). And here a post on the difference between conservatives, liberals, and Texans. Last but not least, I hope these are the virgins waiting in paradise to greet the terrorists.

P.P.P.P.S. To end on a serious note, I will continue my tradition of sharing the very powerful testimony of a true gun expert, as well as the admissions of two leftists (here and here) who admit that gun control is grossly misguided. All three of these links should be widely shared.

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Which Costly Family Most Deserves to Enter the Moocher Hall of Fame?

Selection to the Moocher Hall of Fame is a special award that is bestowed upon “the individuals who best exemplify the culture of loafing, laziness, and dependency that is being subsidized by our vote-buying political class.”

But it’s not limited to Americans. Previous winners of this prestigious award include Brits, Austrians, Greeks, and Danes.

Now it’s time to pick a new honoree. But we’re going to make this a contest. We have two families living in the United Kingdom, both of which impose a big fiscal burden on taxpayers, but only one of which gets to join the Moocher Hall of Fame.

Here’s contestant number one. As reported by a British tabloid, a Romanian couple, along with their 15 kids, are imposing a very heavy cost on British taxpayers.

Mihai Toma and his brood live in a three-bed home after moving to soft-touch Britain two years ago. They rake in £2,500 a month in tax credits, £1,400 in housing benefits and £700 in child benefit… That adds up to £55,200 a year in handouts – the equivalent of a £90,000 salary… It means Mihai is making more than many doctors, senior police officers and MPs. …the Toma family want even more. They are demanding to be moved to a bigger taxpayer-funded house for their children aged four months to 19. And they cannot understand why so many hard-working Brits unable to afford their own homes are angry. Mum Veronica, 37, said: “…People will judge us but we have not done bad because we have come here to get a better life than in Romania.” …The Tomas are among thousands of immigrant families who have flocked to Britain as “welfare tourists”.

I have nothing against big families, but demanding a bigger house that will be financed by other people definitely rubs me the wrong way.

And here’s contestant number two, as described in another story also from the Daily Star. The Sisarovas are a Slovakian family with 11 kids.

Katerina Sisarova, 43, left Slovakia in 2007 and has worked for just one month after settling here. …But with her £23,000 annual income from handouts, gypsy Katerina doesn’t want a job. She said her life was “very nice” and she’ll never go home. Katerina bragged: “We have a good life here. We have everything that we want. …Her husband Peter, who has not worked for two years, added: “I like England. England give me house, give me doctor, give school, benefit. England good, thank you so much England.” …Her daughter Petra, 20, lives in a council house nearby with her son Peter, three. She also lives on handouts, collecting £650 a month, and said: “I get child benefit, tax credit, housing benefit. I’ve got a better life here than in my country.

So which family is more deserving of entering the Moocher Hall of Fame?

It’s a judgement call, but my vote goes to the Sisarova family. The Toma family is disqualified because Mihai actually does something productive. He earns “£1,800-a-month wage as an electrician.”

To put this in American terms, the Sisarova family is akin to a household where everyone goofs off while collecting welfare (and assorted additional benefits based on no income).

In the Toma family, by contrast, someone is working, so that makes them akin to an American household that is eligible for the earned-income credit (and assorted additional benefits based on modest income).

And the difference is that welfare is money you get from the government for doing nothing while the EITC is money you get from the government for working.

Getting back to our contest, Mihai’s decision to be partially self-sufficient means he and his family don’t get to join the Moocher Hall of Fame.

By the way, there’s also a Terrorist Wing of the Moocher Hall of Fame. It features repugnant people like the Tsarnaev family in the United States, as well as Abdul, the million-dollar moocher from Australia.

We don’t have any new nominees for the Terrorist Wing, but here are a couple of stories that should probably be in the honorable mention category.

First, the Daily Telegraph from the U.K. reports that home-grown terrorists are using government handouts to wage jihad.

Terri Nicholson, from the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism command unit, said that taxpayers’ money was being claimed fraudulently and used by terrorists in countries such as Iraq and Syria. She said there had been “a number of cases” recently of terrorists making fraudulent student loan claims to fund their activities. …“We are seeing a diverse fraud, including substantial fraud online, abuse of the benefits system, abuse of student loans, in order to fund terrorism,” she said.

I’m particularly struck by the use of student loans. Many of the people I knew in college used such payments for beer, but they obviously weren’t thinking big enough.

I guess we should count fighting for ISIS with taxpayer money as some sort of self-directed independent study.

We have similar problems in the United States.

I’ve already mentioned the Tsarnaev brothers, but we also have two men who wanted to blow up the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and kill two officials. But they had one small problem. They couldn’t afford to buy the bombs they wanted until one of their girlfriends received her next installment of handouts from Uncle Sam.

Two men indicted last week on federal weapons charges allegedly had plans to bomb the Gateway Arch — and to kill St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch and Ferguson Police Chief Tom Jackson — the Post-Dispatch has learned. …the two allegedly did buy what they thought was a pipe bomb in an undercover law enforcement sting. The men wanted to acquire two more bombs, the sources said, but could not afford to do it until one suspect’s girlfriend’s Electronic Benefit Transfer card was replenished.

Gee, if only handouts were even more generous. Then those two guys could have planned more efficiently.

Though I shouldn’t joke. If these guys hadn’t been such morons, some people might now be dead.

Let’s close on a more serious note about public policy. It should go without saying that the vast majority of welfare recipients aren’t terrorists, or even criminals. And most of them presumably don’t have the extreme entitlement mentality illustrated by the Sisarova family.

But that doesn’t mean welfare should be an acceptable way of life. It’s bad for taxpayers when that happens, of course, but it’s also bad for recipients.

And this is becoming apparent even to some foreign politicians who are far from being libertarian. Here are some excerpts from a story published by the Independent in Ireland.

Social welfare has become a “lifestyle choice” for many leaving school, a situation which is totally unacceptable and will no longer be tolerated, Social Protection Minister Joan Burton has said. “What we are getting at the moment is people who come into the system straight after school as a lifestyle choice. This is not acceptable, everyone should be expected to contribute and work,” Ms Burton said. Speaking to the Sunday Independent, Ms Burton said those who failed to cooperate with her department by not taking job or training opportunities would lose up to €44 a week.

My gut reaction is that they should lose everything, but I guess this is a big step from a Labour Party politician.

It appears Ms. Burton recognizes that people can be trapped into a life of dependency if the welfare system is too generous.

Which is a revelation that also has occurred to at least one American leftist.

P.S. Guess what happened when politicians in Washington declared “war on poverty” and started spending lots of money?

P.P.S. On the other hand, guess what happened while politicians in the U.K. decided to make dependency a less attractive lifestyle?

P.P.P.S. Here’s a map showing which states have the biggest welfare benefits.

P.P.P.P.S. I can’t help but wonder if the British press focuses on immigrant households that collect welfare while paying inadequate attention to the equally disturbing anecdotes of home-grown welfare families. The problem is welfare, income redistribution, and dependency, not the race or nationality of the recipients.

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Goldilocks, Canada, and the Size of Government

I feel a bit like Goldilocks.

No, this is not a confession about cross-dressing or being transsexual. I’m the boring kind of libertarian.

Instead, I have a run-of-the-mill analogy. Think about when you were a kid and your parents told you the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

You may remember that she entered the house and tasted bowls of porridge that were too hot and also too cold before she found the porridge that was just right.

And then she found a bed that was too hard, and then another that was too soft, before finding one that was just right.

Well, the reason I feel like Goldilocks is because I’ve shared some “Rahn Curve” research suggesting that growth is maximized when total government spending consumes no more than 20 percent of gross domestic product. I think this sounds reasonable, but Canadians apparently have a different perspective.

Back in 2010, a Canadian libertarian put together a video that explicitly argues that I want a government that is too big.

Now we have another video from Canada. It was put together by the Fraser Institute, and it suggests that the public sector should consume 30 percent of GDP, which means that I want a government that is too small.

My knee-jerk reaction is to be critical of the Fraser video. After all, there are examples – both current and historical – of nations that prosper with much lower burdens of government spending

Singapore and Hong Kong, for instance, have public sectors today that consume less than 20 percent of economic output. Would those fast-growing jurisdictions be more prosperous if the burden of government spending was increased by more than 50 percent?

Or look at Canadian history. As recently as 1920, government outlays were 16.7 percent of economic output. Would Canada have grown faster if lawmakers at the time had almost doubled the size of government?

And what about nations such as the United States, Germany, France, Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, all of which had government budgets in 1870 that consumed only about 10 percent of GDP. Would those nations have been better off if the burden of government spending was tripled?

I think the answer to all three questions is no. So why, then, did the Fraser Institute conclude that government should be bigger?

There are three very reasonable responses to that question. First, the 30 percent number is actually a measurement of where you theoretically maximize “social progress” or “societal outcomes.” If you peruse the excellent study that accompanies the video, you’ll find that economic growth is most rapid when government consumes 26 percent of GDP.

Second, the Fraser research – practically speaking – is arguing for smaller government, at least when looking at the current size of the public sector in Canada, the United States, and Western Europe. According to International Monetary Fund data, government spending consumes 41 percent of GDP in Canada, 39 percent of GDP in the United States, and 55 percent of GDP in France.

The Fraser Institute research even suggests that there should be significantly less government spending in both Switzerland and Australia, where outlays total “only” 34 percent of GDP.

Third, you’ll see if you read the underlying study that the author is simply following the data. But he also acknowledges “a limitation of the data,” which is that the numbers needed for his statistical analysis are only available for OECD nations, and only beginning in 1960.

This is a very reasonable point, and one that I also acknowledged when writing about some research on this topic from Finland’s Central Bank.

…those numbers…are the result of data constraints. Researchers looking at the post-World War II data generally find that Hong Kong and Singapore have the maximum growth rates, and the public sector in those jurisdictions consumes about 20 percent of economic output. Nations with medium-sized governments, such as Australia and the United States, tend to grow a bit slower. And the bloated welfare states of Europe suffer from stagnation. So it’s understandable that academics would conclude that growth is at its maximum point when government grabs 20 percent of GDP. But what would the research tell us if there were governments in the data set that consumed 15 percent of economic output? Or 10 percent, or even 5 percent? Such nations don’t exist today.

For what it’s worth, I assume the author of the Fraser study, given the specifications of his model, didn’t have the necessary post-1960 data to include small-state, high-growth, non-OECD jurisdictions such as Hong Kong and Singapore. If that data had been available, I suspect he also would have concluded that government should be closer to 20 percent of economic output.

I explore all these issues in my video on this topic.

The moral of the story is that government is far too large in every developed nation.

I suspect even Hong Kong and Singapore have public sectors that are too large, causing too many resources to be diverted from the private sector.

But since I’m a practical and moderate guy, I’d be happy if the burden of government spending in the United States was merely reduced back down to 20 percent of economic output.

P.S. Though I would want the majority of that spending at the state and local level.

P.P.S. Since I’m sharing videos today, here’s an amusing video from American Commitment about the joy of being “liberated” from employment.

And if you like snarky videos about Obamacare, here are some based on sex and mockery, and there’s even a Hitler parody.

P.P.P.S. This has nothing to do with public policy, but I got a good chuckle from this news out of Iraq.

A group of Sunni militants attending a suicide bombing training class at a camp north of Baghdad were killed on Monday when their commander unwittingly conducted a demonstration with a belt that was packed with explosives, army and police officials said. …Twenty-two ISIS members were killed, and 15 were wounded, in the explosion at the camp.

One of the reasons I laughed is that I recalled a cartoon that was sent to me many years ago. And when I dug into my humor folder, it was still there.

I think you’ll see the obvious connection.

And since we’re venturing into humor about self-detonating terrorists, here’s another joke from my treasure trove.

===================================

Guy goes into a sex shop and asks for an inflatable doll.

Guy behind the counter says, “Male or female?”

Customer says, “Female.”

Counter guy asks, “Black or white?

Customer says, “White.”

Counter guy asks, “Christian or Muslim?”

Customer says, “What the hell does religion have to do with it?”

Counter guy says, “The Muslim one blows itself up.”

===================================

And here’s another joke that’s worth sharing.

If this isn’t enough terrorism-related humor for you, we also have this collection of stereotypes I received from an English friend.

This image, meanwhile, doubtlessly has caused a few nightmares in certain quarters.

And this Jay Leno joke is one of the best examples of anti-political correctness I’ve ever seen.

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The Lamest Possible Rationale for NSA Spying

Last June, in response to a question about indiscriminate spying by the National Security Agency, I made two simple points about the importance of judicial oversight and cost-benefit analysis.

I want – at a minimum – there to be judicial oversight whenever the government spies on American citizens, but I also think some cost-benefit analysis is appropriate. Just because a court has the power to approve snooping, that doesn’t mean it’s a sensible use of law enforcement resources.

Nothing since then has changed my mind.

Indeed, I’m perhaps even more skeptical of untrammeled government power and ability to spy on citizens for the simple reason that I don’t trust politicians.

Just look at how the White House turned the supposedly professional IRS into a partisan political operation. The government had power, ostensibly for a legitimate reason, but politicians and bureaucrats then used the power is a grossly improper fashion.

On the other hand, I know there are people out there who hate America. And they don’t just hate us because we’re intervening in the Middle East. I suspect many of them would want to kill us even if we had a perfect libertarian foreign policy of non-intervention and peaceful global commerce.

Now we learn from a report in the Washington Post that government has become bigger and more powerful and that our privacy has been violated as part of the NSA’s spying, yet there have been no benefits. As is zero. Nada. Zilch.

Here are some excerpts.

An analysis of 225 terrorism cases inside the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has concluded that the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency “has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism.” In the majority of cases, traditional law enforcement and investigative methods provided the tip or evidence to initiate the case, according to the study by the New America Foundation, a Washington-based nonprofit group.

But perhaps, you may be thinking, this is merely the predictable conclusion of a group that is predisposed to be skeptical. That’s a fair concern, but the article also has some very compelling corroborating evidence.

The study, to be released Monday, corroborates the findings of a White House-appointed review group, which said last month that the NSA counterterrorism program “was not essential to preventing attacks” and that much of the evidence it did turn up “could readily have been obtained in a timely manner using conventional [court] orders.”

So not only do outsiders find little to no value in NSA spying, but even hand-picked insiders couldn’t come up with any evidence to show that the program was effective.

But you won’t be surprised to learn that defenders of the NSA have come up with a can’t-miss way of defining success.

Senior administration officials…say it has been valuable in knocking down rumors of a plot and in determining that potential threats against the United States are nonexistent. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. calls that the “peace of mind” metric.

Yes, your eyes did not deceive you.You actually read correctly. The government wants us to acquiesce to a loss of privacy because we will learn that there are no threats and we’ll have “peace of mind.”

That has to be the lamest justification for government power that I’ve ever read.

This is even more preposterous than asserting that we should squander $1 trillion per year on anti-poverty programs, not because that redistribution will help the poor, but rather because it makes leftists feel better about themselves.

That being said, supporters do have a somewhat powerful comeback.

Michael Morell, a former acting CIA director and a member of the panel, said the program “needs to be successful only once to be invaluable.”

Indeed, I suspect this is the main reason why ordinary people might support the NSA.

But I disagree with Mr. Morell because he asserts that a single example of success would be invaluable. The article, for instance, cites one “victory” for the NSA surveillance program.

…the program provided evidence to initiate only one case, involving a San Diego cabdriver, Basaaly ­Moalin, who was convicted of sending money to a terrorist group in Somalia. Three co-conspirators were also convicted. The cases involved no threat of attack against the United States.

I’m glad that a foreign terrorist attack was blocked, but is that really “invaluable”? Does that “victory” justify a very expensive and very intrusive NSA monitoring regime?

As I’ve acknowledged before, I don’t know enough about terrorism to offer an informed viewpoint. But I have studied a similar issue, money laundering laws, and that research leads me to be very suspicious about the NSA.

These laws were put in place with the excuse that government would collect and analyze large amounts of data to help deter crime.

All the evidence, however, shows that these laws are a costly failure. The invade our privacy, hurt the poor, impose high regulatory costs, and have little or no impact on underlying crimes.

Just something to keep in mind when people argue that government should have more power and authority.

P.S. At least the revelations about NSA spying have generated some first-rate political humor.

P.P.S. Keep in mind that the NSA is just one cog in the machinery of government. So if you’re worried about the NSA’s intrusion and power, then you should also worry about the power of the IRS. If you’re concerned about the IRS’s authority, then you also should fret about the Obamacare exchanges. And if you think the Obamacare exchanges give the government too much knowledge and power, then you should be agitated about “know-your-customer” laws that require banks to spy on their customers. And if you’re not happy about those money-laundering rules, then you surely should be dismayed about asset-forfeiture rules. And if you don’t approve of government stealing property, then maybe you don’t like government accumulation of power for the Drug War. And if the failed War on Drugs rubs you the wrong way, then perhaps you…I better stop now. I think you get the point.

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Mark Steyn Correctly Worries about Obama’s Looming Syrian Adventure

I’ve already shared some analysis of Mark Steyn’s libertarian-leaning views on foreign policy, so it’s very timely to see what he just wrote about Syria.

Here’s some of his new article in National Review. His humor is sharp, but he makes a very important point.

The administration’s ingenious plan is to lose this war in far less time than we usually take. In the unimprovable formulation of an unnamed official speaking to the Los Angeles Times, the White House is carefully calibrating a military action “just muscular enough not to get mocked.” That would make a great caption for a Vanity Fair photo shoot of Obama gamboling in the surf at Martha’s Vineyard, but as a military strategy it’s not exactly Alexander the Great or the Duke of Wellington.  …From the New York Times: “A wide range of officials characterize the action under consideration as ‘limited,’ perhaps lasting no more than a day or two.” Yeah, I know, that’s what Edward III said about the Hundred Years’ War. But Obama seems to mean it

Steyn notes that British voters already have said no to “ineffectual warmongering.”

This week, David Cameron recalled Parliament from its summer recess to permit the people’s representatives to express their support for the impending attack. Instead, for the first time since the British defeat at Yorktown in 1782, the House of Commons voted to deny Her Majesty’s Government the use of force. Under the Obama “reset,” even the Coalition of the Willing is unwilling. …“This House will not fight for king and country”? Not exactly. What the British people are sick of, quite reasonably enough, is ineffectual warmongering.

For what it’s worth, Obama doesn’t think he should be bound by that silly little clause in the Constitution about only Congress having the power to declare war. Which at least makes him consistent, since he doesn’t feel bound by the fact that Article I, Section 8, doesn’t authorize the federal government to be involved in health care.

But I’m digressing. Let’s look at what Steyn identifies as the real problem. We account for a huge share of the globe’s military spending, yet we don’t get much bang for the buck.

The problem with the American way of war is that, technologically, it can’t lose, but, in every other sense, it can’t win. No one in his right mind wants to get into a tank battle or a naval bombardment with the guys responsible for over 40 percent of the planet’s military expenditures. Which is why these days there aren’t a lot of tank battles. The consummate interventionist Robert Kagan wrote in his recent book that the American military “remains unmatched.” It’s unmatched in the sense that the only guy in town with a tennis racket isn’t going to be playing a lot of tennis matches. …America’s inability to win ought to be a burning national question, but it’s not even being asked.

Particularly since there are no real friends competing to rule Syria.

For a quarter-century, from Kuwait to Kosovo to Kandahar, the civilized world has gone to war only in order to save or liberate Muslims. The Pentagon is little more than central dispatch for the U.S. military’s Muslim Fast Squad. And what do we have to show for it? Liberating Syria isn’t like liberating the Netherlands: In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.  …So we’ll get rid of Assad and install the local branch of al-Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood or whatever plucky neophyte democrat makes it to the presidential palace first — and then, instead of napalmed schoolyards, there will be, as in Egypt, burning Christian churches and women raped for going uncovered.

Steyn then summarizes what’s at stake.

…the hyperpower is going to war because Obama wandered off prompter and accidentally made a threat. So he has to make good on it, or America will lose its credibility. But he only wants to make good on it in a perfunctory and ineffectual way. So America will lose its credibility anyway.

It’s unfortunate that politicians misallocate military spending for parochial reasons, but it’s equally worrisome that they risk blood and treasure in ways that don’t make sense.

Syrian intervention, however, would take foolishness to an entire new level.

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Crime Fighting or Corporate Welfare?

I want government to successfully and rationally fight crime and stop terrorism. That’s a perfectly appropriate libertarian sentiment since protecting life, liberty, and property are among the few legitimate roles for government.

But I don’t want to give bureaucrats carte blanche to monitor our lives and I don’t want to waste money in those cases where it is proper for the government to snoop on bad guys.

And those are some of the sentiments I expressed in this panel for Forbes on Fox.

My wonkish concern for cost-benefit analysis and corporate welfare is not empty posturing. There’s real money involved.

Here’s some of what CBS News reported on the issue.

How much are your private conversations worth to the U.S. government? Turns out, it can be a lot, depending on the technology. …AT&T, for example, imposes a $325 “activation fee” for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that… Industry says it doesn’t profit from the hundreds of thousands of government eavesdropping requests it receives each year… “What we don’t want is surveillance to become a profit center,” said Christopher Soghoian, the ACLU’s principal technologist. But “it’s always better to charge $1. It creates friction, and it creates transparency” because it generates a paper trail that can be tracked. …The FBI said it could not say how much it spends on industry reimbursements because payments are made through a variety of programs, field offices and case funds.

I confess that I’m not an expert – or even a novice – on the details of law enforcement, but I’m glad that my speculation on the low cost of setting up a wiretap seems to have been accurate. At least based on this excerpt from the article.

In 2009, then-New York criminal prosecutor John Prather sued several major telecommunications carriers in federal court in Northern California in 2009, including AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, for overcharging federal and state police agencies. In his complaint, Prather said phone companies have the technical ability to turn on a switch, duplicate call information and pass it along to law enforcement with little effort. Instead, Prather says his staff, while he was working as a city prosecutor, would receive convoluted bills with extraneous fees. The case is pending.

This article, as well as the Forbes on Fox debate, deal with general law enforcement, not the controversy about NSA data collection and monitoring.

But I can’t resist sharing this excellent bit of NSA-related humor that arrived in my inbox.

Very similar in quality and theme to this great set of images.

And if you appreciate political cartoons on this topic, here are some of my favorites. I think the one featuring Nixon and Bush is the best of the bunch.

Last but not least, here are my thoughts on the NSA/Snowden controversy if you want some non-humorous analysis.

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