Lonely threesome back work-card freedom

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 30 Sep 2001 13:10:48 GMT

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 11, 2001
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Lonely threesome back work-card freedom

Clark County has already made strides in reducing the bloated list of private-sector job categories in which Southern Nevada workers had been required to undergo the humiliation of fingerprinting in order to secure a "work card."

It should go without saying that taking up a job for pay is a right in this free country, not some kind of "conditional privilege" to be granted at the whim of police or other bureaucrats.

The effectiveness of all this background-checking in reducing crime was hard to demonstrate in the first place. (Had Las Vegas dance instruction studios gradually become nests of former Baader-Meinhoff terrorists, two-stepping the night away? Did only the blanket application of fingerprint ink foil the plot to infiltrate the city's cohort of hot dog vendors with Corsican hit men?)

Add to this the irony of court rulings won by our very own Oscar Goodman (in his earlier incarnation as a mob lawyer, back before he became mayor) that a work card can't be pulled without separate "due process" ... even if the holder is convicted of a felony ... and the true goal here (creating a massive police tracking system, primarily of the harmless and law-abiding) soon comes clear.

Last Wednesday, it was the turn of the Las Vegas City Council to take similar strides in thinning out the list of employment categories over which city bureaucrats wield the veto power of the "work card."

"I believe as far as work cards are concerned, the less government the better," said Mayor Oscar Goodman, who came to politics so late in life that such gems of decency and common sense still sometimes appear to bubble up unbidden.

Council members Lawrence Weekly and Lynette Boggs McDonald then proceeded to join the mayor in voting to eliminate the work card requirement for virtually every job category except those which involve direct contact with children or the dependent elderly, or which involve handling cash in the town's casinos.

If only that were the end of the story.

Instead, a working majority of the Council, composed of Councilmen Larry Brown, Michael Mack, Michael McDonald and Gary Reese, went along with setting laborers free of the work card tyranny in the case of hotel maids and bellhops and circus concessionaires ... but then switched sides and voted to retain the city work card requirements for apartment house managers, ice cream vendors, barmaids, dance studio instructors, martial arts teachers, locksmiths, massage therapists, pawnbrokers, hot dog vendors, and carnival concessionaires ... among others.

Apartment house managers must undergo fingerprinting and background checks because they have access to keys that might allow them steal from their tenants, you see, whereas hotel maids and bellhops ... um, wait a minute.

One searches in vain for any principle or consistency behind the votes of Messrs. Brown, Mack, McDonald or Reese, because there is none. Rather, like trained dogs, the foursome voted to remove the work card requirement only for those job categories being promoted for liberation by the 100 Culinary Union members who attended Wednesday's meeting, a boisterous throng that cheered enthusiastically, throwing the electoral equivalent of little bone-shaped biscuits whenever the four well-rehearsed pooches did their trick.

Job categories not on the Culinary list? With precious few exceptions, it was "Form a line and roll up your sleeves, girls."

Then, completing this mortifying exhibition of shameless political leg-humping, Councilman Larry Brown actually had the nerve to turn the far more principled stance of Messrs. Goodman and Weekly and Ms. Boggs-McDonald into a subject of ridicule, joking that the mayor, a former defense attorney, was "upset because he hasn't been beat this badly since he was in a courtroom."

No, Councilman Brown, it's not the mayor who suffered a defeat last week, but the principle that in America, an honest journeyman should have the right to seek gainful employment without running downtown and paying a thinly disguised bribe to the city staff for an artifact once believed to exist only in totalitarian states like Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia, the "work card."

And now that they've won this victory, what do Councilman Brown and his three fellow bone-polishers have in mind for the average Las Vegas worker next -- a set of expensive "travel papers," bearing mug shots and fingerprints, without which we won't be allowed to travel outside our assigned ghettos after sunset?

Surely that would have an even more salutary effect in "reducing crime" ... given that no principle of liberty or limited government apparently remains to block the way.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. To receive his longer, better stuff, subscribe to his monthly newsletter by sending $72 to Privacy Alert, 561 Keystone Ave., Suite 684, Reno, NV 89503 -- or dialing 775-348-8591. His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224 or on the website www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.

Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

"They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin 1759

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Quotes

Government doesn't work. Never did. Never will. Can't. But there are lots of good people. Love them.

-- Bill St. Clair

The Atlanta Declaration

Every man, woman, and responsible child has an unalienable individual, civil, Constitutional, and human right to obtain, own, and carry, openly or concealed, any weapon -- rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- any time, any place, without asking anyone's permission.

-- L. Neil Smith

Reread that pesky first clause of the Second Amendment. It doesn't say what any of us thought it said. What it says is that infringing the right of the people to keep and bear arms is treason. What else do you call an act that endangers "the security of a free state"? And if it's treason, then it's punishable by death. I suggest due process, speedy trials, and public hangings.

-- L. Neil Smith

A Penalty Clause for the Bill of Rights

Any official, appointed or elected, at any level of government, who attempts, through legislative act or other means, to nullify, evade, or avoid the provisions of the first ten amendments to this Constitution, or of the Thirteenth Amendment, shall be summarily removed from office, and, upon conviction, deprived of all pay and benefits including pension, and sentenced to imprisonment for life.

-- L. Neil Smith

Based on 253 journal articles, 99 books, 43 government publications, and some of its own empirical work, the panel couldn't identify a single gun control regulation that reduced violent crime, suicide or accidents.

-- John Lott, commenting on the National Academy of Sciences report on gun control laws.

Who is a libertarian?

Zero Aggression Principle ("Zap")

"A libertarian is a person who believes that no one has the right, under any circumstances, to initiate force against another human being, or to advocate or delegate its initiation. Those who act consistently with this principle are libertarians, whether they realize it or not. Those who fail to act consistently with it are not libertarians, regardless of what they may claim."

-- L. Neil Smith

(Formerly called the "Non-Aggression Principle", or "NAP")

Why Did It Have to be... Guns?

Make no mistake: all politicians -- even those ostensibly on the side of guns and gun ownership -- hate the issue and anyone, like me, who insists on bringing it up. They hate it because it's an X-ray machine. It's a Vulcan mind-meld. It's the ultimate test to which any politician -- or political philosophy -- can be put.

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash -- for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything -- without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you.

If he isn't genuinely enthusiastic about his average constituent stuffing that weapon into a purse or pocket or tucking it under a coat and walking home without asking anybody's permission, he's a four-flusher, no matter what he claims.

What his attitude -- toward your ownership and use of weapons -- conveys is his real attitude about you. And if he doesn't trust you, then why in the name of John Moses Browning should you trust him?

-- L. Neil Smith

Concise

"Tell me," I was once asked, "What do you think about gun control? Give me the short answer." To which I replied, "If you try to take our firearms we will kill you."

-- Mike Vanderboegh

Also from The Atlanta Declaration:

... like going to the bathroom, breathing, eating, sleeping, or making love, it turns out that self-defense is a bodily function one cannot safely or effectively delegate to a second party.

-- L. Neil Smith

This does not mean that "Marijuana should be available by prescription." It means that morphine sulfate should be available in five pound bags at the supermarket for a couple of bucks, like sugar... but probably in a different aisle, to avoid confusion.

-- Vin Suprynowicz

If you refuse to pay unjust taxes, your property will be confiscated. If you attempt to defend your property, you will be arrested. If you resist arrest, you will be clubbed. If you defend yourself against clubbing, you will be shot dead. These procedures are known as the Rule of Law.

-- Edward Abbey

The state can only survive as long as a majority is programmed to believe that theft isn't wrong if it's called taxation or asset forfeiture or eminent domain, that assault and kidnapping isn't wrong if it's called arrest, that mass murder isn't wrong if it's called war.

-- Bill St. Clair

End the War on Freedom

Lonely threesome back work-card freedom