The Freedom Bulletin

As you know by now if you haven’t been living under a rock, the state of Arizona passed an illegal immigration crackdown bill, which criminalizes illegal immigration and transporting illegal immigrants under state law and allows police, if there is reasonable suspicion, to question people about their immigration status and arrest them if they cannot prove they are legal residents.

Does this bill violate people’s civil rights as its opponents claim? Well, making illegal immigration a crime is a no brainer – that’s why it’s called illegal immigration. Cracking down on illegal immigration is something America needs right now. It’s never a good thing to have people benefitting from government services without paying taxes, and that is what most illegal immigrants do. I’m also not immensely worried that the bill will cause racial profiling, as it specifies that race or ethnicity is not sufficient grounds for reasonable suspicion.

However, I don’t like the idea of a law requiring people to prove their innocence instead of the state having to prove their guilt. The presumption of innocence is a central part of the American legal system, and it should stay that way. People should not have to carry papers around to prove to police that they are not illegal immigrants; the police should have to prove that they are.

If there is one rule that everyone, especially the government, should follow, it is this: Don’t punish innocent people. You can ban something without requiring everyone who is suspected of it to prove that they are innocent. Murder is illegal, but the government has to prove people’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This same should be true of illegal immigration. I strongly support cracking down on illegal immigrants, but requiring people to prove their innocence is not the way to do it.

When I went to the Clark Rockefeller trial about a year ago, I got to meet many great people, including reporters, lawyers, interns, and fellow court watchers. But one of the friendliest and most knowledgeable people was Tony, an elderly guy who watched trials every day for fun. At the first pretrial hearing, Tony introduced himself to me and started telling story after story about trials that he had attended. Tony knew all the judges at Suffolk Superior Court and the Moakley Federal Courthouse and basically all the prosecutors and defense lawyers. He told me he had observed thousands of trials, and he eagerly shared the latest courtroom gossip with everyone he encountered.

Tony had an opinion on anything and everything, from Judge Frank Gaziano (fair and impartial) to Assistant D.A. David Deakin (meticulous and hardworking) to Federal Judge Nancy Gertner (his favorite judge) to defense attorney Rosemary Scapiccio (his favorite lawyer).

Tony recently passed away and was eulogized by the Herald’s Peter Gelzinis. RIP Tony! I’ll miss you!

Today I went to the 2010 Boston Tea Party on the Boston Common. As I expected, it was absolutely awesome, with three hours of speeches, music, and liberty! The most high-profile speaker, of course, was Sarah Palin, but the other speakers included WTKK radio host Michael Graham, WRKO radio host Todd Feinburg, Greater Boston Tea Party president Christen Varley, and Debbie Lee, whose son was killed in Iraq. There had to have been thousands of people there, and as usual, great signs and lots of flags.

This Tea Party was organized by the Tea Party Express, a national organization. It was a little different from last year’s Tax Day Tea Party. This one felt a little more Republican and was more organized, while last year’s was more libertarian and “anarchist,” with lots of different organizations handing out literature, talking to the media, and fighting for attention. Each was awesome in its own way.

I took some videos of Palin’s speech and the songs, which you can check out at my YouTube account, since this post would be way too long if I posted them here.

I also took lots of photos:

For more coverage of the Tea Party, check out:

• Boston Globe
• Boston Herald

Lech Kaczynski (via Polish President's Office, GNU FDL)

I don’t know much about Lech Kaczynski, the President of Poland who passed away in a plane crash on Saturday. But it seems like he might have been a tiny bit libertarian.

From Samizdata via the Humble Libertarian:

“President Lech Kaczyński of Poland was probably best described as a conservative rather than a liberal… However, he was someone who lived under tyranny, and when faced with the question of whether you give in to such a tyranny or stand up to it, he stood up to it, and he spent a considerable time in prison as a consequence. Most of us are fortunate not to be tested in such a way, but here was a man who was tested and passed the test.”

Rest in peace, President Kaczynski.

Have you seen this New York Times article about how unpaid internships might be illegal? According to federal law, unpaid internships at for-profit companies must be similar to school or training, must not directly benefit the company, and must not displace paid workers. The requirements are more lenient for nonprofit organizations. In California, Oregon, and other states, law enforcement is investigating and fining employers for having internships that violate these laws.

I think that stricter enforcement of minimum wage laws is a great idea. I wouldn’t have a problem with banning unpaid work for nonprofit organizations, either. Working as an unpaid intern is not, in practice, a voluntary decision. Just take a look at the comments of people interviewed in the article: 

“It’s so expected of me to do this for free. If you want to be in the music industry that’s the way it works,” one student said.

“Internships have become the gateway into the white-collar work force. Employers increasingly want experience for entry-level jobs, and many students see the only way to get that is through unpaid internships,” said someone else.

Although college students aren’t required by law to do unpaid internships, it is getting to the point where people have almost no chance of getting a job without them. Since you need a job to make money and you need money to live, our society has made it so that people have little choice but to do unpaid internships. Given the tremendous social pressure to obtain an internship, unpaid internships are essentially slave labor. If every student feels that they need an internship in order to have any chance of getting a job, companies have no incentive to pay interns, because they know that there will be huge numbers of applicants for every position, no matter how badly interns are treated or how little they are paid.

Additionally, working for no pay drives down the price of labor. Having volunteer labor means that companies and organizations have to hire fewer workers. In this economy, that is something we should be trying as hard as possible to combat.

De facto coercion to do unpaid internships is a defect in the market, much like inelastic demand, and the government needs to step in to make sure that companies do not trample on people’s rights. If someone works for a company or organization, they should be paid, especially if they are coerced by social pressure into working.

This February, Governor Deval Patrick announced that health insurance companies would be required to submit proposed price increases to the Insurance Commissioner 30 days in advance of taking effect. Last month, the Commissioner, Joseph Murphy, rejected 235 of the 274 price increases that insurance companies proposed. Six companies – Blue Cross Blue Shield, Harvard Pilgrim, Tufts Health Plan, Fallon Community Health Plan, Health New England, and Neighborhood Health Plan – are suing the Commissioner, claiming that they will be forced to operate at a loss if they are not allowed to increase their prices as planned. A hearing took place on Thursday in Suffolk County Superior Court, with the six companies seeking an injunction against the state to allow them to raise their prices.

I think both sides have good points. I am all for price ceilings on goods with inelastic demand – necessities that people are going to buy no matter what the cost. I believe that allowing companies to charge whatever they want for necessities such as medical services amounts to extortion. If someone needs a medical product or service to live, then they don’t exactly have a choice about whether to buy it, so the transaction is not voluntary like most transactions in an unregulated market, but actually qualifies as coercive. For this reason, I believe that the government has a right (and if prices are really ridiculous as they are with health services, even an obligation) to set and enforce price ceilings on goods with inelastic demand.

But the insurance companies sure had a point when they argued that they themselves don’t have much control over the cost of health services. The exorbitant cost of health insurance is caused primarily by the prices that doctors and hospitals charge. It is doctors and hospitals, the underlying cause of health insurance prices, who should be subjected to price ceilings.

I am no fan of Patrick, but I appreciate that he is finally trying to do something about the ridiculous cost of medical services. Price ceilings are something that, unfortunately, few politicians have considered as a solution to this problem. I salute Patrick’s willingness to try something that resembles price ceilings; I just wish he would focus on doctors and hospitals, who are the real cause of the problem, instead of insurance companies.

Happy Easter from the Freedom Bulletin!