The other day the Wall Street Journal published an editorial castigating officials in Portland, Oregon, for pulling out of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. The mayor was upset that the FBI refused to give him full access to classified information, and there was a wider concern about the agency violating the civil liberties of Portland citizens. The Journal dismissed such concerns, arguing that the FBI had to make tough choices in the “war on terrorism,” and we all just have to deal with it.
I might find this argument plausible if the FBI—and its bosses at the Justice Department—weren’t squandering resources on persecuting American citizens for fabricated political “crimes.” A case in point from today: The DOJ proudly announced that it had coerced a guilty plea from Larry Lee, an Indiana businessman, who allegedly conspired (with persons not identified) to “fix prices” in the ready-mix concrete market in Indiana. This is part of a larger price-fixing investigation of the concrete industry being led by the Antitrust Division and, yes, the FBI. Lee will serve eight months in prison and pay the government $70,000 for his dastardly act of charging “collusive and noncompetitive prices” to wiling customers. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Scott Hammond proclaimed Lee’s imprisonment a triumph for the Republic: “Price fixing harms government, corporate, and individual consumers by depriving them of the benefits of fair and competitive pricing.”
Apparently the Bush administration’s dedication to a “strict construction” of the Constitution allows for the right to receive “the benefits of fair and competitive pricing,” that is, prices determined ex post by DOJ lawyers rather than buyers and sellers in the free market. Nor does the administration see any federalism issues arising from a prosecution that deals with commercial activity that only affected three counties in Indiana.
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The sad thing is that the US government already has punitive tariffs of up to 55% on imported cement from Mexico! And this has been found to be a violation of free trade by the WTO! Who should the FBI be locking up? The Secretary of Commerce!
Read about it here
I would add that just last month the Federal Trade Commission threw a fit when a Mexican cement company acquired a U.S. cement company. FTC lawyers insisted on a “divestiture” of certain assets to prevent a “monopoly” in the Tuscon, Arizona market.
And when, in years to come, we are all impoverished and enslaved, we will all gaze at each other what a silly “wha’ happened?” look plastered all over our gobs.
Skip,
This is great stuff. I am horrified and fascinated by your continuing exposes of these sort of “everyday” government crimes. It’s easy to see the big ones. But I guess it’s now clear just what these prople are up to when they aren’t planning the next “liberation”.
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