At 11:00 AM -0700 6/20/97, Alan wrote:
I sometimes think that Oregon is being used as a beta test for some of the more draconian laws due for the rest of the country.
Well, California has a constant stream of such laws...I reported on some of them yesterday. I suspect most of the other states are doing the same thing.... An interesting set of issues about "states rights" and "local control." I used to think--indeed, this is what I was taught--that certain things stated in the U.S. Constitution, such as the various items in the Bill of Rights we mention so often, would block many local or state laws. Thus, if Nebraska passed a law restricting religious freedoms, making Islam a crime, for example, then this would be "struck down" by the Supremes. I no longer feel very secure in this belief. For example, many states, counties, and cities have laws which abridge the Second Amendment. Why are these local laws not unconstitutional? When I have raised these points I have been told by law professors (for example, on the Cyberia list) that surely I support "states rights," don't I? I now think it is likely that the 50 state legislatures, the thousands of county and city governments, will accelerate their lawmaking machinery. They have learned that the way to steady employment is to proliferate bureacracies, that despite various scattered attempts to limit such bureacratic growth, the expansion basically continues and even acclerates. This ensures a huge job pool for politicians and bureaucrats. (Even politicians who "retire" or are "voted out" find continued employment in regional and local bureaucracies.... (Just in my neck of the woods there is government from Washington, government from Sacramento, government from Santa Cruz County, government from the Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments (AMBAG), and government from the various City Halls that dot the landscape. Not to mention at least four separate "police forces" roaming the streets (local police, County Sheriffs, California Highway Patrol, and various Forest Service and Park Rangers, all armed, all dangerous, all looking to hassle any citizen-unit they take an interest in.) Plus an army of shakedown agencies which demand $1000 fees to merely process the paperwork for a replacement well on our own property, not even guaranteeing approval: "Well, the $1000 is to cover our overhead costs," meaning the 4-story concrete building housing several hundred County employees, all for a county having fewer than 75,000 residents!) The whole system is a corrupt shakedown racket. Cincinattus would not be surprised. --Tim May There's something wrong when I'm a felon under an increasing number of laws. Only one response to the key grabbers is warranted: "Death to Tyrants!" ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."