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Redstate
The penumbra of power
By John Hayward
May 29th, 2013
A few weeks ago, Apple executives were called on the Congressional
carpet for… well, it’s not really clear, actually. Congress was
very angry at them for failing to haul international profits back to
the United States so they could be taxed at confiscatory anti-growth
American rates. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) countered by pointing
out that everyone tries to legally minimize their tax liability.
Accountants who failed to take such opportunities would be failing in
their duty to shareholders.
Today, the news broke that Apple has hired the scandal-plagued former
administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, to
handle… well, it’s not really clear, actually. She’ll be paid big
bucks for offering “environmental advice” and making sure Apple data
centers use “renewable wind and solar energy,” which means they’ll be
paying far more than necessary for power that doesn’t work when it’s
cloudy or the winds are calm. And no one seems to care about
windmills shredding birds, including bald eagles, so apparently birds
aren’t really part of the environment any more. It seems like
only yesterday that Western liberals were consigning millions in the
Third World to preventable death because pest-controlling chemicals
were supposedly thinning the shells of bird eggs. Now they don’t
care about endangered birds getting sliced to ribbons in the quest for
sustainable energy.
But I digress. Let us return from environmentalist lunacy to Big
Government lunacy, as conservative humorist Iowahawk observes that
Jackson’s hiring by Apple is proof “the system worked,” and recommends
we think of Apple like a taco stand in famously corrupt Chicago:
“Hiring the health inspector’s sister saves a lot of headaches.”
There’s something besides good old-fashioned neo-fascist corruption
that links these stories about Apple. Both are examples of the
way Big Government exercises power far beyond anything citizens have
explicitly granted it. In fact, the old-fashioned notion of power
conditionally and temporarily delegated from citizens to
carefully-monitored government agents is as far removed from the modern
American experience as the horse and buggy. The ruling class
takes power now, occasionally recoiling if the people object too
loudly. The citizen’s everyday challenge is justifying whatever
liberties he insists on keeping… and frankly, the ruling class is
running out of patience with our feeble excuses for disobedience.
The bizarre spectacle of Apple suffering official persecution, despite
having broken no laws, speaks for itself. Corporate executives
are supposed to understand what government really wants, regardless of
what it actually says through the law.
Government environmental policy is all about using sticks and carrots
to discourage activity that isn’t actually illegal. Far beyond
hard-and-fast regulations, there is a vast penumbra of power, in which
the State drafts private corporations into various crusades. And
if government agents aren’t intimidating enough, the political class
boasts of the powerful volunteer auxiliary forces it keeps on
standby. Reluctant business “partners” have to worry about
everything from nuisance lawsuits and regulatory torture sessions, to
protest marches and celebrity denunciations. It’s all highly
organized, although some of the links between regular and irregular
pressure are kept tastefully deniable. Resistance is expensive
enough to make compliance look attractive…
Read the rest of the article at Redstate
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