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US Immigration Bill May Bring a National Biometric ID Card
schwit1 sends this quote from the Wall Street Journal:
"Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain. Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal US workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker. ... A person familiar with the legislative planning said the biometric data would likely be either fingerprints or a scan of the veins in the top of the hand. It would be required of all workers, including teenagers, but would be phased in, with current workers needing to obtain the card only when they next changed jobs, the person said. The card requirement also would be phased in among employers, beginning with industries that typically rely on illegal-immigrant labor."
Federalism is officially a complete failure.
The day I am forced to get an unconstitutional "biometric ID card" in order not to have my job opportunities, directly subsidized by taxes, government-sponsored monopolies and other expropriated wealth, stolen by an illegal immigrant is the day that it's time to dissolve the federal government and revert it's duties back to states that have some semblance of fiscal responsibility and individual rights.
And I say this of course under the near-universal assumption (by now) that this, along with everything else the US government does, will do absolutely nothing to curb illegal immigration or salvage jobs or benefit Americans and instead will be used simply as another tool of inept government to punish the compliant and reward criminals and cheaters and traitor banks and businesses.
The US is no longer a functional government. It can't regulate borders. It dissolves them and signs them away in supranational treaties. It can't regulate trade or abusive businesses. It supports them and bails them out when they fail. It can't win wars. It can't even define "winning" in terms of the bullshit wars it now engages in. It can't regulate reproduction or resource consumption or immigration or anything that actually affects the long term well-being of it's citizens. All it can do at this point is make token bullshit infringements on the rights of anyone unlucky or stupid enough to get in it's way, accomplishing absolutely nothing save crippling debt increases in the process.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Federal employees are already being issued biometric ID cards.
> 1) The government has more force to throw at you than any dissenting group could hope to match. The
> government has pretty much a monopoly of force.
Currently true. Personally, I think that this is exactly the situation that the second amendment tried to avoid. Sadly narrow interpretation has hamstrung it and left us in this sad state.
Of course, I simply pointed out the second amendment as evidence that this state of affairs was not intended and that it is the right of the people to overthrow despots. I never said a revolution HAS to be violent. I would be happy to convene a new constitutional convention.... or 50 (no, I don't particularly want a strong federal union... if anything, maybe something like the EU)
> 3) It is the low road, and pretty much says that you completely given up on the American people, or on
> any chance of fixing the American discourse.
Low? Maybe. Its not so much the people as the bureaucracy that I have essentially 0 faith in. They have shown absolutely no real interest in representing what I see as liberty in any meaningful way. if anything, they approach whats left of liberty as an unfortunate hinderance to their ideas, rather than a core value.
I have 0 faith that they have any intention to do anything but maintain their dominance, and line their own coffers.
> I personally dread the day when people take up guns against their elected government. First because the
> term "elected", by picking up guns your saying that you know better than the voters, which to me, is
> tyrannical
This presumes fair elections. I submit that the system of choosing who ends up on the ballot AND the system of voting itself, constitute systematically unfair elections that highly favor the hegemony of two parties that are willing to collude to break up issues between them as a method of effectively shutting out any voices but their own.
As such, I don't, personally, recognize the legitimacy of said elections. I pay my taxes, of course, because they are the biggest gang in town and I am genuinely afraid of their thugs. That should not be construed as I actually consent to their governance or consider them "my government", any more than I would MS13 if they came into my shop and told me I had to pay for protection from their thugs too.
Personally I advocate the progressive marginalization of the government as an entity, as a new form of revolution. De-legitimization in the eyes of the masses, replacement of their functions by other entities where possible, wholesale subversion of their "laws" when applicable. Just as I would for any other armed gang of thugs.
As an anarchist (of the libertarian socialist variety), I have no desire to force my ideas on anyone but... I certainly don't advocate being a collaborator with thugs. I do however advocate self defense, and being prepared enough so that, should the day come, they need to think twice about clamping down and restricting liberty too much further.
If they simply did not attempt to use their thugs to enforce social engineering, I would happily treat them like any other legitimate organization which might need a force to defend itself but, otherwise respected others.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"