loopholes
I read Senator Joni Ernst’s Ending Taxpayer Funding of Anarchy Act, mostly because the title made me lol, and because I try to keep up with what the Iowa delegation is up to in Congress.
The bill’s ultimate purpose (beyond scoring some law & order points and media coverage &c.) is obviously to take federal funding away from the state of Washington and the city of Seattle specifically for not sending in the National Guard to level CHAZ. The Autonomous Zone is clearly what the bill has in view when it defines an “anarchist jurisdiction.” According to the bill, an anarchist jurisdiction is a state or political subdivision of a State that purposefully—
- abdicate[s] the reserved powers of the State or political subdivision of the State, to be performed by non–governmental actors in a manner that is detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of the State, or political subdivision of the State
Some notes and nitpicks:
One: If the abdication results in an exercise of power that isn’t detrimental to but actually improves the welfare of the citizenry, such a place wouldn’t be an anarchist jurisdiction by this definition. You could argue that exercise of the police power in this country by government actors has long and often comprised an abuse of that power and a perversion of the stated purposes of the government. That the state, not anarchists, have exercised powers in a manner detrimental to the health, safety, and welfare of citizens is exactly what BLM is protesting.
Two: The bill’s definition of non–governmental actor specifically—
- Does not include a nonprofit organization.
So if the people of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone want to keep receiving those sweet sweet federal dollars, all they need to do is get organized enough to fill out their 501(c) forms and become a nonprofit. Because government without paperwork is anarchy!
Really, the point is that the bill is ill–formed and pointless. It shows the limits of compatibility between two things that modern American conservatives claim to love: states’ rights/limited federal powers (for policing is certainly a State and local concern) and a vision of national law & order