Yea, forced labor is wrong

Posted by Marc Hodak on September 23, 2007 under Scandal | Comments are off for this article

Whenever I get down to Maryland, I’m re-exposed to the WaPo, often to my dismay at how a scandal sheet looks dressed up as a respectable paper. This morning, I was pleasantly surprised when I saw this story. Key paragraphs:

Congress passed a law, triggering a little-noticed worldwide war on human trafficking that began at the end of the Clinton administration and is now a top Bush administration priority. As part of the fight, President Bush has blanketed the nation with 42 Justice Department task forces and spent more than $150 million — all to find and help the estimated hundreds of thousands of victims of forced prostitution or labor in the United States.

But the government couldn’t find them. Not in this country.

You and I might be embarrassed to cry wolf, only to lead the town to an empty field. But not so those who benefited from making a Federal case out of what, in nearly every instance, turned out to be ordinary pimping. One of Bush’s moral crusaders drawing his ludicrously over-sized sword:

Tony Fratto, deputy White House press secretary, said that the issue is “not about the numbers. It’s really about the crime and how horrific it is…

“We have an obligation to set an example for the rest of the world, so if we have this global initiative to stop human trafficking and slavery, how can we tolerate even a minimal number within our own borders?”

Here’s how GloboCop: spend maybe $2 or $3 million to see how much of a difference you can make, before ramping up to a frenzied enforcement effort–not $150 million.

It may sound kinda cheap to argue that so much tax money shouldn’t be wasted on virtually non-existent problems if they exist at all. But I’m constantly mindful that those taxes were coerced away from us. We worked for it, and it went to someone else. By threat of violence. $150 million. How much forced labor does that represent?