Apple learns the Chicago way protection racket

John Hayward:

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.
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It is probably cheaper to hire Jackson to do nothing than bring back profits to pay confiscatory tax rates, but it is still a sign of the corruption that the Chicago Way brings to government during the Obama era.