Open Range, Open Season: The Killing of Jack Yantis (UPDATE, November 8)

 

Open range: A typical Adams County vista.

“They’re calling us murderers,” protests Adams County Sheriff Ryan Zollman, referring to local residents and others who have contacted his office to express their outrage over the November 1^nd killing of local rancher Jack Yantis by two of his deputies. That appears to be the opinion of Rowdy Paradis, the only witness to the shooting who has spoken about it publicly. 

“They took a family man from the dinner table and slaughtered him,” Paradis told the Idaho Statesman newspaper.  At the time the fatal shots were fired, Paradis was about ten feet away from the victim.   Upon learning of her husband’s death, his wife Donna suffered a heart attack. She was taken to Saint Alphonsus Hospital in Boise. 

Rest in God's peace: Jack Yantis.

 Yantis was not a criminal suspect at the time of the shooting. Because he was killed by law enforcement officers, however, the shooting – assuming that standard protocols will be followed by the Idaho State Police – will be treated as a “suspected assault on law enforcement.” This means that Yantis is, in effect, the suspect, and his killers are considered the victims. 

As we will shortly see, the ISP’s history of investigating unlawful killings by fellow law enforcement officers strongly suggests that the deputies will never face criminal charges, irrespective of the facts – and that those facts will never be presented to the public without adulteration. 

Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of this tragedy is the fact that Yantis was shot because he had responded to a call for help from the same Sheriff’s Office whose personnel killed him on the scene. 

Yantis, a 62-year-old rancher from Council, Idaho, received a call from the Adams County Sheriff’s Office on that Sunday evening informing him that one of his bulls had been struck by a car on Highway 95. He arrived at the scene a few minutes later, armed with a rifle to put down the wounded animal, which had turned aggressive and was threatening emergency responders trying to treat two people injured in the collision.

Within a few minutes, Yantis was dead – shot by the still-unidentified deputies, who had been trying to contain the wounded animal. The likeliest explanation is that the deputies, already frantic from dealing with one ton of bovine menace, saw an armed Mundane and opened fire after their “officer safety” instincts took control. 

 

A visibly shaken Sheriff Zollman.

Significantly, Sheriff Zollman – who, it must be said, was not on the scene, and was visibly shaken when speaking to the media about the shooting – was among the “constitutional sheriffs” who signed a declaration in early 2013 proclaiming their fidelity to the Second Amendment, and their determination to interpose against federal efforts to disarm law-abiding citizens within their respective jurisdictions. He was also one of the four local sheriffs who convened a February 2013 public meeting in Payette to rally support for the individual right to armed self-defense. 

However noble his intentions might be regarding a theoretical federal gun-grab, the sheriff may have needed to train his deputies not to surrender to panic at the sight of a local resident carrying a firearm. 

Zollman describes Yantis as a well-known and widely respected figure in Adams County. “This is going to be a big hit to this community he told Boise’s NBC affiliate, KTVB. “The gentleman involved, Mr. Yantis, was a well-known cattle rancher around here. It’s just a sad deal for everybody involved, for the whole community.”

The fact that Yantis was on the scene following the accident says something about his conscientious nature. Under Idaho statutes and court rulings, Yantis could not be held legally responsible for injuries or damages resulting from the accident involving his bull: Since the accident took place in a section of Adams County designated “open range,” livestock and other domestic animals have unqualified right-of-way, and may roam freely without their owners incurring liability.

Idaho Code, Chapter 25 section 2118 states that “No person owning, or controlling the possession of, any domestic animal running on open range, shall have the duty to keep such animal off any highway on such range, and shall not be liable to any vehicle or for injury to any person riding therein, caused by collision between the vehicle and the animal.” In the 1999 case Adamson v. Blanchard, the Idaho Supreme Court held that livestock owners enjoy absolute immunity with respect to animals that wander onto public highways. 

By declining to exercise his absolute immunity, Yantis came within the lethal range of state functionaries protected by “qualified immunity.” Yantis had an obvious property interest in a bull worth a considerable amount of money. By the time he learned of the accident, however, the animal had been lost; the only reason he went to the scene was to help contain the bull and protect the people it threatened, including the deputies who wound up killing him. 

Sheriff Zollman (second from left) at gun rights meeting.

State-aligned media outlets are playing their familiar role of producing a law enforcement-friendly narrative: The Statesman referred to the killing as the result of a “shootout,” and the Oregonian referred to the incident as a “gun battle.” Both expressions subtly imply that the Mundane bears the responsibility for his own death. 

Sheriff Zollman insists that his department “takes matters involving any use of force very seriously and we have requested detectives with the Idaho State Police to conduct the investigation into this incident.” The deputies involved – one of whom reportedly suffered an unspecified “minor injury” -- are on paid vacation. If the fatal shooting had involved three hunters, rather than two deputies and a rancher, the names of all three would now be public knowledge.

Yantis’s family must call upon its own resources to deal with his death. The Sheriff’s office is being attended to by a “crisis management team” and receiving material support from the Idaho State Police – the same agency that is investigating the shooting. The eventual outcome of that investigation is not a question that should leave informed people burdened with suspense. 

As related in this space just a few months ago, the Idaho State Police is currently facing lawsuits from two troopers and one former sergeant who claim to have faced official retaliation for refusing to participate in an official cover-up in a previous law enforcement-related fatality. ISP Corporals Quinn Carmack and Brandon Eller, along with former Sergeant Fred Rice, were involved in the investigation of former Payette County Deputy Scott Sloan, who killed 65-year-old New Plymouth resident Barry Johnson by plowing his police vehicle into the side of Johnson’s jeep at an estimated speed of 115 miles per hour.

On the basis of evidence produced by Carmack, Eller, and Rice, Sloan was fired by Sheriff Chad Huff and charged with vehicular manslaughter by special prosecutor Richard Linville. That case was sabotaged through the perjured testimony of ISP Trooper Justin Klitch, who had secretly collaborated with Sloan while working in the official investigation of his actions.

In defiance of its own investigators, the ISP tried to craft a narrative blaming Johnson for his own death by claiming that he was under the influence of alcohol at the time of the October 18, 2011 crash. Even if his had been the case, it wouldn’t explain why he was supposedly at fault when Deputy Sloan crossed into the left lane, careening into the driver’s side of Johnson’s vehicle as he was turning into his own driveway. 

Carmack and Eller, to their considerable credit, were determined to tell the truth as dictated by the evidence, rather than the imperatives of Blue Privilege. Following their testimony in an April 2012 preliminary hearing, Trooper Sam Ketchum – who was in the courtroom as  the ISP’s zampolit, sent a text message to Lt. Col. Ralph Powell (who is now ISP Director), complaining that Carmack and Eller had “laid us out” by testifying truthfully, rather than endorsing the officially sanctioned fiction. 

One issue examined at that hearing was whether the original ISP report faulted Sloan for “unsafe operation of an emergency vehicle.” In his surprise testimony for the defense, Klitch perjured himself by denying that the phrase had been in the original document. In a letter to the ISP written following the hearing, prosecutor Linville pointed to an email in which Klitch – before the official story had changed – “specifically requested” that the phrase be included in the report, based on the available evidence.

Revising his testimony to suit the official line was not the only favor Klitch did on behalf of Sloan, and for his own superiors at the ISP.

“When I initially asked Trooper Klitch to meet with me to discuss filing the case, he made a recording of out meeting without my knowledge or consent,” Linville recalls. “I don’t know why Trooper Klitch would make such a recording. His duty at the time was to present to me all of the evidence he had collected regarding the Sloan case. He was meeting with me to present evidence, not to create it.”

“Never in my 25 years as a prosecuting attorney have I had a law enforcement officer secretly record discussions during case preparation that are otherwise privileged and protected work product, then hide the existence of such a recording from me,” Linville protested.

Klitch’s perjury earned him a place on the “Brady list” – a roster of law enforcement officers whose testimony cannot be trusted in court. For testifying truthfully in court, corporals Carmack and Eller were summoned by their ISP superiors and told that “because of their testimony [they] could not be trusted….” Sgt. Rice, who had conducted a professional and conscientious investigation, was reprimanded for supposedly “withholding exculpatory evidence” – meaning that his original report was later contradicted by Klitch’s perjured testimony.

Subjected to a punitive transfer, Rice was told by his new supervisor that he was “not being a team player” and that “he needed to stop more cars and write more tickets and that if he did not make the changes it would be reflected in his 2013 evaluation.” Rice has since resigned from the ISP.

 

Klitch on road pirate patrol.

The perjurer Klitch, according to his supervisor, remains “a valued member of the ISP” — despite the fact that his name is now inscribed on the “Brady list” and he faces a growing collection of lawsuits by motorists who have suffered abuse at his hands in pretext stops conducted for the purpose of asset forfeiture. 

Jackie Raymond, the only surviving child of the man killed by Deputy Sloan, has filed a tort claim describing the ISP’s behavior as that of a criminal “enterprise or conspiracy …[to] conceal evidence, harbor and protect Sloan from criminal and civil liability, and intimidate, influence, impede, deter, threaten, harass and obstruct witnesses … to protect fellow Idaho law enforcement officers from the consequences of their criminal misconduct.”

The death of Jack Yantis may have been the product of tragic miscalculation, misunderstanding, mishap, or culpable malice. Now that the investigation is in the hands of a “criminal enterprise” with a documented history of suppressing and misrepresenting evidence, it is doubtful that the public will ever learn the unadorned truth of the matter.

"I saw them murder my husband"

 

Donna Yantis says that she witnessed the unlawful killing of her husband, and was nearly murdered to herself when the killers threw her to the ground. 

Video Extra: "No, The Police Don't Work For You"

This week's Freedom Zealot Podcast deals with the politically charged "F-word":

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The Chain of Command and the Executioner in the Classroom

“You know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I go get and beat you with 'til ya understand who's in ruttin' command here.”

Jayne Cobb, demonstrating why he should never be left in charge of anything, from “The Train Job.”

“We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us,” purred 18^th Century arch-reactionary Joseph de Maistre in the opening lines of his essay Considerations on France. “ The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance. Freely slaves, they act at once of their own will and under necessity: they actually do what they wish without being able to disrupt general plans.”

In this scheme, each “slave” is found “at the center of a sphere of activity whose diameter varies according to the decision of the eternal geometry, which can extend, restrict, check, or direct the will without altering its nature,” Maistre pontificates. But that flexibility is enjoyed only by those enlightened few who understand the “eternal geometry,” and have been appointed thereby to preside over the rest of us.

On occasion, of course, one who is “freely” enslaved decides not to remain within the compass of his or her assigned role in the “eternal geometry.” It is at that point that the “flexible chain” becomes the “chain of command” as the expression was defined by Jayne – a scourge employed to beat the uppity slave into compliant submission. This is when the “flexible” nature of that chain is made apparent: While the chains that bind the common run of humanity are unyielding, those who are supposedly nearer to “the throne of the Supreme Being” find their restraints sufficiently supple to accommodate any act of violence necessary to enforce conformity – including summary homicide.

 Maistre’s obsession with hierarchy might reflect his lengthy involvement in oath-bound secret societies, rather than his devotion to Catholicism (see pages 3-4 in this edition of “Considerations”). Be that as it may, his authoritarian perspective largely defines modern conservatism. He insisted that “all greatness, all power, all social order depends on the executioner.” The figure in whom the State’s capacity for lethal violence is made tangible is both “the terror of human society” and the “tie that holds it together,” Maistre observed. “Take away this incontrovertible force from the world, and at that very moment order is superseded by chaos, thrones fall, society disappears."

The “resource officers” who prowl the hallways of government-operated schools throughout the soyuz aren’t present to enhance the security of the inmates, but to be “authority figures” – that is, people who can inflict injury or death in order to force others to submit to their will. In principle, an SRO carries out the function of Maistre’s Executioner. That is certainly how many perceive themselves.

“You should be walking around in schools every day in complete tactical equipment, with semi-automatic weapons,” ranted self-styled counter-terrorism “expert” John Giduck in his keynote address to the 2007 National Association of School Resources Conference. “You can no longer afford to think of yourselves as peace officers.... You must think of yourself [sic] as soldiers in a war because we're going to ask you to act like soldiers."

A more honest description would be that SROs are commissioned to act like prison guards with unlimited discretion to discipline misbehaving inmates.

When former Deputy Ben Fields placed hands on a girl who had refused a teacher’s instruction to put away her cell phone or leave the room, he was acting as Maistre’s Executioner ex officio, empowered to use any force he deemed appropriate to compel her submission. 

When the student, in a reflexive reaction to being seized by a much larger, armed aggressor, flailed pitifully at Fields, she supposedly committed an “assault upon an officer,” which – according to the disciples of Maistre – left Fields fully justified in doing anything he saw fit. Indeed, the teenager should be grateful that she was merely thrown to the floor, dragged across the room, hog-tied, and left with injuries requiring hospitalization, given that the punishment for her impudence should have been more severe.

“She was asked nicely by three different authority figures and given several chances to comply with their instructions,” lectured Matt Walsh of The Blaze. “She refused, she refused, she refused, she refused, she refused. It was at that point that the officer took her to the floor, dragged her out of the chair and across the ground….”

“Once she had brazenly disrespected the teacher’s authority and declined to comply with those instructions, she had to be removed from the room, one way or another,” Walsh continues, not ruling out the possibility that “another” could include being removed in a body bag. “A teacher cannot be backed down by a kid who says, `Nope, I won’t listen to you.’ A school cannot tolerate students who think the rules are optional.” At that “very moment order is superseded by chaos, thrones fall, society disappears” – or, in Walsh’s dumbed-down rendering of Maistre’s warning, “it would surely lead to anarchy in the classroom.”

Take away the discretionary “authority” of “a school resource officer” to inflict summary punishment on a sullen, uncooperative 16-year-old female student, and the terrorists will win, or something to that effect.

“Some might even say that Fields is the actual victim here,” contends an essay published in The New American magazine. “If you’re going to have police in schools, you have to expect police action in schools; the deputy was simply doing his job.”

This is an interesting, and entirely unintended, admission. The advertised job of school resource officers is to protect schoolchildren from serial killers and sexual predators. Their actual job, as this episode illustrates, is to impose punishment for misbehavior that does not involve criminal conduct. Witness the fact that Deputy Fields not only arrested the still-unnamed primary victim, but another student named Niya Kenny whose only “offense” was to urge her schoolmates to record the attack.

Significantly, Kenny – unlike the primary victim – faces criminal charges. The first girl was released into the custody of her foster parents. Kenny was threatened with physical harm, handcuffed, detained for several hours, released on bond, then suspended from school. Her “crime” was to undermine the officer’s “authority” by insisting that he should be held accountable for his actions.

“It should have been an adult” who intervened, Kenny told The State newspaper. “One of the adults should have said, `Whoa, whoa, whoa – that’s not how you do this.’ But instead, it had to be a student in the classroom to stand up and say, `This is not right.’” Like others sentenced to attend Spring Valley High School, Kenny was aware of Fields’ reputation, which had reportedly earned him the sobriquet “Officer Slam.” Accordingly, she urged other students to record the confrontation. More than one of the students acted on that suggestion, which suggests that their capacity for critical thinking had not yet been extirpated.

Even if we were to assume, contrary to the actual law, that classroom insolence is a criminal offense, there was nothing about Kenny’s behavior that warrants such a description. She didn’t “disrupt” an already-ruined learning environment; she was protesting the abusive behavior of a public official. Conservative media outlets routinely depict government-run schools as re-education centers devoted to subverting all that is good, true, and beautiful. Why aren’t they applauding Miss Kenny for her principled individualism, and her insistence that the rules should apply to everyone?

It is tempting, perhaps irresistibly so, to conclude that this reflects a conservative variant on identity politics. Fields, a member of the sanctified Blue Tribe, has been sacrificed to placate the apparently omnipotent Black Lives Matter movement, which has been – in all apparent seriousness – compared to ISIS. Criticizing Fields for arresting Niya Kenny without just cause would complicate the preferred narrative, and could prompt troublesome second thoughts about the propriety of the deputy’s behavior during the entire episode. 

 

Wherever an altar and an executioner are found, "civilization" exists.

Ironically, if predictably, there was no outpouring of outrage in the conservative media over the protests of Spring Valley students who walked out of class – in defiance of “rules” and authority” – as a purported gesture of solidarity with Fields. As someone not too told to remember High School I suspect that the demonstrations weren’t inspired by devotion to the deputy, but by an understandable desire to relieve the unremitting tedium of the classroom. 

None of the protesters was thrown to the floor, handcuffed, or even threatened with a suspension, despite the fact their behavior was immeasurably more disruptive than that of an individual student who refuses to put away her phone. Rule-breaking in defense of state-licensed Executioners is obviously more palatable for those who subscribe to Maistre’s doctrine.

This week's Freedom Zealot Podcast discusses the incident at Spring Valley High School and the "experts" who defend Deputy Fields:

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Commissar Avakian's War Against Property Rights

Keeping -- or making -- Portland free would be even better.

Until April of this year, Christopher Penner was an entrepreneur. Now, despite the fact that he has never committed a crime against persons or property, he is an indentured servant.

For several years, Penner owned an embattled but marginally successful nightclub in Portland, Oregon. Today, according to his attorney, Jonathan Rademacher, Penner has a job managing a bar owned by somebody else – and twenty-five percent of each paycheck is garnished to pay off a $400,000 civil judgment imposed by Brad Avakian, the Commissar of Oregon’s Bureau of Labor and Industry (BOLI) as punishment for trying to save his business. 

Reduced to peonage: Former business owner Penner.

Between his ordinary tax burden and the BOLI-inflicted garnishment, Penner probably devotes more than half of each workday to state-imposed involuntary servitude. He suffers the added indignity of being constantly exposed to the smug face of his slavemaster. 

Business owners who have the misfortune of living in Oregon are required by the BOLI to post a “notice of rights” in their work area. The most recent version of that document, Rademacher told me in a telephone interview, contains a color photograph of Avakian. No previous BOLI commissar has been given the “Dear Leader” treatment, but none of the functionaries who have filled that role have entertained Avakian’s ambitions or been similarly suffused with sociopathic self-regard. 

Last August, Avakian announced his candidacy to become Oregon’s secretary of state. In Oregon, that  position combines the duties of Lt. Governor, public auditor, and chief election officer. The Secretary of State also holds a position on the state land board, which supervises forest lands and navigable waterways, and the “Sustainability Board,” an eco-soviet growing out of a grandiose agenda for “global governance.” 

In principle, a sufficiently ambitious Secretary of State could find an excuse to insinuate himself into every land use, property rights, or business activity occurring anywhere in the Beaver State. Avakian has never neglected an opportunity to aggrandize his powers, and if he becomes Secretary of State that office would fill the measure of its creation.

The insular political clique that rules Oregon out of the northwestern quadrant of that lovely but miserable state is astoundingly casual it its corruption. In 2012, when Avakian was poised to lose the May run-off election for the “non-partisan” position as BOLI Commissioner, fellow Democrat Kate Brown, who at the time was Secretary of State (and has since become Governor), simply rescheduled the election for November, when the heavier turnout would favor the Democratic candidate.

Der Kommissar: Avakian.

If elected to be Secretary of State, Avakian would be in a position to protect other ailing Democrats. He would also enjoy expanded opportunities to shake down potential victims. 

During the 2012 campaign, Avakian – who had been BOLI Commissioner since 2008 -- admitted to receiving campaign donations from interests that were subject to his administrative whims.  When this provoked a much-too-modest controversy, Avakian dispatched a press aide to assure the public that this arrangement was entirely appropriate, given the Commissar, like Robespierre of old, was incorruptible, or something to that effect. 

In announcing his bid to become Secretary of State, Avakian said that if elected he would use his new office to continue his pursuit of “corporate accountability in the workplace” and “combating climate change.” In substance, he is promising to continue his onslaught against property rights in general and small businesses in particular. His campaign literature boasts that he has “directed more than $22 million into the pockets of Oregonians who’ve been treated unfairly.”

In practice, most of that supposed mistreatment consists of exposure, on the part of a person identified as part of a “specially protected class,” to words or gestures that offend them. Avakian has been using the expansive and ill-defined powers of the BOLI to build a loyal constituency by redistributing money from the productive class into the pockets of privileged “victims.” Sticks and stones may break one’s bones, but “hurtful” words are lucrative.

Penner’s case, which has previously been discussed here, involved two polite but urgent voice mails to the “administrator” of a group calling itself the “Rose City T-Girls.” That club’s membership chiefly consists of biological males who “identify” as female in a variety of ways, most of which are related to couture. The T-Girls were familiar and welcome customers at Penner’s club, which routinely hosted “pride” events and otherwise offered ritual homage to Portland’s officially approved version of “diversity.”

However, when the T-Girls essentially took over Friday nights, the business – which was trying to recover from a previous run-in with the BOLI – faced a potentially fatal downturn in weekly receipts. College-age males weren’t interested in socializing with the T-Girls; college-age females didn’t relish the prospect of sharing lavatory facilities with them; and the T-Girls weren’t spending enough to make Fridays profitable. 

Not a Monty Python Skit: The "T-Girls."

Penner left a message for the “administrator” of the group politely asking them not to monopolize the club on Fridays, and pleading for an opportunity to discuss other ways of accommodating them. He did not ban them from his club, which – as a property owner – would be within his rights, whether or not this is recognized by the Marxist retreads ruling the People’s Republic of Oregon.

As somebody whose business was failing, Penner had no interest in driving away customers. As creatures of the coercive sector who have never been gainfully employed, Avakian and his comrades would find this incomprehensible. The entities that employ people of that ilk cannot go out of business, and thus don’t have to worry about earning and retaining customer loyalty. From their perspective, businesses exist to generate tax revenue, and enact policies ordained by visionary social engineers.

The morally appropriate way to deal with irrational discrimination is to use the invisible hand of the market, rather than the mailed fist of the state – but that approach doesn’t empower the state and enrich its pet constituencies. Like those who stand to profit from the agency’s rulings, the BOLI has no incentive to seek resolutions that do not involve ruinous financial penalties. As Rademacher points out, there were many ways that the dispute involving the T-Girls could have been handled without imposing a grotesque punitive award. However, this wouldn’t have served Avakian’s chief interest, which is “using this process to seek a higher elected office.”

Invisible hand: Protest, boycott. criticize -- but don't coerce.

The same perverted priorities were displayed in a $2.4 million settlement reached with Daimler Trucks North America last January. Six former employees filed a civil rights complaint alleging that they had been subjected to discrimination on the basis of “race, color, and national origin,” including “racial epithets,” harassment, threats, and workplace sabotage.

None of those charges – one of which involved an allegation of a very serious crime – was ever corroborated. Once Avakian’s agency became involved, furthermore, no corroboration was necessary. In keeping with standard procedure, Avakian filed a “commissioner’s complaint” that was referred to a prosecutor employed by him, and examined in a legal “forum” presided over by an administrative law judge whose rulings Avakian could set aside.

Given that arrangement, it’s not surprising that Daimler decided to pay the Dane-geld. As Kipling warned, this means that Oregon’s small business owners, who operate on much tighter margins than Daimler, “will never get rid of the Dane.”

Assuming that the expression “rule of law” encompasses official compliance with existing statutes, court precedents, and constitutional limitations, Avakian is a serial offender, the agency over which he presides is a criminal enterprise, and the Oregon Court of Appeals is an accomplice.

A perfunctory ruling handed down by the Court of Appeals in late September upheld the agency’s unprecedented $400,000 “discrimination” award in the T-Girls case. In his motion to reconsider, Penner’s attorney Jonathan Rademacher pointed out that the BOLI’s Deputy Commissioner Christie Hammond violated the law by overruling the judge’s factual finding regarding Penner’s credibility.

The administrative law judge’s ruling in favor of Penner was “a factual issue uniquely decided by the person hearing the testimony,” Rademacher observed. Because Hammond was not the finder of fact, she had no legal authority to rule on that question, and her finding in favor of Avakian – the official who signs her paycheck --- “strips all sense of fairness from the process, and should not be condoned by this Court.”  

Unfortunately, Rademacher’s motion asks the Appeals Court to reverse its own ruling, a development about as likely as a BOLI ruling that runs contrary to Avakian’s preferences.

Avakian sees himself an enforcer plenipotentiary on behalf of the “progressive” movement – even on matters that fall well outside the BOLI’s legislative mandate. During the 2012 campaign, Avakian earned a rebuke from the editorial board of the thoroughly leftist Oregonian newspaper for trying to inject abortion into the race by accusing his Republican opponent of being a pro-life “extremist.”

“In addition to forgetting, apparently, that he is not the commissioner of in-labor, as [his opponent] quips, Avakian has forgotten that he's involved in a supposedly nonpartisan race,” complained the Oregonian. Besides, "what the heck does an easily ridiculed plank in the GOP platform have to do with  the Bureau of Labor and Industries? Labor commissioners enforce laws. They don't make them."

That's not strictly true of the BOLI, given that Avakian's agency considers itself empowered to carry out legislative functions as well. It also wants to make feticide racket the only industry free from invasive regulation -- or even critical public scrutiny.

In 2013, Avakian announced that BOLI would conduct an “anti-discrimination” investigation of a pro-life group that staged protests outside the Lovejoy Surgicenter abortion clinic in Portland. The supposed authority for that investigation was the same statute the agency had employed to destroy Christopher Penner’s business.

This facility discriminates on the basis of age. Avakian's fine with that.

That “investigation” wasn’t opened as the result of a citizen complaint. It began when one of the apparatchiks employed by Avakian happened to see a protest on her way to work and, in a fashion worthy of an East German spitzel, reported this impermissible act of dissent to her agency’s “civil rights” division.

On August 26 of that year, Avakian reportedly sent an official letter to Pastor Charles O’Neal, who led the peaceful demonstrations, announcing the investigation and threatening “one year in prison and fines of $6, 250” for each “civil rights violation” his agency might find.

Avakian is a singularly resourceful sophist, but even he couldn’t contrive a rationale for claiming that people protesting against a business were somehow discriminating against people employed by it, or customers who sought to employ its (in this case, lethal) services.

In any case, the Commissar lost interest in the abortion clinic matter after BOLI received a discrimination complaint against Sweetcakes by Melissa. This presented to him a perfect opportunity to extort a huge sum from Christian entrepreneurs who had done no injury to a living soul.

That case, which involves a $140,000 “damage” award imposed on the bakers for declining to make a wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony not legally recognized in Oregon at the time, will most likely be grinding its way through the courts for the next three years. By its end, Avakian will most likely be ensconced as Secretary of State, busily carrying out new initiatives to reduce independent business owners to the status currently enjoyed by Christopher Penner.

Oregon’s coastal nomenklatura, of whom Brad Avakian is repellently typical, is expansively contemptuous of the values and priorities of the state’s productive population, and is determined to reduce it to outright peonage.  Not surprisingly, residents of rural Oregon are becoming terminally disenchanted with the state’s existing political arrangements.

Since it appears to be impossible to uproot the parasite class embodied by Avakian and his comrades, a quixotic – but growing – secession movement has sprouted in eastern Oregon. It’s impossible to believe that the parasites would allow their long-suffering host to escape without a fight.

If the state’s political class continues to harass and destroy small businesses, and prosecute harmless people for heresies against “progressive” dogmas, they’re likely to provoke a fight that won’t be contained within political channels.

If the legislature wants to foreclose that possibility, they must, at the very least, take action to lance the festering boil that BOLI has become. If all efforts to end Avakian’s collectivist jihad against property rights prove unavailing, somebody might want to take the Commissar aside and quietly ask him if the name “Ceausescu" means anything to him.

This week's Freedom Zealot Podcast examines demonization as a prelude to selective disarmament, which leads to subjugation -- or worse:



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