Author: CS Admin

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Common Sense

Not Just Fiddling in Ferguson

Body Cam Initiative

The Missouri General Assembly adjourned its 2015 legislative session about a month ago, “having passed,” The Washington Post reported, “virtually none of the changes activists sought in the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown.”

“Nothing has changed,” acknowledged State Rep. Clem Smith.

The Post story concluded, “Advocates plan to use the results of a state commission on Ferguson, expected to wrap up its work in the coming months, to engage lawmakers during the summer and work with them on pre-​filing bills for the next session.”

Wait … until next year?

Denise Lieberman, a senior attorney for the Advancement Project and co-​chair of the Don’t Shoot Coalition, conceded that, “Long-​term policy change takes time.”

Hmmm, experience tells me “time” isn’t always a friend to reform. Political change can happen incrementally, of course, but more often it rushes forth when people have both had enough and decide to take the initiative.

Ahem — I’m talking about the ballot initiative.

No waiting.

This afternoon, a committee of seven Ferguson, Missouri, citizens, led by Nick Kasoff, will file a ballot measure to require on-​duty Ferguson police to wear body cameras. The charter amendment also mandates greater transparency for criminal justice information, while providing privacy protections.

Liberty Initiative Fund, where I work as president, is proud to have provided the Ferguson group with model language. We’ll also work with Kasoff on gathering the roughly 2,500 signatures of Ferguson voters on petitions required to place the issue on the ballot and win early next year.

You don’t have to wait, either. Liberty Initiative Fund helps people across the country take the initiative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Body Cam Initiative

 

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom

Reason Requires Freedom

Reason and Freedom

For two weeks, Reason magazine was stopped by court order from talking about two government actions.

It started with online comments.

Everyone who samples the Internet knows that although some un-​moderated remarks are judicious and thoughtful, others are intemperate and un-​thoughtful. Freedom of speech subsumes the latter just as much as the former — unless and until a published comment can be honestly construed as a genuine threat of violence, as opposed to mere venting.

Reason was first hit with a subpoena that “demanded the records of six people who left hyperbolic comments at the website about the federal judge who oversaw the controversial conviction of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.”

The subpoena is itself debatable, the Supreme Court having recently noted that context is relevant to determining whether an online “threat” is a genuine one.

Not debatable? The gag order that soon followed, prohibiting discussion of both the subpoena and the gag order after Reason notified the affected commenters so that they would have a chance to defend their right to anonymity.

Reporting at the magazine’s “Hit and Run” blog, Reason editors Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch explain why the prior restraint represented by the order is unconstitutional and a bad idea.

For Reason, the situation was unprecedented; but similarly wrongful gag orders have become commonplace.

If we lose freedom of speech in this country, it won’t be all at once but bit by ugly bit.

This episode? One of the ugly bits.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Reason and Freedom

 

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets

The Fed Feeds a Scam

D. Stockman

Real and effective “anti-​establishment” ideas come from unexpected places. That is, they are unexpected if you read only the dominant media and its insider sources, or follow politics only during the quadrennial presidential farce.

Quite a few news junkies would be surprised at David Stockman’s critique of current Federal Reserve behavior and policy, for example. In “Why Ronald Reagan Is Rolling In His Grave: The Keynesian Putsch At The Fed,” he charges the central bank with having managed “an economic coup d’etat” by engaging in an ongoing wealth redistribution scam — shoveling wealth to the rich.

Stockman sees the confidence of Fed Chair Yellen’s macro-​policy micromanagement agenda as a scary case of hubris, of self-​appointed effrontery. “Yellen & Co believe they are in charge of virtually everything on the main street economy … based on nothing more than their own subjective and unexplained wisdom.”

Stockman is in high form, here. Yellen’s latest pronouncement, he says, is “unaltered Keynesian claptrap. It is the arrogant over-​reach of a model-​obsessed academic zealot who has no respect whatsoever for the real main street economy and for the historically proven truth that free markets are the best route to prosperity and higher living standards for the people.…”

Her policies, he claims, amount to “‘trickle down’ economics with malice of forethought.”

Does that sound Bernie Sanderish to you? It shouldn’t.

The case for limited government and against the Fed (and federal government management in general) are that it is modern unlimited government that serves the few at the expense of the many. Stockman is just restating very old wisdom.

Remind your Occupier friends of this. They are on the wrong team.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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D. Stockman

 

Categories
folly free trade & free markets

Prophecy Failed

Eggs, New York Times, Economics, collage, photomontage, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/

In the first week of June we were told to expect egg shortages. The avian flu had infected millions of hens: egg production would plummet.

This was news, reported as “Egg Rationing in America Has Officially Begun.” The Washington Post cited a few signs in Texan retail groceries warning customers that the stores were not in the wholesale biz, supplying eggs for restaurants and the like.

And then the follow-​up: On Tuesday the New York Times reported, “Bird Flu Sends Egg Prices Up, but Slowing Demand Prevents Shortages.”

Author Stephanie Strom is probably not responsible for the title. Her copy was not horrible.

It’s hard to get over the title, though. Economist Mike Munger offered his reaction headline: “NY Times Causes Head of Mungowitz to Explode.”

Why?

One word: “but.”

The title should have read, “Bird Flu Sends Egg Prices Up, So Naturally Slowing Demand Prevents Shortages.”

Why that “slowing demand”?

I’ll let Munger explain it:

There can never, NEVER be a shortage if prices are free to adjust. Because a shortage is insufficient supply at current prices. Lagniappe: This was in the “Science” section. Yes, it was.

People buy less when prices rise. So those who value eggs less cede those humpy dumpties to folks who want them more. Fitting. Harmonious!

So the title was witless, Munger insists, “on the order of ‘Water:  Still Wet!’ or ‘That Crazy Sun:  Rising in the East Again This Morning.’”

I like “good news” stories. Too bad the Times wasn’t quite up to delivering the good news that was clearly fit to print.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Eggs

 

Categories
folly general freedom too much government

Under the Law, Not Beneath It

Magna Carta Nation

Celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta Libertatum this week, I noted how a document intended to serve the very upper classes, by limiting each others’ powers, led to liberty for all.

The Nation, on the other hand, used it to excoriate the Citizens United ruling.

“Magna Carta reminds us that no man is above the law,” wrote John Nichols on Monday. “But it should not be imagined that Magna Carta established democracy, or anything akin to it.”

Of course the Magna Carta did not establish democracy. No one said it did. And neither Britain nor America has pure democracy, if you define it … in Nichols fashion. What is he driving at?

If we respect the notion that the rule of law must apply to all … then surely it must apply to corporations.

And, surely, the best celebration of those premises in the United States must be the extension of the movement to amend the US Constitution to declare that corporations are not people, money is not speech, and citizens and their elected representatives have the authority to organize elections — and systems of governance — where our votes matter more than their dollars.

Sure, Mr. Nichols, corporations shouldn’t be above the law. But they shouldn’t be below it, either. And in America we have rights to free speech and press. Those rights “surely … must apply to corporations.”

Let’s increase the liberating powers of democracy: open up ballot access, de-​privilege incumbents, count votes in a non-​mere-​plurality-​wins fashion.

But let’s not throw out equal rights under the law, even in the name of democracy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Magna Carta Nation

 

Categories
general freedom U.S. Constitution

An 800th “Birthday”

Magna Carta, free speech, collage, photomontage, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, political, politics, King John

Something happened 800 years ago yesterday, something of note.

The much-​loathed and legendary — but real-​life — King John signed a document with his barons that limited his power. It was later called the “Magna Carta,” the great charter.

Strange history. It was signed, made a big deal of, and then quickly repudiated. But it was never completely dead, possessing a zombie afterlife, and eventually helping give birth to the Enlightenment idea of limited government, as well as to the United States Constitution.

Most of the document is concerned with the king’s relationship with his subordinate (and insubordinate) barons. There’s a lot of power-​wrangling in it, it’s all about divvying up prerogatives and responsibilities and taxes and fees. But it does contain a few passages of note (I’ve listed them on my “Today in Freedom” feature, in the past, and revive one for today’s).

My friend Sheldon Richman quotes scholar John Millar (1735 – 1801), one of Adam Smith’s most illustrious students, to put the document in its best perspective: “A great tyrant on the one side, and a set of petty tyrants on the other, seem to have divided the kingdom … who, by limiting the authority of each other over their dependents, produced a reciprocal diminution of their power.”

They were selfish men, Millar notes, not much concerned with ordinary folk, “But though the freedom of the common people was not intended in those charters, it was eventually secured to them.…”

Britain and then America stumbled onto liberty — a general and shared freedom — by the jealousy of competing powers.

We, the people, win when our “rulers” are divided, not united.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Magna Carta