Author: CS Admin

Categories
folly general freedom national politics & policies too much government

Political Theatrics

TSA

Our suspicions have been proved: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) doesn’t secure much of anything; it is mere “security theater.”

After revelations that TSA screeners failed to find weapons and other deadly contraband in 96 percent of tests, David A. Graham, writing for The Atlantic, asked “what kind of theater this is.… A period drama, satirizing the 2000s? Vaudeville farce?”

Easy answer: the genre is “statism.”

Statism is the worship of government, or the reliance upon government to do many more than a few tasks. It is very old.

The ancient states arose from conquest, developing as a way to milk the masses for the benefit of the few. That’s what states traditionally do: use force to move wealth from one group to another.

Along the way, the states did do some good. Amidst all their horrors.

But mostly rulers just leveraged myth and bluster to cover crimes.

In more recent times, in this great country, the idea arose that the state should be limited to a few necessary jobs, tightly controlled by the people so that government might actually defend rights, not abridge them.

But this revolutionary democratic-​republican ideology did not alter the basic nature of reality, turning the sow’s purse of the conquerors’ art into the gold of the Public Interest.

Without our vigilance, government always reverts back to its roots.

The TSA is simply the latest myth-​and-​bluster-​backed scam aiding the ludicrous notion that government is all-​powerful … while providing only faux security. Get rid of it; let its people go. Then watch airlines come up with more effective, less intrusive, more passenger-​friendly security systems.

Want theater? Try “vigilance theater.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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TSA

 

Categories
nannyism national politics & policies

For and Against?

Labor Union Logic

Bad ideas take a person only so far.

Proponents of a widely destructive policy may be loath to relinquish it altogether when destructive consequences loom. Yet they may also loathe to see it applied consistently — because of the pain it’ll cause their particular gang.

Harm to others inflicted by lousy ideas? Fine!

Harm to yourself? Not fine!

Hence the semi-​reversal by Los Angeles union officials of their demand for a minimum wage of $15 an hour, recently approved by LA’s city council. Union leaders have been among the most ardent proponents of the new minimum, which until now they’ve insisted must be imposed equally, no exemptions for special hardship.

But now union reps like Rusty Hicks want exemptions for unionized companies so that unions are free to negotiate an agreement that, as Hicks puts it, “allows each party to prioritize what is important to them.” Wow! Sounds like he might favor free markets, in which parties to a trade participate, voluntarily, only when priorities are aligned and each expects to gain.

Many motives for Hicks’s contradictory stance are plausible. One is that the requested exception would encourage companies to unionize to escape burdensome new costs. Accept one burden to escape a worse one.

Instead of letting unions cripple all workplaces but their own, let’s “allow each party to prioritize what is important to them” across the board, by letting employers and employees negotiate without any political interference whatever.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Labor Union Logic

 

Categories
crime and punishment

Life in Prison [x 2]?

Ross Ulbricht

As I worried, this weekend, about Dr. Annette Bosworth, and her future sentencing for the “felonies” (minor infractions) she committed in South Dakota, others were similarly anguished about Ross Ulbricht.

A judge just gave him two life sentences in prison for setting up the “Dark Web” anonymous trading service “The Silk Road.” He begged for leniency — “just give me my old age,” the 31-​years-​old pled — but District Judge Katherine Forrest proclaimed “lawlessness must not be tolerated,” judging Ulbricht “no better a person than any other drug dealer.”

According to the BBC, “Prosecutors say that six people who died from overdoses bought drugs via the site and that such untraceable deals earned Ulbricht at least $18m.” This is supposed to make us hate him as a “drug dealer.”

Which he wasn’t. He set up a trading website — albeit a no-​tax, black-​market one. The actual trades were the responsibility of the traders. Like on eBay. Emptors caveated, knowing what they were doing.

Curiously, his site could only be accessed using software produced by the U. S. government. Using the judge’s rationale, maybe the federal government should be tried?

Some would say that drug overdoses are the responsibility of the drug users — but more to the point, the main factor in illegal drug overdoses remains their illegality. Not given the sunshine of a legit market, actual dosages are hard to manage: producers don’t usually bother with consistency, immune as they are to the reputation aspects of legal markets, not to mention any regulation or tort law influences that affect legal products’ safety.

In reality, those six deaths are more a result of the government than Mr. Ulbricht.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

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Ross Ulbricht

 

Categories
crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall

No Part Justice

Dr. Bosworth

Dr. Annette Bosworth was convicted last week on twelve felony counts. She now faces as many as 24 years in prison, $48,000 in fines … and the likely loss of her medical license.

Her crime? She circulated six nominating petitions to get on the South Dakota ballot in 2014. Thirty-​seven people signed — at her medical office and at a Hutterite colony (where she sees patients) — while she was on a medical mission to help typhoon victims in the Philippines.

Dr. Bosworth’s sister was one.

But the affidavit on the petition reads that the circulator must actually witness each person’s signature being affixed. Bosworth should not have signed it.

Hence six counts of perjury and six more, one for each false document filed.

In court, Bosworth testified that her attorney — who legally notarized the petitions — told her she met the legal definition of a circulator.

Last month, I traveled to South Dakota to release a Citizens in Charge Foundation report on this prosecution. One key finding? While the threatened penalty is the most severe any American has ever faced in a petition-​related case, Dr. Bosworth submitted signatures of people she knew and who very much did support her. No forgery, no fraud … against the voters.

In response, the state’s largest newspaper reported that, “[Attorney General Marty] Jackley said that it’s ‘well understood in state law’ that the offenses Bosworth faces are punishable by probation and not jail time.” Then after her conviction, Jackley suggested a presumption for “either no or limited actual jail time,” adding, “but that presumption can be overcome by a defendant’s conduct.”

Annette Bosworth should be held accountable. But aiming to ruin her life isn’t any part of justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Dr. Bosworth

 

Categories
general freedom government transparency national politics & policies privacy too much government

Rand to the Rescue

Rand Paul vs. the Surveillance State

Nothing gets done in Washington?

Tell that to Kentucky Senator and presidential hopeful Rand Paul. Last night, he single-​handily “repealed” Section 215 of the Patriot Act, ending the federal government’s mass collection of our phone records.

At least, for the next few days.

On the floor of the Senate, Paul blocked the USA Freedom Act, a “compromise” bill passed by the House. It would’ve required private telecoms to keep the data, allowing the government to query that data with a warrant.

“I’m supportive of the part that ends the bulk collection by the government,” said Paul. “My concern is that we might be exchanging bulk collection by the government [with] bulk collection by the phone companies.”

In a Time magazine op-​ed, he argued, “We should not be debating modifying an illegal program. We should simply end this illegal program.”

Also last week, the Tea Party Patriots joined the ACLU in agreeing with Paul’s position: the USA Freedom Act doesn’t go far enough … to protect our civil rights.

Others warn we aren’t safe without maximum snooping and info-​scooping by government:

  • CIA Director John Brennan called the metadata program “integral to making sure that we’re able to stop terrorists in their tracks.”
  • Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the expiration amounted to “a serious lapse.”
  • James Clapper, director of National Intelligence — most famous now for lying to Congress about the existence of the metadata program — declared we “would lose entirely an important capability that helps us identify potential U.S.-based associates of foreign terrorists.”

Yet, there’s not a single case where this bulk phone data helped capture a terrorist or stop an attack.

Sen. Paul believes “we can still catch terrorists using the Constitution.”

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Rand Paul vs. the Surveillance State

 

Categories
folly free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Raise Your Hand, Dry and Secure

B.S.

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders made a splash last week with an off-​the-​cuff comment. “You don’t necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different pairs of sneakers when children are hungry in this country.”

The candidate whose initials are “B. S.” doesn’t call himself a Socialist for nothing.

The Democratic-​caucusing “Independent” Senator from Vermont was expressing a tired old sentiment. See his error? (Raise your hand if you know.)

To make any connection between “feeding the hungry” and cutting back on competitive products one would have to believe there is a fixed stock of wealth, and that we waste it on different brands and whole varieties of antiperspirants and sports shoes.

But there is no such fixed supply.

Supplies are concocted to meet consumer values, wants, and getting rid of competitive products means that some values are not being met … and that some folks are not being employed at the rates they could be with more diversity of commodities.

The best way to “feed the hungry” is for the hungry to feed themselves, by being productive — if children, then being fed by productive parents. And to do that, folks need to find their market niche. Which might very well entail another deodorant or shoe.

There is a realm where one person gains at the expense of someone else: redistributive government. If Sen. Sanders wants government to give more money to feed hungry people, he should consider cutting back on some other government expenditure.

Why didn’t B. S. suggest that? Perhaps more than feeding the hungry, he’s interested in feeding government, and his own pride in his own b.s. ideology.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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B.S.