Author: CS Admin

Categories
Accountability folly government transparency incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall meme term limits too much government

Stop Phony Crony Pay Grab

Arkansas Tricksters

Are people in Arkansas as stupid as their legislators think?

Last November, legislators tricked enough voters to narrowly pass Issue 3. 

I’ve addressed before the measure’s dishonest ballot language, mis-​identifying a doubling of allowed terms as the “setting of term limits.” And about a much-​ballyhooed gift ban that has proven so weak that now most legislators are offered “free meals nearly every day.”

Perhaps the biggest of the tricks used to pass the measure was this: Hide from voters the measure’s establishment of an “Independent Citizens Commission” . . . a majority hand-​picked by those same legislators. 

This “Legislative Cronies Commission” (as it should be called) has announced it will unilaterally hike pay by an outrageous 150 percent!

The commission claims to have looked at legislative salaries in nearby states, except Texas and Mississippi — two states that just so happen to pay lower salaries. Economic factors were also considered, supposedly, but household income in Arkansas has actually dropped in the last decade.

The commission held only one poorly publicized hearing — at, get this, 10:00 am on a Monday, when most folks were working. No surprise, public comments have run ten to one negative. Letters and emails contain words and phrases such as “shameful,” “insult,” “actually sick to my stomach,” “a joke,” “ludicrous,” “appalled” and “slap in the face.”

This led Larry Ross, chief crony on the commission, to rudely dis citizens, telling the Arkansas Democrat-​Gazette that he would look at the “quality” of comments, not the “quantity.”

Only a tsunami of public anger can stop this rip-​off of Arkansas taxpayers. Act fast. A March 16 meeting is set to finalize the increase.

Tell the Independent [sic] Citizens [yeah, right] Commission what you think: call (501) 682‑1866.

This is Common Sense. Paul Jacob.

 Printable PDF

Categories
Common Sense general freedom U.S. Constitution

Slavery & Racism

African Slaves

On Sunday, I marked an awful event in our history: The official beginning of chattel slavery as such in Britain’s American colonies.

At first, John Casor, an African indentured servant, had gained some control of his life. He charged his master, Anthony Johnson, a free black, with having forced him to labor longer than the term of his indentureship. He won, was freed, and then indentured himself to one Robert Parker. 

But Johnson sued, and, on March 8, 1655, won Casor back — as a slave for life.

The case established a civil ground for slavery, also enabling free blacks to own slaves. Even as late as the Civil War, the South harbored families of obvious African descent who themselves owned African-​Americans as slaves.

On the surface, American slavery wasn’t about race. But in the 1640 case of John Punch, sentenced to a life of slavery as criminal punishment for running away from his indentured servitude, his fellow escapees — whites — merely got longer terms of forced labor.

Racism, Thomas Sowell explains, became increasingly important to “the peculiar institution” as time went on. If you exalt the notion that “all men are created equal,” how do you square that with your slave-holding? 

By denigrating the humanity of blacks.

This vile ugliness of racism is still with us, to some degree … and slavery, too — at least, in small pockets around the globe and in a much bigger way in the Muslim world. An estimated eleven million slaves are held in Africa and the Middle East. And black Africans are still the main victims.

Sunday was also the 240th anniversary of Tom Paine’s first American call for slavery’s abolition.

Ending slavery: it’s way past time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Categories
crime and punishment folly general freedom nannyism too much government

America’s Twilight Zones

On Friday I lamented the picking up, by local police, of two children, 10 and 6, for walking home from a local park …

and the subsequent two-​month Montgomery County (Maryland) Child Protective Services investigation, which found the parents “responsible” for “unsubstantiated child neglect.”

Left unanswered? Whether parents “may” let their kids walk somewhere without supervision.

There’s no law, of course, against children walking in public without parents. But the “swarms of Officers” employed “to harass our people” aren’t limited by trifling things like laws.

This Kafkaesque episode reminds me of my experiences with campaign finance agencies.

In both cases, agencies rely upon meritless complaints to investigate, intimidate and impoverish people without any law being broken. All that’s required? An unelected bureaucrat’s arbitrary decision.

Take Lois Lerner. She ran the IRS division targeting conservative groups. Remember her allegedly lost emails? Irretrievable! Until someone actually looked for them.

Before violating people’s rights at the IRS, Lerner did so heading the Enforcement Division of the Federal Election Commission (FEC). A recent George Will column detailed her threats and very public and politically damaging harassment of Al Salvi, the Illinois Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate. Sure, he was fully acquitted in federal court … after his defeat.

Using a spurious complaint by former Rep. Mike Synar (D‑Okla.), Lerner launched a political persecution against U.S. Term Limits, costing us nearly $100,000 in legal fees and much more in dislocated time and manpower.

Finding no evidence — there was none to find — the FEC finally closed the matter. But agency officials still issued a news release proclaiming that they believed we had violated the law.

An Oklahoma newspaper headline read, roughly, “National Term Limits Group Broke Law, Says FEC.”

Talk about “unsubstantiated.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Categories
Today

African Slavery In America…

On March 8, 1775, “African Slavery In America,” the first known essay advocating the abolition of slavery in America, was published anonymously in the Pennsylvania Journal and the Weekly Advertiser. Thomas Paine is believed to be the author. The first anti-​slavery society was formed in Philadelphia weeks after publication, and Paine was a founding member.

Exactly 120 years earlier, a court in Northampton County of the Virginia Colony ruled that John Casor, then working as an indentured servant to Robert Palmer, must be returned to Anthony Johnson as Johnson’s “lawful” slave for life. Ironically, Johnson was one of the original indentured servants brought to Jamestown, had completed his indenture to become a “free Negro” and the first African landowner in the colony. The case marked the first person of African descent to be legally-​recognized as a lifelong slave in England’s North American colonies.

 

Categories
meme

An Argument in Favor of Term Limits

“As a lobbyist, I was completely against term limits, and I know a lot of people are against term limits, and I was one of the leaders, because why? As a lobbyist, once you buy a congressional office, you don’t have to re-​buy that office in six years, right?”

—JACK ABRAMOFF, Former Lobbyist and Convicted Felon

Shared ideas matter. Please pass this along to friends.

Get a high-​resolution screensaver of this image. Click on the thumbnail picture below to open a large version that you can download.

Abromoff_TermLimitsFINAL

 

Categories
education and schooling folly nannyism

Well-​Substantiated Insanity

Well-Substantiated Insanity
In what sort of place are children taken from their parents, or parents investigated by the authorities with that in mind, because they allowed their 10- and 6‑year-​olds to walk to a park to play?

Not a forced 20-​mile march across Death Valley, mind you, but a Saturday stroll of less than a mile under normal earth conditions.

What sort of place? These United States — Silver Spring, Maryland, to be specific.

That’s where Danielle and Alexander Meitiv’s two kids, Rafi and Dvora, were picked up by police, on their way home from a neighborhood park.

A two-​month Montgomery County Child Protective Services (MCCPS) investigation followed. Now, there’s no law against youngsters walking in public by themselves. Local public schools don’t provide bus service for kids within a mile of the school, deeming that close enough to walk. Nevertheless, this week, authorities announced that the Meitivs were “found responsible” for “unsubstantiated child neglect.”

The good news is that the neglect charge is completely “unsubstantiated.” The bad news is that official “Free State” busybodies seem to have not one clue as to what that word means.

MCCPS will keep a file on the suspicious family for five years. “We don’t know if we will get caught in this Kafkaesque loop again,” says Mrs. Meitiv, noting that the agency left unanswered the question of what might happen if they ever again dare allow their kids to walk outside the house without adult supervision.

The family is appealing the nonsensical MCCPS “finding.” In the meantime, the Meitiv children will continue to walk in public as if it’s a free country.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF