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Accountability crime and punishment moral hazard national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest responsibility U.S. Constitution

It’s Morning in Wisconsin

Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin, police abuse, harassment, militarization, democracy, intimidation, collage, photomontage, illustration, editorial, violence

Regarding mornings, put me in Sheriff Hopper’s camp. He’s the Stranger Things character, repeatedly informing folks: “Mornings are for coffee and contemplation.”

Speaking of stranger things, who expects an early morning SWAT-like police raid on their home?

Three years ago, yesterday, that happened to Cindy Archer, and other conservatives in Wisconsin. Near dawn, a dozen police officers in flak jackets pounded on her door, carrying a battering ram just in case. Her dogs were freaking out and she feared they’d be shot. The police ransacked her home, confiscating her computer and smart phone.

This was a secretive John Doe investigation, so Ms. Archer was informed she could discuss the raid with nobody but her lawyer. The raid was public, the media tipped off, but Archer was prevented from defending herself publicly. Or even privately, among friends and relatives.

Her suspected crime?

Like her fellow targets, she had supported Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to reform the law regarding public employee unions. And for fundraising “coordination” in pursuit thereof.

The gag order slapped on conservatives in 29 groups might have prevented us from knowing the partisan political assault taking place, but Eric O’Keefe, the head of the Wisconsin Club for Growth, courageously spoke out.

“Had I honored their secrecy order, I couldn’t have organized our defense,” Eric O’Keefe told Blaze TV. “I decided quickly — look, this is supposed to be a free country, I’m going to operate as though it is, even if it isn’t today.”

First, John Doe Judge Gregory Peterson ordered the probe to close. Prosecutors appealed.

O’Keefe went to federal court and soon Judge Rudolph Randa agreed that Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and the Government Accountability Board were violating their rights. Randa warned: “[A]ttempts to purify the public square lead to places like the Guillotine and the Gulag.”

Randa’s ruling was stayed pending the appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. “It is utterly clear that the special prosecutor has employed theories of law that do not exist in order to investigate citizens who were wholly innocent of any wrongdoing,” read the that court’s majority opinion.

Still, the persecutors persisted, asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case. Yesterday morning, the High Court denied Milwaukee County’s appeal.

Calling the three-year dystopian odyssey “a disgraceful episode in Wisconsin history,” this morning Mr. O’Keefe is pushing the state legislature to have some coffee and contemplate (and then legislate) ensuring this never happens again.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Assault on Free Speech in Wisconsin, police abuse, harassment, militarization, democracy, intimidation, collage, photomontage, illustration, editorial, violence

 

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Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

The Choice That Isn’t

politics, Obama, Hiillary Clinton, lies, elections, FBI Director, James Comey, war president

Americans are used to being betrayed by their political representation.

This long series of infidelities has led to the current predicament, where the Republican and Democratic parties present us with the opposite of what most Americans want.

Why this vexing stalemate?

History.

The current Democratic President, Mr. Obama, gained both notoriety and trust for his stance against war. Rank-and-file Democrats rejoiced. The Bush Wars were over!

Nope. Obama grew into his role as war president.

Like his predecessor.

Under his watch, the U.S. expanded regime change to Libya, stretched the Afghanistan incursion into our longest war, and now sends more troops into Iraq. (Sans their boots.)

The peacenik manqué has discovered his talent for killing foreigners. His supporters, in consequence, “cling to” his other paltry achievements: a weak, ephemeral recovery; the imperiled, perilous Obamacare.

And a long series of lectures.

No wonder Democrats are demoralized enough to vote for hawkish Hillary Clinton, the least qualified presidential candidate in American history.

But wait, Obama hath ballyhooed: she is “the most qualified”!

Why “least”?

Because FBI Director James Comey just admitted* that any underling of his that had behaved as recklessly as she had with national security would be “disciplined” and “in big trouble.”

Instead, Americans may wind up hiring her . . . for Commander in Chief!

Republicans, on the other hand, have enthusiastically kicked at that “small government” football so many times, only to witness their “leaders” yank it away. Have they now given up? Donald Trump has no interest in limiting government; he talks of new spending programs.

With a “choice that isn’t” in these two losers, no wonder “we don’t win anymore.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*Comey’s exact words, in July, were “They might get fired, they might lose their clearance” — expertly hedging with those mights — “There would be some discipline.” Though he could find no evidence of intent to commit a criminal act, Comey did judge Mrs. Clinton “extremely careless” and “negligent.”

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Bernie’s Principled Recommendation

Bernie Sanders, man of principle, translated:

Sure Gary has taken a stand against endless war, the drug war, our insane justice system, overcrowded prisons, police militarization, police abuse of civil rights, corporate cronyism, government surveillance…

…but he’s not offering any free stuff, so you’d better vote for Hillary!

Here’s what will continue under Hillary:
More war
More drug war
More police militarization
More rampant police abuse of civil rights
More overcrowded prisons
More government surveillance
More corporate cronyism
More national debt
More taxes to pay for all of this madness.

How do we know they will continue? Because she has helped to create and promote policies that have given us all of these things in the past.

There was a time when a liberal would have been appalled by these prospects. Now these are casually dismissed as acceptable as long as they get to have their progressive agenda… and she’s not even a consistent progressive!

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general freedom individual achievement

Crybaby

San Francisco Freedom Forum, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Illustration

I’m not a crybaby. “Believe me” . . . as one fellow running for president is fond of saying.

Yesterday, however, at the San Francisco Freedom Forum, I was admittedly glad that the ballroom was dimly lit. Listening to speakers from across the globe tell their stories of struggling for freedom, I became . . . well, verklempt.

The event, organized by the Human Rights Foundation, is an expansion of the long-running Oslo Freedom Forum. It featured speakers such as:

  • Hyeonseo Lee, who not only escaped from North Korea, the world’s most totalitarian regime, but later returned to help her family get out as well.
  • Yulia Marushevska, the Ukrainian anti-corruption crusader, whose powerful YouTube video, entitled “I Am a Ukrainian,” helped the world see the Euromaidan protests.
  • Anjan Sundaram, the journalist with chilling tales of the totalitarian regime of Rwanda’s President Kagame, who recently overcame term limits through a referendum wherein 98 percent of the country supposedly voted to allow him to stay in power until 2034. Embarrassingly, Kagame spoke at Harvard and Yale on democracy and human rights. Sundaram recalled a Rwandan who explained, “We don’t know where the state ends and we begin.”
  • Zineb El Rhazoui, who co-authored the comic book The Life of Mohamed with slain Charlie Hebdo editor Stéphane Charbonnier, and now lives facing an ISIS death sentence.

And many more.

For me, Rosa María Payá, with the Cuba Decides campaign, was the biggest tear-jerker. She spoke about the murder of her activist father, Oswaldo Payá, at the bloody hands of the Castro regime.

As a father, it made me . . . (give me a moment) . . . think about how important freedom is.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility too much government

Undefeated

Missouri Ethics Commission, lobbyist, lobbying, Ron Calzone, Missouri First

It’s over . . . but it’s not.

A conscientious Show-Me state activist has won his case, but . . .

A year ago, the unethical Missouri Ethics Commission fined Ron Calzone $1,000 for not paying a silly $10 fee. To register as a lobbyist. They also ordered him to stop talking to legislators until he complied.

Citizen Calzone didn’t register.

He didn’t pay.

And he didn’t shut up.

On principle.

Instead, he contacted the Freedom Center of Missouri and the Center for Competitive Politics, a national outfit that defends our rights to participate in our supposedly participatory and representative democratic republic.

On Monday, a judge ruled in Ron’s favor, tossing out the “ethics complaint” against him. On a technicality, actually.

Winning is better than losing. But even if someone bothers to try again against Calzone, filing the suit properly*, Calzone would win.

You see, we have rights . . . including the freedom to talk to those pretending to represent us. It is not at all certain that government has any constitutional authority to regulate paid lobbyists.

But Ron is not a paid lobbyist. He volunteers for Missouri First, a citizen group.

So why did the speech police’s long arm reach out to grab him?

He’s effective.

More than a forthright advocate for what he believes, he has proven smart enough to find ways to allow fellow freedom-lovers to weigh in on bills they favor or oppose.

This has endeared him neither to legislators nor the lobbying “community” — professionals paid handsomely to lose to Calzone’s grassroots network. They will strike back. You can count on it.

But as long as there are citizens like him, the people will not be defeated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The charges weren’t filed by a “natural person,” as the law requires, but by the attorney for the Missouri Society of Governmental Consultants, the state lobbyist guild.

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Acceptable Brain Freeze

Gary Johnson, brain freeze, lying crook, Aleppo, admire, meme, illustration

Quick, name a lying crook that you admire!

Gary Johnson, brain freeze, lying crook, Aleppo, admire, meme, illustration

 

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general freedom nannyism national politics & policies too much government

A Federalist Prescription

FDA, self medication, drugs, medicine, death, illustration

California has become the 32nd state to stand up for the dying.

Gov. Jerry Brown just signed the “right to try” law that the Goldwater Institute has been pushing. It allows diagnosed terminally ill patients with only a few months left to live to try “experimental” medications.

These are drugs that haven’t passed through all the Food and Drug Administration’s many hoops.

The rationale for the law is that the FDA’s decade-long, costly process is ostensibly designed to prevent “dangerous” drugs from being regularly prescribed and sold and used in the United States. To save lives, you see. But it is simply cruel to hold patients in the process of dying to the strict standards of the slow, bureaucratic federal bureaucracy. Cruel because purposeless.

The Goldwater Institute’s press release clarifies the law like this: “Right To Try is limited to patients with a terminal disease that have exhausted all approved treatment options and cannot enroll in a clinical trial. All medications available under the law must have successfully completed basic safety testing and be part of the FDA’s on-going approval process.”

Hardly radical. Indeed, it seems such a meek and mild move, to me. If you are dying, and your doctor is obliging, who is harmed?

Two things, though:

  1. Had Americans a right to self-medicate — like we did before the Progressive Era nanny state bureaucracies were set up — this issue would not even come up. These reforms are necessary because we are not Once upon a time, all Americans could choose any medication.
  2. This is yet another example of states effectively nullifying federal law.

More please.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people moral hazard nannyism Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

Four Measures for Rogue Government

speech, anti-speech, NAACP, Supreme Court, First Amendment, Free Speech,

Rule of thumb: don’t enact today laws that, had they been obeyed by folks in the original 13 states of our union, would have prevented independence.

Voters in Missouri, South Dakota, and Washington have the “opportunity” to enact such laws this November.

In “Beware of Anti-Speech Ballot Measures,” Tracy Sharp and Darcy Olsen, presidents of the State Policy Center and the Goldwater Institute, respectively, offer a warning. Focusing on Measure 22, the South Dakota Government Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act, they show how dangerous notions like forcing “nonprofit organizations to report the names and addresses of their donors to the state government” can be.

Such disclosure would subject non-profits “to possible investigation by an unelected ethics board that is given the power to subpoena private documents and overrule decisions made by the state attorney general. . . .” Rogue, star-chamber government.

Fever dream?

No. Sharp and Olsen highlight a famous U.S. Supreme Court case that protected the NAACP from the state’s demand for the group’s funding sources. Both women also offer personal tales of how nasty the opposition (in government and out) can become when big issues are on the line.

I can personally attest.

These measures fly in the face of what really matters — encouraging robust public debate. Democracy doesn’t work when people dread participation. As our authors challenge, “[d]o we want America to be a country where government keeps public lists of law-abiding citizens because they dare to support causes they believe in?”

Especially when, without the secret (unreported!) activities of the Committees of Correspondence, the USA would not have become united states in the first place.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original (cc) photo by Michael Tracey on Flickr

 

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Accountability national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

How to Corrupt Politicians Without Really Trying

politicians, public servants, service,

In a Townhall.com column last January, I argued that politicians weren’t “stupid,” as Mr. Trump had loudly proclaimed — to few objections.

The problem is worse: too many politicians lack honesty and integrity. They’re in the politics biz for their own lucrative ends.

Six weeks ago, I declared — again, to few objections — that “Politicians Must Suffer.” Despite the provocative, sizzling-with-Schadenfreude title, my point was simple: “lavish pay, pensions and other benefits for city councilmen, state legislators and congressmen constitute a serious problem.”

“It breeds,” I added, “bad behavior when politicians line their own pockets. . . .”

Well, I’m right.

At least, I’ve got some academic back-up from a new study by Mitchell Hoffman of the University of Toronto and Elizabeth Lyons of the University of California-San Diego, entitled, “A Time to Make Laws and a Time to Fundraise? On the Relation Between Salaries and Time Use for State Politicians.”

Sounds like a fascinating read, eh?

“Using data on time use and legislator salaries, we show that higher salary is associated with legislators spending more time on fundraising,” the study’s abstract reads. “In contrast, higher salary is also associated with less time spent on legislative activities and has no clear relation to time spent on constituent services.” [Emphasis added]

While their study jives with my experience, the Wall Street Journal reports that others were surprised. Authors Hoffman and Lyons explain: “When salaries are higher, politicians face a greater incentive to get re-elected (as the value of serving in office is greater). Thus, they will optimally respond by increasing the time spent on fundraising.”

Sounds like in addition to lower pay for politicians, we need term limits, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people

Crime and Terror and Panic

panic, terror, terrorism, media, keep calm, illustration

Many people think crime is going up. But it’s going down.

Similarly, many people think terrorism is “an existential threat” to our very civilization.

Could the latter folks be wrong for the same reason the former folks are?

Because news reporting concentrates on crime, covering it intensely, incessantly — if it bleeds, it leads — we get the wrong perspective on crime. The long-term trend-line shows crime going down since the early 1990s. Though we’re now seeing upticks in certain big cities, it’s simply not all getting worse.

This is not a reason to slack off. It is a reason not to panic.

How is terrorism different?

In 15 years, there has been no repeat of 9/11/01, or anything close to it. Granted, there have been horrific homegrown terror incidents. That threat remains. Though, thankfully, last weekend’s terrorist spree wasn’t more effective: One bomb fizzled, another killed no one, and the mad jihadist knifer was himself put down before anyone was killed.

Some might note that the number of deaths as a result of automobile crashes* is far, far higher than from terrorism. Why worry more about the very small number of terrorist outbreaks in a huge country like ours?

Here’s why: the terrorism is intentional, and could become worse for whatever reasons flip normal Muslim men and women into jihadist radicals. So our vigilance must not abate.

But there’s another difference. Terrorists, unlike normal criminals, want to be noticed. The more we panic, the more they are tempted to seek to cause us to panic.

Terrorism, whether going up or down, requires, along with vigilance, a certain resolute calmness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

* Deaths from automobile accidents have been decreasing for decades, a 35 percent drop from 1979 to 2005. However, last year the U.S. had the “highest one-year percentage increase in traffic deaths in half a century.”

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