Author: Redactor

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment

But for a Video

I’ve argued that police be required to wear cameras on the job — for the sake of both the wrongly used and the wrongly accused.

But ensuring that video is recorded and then, if necessary, used in tandem with other relevant evidence to secure justice doesn’t happen automatically. It requires a culture dedicated to upholding ethical standards of professional conduct.

This culture seems in short supply in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

There, explains the Washington Post, “it is now clear that the police, without provocation, can beat an unarmed young student senseless — with impunity. They can blatantly lie about it — with impunity. They can stonewall and cover it up for months — with impunity. They can express no remorse and offer no apology — with impunity.”

Beverly Woodward, the circuit court judge in the case the Post outlines, should have recused herself because of a conflict of interest. She did not. Then, without explanation, she tossed the case’s one modest conviction — which had been obtained only with great difficulty. The matter would not have stretched even that far had a video of the incident not eventually surfaced, exposing the lies of the officers who pummeled the innocent student.

Suspicious circumstances in the case abound. Radley Balko gives the laundry list.

When corruption is this pervasive in a locale, state or federal government must intervene to reform and prosecute. It should be a lot easier at all levels to prosecute and punish those public officials who commit clear wrongdoing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Today

1st Model T, Lawrence of Arabia captures Damascus

On October 1, 1908, Ford produced the first Model T at a plant in Detroit. The auto could travel 40 miles per hour and ran on gasoline or hemp-based fuel. (As oil prices fell, Ford phased out the hemp option.) The Model T was the first car designed for a mass market, rather than as a luxury item. By 1927, Ford would build some 15 million Model T cars – the longest production run of any car model until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.

On October 1, 1918, Lawrence of Arabia (T.E. Lawrence) helped lead a combined Arab and British force that captured Damascus from the Turks during World War I.

Categories
education and schooling

Tech/Knock/Crazy

When Bill Nye “The Science Guy” spoke out in defense of Common Core, he succumbed to the urge to carry baggage from other disputes. He laid much of the blame for opposition to Common Core on the creation/evolution debate, basically just blurting out that people who objected were objecting to “science.”

Amusingly for someone with “science” in his moniker, Nye missed the fact that science isn’t part of Common Core. Math and English are. There are many ways to learn and teach both. I see no reason to standardize either. The “science is settled” meme doesn’t translate to English studies — “the English” is definitely not settled.

More recently, Bill Gates trumpeted that the issue seemed to him a “technocratic” one (his words, not mine; thanks, Bill), like which electrical socket standard to choose, or which gage of rails to adopt.

Now, it’s worth noting that American railways standardized the bulk of its gages ages ago, and without government help. So standardization, when it really matters, can happen without appointing a Technocrat in Chief. Or a Department of the Technocracy.

For my part, I’m glad my wife and I homeschooled our daughters. We could avoid the latest trends in the education biz.

It’s harder for schools under the federal thumb.

Common Core’s “mathematics” looks like a slightly renovated “New Math,” a goofy experiment that wreaked havoc on public schooling when I was young. Some teachers might teach such innovative and oddball methods well; some students might learn best with it. Pushing it down all gullets seems not merely bad educational policy, but bad “technocracy.”

And heck, even bad “science.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Ludwig von Mises

In order to be rich, it is not sufficient to have once saved and accumulated capital. It is necessary to invest it again and again in those lines in which it best fills the wants of the consumers. The market process is a daily repeated plebiscite, and it ejects inevitably from the ranks of profitable people those who do not employ their property according to the orders given by the public.

Categories
Today

September 30, Oppenheimer

On September 30, 1943, Franz Oppenheimer — a German-Jewish sociologist and political economist, who most famously published on the fundamental sociology of the state — died.


September 30 has served as Blasphemy Rights Day since 2009, when it was initiated by the Center for Inquiry.


Botswanans celebrate their independence from Great Britain with an official day on September 30.

Categories
Thought

Ludwig von Mises

It is customary to see the radical innovations that capitalism brought about in the substitution of the mechanical factory for the more primitive and less efficient methods of the artisans’ shops. This is a rather superficial view. The characteristic feature of capitalism that distinguishes it from pre-capitalist methods of production was its new principle of marketing. Capitalism is not simply mass production, but mass production to satisfy the needs of the masses.

Categories
crime and punishment too much government

Red Light Robots

Since we constantly battle against bad government — it being necessary to pare government down to its essential kernel, where it protects rather than tramples our rights — we sometimes lose sight of the fact that good government is both possible and necessary.

Now, many folks will raise an eyebrow, here. “‘Good government’ isn’t just about protecting our rights,” they might say. “It’s about providing key services. Like roads. Traffic lights. That sort of thing.”

Sure, we need roads. And safety measures. Nevertheless, good government is not about overkill.

Take automated intersection policing. That is, the infamous “red-light cameras.”

The New York Post reports that one camera — one intersection robot (better term, eh?) — snapped 1551 infractions on July 7. That was $77,550 for one camera for one day. No wonder that one city councilman likes it. And says it makes roadways safer.

But over at Reason, Zenon Evans marshals some skepticism. “A British study on speed cameras last year determined that ‘the number of collisions appears to have risen enough to make the cameras worthy of investigation in case they have contributed to the increases.’” These dangerous effects don’t appear to be limited to the other side of the pond, either: “[M]any reports,” Evans concludes, “have indicated that red light cameras in the U.S. increase accidents.”

More policing isn’t necessarily better policing. The old rule about traffic safety is that the rules should be set to what most people would drive without the rules.

Let’s remember: rewarding ineffective, counter-productive policing with lots of money is a bad way to govern the governors.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Second Amendment rights

Common Sense Reprieve

She must still suffer bogus punishment for her non-crime.

But at least Shaneen Allen won’t have to rot in prison for up to ten years.

What is the charge? Crossing a state border.

I’m glad that she no longer lives in the purgatory of that possibility.

And I think I know how she feels, having been arbitrarily threatened with prison myself, along with two colleagues, for a “crime” that was, in fact, a non-crime.

Twice a victim of real crime last year, Ms. Allen has a concealed carry permit from her home state of Pennsylvania. Her duly licensed gun was in her purse on the day she drove into New Jersey. A routine traffic stop led to its discovery and to Atlantic County Prosecutor James McClain’s injudicious determination to throw the book at her for possessing that gun in New Jersey without New Jersey’s permission.

Laws at all levels of governance being what they are — prolific, contradictory, and potentially ruinous — let’s agree that Allen should have double-checked her assumption that her constitutional right to bear arms would not dissolve en route to the Garden State. Let’s also agree that crossing a border between two states of our union hardly stacks up to bank robbery or murder.

This kind of lapse of due diligence should not be used to destroy a life.

In late September, bowing to public pressure, McClain reversed himself. Shaneen Allen must enter a so-called pre-trial intervention (PTI) program, but no longer faces prison. The Daily Caller called the prosecutor’s welcome caving to public pressure a “stunning outbreak of sanity.”

I call it Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Richard von Mises

Mass phenomena to which the theory of probability does not apply are, of course, of common occurrence.

Categories
links

Townhall: Return to Republicanism?

This weekend’s Common Sense column over at Townhall may seem familiar to readers of Common Sense. It summarizes a bunch of ideas we grapple with all the time. Even the historical facts about the Roman Republic and Empire may seem familiar — and for a reason. Most were featured in the “Today in Freedom” sidebar.

So click on over to Townhall, and then back here for some more reading:

I don’t know about you, but I wonder if Vladimir Putin sees himself as Odoacer. And Obama as Romulus Augustus.

Oh, here is Elizabeth Warren calling Tea Party Republicans “anarchists”:

http://youtu.be/AEqpQuenCxQ