Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.
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Author: Redactor
Since my days in the early grades of school, there’s been a lot of educational progress in America.
Not so much in the public schools, but in alternatives to them. When I was young, public schools were not only paid for by taxpayers, they were near-monopolies. Parochial schools and other religious-based programs were few. Home-schooling was uncommon, technically illegal in most states and locales.
How things have changed! Not enough, mind you. But the general political culture has improved enough that charter schools are often voted in, and there exist working voucher systems, if of a limited scope, in several areas of these United States.
In Britain, the situation is also opening up. The Labour Party is pitching its support for “parent-led academies in areas of educational need.” Party outreach spokesman Tristram Hunt, who had previously snarked that such projects were “vanity project[s] for yummy mummies,” takes it all back, now insisting that his (quasi-socialist) Labour Party now backs “enterprise and innovation.”
Britain is ruled by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, with Labour on the outs, so of course Labour could be said to be grasping at straws. It’s cheap to try freedom when you have little power. Conservative politicians insist that the latest statements are nothing but empty promises, and that Labour is still socialistically clinging to the old notion of schools “run by bureaucrats.”
But hey: notice that freer solutions are on the table.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Washington Government is broken. Everyone — even those limited to a single firing brain synapse — knows as much. But, what to do about it?
Washington scribe Ezra Klein offers “The 13 reasons Washington is failing,” on The Washington Post’s “Wonkblog.”
First on Klein’s list? Earmarks. Really. Yes, the little pork-barrel items stuffed into bills without any debate or serious consideration to boost an incumbent politician by a million or a billion dollars here or there. Klein blames the GOP House for banning earmarks.
“It used to be that Boehner could ask a member to take a tough vote and, in return, help him or her get a bridge built back home,” explains Ezra. “That bargaining chip is gone.”
Our political system desperately needs it back, so we can put the genie back in the Klein bottle. Congressional leaders simply must be able to keep your representative on the take.
But that’s not all. Government is also too transparent, or, as Ezra puts it, “Too much sunshine can burn.”
Sure, effective political bridge-trading needs to be done behind closed doors. Away from the prying eyes of pesky voters.
Klein goes on to lament that, “Big business has lost a lot of its power over the Republican Party.” That’s a problem. Really. Progressives are nonplussed.
And Klein argues “The Republican Party has become particularly extreme” and “Ted Cruz (and others like him) has gained a lot of power over the Republican Party,” before informing readers: “There is no ‘Republican Party.’”
All of which — obviously and unquestionably — explains why Big Government cannot give us nice things. Or so says one insiders’ outsider.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Eugene O’Neill
Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
The war on democracy is ongoing. One of the ironies some folks note is that the biggest opponents of citizens’ direct say in government tend to be sitting Democratic politicians. But Democrats who earnestly support democracy can take heart, for not only can they remind Republicans of recent GOP-led jihads against initiative rights, but Governor Jerry Brown, a Democrat, just vetoed an initiative-silencing bill in California.
Of course, it was concocted by labor unions for their benefit, and was supported by Democrats in the Assembly, but still: Huzzahs for Jerry Brown!
Assembly Bill 857, advanced by Cupertino’s Paul Fong, would have placed hurdles on the petitioning process by limiting the paying of petitioners to qualify initiatives for the ballot. The vetoed law, if enacted, would have required 10 percent of valid signatures to be volunteers. But “volunteer” included union workers who were, in fact, being paid to circulate petitions.
And that was one of the governor’s complaints about the weaselly legislation.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association had gone on record opposing the measure, charging that it would have made the process more difficult for most groups with its cumbersome record-keeping requirements. And another part of the bill, as Neal Hobson summarized at Citizens in Charge,
would have established a right for any California citizen to sue the sponsors of initiative petitions by claiming they had turned in any fraudulent signatures. Whether such charges could be substantiated or not, the resultant litigation could bankrupt initiative campaigns with legal fees.
Devious political minds obviously cooked up this bill. Exclude Gov. Brown from that designation.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Eugene O’Neill
Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
Former FEC commissar Trevor Potter says the Supreme Court “should get more politically savvy.”
Potter really means the High Court should agree with him, and allow incumbents in Congress to write the campaign finance rules under which they — and their opponents — operate, undisturbed by constitutional review.
Last week, the Court heard McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case concerning Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman, who wants to give $1,776 dollars to more candidates. He’s limited, because by law he cannot give over $48,600 to all federal candidates combined.
Why? Apparently those who contribute $48,600 or less to candidates they believe in are pure of heart, but that once that forty-eighth-thousandth-six-hundredth-and-first dollar is donated it can only be devoid of any decent intention, an unquestionable attempt to corrupt our government.
Most observers recognize that such an arbitrary limit is constitutionally suspect and likely to be voided. Including Potter, who is already furious that the Roberts Court has restricted congressional legislation dealing with campaign regulation in all five cases it has thus far considered. Potter accuses it of “judicial hubris” and “contempt for legislative authority” and “a surprising lack of respect for Congress’s expertise on political matters.”
How could “a lack of respect” for Congress be “surprising”?
Speaking of “political savvy,” where’s Potter’s?
Potter concludes that the Supremes “should leave politics to the politicians, who have a better sense of when the intersection of fundraising and lawmaking leads to corruption.”
Sure, politicians have a better sense of that corrupt intersection . . . they’re always there.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Albert Jay Nock
One can hardly say that republicanism has failed, or say a priori that it is bound to fail, so long as it has not been tried under conditions essential to its success.
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Townhall: Earmarks and Ezra to the Rescue
This weekend’s Townhall excursion takes us back to the utopia of just a few years ago, when politics was stable. Yes, that’s an argument. It was made by Ezra Klein. Click on over, then come back here for a few choice bits of further reading.
- Washington Post: Ezra Klein, “The 13 reasons Washington is failing“
- Wall Street Journal: “Use of Food Stamps Swells Even as Economy Improves”
- CBS: “House Probe Cries Foul on Social Security Disability Claims”
- “Selected Data from Social Security’s Disability Program”
- USA Today: “Wall Street cowers as Fed hints at stimulus pull-back”
- Common Sense: “Big Government Blows It”
- Common Sense: “The Apple of Their Own Eyes”
- Common Sense: “Resistance is Not Futile”
- Wikipedia: “Klein bottle”
- The Objective Standard: Ari Armstrong, “Get Government Out of Beer“
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Albert Jay Nock
As long as our people are incapable of the simplest possible process of putting two and two together, I can not get much warmed up over their political misfortunes.