On February 5, 1788, Robert Peel was born. He would become one of the most important of the United Kingdom’s prime ministers, ushering in some reforms that led to the liberalization of England in the 19th century.
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Author: Redactor
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February 4
On February 4, 1789, George Washington was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States, under the new constitution, by the U.S. Electoral College. On the same date five years later, the French legislature abolished slavery throughout all territories of the French Republic.
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Frédéric Bastiat
Partial plunder, universal plunder, absence of plunder, amongst these we have to make our choice. The law can only produce one of these results.
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Protecting the Guilty at IRS
Should a spurious inalienable right to Employee Confidentiality protect IRS personnel from being held accountable when they commit crimes?
In 2010, Christine O’Donnell, then running for U.S. Senate, had to fend off false accusations about tax liabilities on property she no longer owned — after her tax returns had been released to political opponents. No one broke into her home and stole a copy of the returns. Some IRS guy had divulged them.
Other citizens too, as we’ve noted, have been targeted by IRS and other agencies for ruffling the feathers of the powers that be.
Congressional committees looking into the Internal Revenue Service’s diverse assaults on persons with inconvenient political views have tossed O’Donnell’s case onto their slush pile. But IRS is not cooperating with these investigations. IRS says that openly naming perpetrators would violate Employee Confidentiality. (Which apparently bears a family resemblance to Diplomatic Immunity.)
This is par. A few IRS officers have been transferred or even resigned following revelations about how IRS harassed conservative applicants for tax-exempt status. But the FBI has dropped its non-investigation of evil deeds with respect to which a perpetrator like Lois Lerner feels she must plead the Fifth and depart the scene with only her freedom and her $50,000 pension. Others also see nothing to see.
If our laws allow IRS to stonewall to protect the guilty, they should be changed. Such governmental targeting of us should be both illegal and punishable. Do you agree?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Photograph courtesy of scismgenie, some rights reserved.
Why is schooling so expensive? Government makes it so.
Take the recent example, in California, of “coder boot camps.” These are “schools” where computer coders receive training. We now learn that the Golden State’s education bureaucrats are cracking down on this unlicensed and unregulated form of learning.
Unless they comply, these organizations face imminent closure and a hefty $50,000 fine. These organizations have two weeks to start coming into compliance.
In mid-January, the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education (BPPE) sent cease and desist letters to Hackbright Academy, Hack Reactor, App Academy, Zipfian Academy, and others.
The regulators insist that these private enterprises fall under their regulatory domain, and they are going to do their job, dangit, even if it helps . . . no one.
Reaction from the coder academy heads has been boilerplate. They’ve attested to their will to co-operate with regulators, but worry that current regulations do not really have much to do with what they are up to.
Hey, regulators, rather than shut these academies down, or cook up new regs, why not just let the operations go on as before?
Worried about quality control in a consumer-protection sense? Then make one requirement: The schools should notify paying students that the academy’s services and education contracts are unregulated by the state. Make do, students, with caveat emptor, as before. That is, by the principles of market supply and demand, and undergirding laws against fraud.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Let Jeff Mizanskey Go
Commuting unjust sentences is the least that should be done for convicted non-criminals like Jeff Mizanskey, guilty of peaceful offenses in the War on Drugs. The man’s heinous crime? Abetting a friend’s purchase of marijuana. For this, Mizanskey was sentenced to life without parole — more than 20 years ago.
Because Mizanskey had been caught with pot before, prosecutors designated him a “prior and persistent offender,” and sought the most draconian penalty possible. For not doing anything to anybody.
Repeated appeals of his sentence have availed him naught.
His son Chris and his attorney Tony Nenninger have been asking Missouri Governor Jay Nixon for clemency. In his letter to the governor, Nenninger observes that his client seems to be alone in Missouri in serving a life sentence “for non-violent cannabis-only offenses.”
Nenninger’s appeal for donations is accessible via the website of Show-Me Cannabis, an organization that fights to legalize marijuana in Missouri and elsewhere, and which has been helping to publicize the cause. Show-Me Cannibis explains on its justice-for-Jeff page: “Many prisoners make these applications, and it is rare that a case gets enough of a governor’s attention to be seriously considered. This is why it’s so important you speak out!”
Since I disagree with 1,111 out of every 1,112 Obama policies, perhaps I should note here that one good thing the president has been doing, recently, is using his power more often to commute outrageous sentences. It’s a start.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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February 3
February 3 is one of those “good days/bad days” dates:
- Nice: 1783 – Spain recognized United States independence.
- Not-so-nice: 1787 – Militia led by General Benjamin Lincoln crushed the remnants of Shays’ Rebellion in Petersham, Massachusetts.
- Great: 1870 – The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing voting rights to citizens regardless of race.
- Horrible: 1913 – The Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, authorizing the Federal government to impose and collect an income tax.
- But we can celebrate birthdays of two worthies: Walter Bagehot, famed editor of The Economist and author of Lombard Street, was born in 1826, while economist Greg Mankiw was born on this date in 1958.
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Frédéric Bastiat
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
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Groundhog Day
On February 2, 1887, Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania celebrated the first Groundhog Day. On the same day in 1976, the Groundhog Day gale hit the north-eastern United States and south-eastern Canada.
In 2009, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe officially devalued the Zimbabwean dollar for the third and final time, making Z$1 trillion now only Z$1 of the new currency, equivalent to Z$10 septillion before the first devaluation. Politicians in Zimbabwe looked up, saw their shadow, and realized that they had only a couple months more of their inflation binge. Indeed, the legalization of trading currencies, the previous month, had sealed the fate of Zimbabwe’s independent dollar. The Zimbabwean dollar was abandoned officially on the 9th of April, 2009.
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Townhall: Give Them Credit
The latest database on U.S. citizens, prying into our private lives, and it wasn’t perpetrated by the NSA!
Click on over to Townhall.* Then back here. For, we’ve got some links for you. But hey: First things first: Read the Townhall piece. It’s short! (And easy to share. If you weren’t aware of this chunk of our Surveillance State, sharing links is more than in order.)
For the Doris Day reference, see The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Alfred Hitchcock.
For the King of Siam reference, see The King and I, with that great starring role by Yul Brenner.
For more on the new database, see
- Washington Examiner: “Federal consumer bureau data-mining hundreds of millions of consumer credit card accounts, mortgages”
- Washington Examiner: “CFPB HQ rehab to cost more than Trump Towers”
- Washington Examiner: “Consumer agency FOIA officers help employees hide work calendars”
* The column was published Monday, February 4, one day later than intended. Sorry for any confusion.