Author: Redactor

Categories
ideological culture

Continental Divide

Today’s ideological impasse is not well understood.

To be a modern “liberal” or “progressive” means generally to favor governmental ways of accomplishing things over private ways, especially over voluntary economic transactions.

Programs such as Arizona’s “Clean Elections” law, discussed yesterday — like similar ideas elsewhere — are designed to make “things better” by preventing certain types of voluntary behavior and distributing taxpayer money (forcefully extracted money, mind you) to people who play by certain established rules.

This seems like “justice” and “fairness” to progressives. It seems more like tyranny and bullying and grand theft to me.

The biggest division — the ideological analog of a continental divide — may be the very picture we have of government. Whatever good intent there is, I see government as Force Institutionalized. So, of course I want it limited, by constitutions and whatnot, its scope reduced so that voluntary (non-governmental) interactions can take center stage in our social life.

I believe that paper constitutions are not enough, though, and that government must be checked by Joe and Jill Citizen, who have to live under it, pay taxes to support it, and in good conscience assent (or at least adapt) to its presence in their lives.

Progressives prefer not to look at the “naked force” aspect of government, and see only what they think it can do “for us.” I worry what it will do “to us.” As Tom Paine once wrote, “It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from his government.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access too much government

Arizona “Clean Elections” Scheme Nixed

The United States Supreme Court decided, 5-4, against Arizona’s “clean elections” law. In two challenges to the law, Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett and McComish v. Bennett, the Court ruled for freedom and against a bizarrely unfair form of “fairness.”

The idea behind Arizona’s law was to make money somehow “not count” by “leveling the playing field.” Arizona did this by giving taxpayer money to “clean elections candidates” to equal the voluntary donations obtained by privately funded competitors.

Chief Justice Roberts says the scheme goes “goes too far.” I would say: Way too far.

Roberts nicely argues that though “‘Leveling the playing field’ can sound like a good thing . . . in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game.  It is a critically important form of speech.  The First Amendment embodies our choice as a Nation that, when it comes to such speech, the guiding principle is freedom — the ‘unfettered interchange of ideas’ — not whatever the State may view as fair.”

Now, I see why people don’t like the ugliness and “unfairness” inherent in “winner-takes-all” zero-sum contests like political campaigns. But the solution isn’t to hand public money to some favored candidates, effectively putting a finger on the scales. Instead, provide the public with greater choices, and let the people freely decide.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall

What’s Next, Democracy?

Not all votes are democratic, for — as Stalin pointed out — it’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.

Same for “town halls” and public discussions: Politicians regularly hold meetings with constituents the main point of which is to make sure that nothing too challenging gets aired.

This being the case, you might guess my reservations about “deliberative polling” in the “What’s Next California” vein.

This weekend three hundred “randomly selected” Californians gathered in Torrance to undergo what looks to be a three-part process:

  1. Submit to polling on the major issues facing the crisis-ridden state.
  2. Gather to discuss the issues, with fact-sheets in hand, and lecturers to listen to and answer questions.
  3. Submit to polling at the end of the session, to see how many of the participants’ ideas have changed.

Project founder James Fishkin is obviously interested in the initiative process, but just as obviously interested in seeing it lean more towards a “progressive” direction. Of the three opinions on the program featured at Zócalo Public Square, I lean towards Tim Cavanaugh’s: “By combining polling with top-down instruction from a panel of ‘experts,’ deliberative pollsters hope to determine how voting would change if voters’ opinions could be forced into compliance with establishmentarian thinking. . . .”

Athenian-style public deliberation? Not really. The experts aren’t polled, so it’s obvious that they aren’t expected to modify their opinions.

Besides, in a real democracy, the people would do their own research and bring along their own experts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Reform Challenge

Taxpayers fund about half of all medical industry transactions, and governments regulate that as well as a huge chunk of the rest. No wonder medicine is in chaos.

Economist Charles Sable asserts that he knows how to make health care better. Arnold Kling, on EconLog, reports Sable as saying that “health care providers need to be able to improve by learning from and correcting mistakes. He then proceeds to offer legislation to force that.”

But Kling offers an interesting challenge: “If you know a better way to run health care organizations, why don’t you start a health care organization?”

As opposed to dictating by law how others should manage theirs.

Kling, an economist who has run a business or two, thinks that when “a liberal/progressive proposal is supposed to do X,” the liberal “expert” should “start a private entity to do X.” He sees no reason why the medical industry would be immune to such challenge:

If health care providers are doing a bad job, what stops you from implementing a better model and taking over the market? Are consumers too stupid to know the difference between providers who make lots of unnecessary mistakes and providers who don’t? If they are so stupid as consumers, why do you expect them to be smart as voters?

In the real world, we could use people with ideas who really run with them — not stand back and tell some other folks how to run yet another bunch of folks’ lives and businesses.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
too much government

ATF Misfire

A machine gun is like obscenity: We can’t define what it is, but everyone says they know it when they see it.

Well, that appears to be the case with the agency of the federal government formerly called the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, anyway. According to a statement issued yesterday by the Gun Owners of America (GOA), “The Bureau has never published a manual detailing how they determine what is, or is not, a machine gun.”

If your main reason for existence is controlling weaponry like machine guns, shouldn’t the criteria for determining what a machine gun is be publicly known?

But the reason for the bureau itself is a bit iffy. Known (un)popularly as the “ATF,” it’s been in operation (in one form or another) since 1886. Ronald Reagan infamously dubbed it a rogue agency. Since then, the ATF has slogged through multiple scandals, and a major umbrella department change, moving from Treasury to Justice. And that iffiness has been exacerbated by recent investigations by the House Oversight Committee.

Indeed, in part based on the results of those investigations, the GOA now advocates getting rid of the agency— you can read the details in yesterday’s communiqué.

The group has a point. Recent ATF activity includes another of its weird attempts at entrapment, which ended up supplying a huge amount of guns to the Mexican drug cartels.

Another federal agency doing the opposite of its mission?

Not unheard of. Call it a typical misfire.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ideological culture

Are Canada a Thug Nation?

Has Canada crossed the line? Was the post-hockey rioting in Vancouver the last straw? Should we toss Canada in a cell and throw away the key?

Al Capone once famously claimed he didn’t “even know what street Canada is on.” But I think we know that, kidding aside, Canada is a big and populous place, having somewhere around 34 or 35 million people, almost as many as Binghamton.

At any time, some of these millions are behaving well, others badly. With perhaps a few exceptions that we can debate in psychology class, every individual human being is responsible primarily for his own conduct, not that of anyone else.

So why does a New York Times story, “Hockey Hangover Turns Into Riot Embarrassment,” report that after Canadian thugs went on a rampage when their team lost a hockey game, “a nation that takes pride in its reputation for peaceful coexistence wrestled with questions about possible flaws in the national character”?

First of all, “the nation” didn’t fret about this. Certain people did.

Second, thugs who use sports and team rivalries — or trade agreements or any other grievance — to rationalize random destruction are nothing new in the world. Journalist Bill Buford published a visceral account of the British soccer-thug scene. Read Among the Thugs and you’ll know that the conduct of the rampaging rioters has nothing to do with the “national character” of either most fans or the little old lady down the street.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall

A Really Bad Sign

I’m traveling across California this week to raise awareness about a diaper load of legislation designed to restrict, thwart, inhibit, hamper, obstruct, impede, block and tackle California’s robust system of initiative and referendum.

Politicians know they cannot abolish voter initiatives outright. They’d need voter approval. Instead, they seek to rig the rules so that people are nonetheless prevented from exercising their rights.

At CitizensinCharge.org we’ve detailed the various legislative proposals, with one bill really standing out amidst the general stench: Senate Bill 448. Authored by State Senator Mark DeSaulnier, the bill has already passed the Senate and is pending in the State Assembly.

Sign of the Times

SB 448 would force any citizen gathering petitions to put an issue onto the ballot to wear a badge — really a small sign, with lettering the size I’m wearing in this picture. If the citizen petitions as a volunteer, the sign must read “VOLUNTEER SIGNATURE GATHERER”; if one is paid, then “PAID SIGNATURE GATHERER.”

The sign must also contain the California county in which one is registered, or read: “NOT REGISTERED TO VOTE.”

DeSaulnier touts his legislation as simply providing “a little transparency.” But for those in power to force citizens to wear a message that politicians dictate suggests that they think of petitioning government as a permitted privilege rather than an inalienable right.

Though it’s easy to bring up ugly historical parallels, that doesn’t make Sen. DeSaulnier and those supporting this bill redcoats or Nazis.

But they are petty, mean and unconstitutional.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Post-script: You can email Sen. DeSaulnier at: senator.desaulnier@sen.ca.gov

Categories
ideological culture

Fingernail Adjustment

The oldest method of fraud is the classic merchant’s trick of “putting finger to the scale,” in days before pre-packaging. Buy a pound of grain? Watch the seller’s hands, make sure they’re clear of the measurement device . . .

Some climate scientists might have been engaging in similar rigging of measurement, in this case of the sea’s much-prophesied rise, as FoxNews.com reports:

The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters — or about the thickness of a fingernail — every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.

So, instead of putting a finger on the scales, they’ve put a fingernail’s worth of bias to the data.

The scientists say they have to offset for other factors in the land-sea ratios, and, for all I know, they are correct. But in the context of the “global warming” debate it doesn’t look so good, especially when what we hear from climate change alarmists includes scant talk of complex, offsetting factors. Indeed, in that light, the repeated fingernail addition looks like a piling onto the data, to make the evidence match the prophecy.

Ideally, scientists would not ever dumb down their opinions — or skew their forecasts — to the point where we become suspicious of every complexity they add to their models.

But, as we have learned, we don’t live in an ideal world.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets ideological culture

Auto Bailouts & Obama Bombast

I never expected a Washington Post writer to so soundly assail a presidential stream of pro-bailout nonsense.

In a “Fact Checker” column entitled “President Obama’s phony accounting on the auto industry bailout,” Glenn Kessler concludes that a “virtually every claim” by the president in recent comments about the auto industry “needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.”

President Barack Obama says General Motors will rehire all workers laid off during the recession. But he’s referring to only a sliver of the 68,000 employees General Motors has dropped from its work force since 2006.

Obama says Chrysler has repaid “every dime” it got from taxpayers “during my presidency” — years ahead of schedule. But he omits four billion forked over to Chrysler during the last month of the Bush presidency! So . . . Chrysler has repaid every dime except four billion dollars. (That’s 40 billion dimes, by the way.)

And so forth. Kessler leaves the job of analyzing the wisdom of shoveling billions of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of failing firms to others. So he doesn’t observe that capital forcibly rerouted into “creating jobs” in foundering enterprises cannot be turned to more productive uses in the more successful enterprises from which the capital was grabbed. This is another fact Obama neglects.

It’s not the 2008 presidential campaign any more. Maybe the left-leaning press will no longer automatically bail out Obama when he distorts the truth?

Let’s see where we are in mid-2012.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment national politics & policies too much government

Disarm Power-Trippy Bureau-Thugs

“This is the sort of thing that should never, ever happen in a free society,” says Quin Hillyer at the Center for Individual Freedom site.

By “this . . . sort of thing” Hillyer means pre-dawn raids in which “thuggish bureaucrats . . . burst into a man’s home and handcuff him in front of his children because his estranged wife is late on student loan payments.”

I’ve already commented on this vicious and stupid Department-of-Education-sponsored raid. I return to the story to echo Hillyer’s suggestions for reform.

He observes that such baseless assaults on innocent citizens are “an increasing problem. . . . [A] horrific number of similar stories [show] that we are all subject, at the whim of idiots without any good reason to carry arms, to tactics reminiscent of a terrible police state.” More and more commonly, agencies like the Small Business Administration and the Railroad Retirement Board, which have no business having armed agents, nevertheless do.

Hillyer suggests that the SWAT-like raid teams and the people who order them should both be subject to imprisonment for these flagrant abuses of power. He also wants Congress to stop criminalizing mere clerical errors and to “de-arm federal agents.” The Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, concurs, saying he’d “like to see some Tea Party members of Congress pass bills to disarm all non-law-enforcement agencies.”

Yes. Let the congressmen openly debate and vote whether rampant, arbitrary, armed raids of innocent citizens should or should not continue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.