Author: Redactor

Categories
First Amendment rights free trade & free markets too much government

Absurdity Then, Absurdity Now

There’s a famous quip by one English intellectual about another. “Oh, you know what so-and-so’s idea of a tragedy is: A beautiful theory killed by an ugly fact.”

Well, don’t I know it.

I wrote a column, recently, for Townhall.com, entitled “The Buxom Bailout Babes of the Umpteenth Brumaire.” In it I noted that while the Great Depression was a tragedy, today’s economic debacle, though a repeat of it, is more farce. To demonstrate its farcical nature I noted that some people are seriously talking about bailing out the newspapers, which have hit hard times.

And nothing, I assured my readers, could be more absurd than that. The point of having newspapers is to be critical of government. To have government support them would turn them into worse propaganda rags than they now are.

The trouble with this? Well, FDR, way back in the tragedy, also subsidized newspapers. Well, at least one.

Bailouts weren’t exactly the main thrust of the New Deal, but they happened. And, like most political acts, they were politically motivated. FDR was worried about Philadelphia, which was solidly Republican. The Democratic newspaper was failing.

So he bailed it out.

Simultaneously he set the IRS on the publisher of the Republican newspaper. In the next election, the area turned Democrat.

Here’s one theory that won’t be disproven: In government, it’s politics that matters.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

The Year of Reform?

This year has brought good news for freedom and democracy in Oklahoma.

Last month, the state’s attorney general, Drew Edmondson, dropped his appeal of a federal court decision, which had overturned part of Oklahoma’s petition law. The AG also dismissed all charges against the Oklahoma Three — Rick Carpenter, Susan Johnson and me.

Hopefully, with the end of this politically motivated prosecution, the chilling effect it has had on Oklahomans who want to petition government will quickly dissipate.

But still, as State Senator Randy Brogdon points out, Oklahoma’s petition process remains “the most onerous . . . in the nation.” That’s the bad news.

The good news? Senator Brogdon and State Representative Randy Terrill aim to change all that. They’ve introduced legislation to “tear down many of the roadblocks that currently prevent the people from exercising their First Amendment rights.”

There’s a constitutional amendment to lower the signature requirements on petitions, now the highest percentage in the nation. A separate statute would give citizens a year to collect signatures, rather than the short 90-day window currently required. That statute would also clean up the process to prevent petitions from being thrown out arbitrarily.

Only three out of 24 initiative petitions this decade have made the Sooner State’s ballot. “Perhaps relief is on the way,” wrote The Oklahoman newspaper. Brogdon says, “2009 could be the year for reform.”

Now is exactly the right time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom

The Losingest Winner

Can you win too much?

Not if the job is worth doing or the game is worth playing to begin with, and is done honorably and well.

Consider the case of Micah Grimes, the coach of a Texas high school basketball team that beat another team 100 to zero. Covenant School recently fired Coach Grimes for failing to apologize for the massive margin of victory. Covenant School had posted a message on its website expressing regrets over the lopsided scale of the triumph, calling it “shameful and an embarrassment.”

Now, nobody is claiming the Covenant girls smashed the kneecaps of the Dallas Academy girls. The Academy players have a very long losing streak under the belts, and didn’t seem all that traumatized by their huge loss when interviewed about it on ABC News. In fact, they showed some pluck and eagerness to keep improving their game to try to improve their chances. As losers go, they have a winning attitude.

Coach Grimes, on the hand, lost . . . his job. He stated publicly that his values would not allow him “to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity.” Shortly afterward, Covenant School fired him.

The school did wrong. Coach Grimes did right to exhibit that integrity. There isn’t any rule in any sport that says the team that is winning must stop trying to win.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
initiative, referendum, and recall

Citizen Government in Gloucester

What does Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, have in common with Gloucester County, Virginia?

Politicians and judges who try their mightiest to keep citizens from influencing government.

In Wilkes-Barre, a judge ruled that Denise Carey would have to pay the court costs for the money spent by the city to trounce her attempt to put a local issue to a vote.

In Gloucester, a group of citizens got angry at four newly elected members of the county’s Board of Supervisors. The four had participated in a closed meeting. So some folks worked to get a Grand Jury, which indicted the supervisors, and then they petitioned to recall them.

The judge who got the case was neither respectful nor amused. He threw out the indictments — and, citing a minor technicality, the petitions too.

He then ruled that the citizen activist group owed $80,000, to cover a majority of the supervisors’ legal bills.

As I told you a few weeks ago, the Wilkes-Barre case had a good ending, with higher courts reversing the judge’s decision.

In Gloucester County, the ACLU is coming to the aid of the group, and the state legislature is considering a law preventing judges in future cases from punishing citizens exercising their rights.

Great — but wouldn’t it be better if politicians and judges respected citizen rights in the first place?

That would be Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets

A Cato Alert

President Obama suggests that all economists agree that the best way to dig the economy out of its giant hole is to dig that hole faster and harder. Too much debt? Pile on more. Consumers not “buying enough”? Tax and borrow more to spend more to subsidize more buying.

I don’t get it. Were I Robinson Crusoe on a desert island I sure would want to consume. Berries and bananas, fish, maybe deer.

But I’d also want to produce. I’d make tools to help me to gather and hunt, and to prepare and store food. Desiring shelter, I’d realize that I can’t live in a hut unless I first build the hut.

On Crusoe’s island, there would be no politicians around to tax me to death before I could finish the hut. But here in our mixed economy, there sure is.

The Cato Institute, a D.C.-based think tank, has been spreading the word that not all economists believe that the best way to improve the economy is to nuke taxpayers and producers. At Cato.org I’ve heard economists insist that bailouts have NEVER worked to stimulate the economy. Further, Cato has taken out a full-page ad in major newspapers, like the Washington Post and the New York Times, disputing the notion that the solution to the recession is a massive government spending spree.

The Cato statement is signed by hundreds of economists. Many more signed it after the ad was published.

Will it help? I have the audacity to hope.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights

Don’t Outlaw the First Amendment

Should Doug Guetzloe go to jail for speaking his mind?

I say No.

That’s not State Attorney Lawson Lamar’s answer. Lamar tried to imprison Guetzloe for 14 years.

In 2006, Doug Guetzloe distributed a flyer about mayoral candidate David Strong to Winter Park, Florida, residents. It pertained to an embarrassing dustup Strong had with a neighbor. The police report Guetzloe quoted is publicly available. The alleged crime is not libel.

Lamar charged Guetzloe with violating Florida’s election laws. One is supposed to include a disclaimer with any paid electioneering communication saying it’s an electioneering communication. The flyer did not advocate voting for or against any candidate. Not that doing so should jeopardize anyone’s liberty either.

Guetzloe pled no contest, thinking any penalty would be trivial. But he was sentenced to 60 days in jail and $8500 in fines. The easiest path might still have been to just do the time and pay the fine. But Guetzloe has been fighting back, spending a small fortune on legal fees.

Late in 2008, his attorneys filed a motion with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking it to declare Florida’s Electioneering Communications law to be unconstitutional. A little earlier, a federal judge had restrained the State of Florida from enforcing that law.

There is only one right ruling here. The high court should uphold the right to freedom of speech.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
government transparency

Transparent Obama

You may have heard about Barack Obama’s desire for greater transparency in government. Policy will now favor ready revelation, he has said. No more unnecessary dark secrets about governmental doings.

As a U.S. senator, Obama made a few plausible gestures in support of greater openness about the legislative process. So I have been guardedly optimistic about his commitment to transparency as our new president.

President Obama has promised to post legislation online for public viewing before he signs it. However, the very first bill he signed, which expands the right to sue over alleged pay discrimination, was not posted online.

Recovery.gov page, early February
Recovery.gov page, early February

An administration spokesman alluded to mysterious difficulties preventing this. Apparently, one is not allowed to be transparent about the obstacles to transparency. Okay, so maybe it just slipped through the cracks.

But what more urgent test can there be of the president’s commitment to transparency than the trillion-dollar “stimulus” spending package Obama is touting? Why not make it easy for all Americans to scan the dirty details before it’s too late to scream at congressmen to try to stop it?

The question answers itself, but let’s visit the recovery.gov Web page.

There we are told: “Check back after the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to see how and where your tax dollars are spent.”

You know, after it’s too late.

The only thing transparent here is this maneuver.

This Is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense First Amendment rights

More than a Breach of Professional Ethics?

The Oklahoma Educational Television Authority has a mission, to provide “Public Television For All of Oklahoma.”

And its top-listed production is news.

Oklahoma Educational Television Authority website
Oklahoma Educational Television Authority

And yet when the non-profit organization I work with, the Citizens in Charge Foundation, sent out a press release to OETA — that’s the outfit’s acronym — OETA sent an official complaint to our Web host, calling the press release spam.

Our former Web host, Hostica, shut down our site and our email.

This is the second time this happened. Obviously, we won’t be sending any more press releases to that news source.

But think about this. OETA is in the news biz. For it to call a press release “spam” — unwanted — is not just nasty, it’s an astounding breach of professional ethics. It’s like a weather man refusing to cover snow, or a preacher refusing to talk about God, or . . . a politician refusing to read the Constitution.

Now, it could be that we sent the press release to the wrong department. Their proper response? Forward it to the right people, then reply back.

But email routing is not what this is all about. Our press release covered a story that put a top Oklahoma politician in bad light. The public TV folk in Oklahoma aren’t independent. Being all-too-political, OETA — or someone at OETA — attempted to squelch our speech rights.

So I ask you: What should our response be?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability Common Sense free trade & free markets too much government

New Prez Pleads for Common Sense

I like a president who pleads for common sense.

Here’s the story, headlined in the New York Times: “Obama Calls for ’Common Sense’ on Executive Pay.”

The president announced a salary cap for top executives working for companies garnering the greatest gobs of booty under the most recent federal bailout. The cap? Half a million bucks.

President Obama allayed a few qualms, right away. He said that “This is America, we don’t disparage wealth. . . .” And he said, “we certainly believe that success should be rewarded.”

But he does talk about the “height of irresponsibility” in Bush administration bailouts, with execs taking huge bonuses after running their companies into the ground. Who wasn’t sickened by this? Obama sees it as common sense to make sure we don’t reward massive failure with the usual rewards of success.

Still, America is also about respecting contracts. Those corporations had negotiated very explicit contracts with their execs regarding the big bucks. And — surprise, surprise — Congress wrote up the law on the gargantuan bailouts without requiring those contracts be renegotiated.

And consider: Do we really want our politicians setting non-government salaries?

This is all a side issue, though. Take the bailouts themselves. Where’s the common sense there? They do reward failure. They will not help the economy. If our leaders had acted according to common sense, the whole salary issue wouldn’t even have come up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Fake Grit

“Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Or maybe not: I prefer it when “cooler heads prevail.”

But as our times get desperate, here comes Tony Blankley with a new book, True Grit.

Blankley calls for a universal draft that would delay college or work for your 18- or 19-year-old boy or girl, forcibly placing them under government control. Under Blankley’s plan the military would get first dibs, but those not forced into military service would be corralled into civilian government service.

This is, well, stupid. One of the federal government’s few big successes has been the all-volunteer military. Forcing people, not suited or interested, into armed service may seem egalitarian, but it undermines the military, which ought to concentrate on winning wars.

Moreover, to force millions more into government make-work programs, again in the name of fairness, will cost taxpayers plenty — and uproot the lives of young people.

Charlie Rangel has been the most persistent conscription pusher. His draft legislation proved so overwhelmingly unpopular that when it was brought up in Congress even he voted against it.

In a review of True Grit at Human Events, Blankley is described as progressing politically from being a libertarian to a conservative to a nationalist.

Sorry, that’s not progress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.