Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets nannyism

Jerry Brown’s Latest Trip

Some politicians are loathe to allow freedom of action even when they’re going out of their way to allow freedom of action.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown doesn’t want the federal government to harass patients who use medical marijuana, or to harass those who provide it. To implement this laissez-faire policy, Brown wants to make darn sure that any businessmen who provide cancer patients with marijuana are the ones who get raided and arrested.

What’s going on?

Cannabis for medical use has been legal in California since 1996, when voters passed Proposition 215. The federal government has not been playing along, however.

To clarify things, Attorney General Brown has issued an 11-page guideline to help “legitimate patients” avoid being arrested. The guidelines also confirm the legality of medical marijuana co-ops. Brown hopes that under the new guidelines patients will steer clear of the unapproved dispensaries.

Who is an unapproved provider? Anyone who actually makes money selling medical marijuana. Supposedly, it’s okay for a cancer patient to ease his pain with the plant, so long as there is no economic incentive for anyone to help him ease it. It must be done by nonprofit co-operatives.

Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project doesn’t agree that socialist medicine is good, capitalist medicine bad. “Last I heard,” he says, “Walgreens isn’t a charity.”

He’s right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Helter Keller

In 2000, Florida Congressman Ric Keller was just Citizen Keller, running for Congress for the first time.

An October 2000 news story states, “Regardless of whether Democrat Linda Chapin or Republican Ric Keller wins Orange County’s congressional battle, neither one of them will be in the seat past 2008. Both Chapin and Keller have signed pledges limiting themselves to eight years in office.”

Now, that was optimistic. But hey: I was optimistic too.

After Keller won his first term, I saw him speak at a conference sponsored by U.S. Term Limits. He was persuasive about the virtue of serving a few years, then stepping down. No big deal for him to leave Washington and return to Florida to enjoy balmy lakeside life. Keller was very aw-shucks and folksy about it.

That was then. Now Keller has decided eight years in one political office is not enough, despite his pledge.

He’s telling reporters that as a “rookie candidate” he just didn’t understand the importance of seniority in Washington. Hmm. That’s funny. I thought one of the best reasons to support term limits was because we understand how seniority works in Washington!

There’s also the issue of integrity versus self-interest. Other leaders have kept term-limit pledges: Mark Sanford, now the governor of South Carolina; Tom Coburn, now a U.S. Senator; and Keller’s fellow Floridian, Charles Canady, who was just nominated to serve on the state supreme court. Unlike Keller they’ve succeeded and kept their integrity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
judiciary property rights too much government

© Is for California

You might think that there’s nothing a government won’t try. You’d be right. But I was near stupified to learn that the state of California copyrights its laws. And it’s not alone.

The state tries to control — through copyright — how you can access its laws, where and how you store them, etc. The state makes available its building codes, plumbing standards and criminal laws online, but requires you to ask for permission to download them!

The state’s out to make money. It charges $1,556 for a digital version, more for a print-out, and makes nearly a million dollars a year selling what is legally ours.

Yes, what’s ours. We are a nation of laws, not of men, and we have the right to own and reprint our laws as much as we want. The purpose of copyright is to ensure private parties can maintain some control over their intellectual property. But the laws themselves are, in point of elementary political theory, the intellectual property of all. Not of state bureaus.

Thankfully, heroic Internet technician and mover and shaker Carl Malamud believes in government transparency. And he, unlike Al Gore, really worked to help build the Internet.

On Labor Day Mr. Malamud published the whole California code online. Available for free.

Obviously, Malamud is spoiling for a fight. Good. He should win it. He has, after all, the law (if not the state) on his side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Bootless Economic Policy

When I was a kid, what we now call flip-flops were called thongs. When I use the word “thong” about footwear, today, I get funny looks from the kids.

Whether it’s today’s thong, or yesteryear’s, both are skimpy. When you walk, the footwear goes “flip flop, flip flop”; what happens to the underwear, well . . .

Modern Democratic Party economic policy is like the underwear — it quickly creeps into uncomfortable places. Republican economic policy resembles the Democrats’, but also the footwear. Take John McCain’s economic policy: “flip flop, flip flop.”

Recently, McCain pompously took credit for “putting” and “keeping [Americans] in their homes.” Give me a break! He’s not paying the mortgage. I liked it better when, after the housing bubble began to burst, McCain said we should be wary of subsidizing bad business decisions with a massive bailout.

But not long after saying that he then specified a whole bunch of bailout measures. Flip. Hillary Clinton chortled that at last he was getting it, but he wasn’t going far enough.

His basic problem, though, goes back to his philosophy. He said that he’s “committed to using all the resources of this government and great nation to create opportunity and make sure that every deserving American has a good job and can achieve their American dream.”

Flop. To ensure his goal, he should not use all the resources of government!

Sometimes less is more. Like . . . sandals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets too much government

Wind Turbine Blues

I’m all for alternative sources of energy . . . providing that they actually produce enough to cover their costs.

Sad to say, it’s beginning to look like wind power is for the birds, if not the bats.

One big fear some people had about wind turbines was that they might kill too many birds. Think giant food processors in the sky.

But it turns out that the bigger danger is to bats. Dead bats are found all around wind turbines. Why?

Wind pressure. The poor little creatures can’t stand the quick change in air pressure around those spinning blades.

Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the government agency overseeing the state’s rebate programs for alternative energy, has put a halt to subsidizing small wind turbines. No more bucks for housetop windmills, folks.

The agency sponsored a study that has calculated that the average energy output for the turbines reviewed was no more than 27 percent of what installers had projected. It could be worse, and sometimes is. In Britain, a study found that some poorly placed turbines sucked up more energy converting current from DC to household AC than produced, making them economic and energy sink holes.

We should remember, when activists start talking about revolutionizing things, that subsidies are for the birds, and technology based on hope alone, bats.

It’s from successful business operations that future revolutions come, not from mere wishful thinking. Or any amount of government subsidy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders national politics & policies

True Outsider Experience

John McCain’s choice of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate shocked a lot of people.

Even people in the media didn’t know very much about her. She hasn’t spent any time on Meet the Press, for example.

But I knew who she was long before her selection as Republican nominee for Vice President. That’s because Sarah Palin has real street cred as a reformer.

For starters, as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she followed through on her campaign promise to cut property taxes — by 40 percent.

Though a Republican, she has not hesitated to challenge Party bigwigs. She went after the state’s Republican Party chairman for ethics violations — violations he later admitted. She joined a Democrat in filing an ethics complaint against the Republican attorney general. He later resigned.

Then, in 2006, she ran against the incumbent governor of her own party, and by connection the whole corrupt GOP cabal in Alaska. And she won.

Today, Sarah Palin is the most popular governor in the country.

Of course, questions remain. Though she has taken on GOP leaders in her state, she has been friendlier to their pork projects than I like.

But while some belittle her experience, her readiness to be president, I say, think again: Twenty or 30 years of Washington experience disqualifies a candidate for the job.

Now, I don’t mean to speak ill of politicians . . . well, yes I do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

McCain’s Admission

John McCain is a man on a mission. But it was his admission that Republicans in Washington have lost their way that jumped out at me as I listened to his speech accepting the Republican Party presidential nomination.

“I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party,” he told Republicans. “We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us.”

Everyone already knows this. We’ve watched power politics triumph over principle.

But it was still nice to hear McCain say it. The first step toward solving a problem is to recognize you have one.

McCain went on to admit, “We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger.”

Oh, yeah, a whole lot bigger.

I began shouting about Republicans selling out principle early on, when, after Republicans took the House back in the 1990s, they quickly also took a dive on enacting term limits.

And the sell-outs just kept coming. Republicans traded their rank and file supporters for a bevy of big special interests.

McCain says he wants to take the party “back to basics,” vowing “low taxes, spending discipline, and open markets.”

That’s the right message. And McCain’s opposition to earmarks is to his credit. But are voters ready to believe it?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
judiciary jury rights and duties

Penn’s Jurors’ Treason — Our Reason

Remember, remember the Fifth of September, when jurors freed Penn of the knot. I know of no reason why Penn’s jurors’ treason should ever be forgot.

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is one of three governors who have honored September 5, officially, as Jury Rights Day. From her 2007 proclamation we learn that 338 years ago, in the trial of William Penn, his jury refused to convict him of violating England’s Conventicle Acts, despite clear evidence that he acted illegally by preaching a Quaker sermon.

In acquitting Penn, the jury acted against the judge’s explicit instructions, perhaps spurred by the judge’s own illegality, not allowing Penn to make a defense. So the judge threw the jurors in prison, on September 5.

In my little ditty, my parody of the Guy Fawkes Day rhyme, I indicated Penn was in danger of hanging. I doubt that. It rhymes; that’s my excuse. But he was in danger of harsh imprisonment, at the very least, merely for gathering people so he could preach.

The jurors who resisted a bad law and a rogue judge risked a lot. But they not only freed Penn, who went on to found Pennsylvania, they established important principles to be found today in our Bill of Rights — and in the principle of jury nullification. They served justice by judging the law as well as the accused.

I know of no reason why Penn’s jurors’ “treason” should ever be forgot!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
nannyism

“Safe” Kids Are Fat Kids

Even the most careful athlete sometimes pulls a muscle. Does that mean that vigorous and sometimes even risky exercise is more dangerous than being a cordoned and cosseted couch potato?

Many of the gendarmes who oversee America’s playgrounds seem to think so. I don’t know how real the so-called “epidemic” of obesity is. (Is the fat infectious?) But it wouldn’t surprise me if kids banned from playing one “dangerous” game after another tend to accumulate more flab than when they were rambunctiously running around like they always used to do.

Even playing tag is outlawed in some places. Along with cops and robbers, monkey bars, and sliding into third base. Playground mats laid down to break possible falls are the latest terror. The sun sometimes makes them hot, and barefooted kids can burn their feet.

Playground activists are in an uproar over this latest bogus crisis. When are the canopies going up?

Philip Howard, the author of The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America, says we’re teaching kids to be flabby in more ways than one. He notes that scrapes and bruises are one way “children learn their limits, and the need to take personal responsibility.”

Life is an inherently risky venture. You don’t learn to cope with those risks if you are never allowed to take even modest ones. And that’s dangerous.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
local leaders property rights

The Redding Alternative

Ever since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that it is constitutionally okay for states and towns to grab property for pretty much any reason at all, citizens have been trying to prevent governments from doing so.

The track record is spotty. Officials and private interests who like to grab private property are aware of public outrage over the court’s decision. So they often support “protections” against eminent domain abuse with loopholes you could drive a truck through.

In a recent California election, two alleged property-protection measures were on the ballot. Proposition 98 was the real deal. Proposition 99 was the fake. Unfortunately, the phony measure was the one that passed. It was the measure that had by far the most advertising, being bankrolled (you guessed it) by land-grabbing special interests.

Friends of property rights can eventually try another ballot measure. Meanwhile, voters and elected officials in towns and counties can act independently to protect property owners, as the town council of Redding, California, has done. By a majority of three to two, the council voted to forbid officials from grabbing property just to flip it to another private owner.

Redding Councilman Ken Murray, who proposed the new law, says he wanted “to make it really hard for some future councilperson to willy-nilly take property from one person and give it to another just to jack up our revenue.”

Great move! Let’s hope it works.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.