Author: Redactor

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Common Sense free trade & free markets insider corruption nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Welfare Kings

Bear Stearns. You gotta like an investment company with the word “bear” in it. If you are the kind of investor to go bullish over anything big, Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc., was BIG. For years its subprime mortgage biz made investors go all squirmy with bullishness.

They could pretend that the word “bear” was there for irony.

Call it prophecy, instead: The Bear Stearns bull lies on the ground, gored. Time to sell off the carcass.

The Federal Reserve has forced through a takeover deal, with J.P. Morgan buying out the dead bull. At a low, low price — though not nearly as low had the Federal Reserve stayed out. It’s another so-​called capitalist bailout, an attempt to make a failure not seem so big.

This is not free-​market capitalism, folks. This is big business welfare-statism.

In their normal run of operation, businesses negotiate the uncertainties of markets using tools like the profit-​and-​loss statement, aiming for profit. When they don’t manage this, they fail. Remember that term, loss?

Well, in today’s truly bipartisan political economy, the bigger you are the more scared our rulers get when you fail. So they prop up, as best they can, the biggest failures.

Forget welfare queens. The welfare kings are businessmen on the take from government. The losers are everybody else, as idiotic risks and bad business practices get propped up by government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

Justice, Skirted

Two years ago in Oklahoma, Riccardo Gino Ferrante was arrested for aiming a camera up a 16-​year-​old girl’s skirt while in a Target store. He was arrested and convicted of a felony.

Unfortunately, in mid-​March four-​fifths of Oklahoma’s Court of Criminal Appeals voted that no felony occurred.

Why?

Because “the person photographed was not in a place where she had a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Now, being in a public place does remove or decrease one’s expectation of privacy. But ought that extend even to the private space WITHIN one’s clothing?

The court answered in the affirmative. As Judge Gary Lumpkin wrote in his dissent, “It is open season for peeping Toms in public places who want to look under a woman’s dress.”

This is judicial common sense in the age of Britney Spears? At least there’s still the knuckle-​sandwich penalty someone might get.

If our court system can’t get this one right, everyone should agree that something’s wrong.

The judiciary must be independent. But it must be independent of the other branches of government, not detached from common sense, or all semblance of sanity.

Oklahoma legislators now seek to outlaw currently court-​protected invasive and gutter photography. Should they also consider random intelligence testing for the judiciary? They have more than probable cause.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
term limits

Arnold Loses His Strudel

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger no longer likes term limits. He explained why in an interview with the LA Times.

Says Arnold: “[O]riginally I felt very strongly that it was the greatest thing ever done. Because I despised the idea of guys being so locked in and safe in their positions, staying up in Sacramento and doing their deals and all this stuff.

“Now ’ve been there for four years and I say to myself, ‘Oh my God, this is a disaster.’… It’s going to hurt the state, because we have to start all over again, getting acquainted with these new people coming in.… John Burton, whom I’d just gotten used to working with; he used to bring me delicious Austrian coffee and apfelstrudel. Now he’s gone.”

Gee, competitive elections are so inconvenient, aren’t they? With the people coming and going and all this stuff? Not to mention the strudel crisis.

U.S. Term Limits president Phil Blumel observed: “Yes, Arnold ‘learned’ the lessons most politicians learn after a while in office: that government is the solution not the problem and that staying in office is better than leaving it.’

Blumel is right on. And I’m happy to report that California citizens ignored Arnold’s recent brainstorms and his endorsement of Prop 93, a devious term limits extension measure, defeated in February by Golden State voters. If the governor is still sad, well, maybe somebody can bring him some jelly doughnuts as a consolation prize.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
property rights

Saving a Scandigooginesian Denny’s

Can zoning laws stop time?

Consider the Denny’s in the Ballard district of Seattle, Washington.

It’s an odd building, and, in its own odd way, a landmark. The community adapted to it. Lots of people talk of it fondly — even the ones who would normally zone out a Denny’s on principle.

But it is a Denny’s. Or was until it closed a few months ago. And the owners want to sell it to a developer.

They filed to get it declared a landmark, hoping that it wouldn’t be. Well, play with fire, get burned. Lots of people glommed on to the proposal. Seattle’s Landmark Preservation Board decided in late February that the building should not be demolished.

There was much yammering about its unique architecture. There’s apparently a style called Google, and while I’ve ogled at the building in the past, it’s still, well, a Denny’s. Because it’s in Ballard, a community of Seattle known for high concentrations of Scandinavians, one architect was quoted calling the building’s style “Scandigooginesian,” because of Scandinavian, Google and Polynesian influences.

Unique, yes. But worth voiding private property right to sell? Hardly.

Sure Ballard defined itself by the building. But communities change, and redefine themselves with new development, like Ballard did when the building was built in 1964.

Besides, if folks in Ballard had patronized the Denny’s well enough, it would still be in business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

When Birds Attack

If you’ve never seen Hitchcock’s The Birds, you’ve probably seen a few chilling out-​takes. People running. Birds swooping. People screaming. Glass shattering.

Could the scenario be even scarier? Well, yes: if, say, it were illegal for the victims to defend themselves.

This is not a movie remake. That’s what the beleaguered citizens of Bartow are currently facing. This is a small town outside of Orlando — a quiet community says the Orlando Sentinel. Well, except for the screaming.

Migrating turkey vultures have turned into quite a nuisance there. They rip shingles off roofs. They chew rubber from car windows. First pecking a little. Then a lot.

And the people? Screams. Of frustration.

They’re not allowed to do much about this. They may blow a shrill whistle to try to scare off the vultures, or tactically position stuffed toys that resemble dead vultures. But the beleaguered residents may not kill or even capture the birds.

The birds are protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Apparently we’ve signed an agreement with the birds which makes it a criminal offense for anybody to ruffle their feathers. Too bad such well-​meaning edicts don’t also make it illegal for birds to harass innocent villagers.

Once again we see the tyranny of well-​meaning politics, un-​tethered by even the tiniest amount of thought about the consequences.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Common Sense

GASPworthy

I don’t live in Milwaukee County, so I’m not gasping right now. But, gasping or not, Milwaukee County residents have something the rest of us don’t. They have GASP.

GASP is the snappy acronym for CRG Network’s new Government Accountability in Spending Project. It’s an online database of information of Milwaukee County government’s finances. In the future, more local governments will go on the system. Right now, we can root around in the finances of this one county only. The search engine works like a breeze, and you can export the results of each search to a spreadsheet with an easy Export function.

CRG Network calls this “the ultimate in openness and transparency.” At crgnetwork​.com it’s explained that “Scott Walker and the Milwaukee County stepped forward to be the first unit of Wisconsin government to commit” to this citizens’ resource. The project had funding help from the Sam Adams Foundation, National Taxpayers Union, and Citizens in Charge.

Hey, I’m affiliated with two of these outfits! So I guess I’m patting myself on the back.

But not really. The hard work was done by the county’s Information Management Services Division, Controller’s Office, and Department of Administration, with a lot of help from professional volunteers of the CRG Network.

If you want to see how a local government spends its billions, you can hardly do better than putting Milwaukee County onto your research agenda. Thanks to GASP.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.