Author: Redactor

Earmarked Nation

The big secret of the federal government’s budget is that there isn’t one.

Instead of proposing a rational budget, Congress spends money in huge omnibus bills, which sweep up most of the big items into a bucket which is then poured out into the economy. Since these buckets contain more money than can actually be found in federal coffers, the consequent deficits are covered by debt.

Which accumulates.

Looming larger and more ominous every year.

One way these omnibus bills are managed is that almost no one reads them. As former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of Obamacare, ya gotta pass it to find out what’s in it.

How to get congressmen to go along with this financial chaos? Bribery. Make the spending binge even bigger with earmarks.

That’s where members of Congress place local boondoggle projects into the omnibus bills and get them through without having to convince anyone but the leadership of the projects’ dubious merits.

I used to talk more about earmarks. But when the Tea Party Republicans entered in 2011, they nixed earmarking “the pork.”

When the Democrats came back into power, the aforementioned Mrs. Pelosi brought them back, which, in the last big omnibus bill, pushed spending up an extra $8 billion or so.

Though Democrats love earmarks as an institutional practice, Republican protests are often merely pro forma. Alabama’s Retiring Republican Senator Richard Shelby, for example, “got $666.4 million down there to Alabama,” explained Tom Temin recently. “Sounds like there’s going to be a lot of Richard Shelby bridges, Richard Shelby schoolhouses, Richard Shelby highways.”

Thankfully, one of the concessions Speaker of the House McCarthy made with the Freedom Caucus (whom the president calls “ultra-MAGA” and “semi-fascist”) was to attack the earmarking practice again — after a failure to decide against earmarks late last year.

We’ll see how that goes. But the real test will be the abandonment of omnibus spending packages.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Congress, debt, earmarks, porkbarrel politics

Thought

George Stigler

The state — the machinery and power of the state — is a potential resource or threat to every industry in the society. With its power to prohibit or compel, to take or give money, the state can and does selectively help or hurt a vast number of industries.
George Stigler, “The theory of economic regulation,” The Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science (1971).

Today

ACLU

Post author By Redactor
Post date January 20, 2023
No Comments on ACLU

On January 20, 1920, the American Civil Liberties Union was founded.

general freedom media and media people national politics & policies

How Congress Works

“Who knew that our time-tested and powerful democracy could not survive a few days of debate and disagreement on our most important questions?” asked journalist Glenn Greenwald weeks ago during the House voting for Speaker.

“To hear establishment mavens all tell the story,” he pointed out, “the failure of Congress to smoothly and swiftly and immediately elect a speaker that’s been preordained — with little debate (as it usually does) — has put the U.S. Government on the verge of collapse.

“Apparently, a healthy democracy requires that everyone march in lockstep, follow orders from on high, and never question anything,” he added sarcastically.

Greenwald is onto something.

“One of the dirty secrets of how Congress works in the modern era,” he explained, “has been that actual members of Congress, your representatives, have very little power — almost none. They’re more like little, tiny chess pieces moved around for a tiny coterie of party leaders.

“It’s a dynamic that has turned Congress into a profoundly anti-democratic institution,” noted Greenwald. “And it’s one of the main reasons why we get so little reform and so much corruption out of [Congress].

“Many Americans remain convinced that the two parties can’t agree on anything . . . can’t make anything happen, when in fact they’re making a lot happen.” Such as making “tens of trillions of dollars fly out the door.”

Mr. Greenwald blames “a small handful of omnipotent party leaders, from each party, who are willing to play the game, join hands and ensure that totally insulated from election outcomes and public debate, the Washington consensus churns on.”

What to do? Greenwald did not mention term limits. But I just did.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Thought

Montesquieu

The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, Book VIII, Chapter 1.

Today

Lysander Spooner

On January 19, 1808, Lysander Spooner was born.

Spooner’s achievements in American life, law, and political philosophy, are among the most colorful of the 19th century. Studying law privately, he sued to practice without joining the bar, and won the suit. He set up a postal service that directly competed with the United States Postal Service, delivering mail at a fraction of the cost. He wrote The Unconstitutionality of Slavery, and convinced noted Garrisonian abolitionist Frederick Douglass of his argument. (The book became the centerpiece of intellectual ammunition for the Free Soil Party.) Later in life Spooner turned against constitutionalism itself, and penned some of the most radical political works of his day, including Vices Are Not Crimes and The Constitution of No Authority. Spooner also clearly articulated a “jury nullification” position in his classic treatise Trial by Jury.

education and schooling government transparency paternalism

Motown Bully

Is the republican form of government unnatural?

People in government tend to balk at republican imperatives, anyway. You know, like transparency. Citizen control sure seems unnatural to politicians.

Case in point: Detroit.

“The Rochester Community School district is determined to keep the sun from shining on its operations,” writes Kaitlyn Buss in The Detroit News.

At issue is a new school board member, Andrew Weaver. He had campaigned on issues like “transparency, accountability and communication between the district and parents.” Well, Superintendent Robert Shaner does not like this agenda. He “sent a letter to the board president and vice president in late December targeting [the] newly elected board member” and threatening “legal action if Weaver is too forceful in challenging the way schools are being run.”

This is awfully brazen, and it should alarm parents in the Rochester Community School District. For it is not coming from some obscure bureaucrat: “Shaner was selected as Superintendent of the Year in 2020 and is one of the longest tenured and highest paid school leaders in the state.”

He epitomizes government, at least in the “education” wing of Michigan government.

Bullying is how he rolls.

Mr. Weaver explains it this way: “I sat there as a private citizen and wondered why our board didn’t do anything. Well, we found the answer. Because they’re all scared of getting one of those [letters].”

But perhaps Weaver’s prepared for the battle. Even as a parent he’d received two cease-and-desist actions from Shaner, who objected to his online attacks.

Politicians think they are kings. Above citizen criticism.

Which is why citizen control must be forced upon them.

Over their objections.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Detroit, education, school board

Thought

Goethe

Alles ist einfacher, als man denken kann,
zugleich verschränkter, als zu begreifen ist.

Everything is simpler than one can imagine, at the same time more involved than can be comprehended.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Maxims and Reflections (1833), Maxim 1209.

Today

Montesquieu

On January 18, 1689, Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu, French satirist and philosopher, was born.

His treatise The Spirit of the Laws was a major influence upon America’s founding generation. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He did more than any other author to secure the place of the word despotism in the political lexicon.

In 1811, former U.S. President Thomas Jefferson translated and published Destutt de Tracy’s Commentary and Review of Montesquieu’s ‘Spirit of Laws,’ a very popular review of republican principles — which helps demonstrate how important these French writers were to the American form of government.

Montesquieu died on February 10, 1755.

education and schooling insider corruption local leaders

Lightfoot, Heavy Hand

When you’re right, you’re right.

And all of Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s critics are right that it was wrong for Lightfoot’s deserves-to-fail reelection campaign to solicit teachers to solicit students of the city’s public schools to work for her reelection campaign in exchange for class credit.

A former city inspector general called the move “deeply, deeply problematic.” Local teachers union honchos called it a “shakedown” and “exploitative and wrong.” Mayoral election challenger Brandon Johnson called it “outrageous, desperate, and downright unethical,” an abuse of power.

This may be a case of Corruption Grade B rather than Grade A if, as seems slightly possible, nobody on Lightfoot’s team understood that they were crossing another line in the endless saga of incumbents’ shameless misuse of government-controlled resources for political gain.

First, Lightfoot’s campaign said “this is common practice” and that they were just giving students “the opportunity to learn. . . .”

Eventually, they ended up saying that out of an “abundance of caution, we will cease contact with [public school] employees.” Then that campaign staff were being admonished about the “solid wall” that must exist between the campaign and “contacts” with noncampaign government employees.

Is enlisting public school teachers to enlist public school students to help an incumbent mayor’s reelection campaign really so very different from other abuses we have seen before, especially in a super-corrupt town like Chicago?

It doesn’t change the fact that when you’re wrong, you’re wrong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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