Category: too much government

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

Practicing Competence Without a License

You just can’t win. Well, you can; but if you do win — or even just make a decent go of it — that only proves you’re cheating. 

Before you object, please take a breath. Note the sterling sentences, above, with subjects and predicates and everything. I must be practicing grammar without a license! At least, that’s what the charge would be if I were to dispute the syntax of pronouncement from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

See, an official at NCDOT has accused David Cox, a member of a citizens group, of “practicing engineering without a license.” This was not just colorful rhetoric. The accuser filed a complaint with the state licensing bureau. 

Cox’s group wants city and state officials to authorize traffic lights at a couple intersections. The Department of Transportation hired an engineering consultant to demonstrate that the traffic lights are unnecessary. In response, Cox helped prepare a sophisticated counter-​analysis with diagrams and traffic projections. Cox, a computer scientist, did such a great job that he allegedly crossed the line from legal bumbling to illegal knows-what-he’s‑doing.

I shan’t tear this notion to bits myself. You’re no doubt doing so in your head, and without first obtaining governmental permission — you outlaw! I will say that in this case, “practicing engineering without a license” might as well mean “petitioning of government without a license.”

But we don’t need licenses for that. We have the right. A constitutionally recognized right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall nannyism too much government

Greenlighting Red Light Cameras?

Politicians seem to love what are called “red light cameras” — cameras that take pictures of cars that run red lights. And then ticket the registered owners.

Citizens? Not so much. I’ve reported how Tim Eyman — an activist who usually sets his sights on tax increases — orchestrated a citizen initiative petition campaign to get rid of the red light cameras in his town. There are many other such movements. 

But those who habitually side with government don’t get it. They see the issue as the Washington Post editors see it, as “common sense. Police can’t be everywhere, and officers should not be diverted from high-​crime areas to police every high-​risk intersection.”

A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety backs up this “common sense” with, uh, science. Sort of. The study’s method has been attacked pretty thoroughly.

More importantly, as Radley Balko notes, there are better alternate policies — more effective in saving lives at intersections, and far less creepy.

Like what? you ask. Well, bear with me. It’s hard to understand: Longer yellow lights.

Yes. Longer yellow lights save lives. What a shock. And yet it turns out that when politicians have red light cameras installed, they tend to decrease the time of the yellows — the very opposite policy.

For our safety?

No.

For their revenue.

People who “go into politics” show their true colors when they prefer to pump up surveillance state powers instead of enacting simple, decent reforms. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall too much government

The Tree of Liberty

For years, Egyptians have called for greater democracy and constitutional limits — like term limits. Now newly appointed Egyptian Vice President Omar Suhleiman dangles the concession of term limits for the president, freedom for the press and an end to the three decades of emergency powers, the better to retain the keys to the nation’s executive washroom and the army. Or so he hopes.

Wisely, both pro-​democratic and not-​so-​democratic opponents aren’t buying it. Opponents fear that such concessions will (if Mubarak or his chosen cronies remain in power) be pulled back later.

At a time more opportune for thuggery. 

Still, how to get from a brutally repressive state to a free, constitutional democratic republic? Revolution is a clumsy, dangerous mode of political change. 

Jefferson may have written something about “refreshing” the tree of liberty every generation with the blood of patriots, but most of us prefer more peaceful methods.

Lo and behold, they exist: Free elections. Here in America, voters have had the power to change party control of the U.S. Congress several times this decade. Hasn’t gotten us the reforms we want yet, but it’s better than in Egypt.

Plus, in half the states and most cities, citizens can check government and inject reform into the political system through the initiative, referendum and recall.

Egyptians are struggling to get democracy; Americans should use what we’ve got.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Brew Stronger Tea

The Tea Party’s House Republicans have begun work, outlining a “plan to attack the federal deficit. The result: A proposal to cut $100 billion,” which amounts, in the words of Tom Mullen, on LewRockwell​.com, to a mere “[s]even percent of the deficit.”

Disappointing. But wait, Mullen goes on, “if history has taught us anything, it is that this isn’t ‘just the beginning,’ with more substantial cuts to follow. This will be the high water mark as far as reduction in government spending is concerned.”

Mullen then offers an alternative venue: The states should unite in defiance of Washington, authorizing and defending citizens who withhold income tax payments until Congress balances the budget. He calls this “interposition.”

Radical, yes. But it will prove even less effective than our first House’s first foray.

Why? Many of the states are in just as bad a financial shape — or worse — than the federal union, and are presumably right now primping for federal bailouts.

What to do?

Brew stronger tea.

And throw it at Congress.

No state bailouts. The only thing the House can do, alone, is prevent more debt. Don’t raise the debt ceiling, and force President Obama and Democrats in the Senate to take budget cuts seriously — big budget cuts — now.

As I wrote a few days ago, let’s put the federal government onto a cash, pay-​as-​you go finance plan immediately. This would require, certainly, no small amount of courage from House Republicans.

Brew stronger tea.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights too much government

Not Guilty as Charged

If software developer Phil Mocek is guilty of anything, it’s the conviction that he has a right to move about the country as if he were a free man. He’s guilty of defending his dignity. Guilty of believing he’s innocent.

That’s his crime, not “failing to obey an officer,” “concealing his identity,” “criminal trespass” or “disorderly conduct.” Fortunately, an Albuquerque jury has now found him innocent of these bogus charges.

During his trial, a TSA official and an Albuquerque police officer both testified, in Mocek’s words, that “you do not have to show ID in order to fly and that you can use cameras in public areas of the airport.” Yes, recording the unwarranted and outrageous harassment of him was proposed as proof of the man’s criminality. 

The normals among us, on the other hand, can only applaud Mocek’s nerve and presence of mind in standing up for himself.

Defense co-​counsel Molly Schmidt-​Nowara observes that TSA officials and police at the airport “became annoyed because he was filming.” But annoying the police or TSA officers is not in itself a crime.

Mocek says: “I wasn’t testing the system. I went in with a boarding pass. I had what I’m required to have to fly and by way of being a human I observed what happened.”

Has the tide started to turn against the noxious surveillance state and in favor of everyday freedom for human beings?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
national politics & policies too much government

Help Us Help Ourselves

Hopeful about the innovations transpiring in various small sectors of fields like medicine or education? 

Atlantic Monthly blogger Megan McArdle isn’t.

According to McArdle, the history of “social science” — society? — is “littered with exciting programs that promised to both significantly improve the lives of the targeted populations, and to save money.” Yet average costs of education and health care keep going up.

Gee willikers, why?

Scalability. McArdle suggests that successful but small-​scale experiments have expertise and enthusiasm going for them that can’t be readily replicated on very large scales. The positive effects of the small programs tend to disappear when people who don’t want to change their ways have to sign off. 

She says that this isn’t a medical or educational problem but a social one.

What kind of social problem? McArdle doesn’t say.

But compare and contrast. Do small-​scale innovations in electronics and computers, for example, tend to dissolve into puddles of social lethargy and recalcitrance even if they achieve substantial improvements at lower cost? Apparently not. So what’s the difference? Well, hardware and software firms may be taxed and regulated by government, but they’re burdened with nowhere near the level of bureaucracy that swaddles schooling and medicine.

In free markets, bad solutions don’t get entrenched. Good ones don’t either, unless they prove economically viable over time. 

So how about removing the shackles and just letting us function as free people — in every realm of human endeavor?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.