Category: too much government

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics privacy property rights responsibility tax policy too much government

Progress, DC-Style

gentrification, renewall, Washington D.C., corruption, crony capitalism, housing, dirigisme

Is the black, Democratic mayor of Washington, D.C., actually a “racist”? What about the city council, which is 46 percent African-American, 85 percent Democrat, and 100 percent liberal/progressive?

That’s what a lawsuit argues — the DC ‘powers that be’ are racist in their development and housing policies. Filed on behalf of several African-American DC residents, it alleges that Mayor Muriel Bowser and the council have been striving mightily, as the Washington Post reported, “to ‘lighten’ African American neighborhoods and break up long-established communities.”

“Every city planning agency,” states the complaint, “. . . conspired to make D.C. very welcoming for preferred residents and sought to displace residents inimical to the creative economy.”

Nothing that a billion dollars couldn’t make right, of course — for which the plaintiffs ask.

But is gentrification a crime?

As American University professor Derek Hyra told the Post, “Developers want to maximize their return. This is not a conspiracy. This is capitalism.”

But no, this certainly isn’t laissez faire “capitalism.” It could be described as dirigisme — or “state capitalism” or “crony capitalism” or just a bad old-fashioned mercantilism, revised to work at the city level, where governments partner up with particular groups to extract as much wealth for the insiders as they can. Professor Hyra acknowledges that Bowser and the council were “providing subsidies” to bring in richer citizens and push out poorer ones.

Most importantly, we discover yet again that the power politicians claim they need to help the poor, is used to help the rich.

Way to go, “progressives.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Note: The mayor is a Democrat and the 13-member council is composed of eleven (11) Democrats and two (2) independents. There are no Republicans.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy too much government

Good Pot, Bad Law

Brill, family, marijuana, pot, prohibition, seizures, epileptic, goFundMe

Should you let your son suffer, perhaps even die, if the medicine he needs — the only medicine that helps — is illegal to administer?

The question answers itself. It’s the answer that Matthew and Suzeanna Brill acted on when they let their 15-year-old son David smoke marijuana to help control his epileptic seizures. Nothing else was doing the job.

“For 71 days our son rode his bike, woke up, went to school, played with friends, played outside; and the terror for his life that gripped our hearts and souls began to lift,” says Suzeanna. “We were breaking the law. We saved our son.”

But because the Brills did what they did — and because a thoughtless therapist tattled on them — Georgia’s Family and Children Services took David away, with the help of the sheriff’s office of Twiggs County. So David has been living in a group home, forcibly separated from his parents and presumably from any effective treatment for his life-threatening seizures.

“Whatever the law is, it’s my job to enforce it,” says Sheriff Darren Mitchum in rationalizing his deplorable conduct. (Whatever the law is?) After all, “somebody’s got to stand up for the child’s welfare.” Because, as everyone knows, preventing destructive seizures could not possibly be in the best interest of the person suffering from those seizures . . . right?

Fighting to get their son back, the Brills are raising money for the legal costs through a GoFundMe campaign.

Let’s help them succeed. Fast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Popular responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Where the Beef Is

cheese, law suit, justice, McDonald's, hamburger, Florida, class action

In South Florida, two McDonald’s customers are suing the fast food behemoth for charging them for cheese they say they do not want.

“According to a class-action lawsuit filed in Fort Lauderdale federal court on May 8,” informs the Miami Herald, “Cynthia Kissner, of Broward County, and Leonard Werner, of Miami-Dade, say they have had to pay for cheese they don’t want on their Quarter Pounder sandwiches.”

Before you upchuck every last greasy, chemical-infused/extra-beef morsel of this story, let’s look at the facts:

The Quarter Pounder went national in 1973.

The fast-food franchise used to charge extra for the cheese.

But “at some point” the junk food purveyor stopped “separately displaying these products for purchase on menus.” These days, only the Quarter Pounder with Cheese and the Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese are listed.

McDonald’s joints in Florida, at least, provide no discount for removing the cheese.

Rip-off, say these two customers. How big? A $5 million injury!

That’s what they are suing for.

It’s mad. The lawsuit, that is. You are not entitled to set the pricing and menu policies of stores you do not own.

In a celebrated analysis of loyalty in markets, an economist revealed that consumers have a continuum of options, including “voice” and “exit.”

“Voice” is what you express when you argue your case in a family or a democracy — and fast food provisioners. Decent people will, if disgruntled, choose “exit,” driving down the street to a Wendy’s.

McDonald’s could rightly charge extra for withholding the cheese.

That it doesn’t do so? Chalk it up to savvy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics property rights responsibility too much government

Déjà vu All Over Again

housing, bust, financial, meltdown, Government-Backed Mortgages, jail, punishment, cause

One of the stand-bys of the post-2008 mortgage finance bust, at least from left-of-center policy mavens, has been to ask: why has no banker gone to prison? They played a game of fraud and got rich. What a protected class — Cronyism! Plutocracy! Capitalism!

The why is much easier to understand if you read up on Round Two of the aughts’ boom-bust scenario, as in Prashant Gopal’s coverage in Bloomberg, “Getting Rich on Government-Backed Mortgages.” Gopal spotlights a non-bank mortgage broker, Angelo Christian, who is making a killing selling houses to people with horrible credit, just as happened before 2008.

“Christian can do this kind of deal because he is, in effect, making the loan on behalf of the federal government through its most important affordable housing program,” Gopal writes. “It’s a sweet deal: He gets his nearly risk-free commission. [His client] puts no money down. If things go south, the government ultimately bears the risk.”

So, should he go to jail?

Not really. He’s merely doing Congress’s bidding.

Gopal notes that it is not banks that dominate this round. They are under too much scrutiny. But non-banking loan intermediaries like Mr. Christian are swarming like flies on a cow’s behind.

There’s a problem in Gopal’s account though. “No one is saying the system is close to another collapse.”

Well, plenty of people are saying that.

The Cassandras are just not being heeded.

Of course, they don’t know when the bust will happen.

They just know it will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo by Images Money on Flickr.

 

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crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government

Good Men With Guns

guns, gun control, school shootings, 2nd Amendment, good men, self defense

We hear too much about “successful” mass murderers — from news readers, journalists, and so-called experts.

And it is hard not to think about the disturbed gunmen who kill as a way to feel powerful for a few seconds as they seek revenge for whatever they hate about their lives.

Now families in Sante Fe must deal with the horror.

We don’t hear as much about the good men who interrupt such rampages.

A report about how a killer was stopped on May 24 begins with these matter-of-fact words: “A gunman who opened fire at an Oklahoma restaurant Thursday evening was confronted by two people who saw what was happening, got their guns and shot him dead, police said.”

The gunman was able to wound three people. But before he could hurt others, Carlos Nazario and Bryan Wittle, outside the building as the shooting began, quickly grabbed firearms from the trunks of their vehicles and ended the threat.

A week earlier, Mark Dallas, a police officer on duty in Dixon High School in Dixon, Illinois, had exchanged gunfire with a recently expelled student, stopping him before anyone else could be shot. The attack took place in a gym where many students were gathered for a graduation rehearsal.

Mark Dallas happened to be an officer of the law. But you don’t need to be a policeman to use a gun justly and well in a bad situation. What you need is training and presence of mind — the willingness and ability to protect yourself and others.

And you need the gun.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo by Ken on Flickr

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism privacy property rights responsibility tax policy too much government U.S. Constitution

Brave New Paternalism

Michael Bloomberg, tax, policy, nanny state, vice, social engineering, statist, technocrat

Michael Bloomberg is rich. He’s also in politics — a public health crusader.

And, for years, he “has personally funded and promoted all sorts of regressive taxes and regulations in an attempt to push people around,” the folks at Americans for Tax Reform tell us. “He uses the coercive power of the government to force people to live their lives as he sees fit.”

Onstage at a globalist event, One-on-One with Christine Lagarde — who is managing director of the International Monetary Fund — Bloomberg blurts out his approach to government policy regarding what he calls “those people.”

“If you raise taxes on full sugary drinks,” he says, “they will drink less and there’s just no question that full sugar drinks are one of the major contributors to obesity and obesity is one of the major contributors to heart disease and cancer and a variety of other things.”

Against the charge often made that such taxes fall heaviest upon the poor, he is forthright. Regressive? “That’s the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don’t have a lot of money.”

Notice that he is not talking about a public service campaign to help people learn how to drink (and eat) better. And he is not talking about removing all the government policies that have encouraged bad eating and drinking habits (as well as lethargy) — the government programs to encourage the overuse of high fructose corn syrup; the welfare state’s poverty trap that stifles life at the lower incomes; the subsidized consumption of food and drink — he wants to add another government program.

He can only see betterment by increased governmental bullying.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Michael Bloomberg, tax, policy, nanny state, vice, social engineering, statist, technocrat

Photo by Center for American Progress

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy too much government U.S. Constitution

Hooray for Congress!

right to try, treatment, healthcare, Rights, FDA, democrats, Congress, medicine, experimental,

When Congress behaves badly, I criticize. When it works well, I applaud.

I’ve waited a long, long, long time to put my hands together in polite applause.

It happened yesterday.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a Senate bill, largely along party lines, to give those facing a terminal illness the “right to try.” That is, the right to try experimental drugs and treatments that haven’t yet been approved by the federal Food & Drug Administration (FDA). 

Of course, Congress doesn’t actually give us rights. We have always had the common law right — indeed, the human right — to freely seek a path to wellness when we are ill.

From time immemorial. Even before the FDA.

So, this legislation was, more correctly put, a way to announce that the congressionally-created FDA would stop blocking our freedom . . . provided we are dying and the government-approved medical establishment has no more licensed hope to offer.

The bill now goes to President Trump. “People who are terminally ill should not have to go from country to country to seek a cure,” he declared in his last State of the Union, “I want to give them a chance right here at home.”

Democrats overwhelmingly disagreed. 

“This will provide fly-by-night physicians and clinics the opportunity to peddle false hope and ineffective drugs to desperate patients,” argued Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.).

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) likewise charged that the legislation “puts patients at risk by allowing the sale of snake oil.”

But of course these patients are dying. That’s already as “at risk” as it gets. Our right to live includes a right to try to live.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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crime and punishment education and schooling general freedom ideological culture responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government

What to Do

guns, gun control, second Amendment, school shooting,can we do nothing?

Another school shooting — more dead and injured, many more terrified by the violence. And, in its wake, more demands for

  • gun control,
  • schools as hardened targets, and
  • mental health initiatives.

Oh, and finger-pointing at video games, too.

So what should we do?

  1. Stop publicizing the names of these school shooters and plastering their faces all over the media.

I’m specifically not calling for any new law or government regulation. These criminals’ names must be publicly available. Let’s not reduce transparency in government one iota. Instead, let’s demand that our favorite media do the public-spirited thing: don’t make these killers personally infamous. I’ve written about this danger, which even the ancients recognized, before.

  1. Fix the background check database. The main system for preventing bad people from getting guns relies totally on checking gun purchasers against a database that is full of holes.

Late last year, a man convicted of domestic violence and with documented mental health issues passed the background check to purchase the weapon he used to murder 26 people in a Texas church. The Air Force had failed to transmit his criminal record to the FBI. If our elected officials, on both sides of the “gun control” issue, are serious about saving lives, they will concentrate first on making certain the background check database is complete, and systematically updated.

  1. Give students greater choice.

Being a teenager isn’t easy. The more choice they have in the schools they attend and the type of bullying education they receive, the better — not only for their education, but for their mental well-being, too.

Let’s face it: we cannot prevent all future acts of violence. And should be wary of those who claim they can. Still, we can take action. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Working for Whom?

Rand Paul, John McCain, Vladimir Putin, balanced budget, spending cap

Two articles on Sen. Rand Paul appeared in my Reason feed the other day. Up top.

So it was hard not to look.

They were “John McCain: It ‘Wasn’t Incorrect’ to Say Rand Paul Was ‘Working for Vladimir Putin’” and “Rand Paul’s Plan to Balance the Budget by 2023 Will Get a Senate Vote This Week.”

The latter story is the bigger one, of course. In it, Eric Boehm asked, “Do Republicans have the guts to impose strict spending caps?”

His answer was “probably not.” Good guess.

“Passing the Kentucky Republican’s so-called ‘Penny Plan’ would be a dramatic reversal for Congress,” Boehm wrote, “which earlier this year approved enormous spending hikes that busted Obama-era spending caps and threaten to put the country on pace for a $1 trillion annual deficits. . . . Paul tells Politico that it will be a ‘litmus test for Republicans who claim to be conservative, but are only too happy to grow the federal government and increase our debt.’”

I am afraid the litmus paper has turned . . . red. As in red ink. As in accumulating debt till we drop.

Yesterday Paul’s plan was voted down, 21-76.

In the other Reason piece, Matt Welch noted that Arizona’s senior senator stands by his calumny, last year, against Kentucky’s junior senator. Paul had delayed “ratification of Montenegro’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).” McCain, a gung-ho NATO expansion proponent, accused Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.”

If Putin really seethes with ill will towards America, wouldn’t he want to see the country burdened with debt?

So, on this vote, those 76 senators who didn’t “stand with Rand” are undoubtedly working for Putin.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo of Rand Paul by Gage Skidmore | Photo of John McCain from Wikimedia Commons

 

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Accountability folly general freedom media and media people Second Amendment rights too much government

Simplistically Wrong

guns, cars, regulations, meme, gun control, second amendment

A clever “meme” made the rounds earlier this year showing, in two columns, what it would be like were guns regulated like cars.

How reasonable that would be!

“Title and tag at each point of sale”; “Driver training”/“Gun training”; Liability insurance on each vehicle/gun”; etc. It seems sound, no?

No.

The memester failed to address a context: our car and driver regulations apply to vehicles and drivers on government-run roads. On your own property you can drive all sorts of vehicles, unregulated. And it is on their own property that most gun owners’ firearms stay most of the time.

So, treating “guns like cars” would put government deeper into our private affairs.*

The meme came into an economist’s view packaged under the slogan “doing nothing means more people die.” He saw problems. For example, “someone might propose that each person above the age of 10 years old be interned in a mental-health camp, until and unless experts appointed by the state certified that he or she was not a danger to society.”

Same logic — we cannot do nothing, can we?

Another economist dubbed the problem we have identified here as “a simplistic model of public policy.” Policy advocates tend to assume that if you change a policy we get only one effect. Not true.  

A third economist (I’m going for a trifecta!) discovered that even adding safety features to cars comes at a cost in human life: feeling safer, drivers compensate . . . and it is non-drivers who suffer. More drivers hit more pedestrians.

Be cautious when you drive, sure. Be cautious when you shoot, of course.

But be cautious, especially, when you prescribe new laws.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Not to mention that gun rights are specifically enshrined in the Constitution and vehicle rights . . . not so much.

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