Category: too much government

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crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom moral hazard privacy responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Ecstatic with Independence

free range, freedom, Utah, children, walk, outside, law, hysteria

Utah’s legislature unanimously passed it; the governor signed it — the nation’s first measure protecting what’s become known as “free-range parenting.”

It was once known simply as “parenting.”

Certain activities are now exempt from a state law criminalizing child neglect. Children may legally “walk, run or bike to and from school, travel to commercial or recreational facilities, play outside and remain at home unattended” — thereby allowing “a child, whose basic needs are met and who is of sufficient age and maturity to avoid harm or unreasonable risk of harm, to engage in independent activities . . .”

Back in the day, we apparently played outside in a sort of statutory limbo.

Do we really need a law saying kids can walk on a public street?

Sadly, yes: government agencies across the country are grossly violating the most basic rights of parents to rear independent children.

Regular readers may recall my 2015 defenses* of the Meitiv parents against the absurd charge of “unsubstantiated neglect” leveled against them by Montgomery County (Maryland) Child Protective Services. Ultimately, Maryland authorities acknowledged that permitting one’s kids (in the Meitivs’ case, a 10- and a 6-year-old) to walk on a public sidewalk (from a local park) wasn’t prima facie evidence of a crime. 

The current free-range parenting movement was launched in 2008 when Lenore Skenazy publicly admitted — to mass shock and condemnation — to allowing her 9-year-old son to take a trip alone on New York City’s subway.

“My son got home,” she wrote in the New York Sun, “ecstatic with independence.”

Notice how rare it is to find anyone ecstatic with dependence.

Lesson? An old one: Happiness must be pursued with freedom.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* My writings on the Meitivs’ battle to keep their kids:

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Abortionists’ Cartoon Advice

planned parenthood, left, Trump, extremism, radical, Trump, funding

Let it not be said that Planned Parenthood lacks for principles.

When Donald Trump offered a deal, last year, to fund Planned Parenthood only if the organization would stop doing abortions, the company immediately clarified the situation. “Offering money to Planned Parenthood to abandon our patients and our values is not a deal that we will ever accept,” said the outfit’s executive vice president. “Providing critical health care services for millions of American women is nonnegotiable.”

And, for Planned Parenthood, abortion is indeed critical. “The Trump administration needs to stop playing political games that would put access to the full range of safe reproductive care at risk,” said Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-NY), “or they will get the fight of their lives.”

Well, that fight was won by Planned Parenthood. The politician who once said he would “shut down the government” over the abortionist enterprise has caved after various roadblocks. Trump signed a stopgap omnibus spending bill, last week, which continues to funnel $500 million towards the outfit.

So, as if to celebrate, a Pennsylvania branch of the abortion mill — er, “reproductive care” service — engaged in a bit of ebullience, a “light-hearted” tweet:

We need a disney princess who’s had an abortion

We need a disney princess who’s pro-choice

We need a disney princess who’s an undocumented immigrant

We need a disney princess who’s actually a union worker

We need a disney princess who’s trans

This caused a firestorm.* And not because its Disney obsession was silly. The problem? The tweet showed that Planned Parenthood is really, really committed to valorizing the killing of fetuses. And that its agenda is far, far left.

The outfit should be left without taxpayer funds.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The Tweet was quickly removed.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

High on Hemp?

hemp, marijuana, legalization, prohibition, THC, CBD, Mitch McConnell

Hemp is not marijuana.

And yet it is.

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he will introduce legislation to legalize industrial hemp.

He is not concerning himself with marijuana, which is what we call the plant Cannabis sativa when cultivated for its Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content, the principal chemical in the plant that makes it ideal for “recreational” uses. Industrial hemp is Cannabis sativa, too, just with minuscule THC.

Hemp products are actually legal to buy and sell in the United States.

Sort of.

But growing it is murky, considering that ingestible hemp is a Schedule 1 drug no matter how little THC it has — despite the fact that Congress has allowed states to regulate the growth of low-THC hemp for “industrial” purposes.  

A complicating factor is that industrial hemp contains an oil, Cannabidiol (CBD), which is neither an ecstatic nor a hallucinogenic drug, but is widely believed to have many therapeutic powers. And is widely sold all over the country, wherever states have allowed for medical marijuana.

Nevertheless the DEA objects to it as much as to THC, saying that all ingestible forms of hemp are illegal.

Because of all this murkiness, McConnell’s bill might seem to be welcome step towards clarity.

Trouble is, since industrial hemp is indistinguishable from cannabis with THC — to look at; to smell; to touch — officials hoping to crack down on marijuana-as-a-psychoactive-drug would be much hampered were industrial hemp commonly and legally grown.

What a mess. The only real solution is to de-list all forms of Cannabis sativa from the War on Drug’s Schedule of Drugs It Unconstitutionally Proscribes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Bailing on Mass Transit

mass transit, metro, cars. low income, recession

Around the country, our major metropolitan transit systems have hit the skids. “Between 2016 and 2017, ridership fell in each of the seven largest transit markets,” the Washington Post informs.

You might guess that the reason for declines in ridership might have something to do with bad planning and poor service. Washington, D.C.’s Metro system, with which I am all-too familiar, is a horror . . . run by people I wouldn’t trust to sweep your driveway much less mine, and certainly not to manage how I get between those (or any other) two locations.

But the Post quotes an urban planning scholar who attributes the decline (in part) “to increased car ownership, particularly among low-income and immigrant populations, who were in a better position to afford cars following the Great Recession.”

This puts planners in a pickle since, he explains, if “low-income people are doing better, getting the ability to move around like everyone else, it’s hard to say that what we should do is get them to remove themselves from their cars and back on trains and buses.”

Shockingly sensible — especially coming from a planning specialist. “Transit systems should deliver quality service to low-income people,” he insists. “But low-income people do not owe us a transit system.”

Well, maybe that’s the problem, this notion that governments “owe” this service to “low-income people.”

After all, web-based services like Uber and Lyft have shown how market innovations provide the best ways to move millions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Unlovely Congress

Craigslist, HR 1865, "FOSTA", Trump, Congress, censorship, liability

If you recently tried to post a personal ad on Craigslist, the popular classified-ad site, you were in for a shock. Craigslist has suddenly discontinued all personals. You can still sell your used rototiller, but forget about telling the world you’re lost in Louisville looking for love.

The company doesn’t want to be prosecuted for helping people find each other en route to becoming partners in outlawry.

Congress has just passed legislation subjecting site publishers to criminal and civil liability when their users “misuse online personals unlawfully.” The president’s signature is expected. Craigslist doesn’t want all that open-ended liability. “Any tool or service can be misused,” it observes.

Indeed. If the principle underlying this law were consistently applied, any good or service that facilitates communication (or other human activity!) would expose providers to liability for any illegal conduct abetted by their products. Would curtain manufacturers be exempt? We all know how bad guys plotting evil pull their curtains. Freedom of speech, freedom of casual encounters, freedom of curtain-trafficking, it’s all at risk.

What about Congress’s goal of discouraging prostitution?

Will all U.S. prostitutes now retire?

Not if the last several thousand years are any clue. Especially as other sites follow Craigslist’s lead, prostitutes who had escaped the streets thanks to online means of client-hunting will tend to return to those streets. If so, neighborhoods less seedy and less dangerous thanks to Craigslist etc. will now tend to reacquire such unlovely qualities.

Thanks to (unlovely) Congress.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies Second Amendment rights tax policy too much government

Was the Line Crossed?

Trump, Congress, budget, 2nd Amendment, guns,

Everybody has a limit, a point after which they reach for the nearest weapon and fire.

Or, in normal politics, withdraw support and go on the attack.

But it is not normal politics right now.

In mid-March, a Congressman from Long Island expressed his frustration with the Trump administration by saying, “This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly, because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts?”

Days after this pol darkly implied insurrection, attacking gun rights became, on our Democratic Congressman’s end of the spectrum, a cause célèbre. Obviously, there remains a strong tension between politically opposing gun rights and the commonsense acknowledgment of the vital political function of the Second Amendment.* Lines are drawn all over the place.

But last week a very different line was crossed.

Donald Trump signed the latest Omnibus whopper. And a few of the gonzo president’s biggest Internet supporters — including the oddest, anarchist Stefan Molyneux — could take no more. Trump’s fatal flaw, Molyneux stated, “is his desire to shovel the money of the unborn into the Great White Shark maw of the military-industrial complex.” Molyneux identifies “the largest military budget in human history” as what Trump wanted in exchange for betraying his base.

So, you can see where Mr. Molyneux draws the line of support.

Meanwhile, others are wondering about Trump’s own line on trade policy. With much ballyhoo and bluster, he raised tariffs on steel — and then, quietly, exempted most of America’s steel trading partners.

Crazyman? Or genius?

The line between those two concepts is notoriously gray.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* In my weekend column I noted that “when the populace is armed sufficiently to realistically repel tyranny, the calculations of self-interested politicians per what they can get away with changes.” Guns can remain holstered, most of the time.

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crime and punishment general freedom media and media people moral hazard too much government

Governments Gone Wilding

South Africa, land, expropriation, reform, genocide, refuges, media, racism

I was late to the story, and had a hard time finding information on the anti-white violence in South Africa — farm families raped, pillaged, slaughtered, beheaded.

And I wasn’t at all aware of the “land reform” that South Africa’s Congress is voting on, the explicit aim of which is to expropriate white farmers without compensation.

Every day, I read through The Washington Post but noticed no articles there. Or elsewhere — until a fleeting Facebook post sent me to Lauren Southern’s video documentary, “Farmlands.”

The Wall Street Journal did cover the farm expropriation story — on its editorial pages. “No country ever became rich through its government’s seizure of private property (exhibit A: the Soviet Union), but politicians in South Africa want to give it another go.”

Zimbabwe on repeat.

Worse yet, it is being argued for on racial grounds, and some of its proponents are notoriously . . . genocidal?

Quartz takes a different approach, in an article charmingly titled “South Africa’s much needed land debate is being turned into an international racist rant.” The Leftwing publication appears to be gearing up to defend mass theft as “land reform,” heedless of its long, violent, destructive history.

Meanwhile, Ms. Southern, the “gonzo journalist” who detailed the ongoing race-based murder spree in South Africa* that Quartz failed to mention, found herself detained in Calais, France, prevented from entering Britain. Why? In part for “being racist.”

Southern had once engaged in a stunt pitching the provocation that “Allah is a gay god” — to seek reactions from people after a major news source produced an article claiming Jesus was gay.

Islam is a religion, not a race, of course, but it’s racial collectivism that still unhinges minds.

To what extent? Socialist expropriation, at least.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “According to the best available statistics,” the BBC relates, “farm murders are at their highest level since 2010-11.”

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders political challengers Regulating Protest too much government

New-Fangled Vote Counting

Florida, Proposal 97, Constitution, democracy, voting, initiative, Constitution Revision Commission

Call me old-fashioned, but when you go to the pols to cast your vote on a ballot measure, your Yes vote should count for yes and your No vote for no.

And if you choose not to vote, your non-vote should count for neither yes nor no.

That’s just common sense. Right?

Well, meet its antithesis: Proposal 97, now being considered by Florida’s powerful Constitution Revision Commission (CRC).* Proposal 97 would count all those who do not cast a vote for or against a ballot measure as a No vote against it.

To pass a constitutional amendment in the Sunshine State already requires a supermajority vote of at least 60 percent of those who do cast a vote on the measure. Under Proposal 97, counting all those not voting on it as No votes, that percentage would necessarily go even higher. If 10 percent don’t vote, Yes would have to come in at 67 percent to win.

This is minority rule . . . with an extra perverse twist.

The supermajority requirement encourages big money interests to spend heavily against ballot initiatives — even when the issues have clear majority support — because if they can manage to lose by less than 20 points (60–40 percent), they win. Now all opponents need do is poison the water with the nastiest campaigning imaginable, causing more voters to throw up their hands or pinch their noses and avoid the issue . . .

. . . thus, being counted as voting No.

Don’t abstain. Stop Proposal 97. Tell them NO here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* How powerful is the CRC? Every 20 years it meets with the awesome authority to refer constitutional amendments directly to the ballot — as many as it wishes and the amendments can be packaged to include several different subjects. No other state has a similar body. Of the 37 commission members, the governor appoints 15, the Senate president and the House speaker each appoint nine, the chief justice of the state supreme court appoints three and the attorney general is an automatic member.

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education and schooling general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Second Amendment rights too much government

Civic Engagement Activities

blackboard, sheep, public schools, indoctrination, protest, guns

I love a good protest.

My first was in Mrs. Grubb’s third grade class, after a substitute teacher gave us a ton of math homework. During recess we organized and delivered a written statement  announcing a student strike against doing the math.

Believe it or not, the assignment was withdrawn, called an April Fools joke . . . but boy did we catch hell when Mrs. Grubb returned.

This week, with the school walkouts across the country to protest “gun violence” and demand “gun control,” some older kids finally got in the game. I may disagree with their public policy shibboleths and disdain their tone, but I would defend to the . . .

Well, you know.

The problem isn’t students or protests. It is the partisan government school system. The system’s taxpayer-paid agents — teachers, administrators — believe they can support student protest movements for changing laws they want changed, but block and punish protests on issues they do not favor.

And, especially, bring the hammer down on anyone who dares notice the double standard out loud.

Rocklin High School teacher, Julianne Benzel, “has been placed on paid administrative leave due to several complaints from parents and students involving the teacher’s communications regarding today’s student-led civic engagement activities,” the California school district said in a statement.

Benzel told CBS in Sacramento that she did not discourage her students from joining the protest — er, I mean, civic engagement activity. But in class, she did raise the issue of whether the school administration would similarly allow (much less facilitate, dare we say, encourage) student protests against abortion, instead of guns.

Let’s protest what we can actually change: public schools engaging in partisan political activity.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Why They Hate the First Amendment

Facebook, censorship, censor, first amendment, free speech, Citizens United, elections

Does banning Facebook in the weeks leading up to an election sound like freedom?

“The corrosive effect of social media on democratic life,” writes The New Republic’s Jeet Heer, “has led both French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to make the same threat to Facebook: self-regulate or be regulated.”

But Macron doesn’t go far enough. “If fake news truly poses a crisis for democracy, then it calls for a radical response,” Heer insists.

“Many countries have election silence laws, which limit or prohibit political campaigning for varying periods of time ranging from election day alone to as early as three days before the election.” And Heer sees little reason not to apply such regulations to social media.

“What if you weren’t allowed to post anything political on Facebook in the two weeks before an election?”

This exactly parallels the prohibition of political spending “by corporations” before an election, as in the McCain-Feingold campaign finance regulation. Except here we have it directly affecting normal citizens.

The current excuse, “fake news,” appears to be defined by partisans almost entirely as the errors and lies and spin of their opponents’ side(s).

But since lying about one’s political enemies is at least as old as the Election of 1800, why is this different now?

Because, I submit, Facebook is just another area the folks pushing such obvious breaches of the First Amendment — politicians and most of the media — do not yet control.

Competition mustn’t be tolerated.  

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credit: by John Nakamura Remy