Category: too much government

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Accountability moral hazard term limits too much government

Dictatorship with the Usual Characteristics

Mao, term limits, China, Xi Jinping, censorship, Mao Zedong

“Argh, we’re going to become North Korea,” a dejected Chinese citizen wrote on his country’s social media site, Weibo.

His comment, later removed by China’s “safe space” police, responded to the Communist Party’s announcement that it would soon remove term limits on President Xi Jinping.

While neighboring North Korea has been ruled in totalitarian dynastic fashion by the Kim family since 1948, the Chinese have had their own experience with extended one-man rule, 33 years of Mao Zedong.

“From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people,” the Washington Post clarified, “easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.”

A decade after Mao’s death in 1979 — there’s always that ultimate term limit — even Communist Party apparatchiks embraced a formal limit on the president and the vice-president of two five-year terms . . . to block dictatorship.*

Talk about a reform popular across the political spectrum!

So popular that, as Business Insider explained, “Criticism of the Chinese government’s desire to abolish presidential term limits has seen censorship soar since Sunday.” Searches for “two term limit,” “third consecutive term,” and “Emperor Xi” were blocked.

“There are no longer any checks and balances,” complained a political analyst at the Chinese University in Hong Kong.

This is bad news for everybody everywhere.

The need to limit those in power is universal. At National Review, John Fund reminds us of our “ongoing job here at home to limit the insatiable urge of incumbents to remain in office for years, even decades, and sometimes until they die of ripe old age.”

Early retirements for all!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* There are also five-year limits on the tenure of those serving in the National People’s Congress. Do I hear six years for our Congress?

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Self-Defense, Implausible?

gun, gun free, school zone, control, schools, teachers, Israel, defense, gun control

Don’t take a GUN-FREE ZONE sign to a gun fight.

Whenever there’s a horrific incident of mass murder, advocates of citizen disarmament blame the right to protect oneself against armed attackers. The thinking seems to be that if we make it illegal for all civilians to have guns, bad guys willing to kill people will also refrain from using guns as they try to kill people.

This is implausible.

And if you do not see its implausibility immediately regarding firearms, consider drugs. Not taking them, but the war on same. Drugs didn’t vanish upon prohibition. Neither would guns if prohibited.

President Trump argues that students would be safer were schools a harder target. Why not arm well-trained teachers? “If you had a teacher who was adept with the firearm, they could end the attack very quickly.” He’s right.

Not a new idea, of course. It’s been argued, for example, by the NRA, whose chairman says that the way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.

This idea is being practiced right now — in Israel.

As Tzvi Lev argues at the Arutz Sheva 7 site, Israel proves the NRA’s point.

Even Israel — where Arab communities are “rife with illegal weapons” despite their illegality — has not always been quick to recognize that it’s better to have lots of armed civilians when terrorists start shooting at civilians. But after terrorists attacked a school in 1974, the government began arming and training teachers — somehow failing to defer to the terrorists’ preference for gun-free zones.

In both of the only-two school shootings in Israel since then, teachers killed the attackers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

He Applied Himself

pre-crime, PKD, guns, gun control, shooting, Parkland, Florida, prevention, freedom

“I need to make this count,” wrote a young man in Everett, Washington.

Unfortunately, it looks like he wasn’t attempting a big career-oriented project. He was planning a mass shooting.

“I need to get the biggest fatality number I possibly can,” is one of many damning journal passages the police have made public. Apparently he had settled on attacking the high school he attended. “I’ve been reviewing many mass shootings/bombings (and attempted bombings) I’m learning from past shooters/bombers mistakes.”

Ambition and rigor: missapplied.

Fortunately, his grandmother read his journal and discovered a rifle in his guitar case. She turned him into the police the Tuesday before the Florida shooting I wrote about last week. And maybe just in time.

Meanwhile, last week’s Parkland, Florida, shooting dominates the headlines. Fellow students and neighbors of the Florida shooting victims have ramped up their condemnations and demands — including at a horrorshow “town hall” on CNN.

Yet the nature of the difficulties in preventing such atrocities has become lost in the rhetoric and anger.*

In a free society, we cannot arrest people before they commit a crime. In the Everett case, officials were “lucky”: despite the young man’s lack of a criminal record, they were able to charge him with a burglary they allege he committed the day before arrest — and his extensive planning notes are being taken as evidence for intent. He’s also been charged with attempted murder.

We should be in inquiry mode, right now. It could be helpful to know the exact motivations for both the Florida shooter and the Everett wannabe — and similar cases.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Law enforcement is tasked with uncovering spree shooting plots today — and to protect, too. But the armed, uniformed school resource officer at the Parkland high school failed to protect. He heard the gunshots but never entered the building, while the shooter killed 17 innocents.

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general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard political challengers responsibility term limits too much government

Graceless Memphis Politicians

instant-runoff elections, Memphis, city council, government, term limits,

“We could care less about instant runoff voting,” fibbed Allan Wade, the city attorney for Memphis, Tennessee.

Wade was rebutting the recent Commercial Appeal revelation that Memphis’s “City Council worked behind the scenes to find a sponsor for legislation this year that could ban instant-runoff elections statewide.”

After long relying on the mayor’s lobbyists, was it purely coincidental that the council suddenly spent $120,000 on its own Nashville lobbyists?

One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), missed the memo. He acknowledged being “approached . . . on the council’s behalf to ask if he would again sponsor the bill.” A lobbyist also confirmed to the Memphis Flyer that the council engaged him to push the ban on what is also known as ranked choice voting.

So, the city council is directly lobbying the Tennessee Legislature to overrule their city’s residents — who voted 71 percent YES for instant runoff voting in 2008.

And there’s a twist. The council has placed two measures that would repeal instant runoff voting on this November’s ballot, hoping to somehow convince voters to scrap the reform. Wait . . . why lobby the legislature when the voters are already set to make the decision?

Oooooooooohhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Now they are using our money to take away that choice from us,” protests Aaron Fowles with Save Instant Runoff Memphis.

This city council — in addition to their sneaky, anti-democratic assault on instant runoff voting — has also placed a measure on the ballot to weaken their own term limits, passed by an 80 percent vote.

To paraphrase Memphis’s King, these rabid-dog politicians ain’t never caught a rabbit and they ain’t no friends of ours.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. After media coverage, a hearing on the Senate version of the bill to ban instant runoff voting, SB 2271, was abruptly postponed for three weeks.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Not Even with a Straight Face

CIA, foreign policy, elections, influence, interference, puppets

Is American foreign policy so foreign to our values that even those who have served at the very pinnacle of national intelligence agencies have trouble telling the truth?

“Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries’ elections?” Laura Ingraham, host of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, asked James Woolsey, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1993 to 1995.

“Oh, probably,” Mr. Woolsey replied. “But, uh, it was for the good of the system, in order to avoid communists from taking over. For example, in Europe in ’47-’48-’49, the Greeks and the Italians, we, the CIA—”

“We don’t do that now, though?” Ingraham interjected. “We don’t mess around in other people’s elections, Jim?”

“Well . . . urrrrr, yum, yum, yum, um, um,” the old spymaster offered to laughter from both Ingraham and her studio cameramen. “Only for a very good cause,” he added with a sly grin, “and the interests of democracy.”

Interests. Of. Democracy.

Ha. Ha ha. Laughing yet?

Foreign Policy tells us that documents declassified in 2017 “shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s central role in the 1953 coup that brought down [elected] Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh . . . poisoning U.S.-Iran relations into the 21st century.”

Need more? There’s a handy database that lists undemocratic and illegal* shenanigans going on and on through the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, up through President Obama to today.

“This broader history of election meddling has largely been missing from the flood of reporting on the Russian intervention . . .” noted the New York Times last December.

Of course, our government’s interference doesn’t justify Russian government interference. But, we can only (possibly) control our politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “Meddling in other’s elections is a violation of international law,” Steve Baldwin writes in The American Spectator. “More importantly, U.S. law prohibits the use of tax dollars to influence foreign elections.”

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility tax policy too much government

Billionaire Theater

Bill Gates, taxes, tax, government, entrepreneurs, responsibility

“I need to pay higher taxes,” Bill Gates told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday.

He was making a case against Republican tax cuts, but his actual argument? Insignificant. It’s just another unlearned, narrow-perspective “growing inequality” farrago. But his conclusion intrigues . . . as a man-bites-dog story, because people have this goofy idea that rich people are somehow against government and for reduced taxes.

They aren’t. Not even most of the richest.

“I’ve paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else,” says the man worth $90 billion, “but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes.”

Why? To spend his money better than he could?

Were all the wealth of America’s billionaires confiscated whole and that sum would actually pay off the federal debt (which I doubt), what do you think Washington politicians would do? Go on the straight and narrow and never over-spend again?

No. Politicians would take the new influx of funds as a signal to go on an even bigger spending binge.

But what about his mere income tax increase notion? What then? As sure as the Blue Screen of Death it would be applied down to millionaires, too. And then rates for less-than-millionaires would likely go up. We have a history with this. And what would that do?

It would hit up-and-coming entrepreneurs the hardest. It would nip Bill Gates’s company’s competition in the bud.

But surely Gates wouldn’t be mercenary in his theatrical play for media adoration, would he? 

Not Saint Bill!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies privacy property rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Thwarting Cops Who Are Robbers

asset forfeiture, corruption, police, traffic, theft, robbery, traffic stop

“Carrying cash is not a crime,” Institute for Justice attorney Dan Alban informs us, “yet too often the government treats it like one.”

Musician Phil Parhamovich learned that the hard way. He was porting his life savings, almost $92,000 — earmarked for a down payment on a recording studio — when cop-robbers of the Wyoming Highway Patrol stopped him for not wearing a seat belt.

It turned out to be an extremely expensive infraction. The officers intimated that it was illegal to travel with so much cash and pressured him to hand it over. Scared and believing that his alternative was jail, Phil signed a preprinted waiver letting them grab his life savings.

Preprinted waiver? This means it’s routine for these guys to try to legitimate their actions as they premeditatedly intimidate and rob people.

The state of Wyoming tried to keep the money. Fortunately, the Institute for Justice took Phil’s case, and a judge accepted the facts presented by Phil and his IJ lawyer. After months of tribulation and suspense, the robbery victim got his money back.

Another win for the good guys.

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice’s freedom-defenders have won a great number of such cases. Yet, IJ lawyers certainly cannot litigate all the forfeiture injustices being committed by government  authorities all across the country.

That’s why the group is pushing to reform civil asset forfeiture laws, requiring a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited. 

And you can help. How? Launch efforts in your town or state, or work to push infant efforts to a higher level. Take the initiative. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

Killer Inlaudabilis

Florida, school, shooter, shooting, mass killing, name, guns, gun control

On the day that Alexander the Great was born, or so the ancients tell us, a man named Herostratus burned down one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.

Why? Just for the infamy.

Which is why the Ephesians proscribed mention of the man’s name. That is called a damnatio.* Obviously, that damnatio didn’t stick, for we know his name now. How? Historian Theopompus recorded it for our . . . edification? Vilification?

I say we should follow Ephesian example and not mention by name the recent Florida school shooter/murderer of students. There should be a widespread damnatio in the press and blogosphere against the young man. Let’s not to give him his infamy, and not encourage copycats — nor in any way normalize his horrible act.

Is this a “solution” to the problem of school shootings? Probably not. But there may be none — at least nothing sure-fire.

Yes, a non-blundering FBI might’ve helped.** But virtue-signaling/grandstanding calls for unnamed gun control measures won’t. And treating “mental health” issues more “professionally,” particularly by easing up involuntary commitment law, is probably a recipe for putting away innocent and unpopular people.

“Pre-crime” is itself criminal.

So, what to do? Maybe it is this: “Notice those around you who seem isolated, and engage them,” as Robert Myers advises. It is loneliness, he argues, that “causes these shooters to lash out. People with solid connections to other people don’t indiscriminately fire guns at strangers.”

But that’s not an after-the-fact solution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* FYI, the arsonist’s status as an unspeakable person was called inlaudabilis.

** As if to fit an established pattern, the FBI failed to take seriously enough an early citizen-initiated alert regarding the young man who went on to commit the mass shooting. Prophecy is a tough biz; it is no doubt easier to connect the dots looking back after the fact.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics Regulating Protest responsibility tax policy too much government

“Our Agenda Was Common Sense”

tea party, nail, coffin, spending, debt, responsibility, dead

The Republican Party doesn’t need to bury the corpse. Its victim has been assimilated, like the Borg did with alien peoples in the Star Trek universe, or maybe it was just soaked up as if the GOP were a giant fungus amongus.

So, what’s dead? The Tea Party, which was killed by partisanship, says Matt Kibbe, President and Chief Community Organizer at Free the People. He admits that the movement’s obituary has been written many times, but, he argues, “this time is different. Republicans, now controlling both the legislative and executive branches, jammed through a ‘CRomnibus’ spending bill that strips any last vestiges of spending restraint from the budget process.”

Kibbe identifies the Tea Party’s central theme simply: “Our agenda was common sense: We demanded that Washington politicians stop spending our money like it was theirs, and keep out of our health care. But in Washington, common sense is often seen as radical.”

This, he insists, was not a partisan movement.

But only Republicans played to it. Kibbe calls Sarah Palin a “political huckster” who “helped hijack our purpose,” and fingers Mitt Romney as the man who scuttled Tea Party “political momentum” in 2012. “And then Donald Trump split the Tea Party right down the middle, and that was the end.”

Nail in the coffin? The recent budget deal.

Kibbe signs the autopsy, but assures us: “American principles of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and constitutionally limited government, are all still very much alive.”

I sure hope so. But it takes more than a handful of Freedom Caucus members on Capitol Hill to realize it in practice.

Like a new citizen movement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Threat Assessment

Tide Pod, foolish, foolhardy, Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch, Benjamin Wittes, vote, voting, Republican, Democrat, threat, GOP

Don’t drink transmission fluid. Or perform a swan dive off the Empire State Building. Or munch on a Tide Pod.

Be cautious, in other words, of the advice offered in “Boycott the Republican Party,” the Atlantic opinion piece authored by Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, both scholars at the Brookings Institution. Their erudite suggestion? Conservatives should “vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).”

My Sunday column at Townhall.com, “Friendly Suicide Advice for the GOP,” reviewed their proposal and analysis. “[H]orrified” by President Trump, they see congressional Republicans as enablers of his “existential” threat “to American democracy.”

Big government has long frightened me, so I’m certainly not suggesting anyone relax just now. I do wonder, however, why these writers and others in the media have been so blasé to past presidential usurpations (noted in the column) with life-and-death implications.

Rauch and Wittes go so far as to reassuringly explain that “the Democratic Party is not a threat to our democratic order.”

Really?

In 2016, every single Democratic Party U.S. Senator voted to partially repeal the First Amendment of the Constitution. The Democrats’ proposal would have largely ended the prohibition that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” replacing it with “Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.”

In our present “democratic order,” the Constitution recognizes the primary importance of walling off political speech from regulation by these very politicians. The Democrats seek to repeal that order . . . that freedom . . . that criticism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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