Category: too much government

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folly porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

A Bullet Train to the Head

California, high speed, rail, boondoggle, waste, illustration

Romanticism. The yearning for greatness; the need for speed. Efficiency! It’s all there in California’s high-speed rail project — hopes and dreams and a sense of the grandeur of progress.

And yet the bullet train project, approved by voters in 2008, is a fiasco.

One can blame the voters, I suppose. At least the 53.7 percent who said yes to a referendum authorizing a 9.95 billion bond. Just to get the project started.

But we shouldn’t, really. All the people pushing the bullet train notion (from Los Angeles to the Bay) said that most of the investment would come from private investors. Further, it would require no ongoing subsidies.

Those assurances, however, “were at best wishful thinking, at worst an elaborate con,” writes Virginia Postrel for Bloomberg.

How bad is it? Total construction cost went from a $33 billion to $68 billion — despite route trimming. The first segment, which is understood to be the easiest to build (shooting through an empty stretch), is four years behind schedule, and still lacks necessary land.

The list of failures goes on and on, and includes a dearth of investors. And then there’s the estimate of the company who got the first bid on the project. It says that the line will almost certainly not be self-sustaining.

“The question now,” Postrel concludes, “is when they’ll have the guts to pull the plug.”

Corruption, hope without realism, business as usual — all these are revealed in the project. And wasn’t the second season of True Detective about this? Let’s hope this real-world fiasco ends with less bloodshed.

Californians have already lost enough in treasure!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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California, high speed, rail, boondoggle, waste, illustration

 

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crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people national politics & policies too much government

Not Buying a Stairway to Riches

Led Zeppelin, copyright, lawsuit

I am not a writer by trade. I don’t make a living off of these daily and weekly writing gigs. I give this stuff away, for free. The donations I ask for are there to cover bandwidth, website expertise, artwork, etc. They don’t cover my contributions.

But that doesn’t disqualify me from my occasional wonder and amazement (and worse) at how intellectual “property” is handled in America.

This week a Los Angeles jury found that the great rock band “Led Zeppelin did not plagiarize the opening chords of the rock epic Stairway to Heaven from the U.S. band Spirit,” the BBC reports. “It said the riff Led Zeppelin was accused of taking from Spirit’s 1967 song Taurus ‘was not intrinsically similar’ to Stairway’s opening.”

So, my surprise, and perhaps yours too, is that a riff, a mere riff, taken from one song and put into another, could be actionable at law. It seems to me that this would be like suing over an essay title (one has no private property rights to your headlines, no matter how original), or clever turn of phrase. Writers copy this stuff all the time. Even more commonly, they inadvertently regurgitate these writerly “riffs” from the far corners of their minds, or even think up these things separately.

But honestly, I didn’t think one could sue over a riff. Riffs and chord progressions vary in originality, but some of the best songs use the same three chords, so there is a lot of apparent “stealing” going on.

Thankfully, the jury wisely knew the difference between What Is and What Should Never Be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Led Zeppelin, copyright, lawsuit

 

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Hysteria, Assassination, and Big Government

Brexit, EU, European Union, independence, democracy, illustration

The biggest political story of the month? Brexit.

The people of Great Britain will vote, this week, whether to remain in, or exit, the European Union. (Britain+exit=“Brexit,” you see.)

Establishment forces in Britain have engaged in hysterical, hyperbolic overkill, warning of grave disaster were Britain to leave the union. America’s President Barack Obama contributed to this, recently, when he warned that an independent Britain might find itself placed “at the back of the queue” in trade talks.

Tragically, things got more troubling last week when anti-Brexit, pro-union campaigner Jo Cox, a Member of Parliament and prominent Labour Party activist, was brutally slain last week in front of her local library. The man had just left a mental health facility, after requesting help.

At first, major media reported that the killer had shouted “Britain First,” an old patriotic motto as well as the name of a pro-Brexit political party, while shooting and stabbing her. Of the several eyewitnesses to have allegedly testified to this murderous shout, only one is sticking to the story . . . a member of the British Nationalist Party, which is antagonistic to Britain First. Other eyewitnesses deny the story.

Next, both sides promised to cease campaigning, out of good taste. Still, polls fluctuated, while remaining close.

Much of the furor has risen over immigration policy, especially fears about EU laxity towards Muslim refugees.

But the bedrock issue is Big Government. The EU is not effectively controlled by citizens; indeed, membership representation is mostly show, a mockery of republican government.

That is why, if I were British, I’d vote to Brexit.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Brexit, EU, European Union, independence, democracy, illustration

 

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies too much government

What Doesn’t Fly

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen

After the Orlando massacre, isn’t it finally time to get guns out of the hands of . . . licensed security guards?

Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, who murdered 49 people and wounded 53 others in the Pulse nightclub, worked for the globe’s largest security firm, Britain’s G4S. He passed two background checks conducted by the company, and his government credentials included “a Florida state-issued security guard license and a security guard firearms license.”

Not to mention that Omar Mateen was twice investigated by the FBI — in 2013 and again in 2014 — and cleared by the agency both times. Though on the terrorist watch list for a while, he was removed from that list after the FBI closed its investigations.

So we need more and tougher background checks? Must the FBI check every gun purchaser three times, is that the charm?

Even if the Feds blocked gun sales to those on the terrorist watch list and the “no-fly” list, it wouldn’t have affected Mateen, for he wasn’t on these lists when he purchased his Sig MCX.

Nevertheless, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy led a 14-hour filibuster to bring attention to his gun control legislation . . . that wouldn’t have stopped the Orlando massacre . . . or the shooting in Newtown.

“I will be meeting with the NRA, who has endorsed me,” tweeted Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, “about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no fly list, to buy guns.”

If our government ever uses a secret list developed by security agencies to deny citizens their rights, without due legal process, without innocence until proven guilty, we will sorely need our Second Amendment rights.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Omar Mir Seddique Mateen

 

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moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Sit, UBI, Sit: Play Dead

Swiss, Switzerland, UBI, Universal Basic Income, socialism, robots, illustration

This weekend, the Swiss people rejected the idea of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) with a whopping 77 percent against.

That’s the kind of overwhelming result that one finds in America for, say, term limits. And 23 percent, you might notice, is about the percentage of the population in America of hard-core “liberal” progressives, the kind of people usually in support of such measures.

In Switzerland’s case, it was a measure put on the ballot by one group, Bien-CH. But if you are thinking “socialism,” the group insists that that’s the wrong way to think about the plan. UBI is needed, the group’s website says, “to grease the wheels of the capitalist economies” facing a declining need for workers as a result of technological advance.

Yes, UBI is a policy designed to accommodate the coming horde of robots! How? By “increasing demand” by spreading out wealth from the connected-to-tech few to the witless-about-tech many. (How vulgar Keynesian.)

The Swiss government urged a No vote, fearing a need to raise taxes by fifty percent. Quite a hike.

Meanwhile, the notion garners worldwide interest, and even libertarian social scientist Charles Murray promotes this guaranteed income idea (under a different initialism), mostly to streamline the costly bulk of the welfare state.

I’m dubious.

After all, about our latest industrial revolution, in artificial intelligence and in robotics: I say open up labor and entrepreneurial markets from excessive regulation, and allow networking advances to transform capitalism on its own terms, with person-to-person (P2P) cooperation (think AirBnB and Uber and Lyft) and much more.

The best is coming, I bet. If clunky proposals like UBI don’t get in the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Swiss, Switzerland, UBI, Universal Basic Income, socialism, robots, illustration

 

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Accountability ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Bernie’s Problem?

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, war, foreign policy, blood stained, death, military, illustration

Sen. Bernie Sanders has a problem. With Hillary Clinton.

Asked about the Clinton Foundation, yesterday, by CNN’s Jake Tapper, host of State of the Union, Bernie re-questioned himself:

Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of state and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments, governments which are dictatorships?

And Bernie answered, “Yeah, I do.”

How many roads must mainstream media reporters walk down before they investigate and report on the myriad of ethical cracks in the Clinton Foundation?

To the most obvious conflict of interest in the history of the human race, add the fact that even after promising President Obama that the Clinton Foundation would at least be totally transparent with an annual report of all donations . . . well, Hillary welched on the deal, not revealing the donors.

While Bernie’s condemnation of Hillary’s ethical shortcomings was big news, less reported were the senator’s comments regarding whether Mrs. Clinton is “too quick on the draw, too eager to use military force.”

Bernie again was clear: “I worry about that. Yeah, I do. Her support for the War in Iraq was not just an aberration.” Sanders went on to cite Secretary of State Clinton’s role in pushing President Obama to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya and to intervene in Syria.

Hillary’s judgment on issues of war and peace is questionable . . . especially when we don’t know whether or not a foreign leader or his cronies have written big checks to the Clinton Foundation.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, war, foreign policy, blood stained, death, military, illustration

 

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Accountability national politics & policies too much government

Dangerous, Incoherent

Hillary Clinton, incoherent, Donald Trump, foreign policy, presidential

Hillary Clinton came out swinging against Donald Trump yesterday. She said electing the man would be an “historic mistake.”

As opposed to her past career in politics, which I would call an historical mistake.

Mrs. Clinton focused in on Mr. Trump’s foreign policy pronouncements. “She ran through Mr Trump’s foreign policy points and rejected each one,” reported the BBC, “calling him thin-skinned, irrational and unprepared.”

Funny, though: I wouldn’t exactly call Mrs. Clinton the opposite: thick-skinned, rational, or prepared.

Take her main charges, then look at the obvious demerit of each:

“Mrs Clinton said a Trump presidency could start overseas wars and ruin the US economy.” Don’t vote Trump — starting wars and ruining the economy is Clinton’s job!

Trump’s “proposals were vague and often nonsensical.” Unlike Clinton’s, whose murky specifics speak of evasion from a to z — and whose policies in Libya and elsewhere made no sense whatsoever, breeding more conflict and opposition in place of the regimes she helped undermine and remove.

“Questioning his relationship with Russian president Vladmir Putin, she said: ‘I’ll leave it to a psychiatrist to explain his affection for tyrants.’” And speaking of perverse affection, her and her husband’s Clinton Foundation has been milking foreign tyrants for years. All very above-board, I’m sure.

“‘This isn’t reality television, this is actual reality,’ she said.” If you ask me, her reality is just as irreal as Trump’s.

We can do better, America.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Hillary Clinton, incoherent, Donald Trump, foreign policy, presidential

 

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ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

The Long Road to Citizens United

Krist Novoselic, Citizens United, free speech, fairvote.org

Everybody is familiar with the standard theory regarding the Citizens United decision. Former comedian and current earnest socialist Sarah Silverman puts it this way: “Every politician takes money from Big Money, ever since it was made legal with Citizens United.”

Like most folks who talk this way, she doesn’t give a squeak of context. She barely even indicates that it was a Supreme Court case, 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. She does not mention at all that the ruling overturned the FEC’s act of suppressing a political movie.

But there is a much wider context than such bare facts — and if you want a good synopsis, you could hardly do better than read my friend Krist Novoselic’s calm, reasoned “look at the history of attempts to regulate independent campaign expenditures.”

This “modern history” started with what the New York Times called Richard Nixon’s “revolution in political financing.” The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 “required detailed disclosure of campaign contributions; set campaign contribution limits to candidates, parties and committees; set expenditure limits on campaigns, independent groups and individuals and created the first public financing of presidential campaigns and national conventions.”

And almost immediately the law began suppressing political speech and advertising. And led to a long series of court cases.

And decisions.

And revisions.

That define our times.

Krist (with whom I serve on the board of FairVote.org) provides the context you need to see through what he aptly calls “the hype” about “Citizens United,” as well as how the decision correctly removed the license given to the FEC’s role as “state censorship board.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Krist Novoselic, Citizens United, free speech, fairvote.org

 

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Fatherland, Socialism and Death!

Venezuela, store, socialism, column

The fall of Venezuela is an atrocity.

The comic elements are clear enough — the further you remove yourself from the poverty, chaos, and collapse. We can wallow in a bit of Schadenfreude, taking glee as some American leftists squirm to explain why the socialist paradise they ballyhooed a mere three years ago now tail-spins to the grave.

The collapse of this socialist experiment offers an enormous level of tragedy. It’s not pretty.

The country’s leader, President Nicolas Maduro, makes his predictable desperation play. Rather than confront his own errors, and the futility of making socialism work in anything like a rigorous form, he boasts. “Venezuela Leader Says US ‘Dreams’ Of Dividing Loyal Military,” reads yesterday’s Reuters report. While no doubt true, this is one of those cases where whatever we dream to the north, our dreams are better than their current reality.

Of course the Venezuelan military should turn on Maduro, Hugo Chavez’s inheritor, protecting the right of recall, which Maduro is denying. By painting the U. S. as the bad guy, Maduro hopes to unite his people — especially his armed forces — around him. That’s what a desperate demagogic dynast does. Citizens and subjects traditionally abandon skepticism about their leaders when they feel threatened from the outside.

Which is one reason it would be a mistake for the U. S. to intervene.

Reuters poetically reports that the military is still united behind the socialist government, and resists the recall referendum, singing “Fatherland, Socialism, or Death!”

Wrong conjunction. Not “or” but “and” . . . if you insist on socialism.

The government, military pressure or no, should allow the recall vote, and soon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Venezuela, store, socialism, column

 

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education and schooling folly ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Toiletarianism

toilet, bathroom, trans, transgender, sex, gender, law, folly

President Obama and other politicians are taking a wide stance over the nation’s public restrooms. Important bathroom policy will finally be determined at the highest levels.

Last week, public educators nationwide received a legalistically-worded letter from the Departments of Justice and Education explaining how to legally treat transgender students under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. CNN boiled it down to “Fall in line or face loss of federal funding.”

Friendly federal “guidance” comes after dueling lawsuits between the Feds and North Carolina over that state’s House Bill 2, which establishes statewide restroom regulations. Those regs require that transgender folks use the bathroom appropriate to the sex listed on their birth certificate (whether Kenyan, Canadian or other).

Obama wants Americans to choose the restroom matching their self-chosen “gender identity.” Conservatives seem most worried that his policy is so loosely defined as to allow non-transgender male persons to simply claim to be transgender in order to shower with the girls volley-ball team or lurk in the powder room.

“Have we gone stark raving nuts?” questioned Sen. Ted Cruz, proclaiming: “Grown adult men, strangers, should not be alone in a bathroom with little girls.”

In California, there’s legislation to force businesses to make “all single-stall public restrooms” gender neutral. “Let’s make a clear statement that, if you want to go pee, by all means help yourself,” argued the proposal’s author.

Transgender people should be treated with care and respect, as should every person. But do we really need a national bathroom policy designed for maximum division in an election year?

Before politicians solve today’s glaring non-problem in public restrooms, they should solve a real problem first.

Just one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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toilet, bathroom, trans, transgender, sex, gender, law, folly