Category: too much government

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Accountability Common Sense general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

America After November

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Yesterday, I bemoaned the disaster that is this year’s presidential race. But big whup. As the LifeLock commercial rightly asks, “Why monitor a problem if you don’t fix it?”

Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be the next president. That means we have our work cut out for us. And we can’t wait for the 2020 presidential race to fix the problem. We must immediately assert citizen power to create an effective check on government-gone-wild.

So, what to do?

First, let’s admit that fixing Washington isn’t easy. We must fight the Feds through national organizations, of course, but we actually gain greater leverage by working closer to home — at local and state levels.

We need to elect mayors, governors, legislators and councilmembers in 2017 and 2018, men and women who will fight for free markets and against cronyism. And stand up to the federal government.

And where we have the power of ballot initiatives and recall, let’s use it.

By Inauguration Day, we can be changing the conversation in most of the top 25 media markets. How? By petitioning the right issues onto the ballot. By April and May, voters in those cities and counties can directly enact those reforms. Next November, Ohio and Washington state voters can weigh in with ballot initiatives.

Sadly, tragically, it’s too late to stop campaign 2016’s tornado from doing damage. The next disaster of an administration is on its way. But we can create a competing agenda to the Hillary Clinton or the Donald Trump agenda.

A pro-liberty agenda. Starting now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original (cc) photo by Niklas Hellerstedt on Flickr

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general freedom insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies political challengers responsibility too much government

We Take the Bullet

debate, Hillary, Donald Trump, the scream, bullet, illustration

“[I]f someone puts a gun to your head,” argues David Boaz of the Cato Institute, “and says you have to choose between Clinton and Trump, the correct answer is, take the bullet.”

Then, proving the axiom “it can always get worse,” came Friday’s twin revelations: the Washington Post broke the story of Donald Trump caught on a hot microphone bragging about groping women, and WikiLeaks released hacked emails with unflattering revelations about Hillary Clinton “principled” duplicity.

The Clinton camp huffs about the hack of campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails, but denies nothing.

In those speeches for which Wall Street firms paid her millions, Clinton’s progressivism evaporates. She suggests Goldman Sachs and other large financial firms should regulate themselves, because they “know the industry better than anybody.”

While publicly bashing the rich, she privately complains before her wealthy audience about the “bias against people who have led successful . . . lives.” Moreover, Hillary explains that it’s bad “if everybody is watching” public policy being made, adding: “[Y]ou need both a public and a private position.”

And to think some folks don’t trust her.

Mr. Trump likewise confirmed our worst fears. During a 2005 taping of a television soap, he boasted that “when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

And then gave a “rapey” example of what “anything” means.

This man deserves political power?

Forget which is worse. Note how much alike they are. Both seem to think they can say — even do — anything. Without consequences.

Without caring one whit about the rest of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly free trade & free markets moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Trump’s Road Rage

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There is no reason why the states shouldn’t handle their own infrastructure. Not only in funding, but in direction and method of production and “distribution.”

But politicians aiming for the presidency tend not to even consider that heresy. And journalists, of course, tend to rah-rah for the nationalist planning notion, too. It’s easier to cover everything from Washington. I remember much talk of “our crumbling infrastructure” back in the 1980s.

Thankfully, Shikha Dalmia has not jumped onto that bandwagon. The Reason writer notes that Trump is trumping Obama’s fling with “shovel-ready jobs,” demanding that the federal government spend up to a trillion in infrastructure “stimulus.”

Forget for the moment the obvious contradiction: pretending to be an outsider, Trump is pushing as “insiderish” a program as imaginable.

I wonder: is Trump playing the cuckoo here, placing an alien idea into his constituents’ nests? Are his supporters about to be “cucked”? (As alt-rightists like to put it.)

Trump looks abroad for models of beautiful roads and bridges and trains and all the rest. If you travel “from Dubai, Qatar, and China,” he bemoans, our biggest cities give off a certain “Third World” vibe.

Dalmia blanches: “the countries Trump is praising as models for a better America are all autocracies that have made a complete hash of things.”

Boy, we do not need to find another way to make a complete hash of things here in the States. And our federal budgets are strained (and pushing us further into debt) as it is.

Besides, it is not written in stone, concrete, or even asphalt, that these United States’ roads and bridges must be made the federal government’s business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest responsibility too much government

How Insidious the Plot?

Eric O'Keefe, Gov. Scott Walker, John Doe, Wisconsin

The story of the Wisconsin John Doe raids against conservatives, covered yesterday and the day before, is a big one. Huge. So I now continue.

The rest of the story? Recently, materials that police seized from the subjects of those dawn raids were leaked, illegally, to the Guardian newspaper — in direct violation of a court order. Yet more lawlessness.

Who leaked this information? Well, it was in the possession of the Milwaukee County prosecutors, and they haven’t alleged a Russian hack.

What’s really going on? Eric O’Keefe stated on Monday that “even though they never brought a charge, the prosecutors did achieve one of their major goals: the unlawful seizure of millions of private communications to create a searchable database of political intelligence spanning Wisconsin and the entire country.”

In short, the abusive investigation was part and parcel of a partisan effort.

State Rep. Dave Craig is urging the creation of a special legislative committee to “take sworn testimony . . . to determine whether those charged with the public trust have acted maliciously by intentionally leaking sealed materials in violation of state policy.”

It’s important that justice be done. To prevent future tyranny.

We don’t want to see a repeat of the IRS abuse of Tea Party groups without anyone being held to account.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Speaking of the IRS, it turns out that the head of Wisconsin’s Government Accountability Board (GAB) was a pal of Lois Lerner, who headed the IRS division responsible for violating the civil rights of Tea Party groups — before she took the Fifth, refusing to testify before Congress and then retiring with a six-figure pension. Further, there is evidence the GAB may have illegally provided confidential information to the IRS in hopes of getting the Feds to join in harassing these conservative groups.

 

FOR MORE ON THIS INCREDIBLE STORY

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Eric O'Keefe, Gov. Scott Walker, John Doe, Wisconsin

 

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

A Morning After

Eric O'Keefe, Gov. Scott Walker, John Doe, Wisconsin

Yesterday we celebrated the end to “a disgraceful episode in Wisconsin history” — the dawn police raids of the so-called John Doe investigations against conservatives alleged to have violated campaign finance regulations.

State and federal courts ruled that no laws were broken and some laws were unconstitutional — certainly Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm’s prosecutorial methods violated the rights of citizens the court called innocent.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, announced Monday, not to hear Chisholm’s appeal thankfully ends this particular reign of error and terror.

So what have we learned?

First, courage is contagious. Had Eric O’Keefe with the Wisconsin Club for Growth not bravely spoken out, others would have remained quiet, and the prosecutors might have gotten away with what National Review’s David French called “a pure intimidation tactic to try to terrify conservatives into silence.”

Another unmistakable conclusion: yes indeed, it can happen here.

It has.

Obviously.

And if changes are not made, it will happen again.

Reforms have already been won. Not only is the John Doe investigation shut down, the law was changed, allowing for no more John Doe attacks. The Government Accountability Board, found to have acted from partisan motives, has been completely disbanded and new ethics bodies formed.

Another avenue of correction comes through the courts. The MacIver Institute filed a class-action lawsuit against Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm and others for illegally seizing documents, and Cindy Archer, whose home was raided by police, has filed a civil rights lawsuit.

Ms. Archer’s suit was dismissed after a federal judge ruled that the prosecutors had immunity. But that dismissal is now on appeal before the federal Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

The prosecutors will go to court . . . as defendants.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Eric O'Keefe, Gov. Scott Walker, John Doe, Wisconsin

 

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general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility too much government

Undefeated

Missouri Ethics Commission, lobbyist, lobbying, Ron Calzone, Missouri First

It’s over . . . but it’s not.

A conscientious Show-Me state activist has won his case, but . . .

A year ago, the unethical Missouri Ethics Commission fined Ron Calzone $1,000 for not paying a silly $10 fee. To register as a lobbyist. They also ordered him to stop talking to legislators until he complied.

Citizen Calzone didn’t register.

He didn’t pay.

And he didn’t shut up.

On principle.

Instead, he contacted the Freedom Center of Missouri and the Center for Competitive Politics, a national outfit that defends our rights to participate in our supposedly participatory and representative democratic republic.

On Monday, a judge ruled in Ron’s favor, tossing out the “ethics complaint” against him. On a technicality, actually.

Winning is better than losing. But even if someone bothers to try again against Calzone, filing the suit properly*, Calzone would win.

You see, we have rights . . . including the freedom to talk to those pretending to represent us. It is not at all certain that government has any constitutional authority to regulate paid lobbyists.

But Ron is not a paid lobbyist. He volunteers for Missouri First, a citizen group.

So why did the speech police’s long arm reach out to grab him?

He’s effective.

More than a forthright advocate for what he believes, he has proven smart enough to find ways to allow fellow freedom-lovers to weigh in on bills they favor or oppose.

This has endeared him neither to legislators nor the lobbying “community” — professionals paid handsomely to lose to Calzone’s grassroots network. They will strike back. You can count on it.

But as long as there are citizens like him, the people will not be defeated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The charges weren’t filed by a “natural person,” as the law requires, but by the attorney for the Missouri Society of Governmental Consultants, the state lobbyist guild.

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Missouri Ethics Commission, lobbyist, lobbying, Ron Calzone, Missouri First