Category: Accountability

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Accountability crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

Lock Her Up

Deyshia Hargrav, superintendent, schoolboard, Vermilion Parish school board, free speech, government, local government, Lozman v. Riviera Beach, Florida, Supreme Court

“Who Are We?” I asked Sunday at Townhall.com.

Today’s question: What have we come to?

Under a seemingly click-bait headline in The Atlantic, “Can Government Officials Have You Arrested for Speaking to Them?” Garrett Epps examines last week’s outrageous handcuffing and arrest of a Louisiana teacher, Deyshia Hargrave, for speech displeasing to the Vermilion Parish school board at a public meeting.

The elementary school teacher complained about a $30,000 raise the board was giving the superintendent, noting that teachers had not seen an increase in nearly a decade. After asserting that the raise would be “basically taken out of the pockets of teachers,” she was ruled out of order by the school board president and then asked to leave the premises. She calmly left the meeting room . . . only to be forced to the floor, handcuffed and arrested once in the hallway.

Police claimed the arrest was for “remaining after having been forbidden” and “resisting an officer.”

The school district announced it won’t press charges. Very funny. Anyone can see from the video that her treatment was excessive.

Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Lozman v. Riviera Beach, Florida, where an arrest was clearly retaliatory, but the city is newly claiming another violation it could have used to arrest Mr. Lozman.

Does this after-the-fact adding on of charges provide governments with an escape clause? As Epps argues, a Lozman decision “could either rein in, or embolden, the tiny-handed tyrants who rule county buildings and city halls around the country.”

If respectfully challenging our so-called public servants in meetings designed for that can lead to being arrested, handcuffed and dragged off, we no longer live in ‘the land of the free.’

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly government transparency local leaders moral hazard porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Babylon Goes Broke

California, pension, crisis, canary, cage, coal mine, spending, taxes

A few Babylonian, er, California cities going bankrupt — Stockton, Vallejo, and Bell — should be seen as more than dead canaries in a coalminer’s care.

Indeed, you don’t need special prophetic gifts to see the dangers posed by over-promising cushy pensions to government workers. Californians are coming around. And the state’s governor, Jerry Brown, appears to be “calling for reductions in gold-plated, unsustainable public-sector pensions,” as Nick Gillespie informs us at Reason.

But statewide reforms will not be easy. The problem is huge, presenting grave costs. “Absent the ability to alter pensions, states and localities have to devote more and more of their taxes to simply covering the costs of retired workers,” Gillespie explains. “Worse still, they often raise taxes to cover rising costs, typically at the expense of providing basic services such as police and road maintenance.”

Yes, over-promising defined-benefit pension packages effectively distributes wealth away from basic government services and into the pockets of the people with whom politicians work most closely.

Unfortunately, the courts long ago decided that politicians’ promises to employees outweigh basic government duties. That is, the courts determined that “public-sector employees at all levels of government had an inviolable right to the pension benefits that existed on the day they were hired.”

But the courts seem to be lightening up on this “California Rule,” and the governor has dared mention that, come “the next recession,” some headway might be possible.

No matter what you may think of this rather desperate hope, the writing is on the wall. And it is in red ink and numbers, not Babylonian.*

As America’s Babylon is finding out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* And not “Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.”

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

Earmark This Bad Argument

earmarks, ear marks, pork, Congress, spending, corrumption, deals

With President Trump endorsing a return to earmarks, House Republicans too are reportedly “reconsidering” their usefulness and pondering “how they might ease back into the practice.” Lawmakers fret that they have lost too much power by giving up this instrument of corruption. (Not their characterization.)

Wikipedia defines “earmark” as a budgetary provision that “directs funds to a specific recipient while circumventing the merit-based or [competitive] allocation process.” An earmark is a taxpayer-funded goodie bestowed on a congressman’s constituent, the sort of crony willing to contribute to the bestower’s next election campaign in return.

Quid pro quo, pay-for-play, bribery. Whatever you call it, there’s darn good reason why political leaders who fight corruption have fought to end earmarks.

Congressional Republicans imposed a ban on earmarks in 2011 to show that they were anti-corruption. So why relapse? Well, “the time is right,” according to GOP Representative John Culberson, for Congress to prove it can use earmarks responsibly. His bad argument is that the “excesses” of a decade ago were committed by “knuckleheads [who] went overboard.”

Somebody alert Culberson to the fact that many of the same knuckleheads are still in office. Ahem. Congress is not yet term-limited, remember?

The more basic point is that earmarks are by nature corrosive of sound government. President Trump’s only metric is apparently “getting [things] done” as opposed to obstructionism, preferring “the great friendliness” when we had earmarks. Sure, stuff got done — a lot more spending, a lot more bad stuff.

To the extent they’re gone, earmarks should stay gone. The only appropriate action is to make it even harder to bring them back.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy tax policy

Hey, It’s Your Money

tax cut, trickle down, supply side, taxes, jobs, employment

I leave it up to you how to spend your own money. You decide, based on your own circumstances and priorities.

Oh, you don’t need my permission?

Of course not.

But some people think that if you spend your own money on your own priorities in accordance with your own judgment, it is indeed a problem. At least when you get to keep more of your own money because of tax cuts.

President Trump has often suggested that recipients of new corporate tax cuts will spend the additional money mostly on increasing wages and hiring new workers. Yet some major corporations reportedly say that they will spend the additional money on paying dividends or buying back shares. Maybe others will buy more advertising, storage space or tools. Various commentators fret. But why should a firm hire new workers if other expenditures would be more productive at the moment?

Of course, in the long run, a company that is more profitable and successful can hire more people and can pay them more.

But wages are not the only expense that companies must cover in order to be successful in the long run. Managers do, and should, devote resources first to the improvements that they conclude are most urgent. That a company’s resources increase because of a tax cut doesn’t alter the necessity or reasonableness of pursuing economic goals in accordance with one’s best judgment.

An approach that, to be sure, also benefits present employees as well as future ones.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

The Ninth and the Tenth of It

marijuana, constitution, intrastate, rights, legalization, decriminalization

When Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Obama Administration enforcement guidelines regarding the states that have legalized (in their 29 different ways) marijuana, last week, supporters of freedom expressed some worry.

But we had to admit, one excuse for Sessions’s nixing of the mostly hands-off policy seemed to make sense on purely legal grounds. If we want to liberalize drug laws, then our Cowardly Congress should do it.

Definitely not the Executive Branch.

And yet, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Will Baude argues that “the rule of law” does not require “renewed enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act.”

If anything, he argues, it “requires the opposite.”

Baude mostly rests his case on the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which does not authorize regulation of intra-state trade. An issue on which the AG does possess a duty to weigh in.*

This rubs against FDR-Era constitutional theory, of course, which treats all commerce as regulate-able interstate trade. But this makes no sense. The Tenth Amendment declares that states possess powers not given to the federal government. An interpretation of the Constitution cannot be justified if it effectively nullifies other parts of the Constitution. (If all trade is “inter” state, what’s left for the states? Powers to do what? And how could there be any constraints on federal power?)

And then there is the Ninth Amendment, which states that the people retain rights not listed in the Constitution.

When citizens assert rights — such as the option to cultivate, sell, buy or ingest a common and quite hardy plant — in their states (largely through ballot initiatives), the federal government should butt out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “Members of the executive branch have their own obligation to interpret the Constitution,” Baude writes, “and if a federal law is unconstitutional in part then the executive branch, no less than the courts, should say so. It is the Constitution, not the Court, that is the ultimate rule of law in our system.”

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Accountability folly

Win On the Field

College Football Playoff National Championship, University of Alabama Crimson Tide, University of Georgia Bulldogs, Central Florida Athletic Director Danny White, Peach Bowl

Tonight, the College Football Playoff (CFP) National Championship Presented by AT&T will pit the University of Alabama Crimson Tide (12-1) against the University of Georgia Bulldogs (13-1). Millions of Americans will tune in to see the game’s winner declared “national champion.”

Regardless, University of Central Florida Athletic Director Danny White, after UCF won the Peach Bowl to finish the season 13-0, stated emphatically, “National champs. Undefeated.”*

What’s going on here? Well, UCF wasn’t ranked in the top four or chosen for the four-team championship playoff. Coming from the American Athletic Conference, UCF’s strength of schedule was far below that of Alabama, Clemson, Georgia and Oklahoma — all representing major conferences.

But strength of schedule is not everything; it should not trump what takes place on the field. Alabama, Georgia and UCF all played Auburn University. Alabama lost to Auburn. Georgia lost to Auburn, too, but then played again weeks later in the Southeastern Conference championship game and beat Auburn. On the other hand, the UCF Knights defeated Auburn on New Year’s Day, 34-27.

The whole point of the College Football Playoff is to have the champion decided on the field of play — not in a backroom by computers and politics.

As happened this year.

The CFP should go to an eight-team playoff, which would allow any undefeated team, even from less prestigious conferences, to be included.

Isn’t this awfully reminiscent of U. S. presidential campaigns? There, so-called “minor” party candidates are prevented from appearing in the debates — and thus removed from competition not by votes but by private poll results. Often before most voters have heard anything about them.

Let winners be decided on the field and at the ballot box. Not by backroom experts limiting opportunities.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Apparently, UCF is putting its money where its mouth is: paying out $325,000 in contracted bonuses to the coaching staff for winning a national championship.

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