Category: Accountability

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Accountability ideological culture local leaders media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

The Eye of the Storm

Hurricane Harvey, Cajun Navy, government relief, aid, Texas, Houston

Hurricane Harvey has been amazing in its devastation. All that rain, all that flooding — what  a frightening time it must be for those caught within it.

While Harvey’s winds brought in waves and rain and floods, for most of us, far away and snug in our homes, it brought an occasion to donate, and . . . nostalgia.

Nostalgia? It’s not the disaster element so much as an old-time exhibition . . . of journalism. For more than just a few hours, we watched reporters actually report. We saw them stand waist-deep in water. We saw them cover actual events.

And we read them deal in facts . . . like the heroic efforts of the “Cajun Navy.”

Of course, this opinion-free window of media coverage did not last long. The talking heads and Twitter-journos and partisan hacks came flooding back not long after the worst.

Did Trump do enough? Or the right thing?

Did Houston’s no-zoning policy lead to the disaster?

Doesn’t “price gouging” really suck?

Did . . . Enough. It was and is too early for finger-pointing and “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.”

Of course, the Houston zoning discussion is interesting. It is worth noting that there are building rules and governments in Houston, as well a national rules that made homes and businesses there less safe. And economists have already come to their usual defenses of “price gouging” and criticisms of disastrous government programs.

Still, the enormous relief efforts remain the biggest human interest story — thousands of individuals taking the initiative and their boats to join first responders and the National Guard in rescuing thousands trapped by flooding.

So, before we explain it all, let’s luxuriate in what remains of the fact-based reporting.

And help.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers Popular responsibility

The Law of Unintended Trump Support

Donald Trump, Afghanistan, outsider, consensus

Last week, when President Donald Trump abandoned his previous policy position on getting U.S. troops out of Afghanistan in favor of continuing the establishment-supported policy of keeping those troops there, he was very well-received in our nation’s capital.

NeverTrumper/neo-con Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) spoke of Mr. Trump’s “smarts” and “moral courage.”

The #NeverPraiseTrump Washington Post applauded the president’s valiant “self-correction.”

Yet when Trump holds a view contrary to the Washington consensus his wisdom and moral bravery elicit less celebration.

Instead, we hear that The Donald is unfit to command.

“I really question his ability to be — his fitness to be — in this office,” says James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence.

“The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability,” Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) concurred, “that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

And from the usual suspect list of television talking heads we get clinical diagnoses, talk of “erratic behavior and mental instability that place the country in grave danger.”

Mr. Trump combines every bad personality trait imaginable, the litany runs.

But all this is for nought.

Donald Trump has been able to withstand media negativity as well as the lack of support from his own party’s insiders for one simple reason: it validates him.

Every insider attack, every media-fueled outrage campaign, just proves him as the ultimate outsider to a system that the long-frustrated, increasingly angered electorate wants turned upside down.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

*This episode of Common Sense condenses my regular weekend remarks at Townhall.

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Accountability crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government

Google: Disagreement

Google, censorship, Boycott, Competition, free market, be evil

Once upon a time, Google penned a stern note to self: “Don’t be evil.”

What you regard as avoiding evil, though, depends on what you regard as doing good.

Does Google think it’s “good” to fire someone for offering reasoned objections to vapid pieties about why there are more men than women working as programmers, and about how to fix the problem? Assuming it is a problem.

If the answer is yes, then it’s up to more reasonable people to say, “No, Google, stomping on candid internal discussion of your (bad) politics and policies is not ‘doing good.’”

Alas, some Google critics push for a “remedy” worse than the problem: government force. They want government to impose new prohibitions and mandates on large private firms that help people to spread their opinions.

I don’t necessarily agree when a firm — Google, Twitter, PayPal or anybody else — stops providing services to persons expressing views that managers and HR departments disdain. Yet I may agree. No one is morally obligated — and no one should be legally compelled — to help spread the views of others.

I certainly refuse to distribute any installment of “Common Sense” guest-authored by The Anti-Paul-Jacob Club.

When market actors make bad decisions without violating anyone’s rights, others have many powerful and peaceful means of opposing those decisions. Criticism. Boycott. Competition.

But we shouldn’t seek to outlaw the decision-making.

The right to freedom includes no guarantee that one will always do the right thing as others see it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies

One Way to Do It

Philip K. Dick, Nazi, ovens, ashes, smoke, abortion, crematorium, camp

While reading CBS’s recent story on Iceland’s success at reducing the number of Down syndrome cases, I was reminded of the Amazon Prime series Man in the High Castle.

The show, based on the celebrated alternative history novel by Philip K. Dick (1928–1982), explores a timeline wherein the Axis powers won World War II. The United States is divided between the Greater Nazi Reich and the Empire of Japan.

In one scene, one of the protagonists — a hero? a villain? — is stalled on a Midwest country roadside. He smells something in the air. Smoke. Ash.

The very American sheriff explains: it is a local hospital destroying defective humans. The weak, the sick, the disabled.

And we, the viewers, recoil: how evil. Nazis actually execute the weak, the sick, the disabled. Well, they did, in history, not just fiction.

But, as CBS explains, the reason Down syndrome cases are disappearing all over the place, and in Iceland most of all, is not a new cure. Chalk it up to the rise of prenatal screenings. We see fewer Down syndrome people because, before birth, they are executed. Aborted.

In our non-fictional timeline, many Americans are incensed that a few folks proclaiming to be Nazis have been “allowed” to demonstrate in public.

Nazism is evil. I agree.

But how do these morally horrified people react about the very “progressive” and culturally acceptable practice of killing the unwanted?

Think I’ve gone over the top, have abused a revered author to make a point alien to his own? Well, please read Dick’s “The Pre-Persons,” a story about abortion, way post-natal . . . until the age at which a person can understand algebra.*

Quite the moral calculation we make, eh?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* That could mean it’s open season for murder as states are moving to drop algebra requirements because so many fail to master the subject. 

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Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies

Of Course, You Know, This Means War

Afghanistan, war, Trump, foreign policy, defense, middle east, east asia

When Steve Bannon was booted out of the White House, my thoughts turned immediately to war. As I wrote in frustration on Friday,

Bannon’s departure probably means the slim chance that the US might withdraw from “our” open-ended, never-ending occupation of Afghanistan has been foreclosed.

If we don’t win the war by ushering in a completely transformed, modernized and westernized Afghanistan, at least our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, etc., etc., will each have. their turn.

Of course, if the fabled “Graveyard of Empires” continues to work its historic magic, maybe future generations won’t face that burden: the United States could fall . . . as a worldwide imperial presence. And, if our global military archipelago fails — for, say, want of wealth to throw overseas — do we have any reason to believe that our republic would bounce back?

There remains more than enough reason to work for foreign policy sanity.

Prior to his evening national address on the day of the eclipse, Trump explained what he intends to do in Afghanistan — send 4,000 more troops.

Meanwhile, Steve Bannon’s door-slapped rump did not dissuade him from tweeting out what he intends to do “on Capitol Hills, in the media, and in corporate America”:

If there’s any confusion out there, let me clear it up: I’m leaving the White House and going to war for Trump against his opponents. . . .

Call this the Bugs Bunny Policy: “Of course, you know, this means war!”

And considering the promises made in the President’s speech, we can amend that to “of course, this means never-ending war.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Categories
Accountability general freedom local leaders term limits too much government

Term Limits for the Memories

Councilman John Crescimbeni, term limits, congress, Florida, promises, politicians

Opponents say term limits destroy “institutional knowledge.”

Imagine legislatures where unsophisticated solons blindly fashion public policies lacking any knowledge of the pluses or minuses of past legislation.

Well . . . actually that explanation bears a striking resemblance to the status quo in our career-dominated Congress. Who wants that?

Now comes an interesting real-world example of such institutional memory: term limits itself.

Back in 1991, residents of Jacksonville, Florida, petitioned a limit of two consecutive terms for city council members onto the ballot — after the city council voted not to place it before voters. When voters had their say, a very loud 82 percent endorsed term limits.

The Florida Times Union called it a “landslide decision.”

That was 26 years ago.* Last month, Councilman Matt Schellenberg proposed that the voter-enacted two-term limit should be replaced by a more politician-friendly three-term limit. He wants to stay in office for 12 years, rather than just eight.

“I think we restrict democracy when we put limits on us,” he declared. “I find the position of being on the council for 12 years is a perfect number . . .”

That’s when Councilman John Crescimbeni offered a dose of outside-the-institution memory, explaining that council members who voted against placing term limits on that 1991 ballot were run over.

“Six of the ten people who voted against [term limits] didn’t come back to office,” Crescimbeni warned. “If you want to push the green button tonight, I suspect that’s going to seal your fate.”

Suddenly, the city council decided to push off making any decision . . . until this week’s meeting. **

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* A new poll commissioned by U.S. Term Limits shows  that Jacksonville voters oppose weakening their term limits law by a better than four-to-one margin.

** Your displeasure can be communicated to the Jacksonville council by calling (904) 630-1377.

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Illustration based on a photograph by Mark Bonica