Category: Accountability

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom national politics & policies political challengers responsibility

Delegates Imprisoned

Republican, convention, delegates, unbound,

Can you go to jail for voting for the wrong person?

We may find out today, in a federal court in Richmond, Virginia. Judge Robert Payne will hear motions in the case of Correll v. Herring. Attorney General Mark Herring is being sued in his official capacity by Beau Correll, a Republican delegate who refuses to vote for Donald Trump.

Correll is the named plaintiff in this class action challenge to a Virginia statute that binds delegates attending presidential nominating conventions to vote for the plurality winner of their state party primary, which was Mr. Trump.

The penalty for not tallying for Trump? As much as a year behind bars. And a fine.

Correll’s attorney, David Rivkin with Baker & Hostetler, has asked the judge to issue an injunction blocking enforcement of the statute against Correll and all other Virginia delegates. The ruling wouldn’t affect delegates beyond Virginia, yet the implication would be obvious: state laws binding party delegates to vote according to the primary results are unconstitutional.

Trump supporters aren’t taking this lawsuit lightly; several have moved to intervene — on the side of the AG. They’re right to be concerned: a delegate revolt to dump Trump has been brewing for weeks. And the legal precedents are all on the side of political parties controlling their own nominating process, leaving state governments no legitimate role.

It’s long past time to break the crony connections between government and the two major political parties.

Let’s stop all taxpayer subsidies for party primaries and conventions. But let’s also recognize that the delegates meeting in convention should be free to do . . . well, whatever they choose. After all, it’s their party.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

BIG PICTURE: Why the case really matters!

With the results of Correll vs. Herring, we may also find out if the Republican and Democratic (and Libertarian and Green) Parties are private organizations, with First Amendment protection for their freedom to associate without government interference. Nothing could be more heavy-handed than threatening delegates with incarceration if they vote their conscience — or even follow the state party’s rules, which call for delegates to be awarded proportionately rather than winner-take-all as Virginia’s statute requires.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency national politics & policies

The Servers of the Self-Serving

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Feel like Charlie Brown? That football . . . yanked away again.

Yesterday, FBI Director James Comey announced he’s not recommending prosecution of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate.

“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information,” Comey stated, “our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” He saw the evidence as not strong enough, “especially regarding intent.”

It doesn’t appear that Mrs. Clinton purposely divulged classified material, though her “intent” in setting up a private server for State Department work was self-centered, and purposely not transparent. She was clearly more concerned with shielding her communications from the U.S. Government and the public, than shielding classified information from the Russians, Chinese, Iranians or ISIS.

While the FBI noted that Clinton and her aides lacked any apparent intent “to violate laws governing the handling of classified information,” the investigation discovered ample “evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

Not a sterling report card for someone seeking to be the commander-in-chief.

Donald Trump’s negative standing with voters, 70 percent disapproval in a recent survey, may save Mrs. Clinton. Still, standing in her way remains the fact that a majority of voters just don’t trust her.

That won’t change with yesterday’s news.

“Key assertions by Hillary Clinton in defense of her email practices have collapsed under FBI scrutiny,” read the lead of an Associated Press story, detailing six public statements made by her that the investigation found to be false.

Let’s split the difference: neither prosecute Hillary nor elect her president.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo credit: Toms Norde / Valsts kanceleja on Flickr

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights

The Return of the Philosopher King

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On Sunday, at Townhall, I addressed the whining attacks on referendums and “democracy” that followed the Brexit referendum.

The most outrageous? A broadside from Jason Brennan.

“To have even a rudimentary sense of the pros and cons of Brexit,” argues this Robert J. and Elizabeth Flanagan Family Associate Professor of Strategy, Economics, Ethics, and Public Policy at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, “a person would need to possess tremendous social scientific knowledge. One would need to know about the economics and sociology of trade and immigration, the politics of centralized regulation, and the history of nationalist movements.”

In other words, most Brits needn’t worry their pretty little heads about deciding their future; experts have everything under control.

Brennan has a new book coming out, Against Democracy, wherein he posits that we need “a new system of government — epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable.”

Sound familiar? ’Tis the old Platonic whine in new wineskins.

This Philosopher King is necessary, you see, because citizens don’t posses the advanced degrees to judge whether Brennan is right or wrong. We can’t even find a Holiday Inn Express in the phonebook. Or a phonebook.

Nonetheless, why not consult other known knowers?

The late William F. Buckley, Jr., well-educated and well-spoken on political matters, once declared that he would “rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory, than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

“Incestuous, homogeneous fiefdoms of self-proclaimed expertise are always rank-closing and mutually self-defending, above all else,” warned journalist Glenn Greenwald, an expert on such hooey.

“I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, “and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.”

Most decisions in a free society are thankfully made by individuals (not voters, bureaucrats, or academics) about their own lives.

But when legitimate decisions of governance must be made, I’ll take democracy over rule by experts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Gray Lady Casts Shadow

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Earlier in the week, I noted how media manipulation of presidential poll results by not considering the Johnson and Stein campaigns distorting the race. I speculated why journalists would do such a thing, but didn’t have space for an exhaustive list.

But it’s clear that one of the things journalists aim to do is retain their once-vaunted position as gatekeepers, as the idea-people and fact-dispersers who define the terms of allowable debate.

By ignoring the competition, they narrow the terms of this year’s presidential campaign, allowing their inexplicable favorite, Hillary Clinton, an advantage going to the polls.

But poll taking and reporting is not the half of it. Tim Graham, writing at Newsbusters, notes how the Gray Lady rigs the intellectual field. “The New York Times appears to be playing games again with conservative authors, trying to keep them off its vaunted (and secretively manipulated) Best Sellers list. This has happened to Ted Cruz, to Dinesh D’Souza, and to David Limbaugh.”

And now, Graham tells us, it’s happening to Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel, whose new book, The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech, has been doing gangbusters on BookScan’s bestseller list.

The new exposé is sixth on BookScan’s hardcover list. But it’s not even made an appearance on the Times’ “list of the top 20 hardcover bestsellers, despite outselling books that did make the list.”

Would the Gray Lady dare manipulate the figures . . . just to suppress an idea it doesn’t like?

That is, the idea that the Left suppresses speech.

It’s almost too rich to be true.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly government transparency

A Most Bizarre Misuse

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Increasingly, folks in government balk at the commonsense requirement for transparency. They don’t like the basic idea of a republic, apparently — that we have rights; folks in government have duties. They are bound to serve us.

And allow us to oversee their work.

The latest bizarre attempt to wiggle out of transparency comes from California. A proposed bit of legislation, AB-2880, seeks to grant state employees copyright protection — for their everyday work as public servants.

“The bill claims to protect access to the documents through the California Public Records Act,” explains Steven Greenhut in The American Spectator, “but it gives the government the ability to control what people do with many of those records.” Emphasis added — to direct your attention to the enormity of the increase in government prerogatives.

Public records are called “public” not merely because they putatively serve the public, but because they are open to the public. Yet, if this measure passes, those records are essentially privatized . . . to the government.

That is not what we mean, usually, when we say “privatize.”

Using copyright law to protect “thin-skinned officials,” AB-2880 would insulate bureaucrats even further from citizen oversight.

The excuse for the law, to help agencies manage their “intellectual property,” is hardly a big concern, except perhaps in one way: trademark infringement. We do not want private businesses to pretend to be state parks or bureaus. But the overreach beyond this core issue goes so far into crazyland that one must question the intent behind it.

And stop it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture nannyism national politics & policies

Digs at the Gig Economy

Uber, Lyft, sharing, economy, HIllary, Bernie, illustration

In Texas’s progressive enclave of Austin, the government has regulated Uber and Lyft out of the city.

Massachusset’s uber*-progressive Sen. Elizabeth Warren cautions that the “much-touted virtues”of the “gig economy” that these services represent are actually dark signs of the times, providing workers a false “step in a losing effort to build some economic security in a world where all the benefits are floating to the top 10 percent.”

Vermont’s Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent candidate for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, is also no fan. Why? These services are not regulated.

Sanders’s charge that these person-to-person (P2P) ride-sharing services are “unregulated” is of course the opposite of the truth. They are self-regulated for safety and efficiency in ways that taxi services never were. How much extra value did governments add, with their regulations of the taxicab industry? They just reduced competition and made cabs more expensive.

P2P online cooperation is revolutionary. And “progressives” are stuck in the past, itching to suppress that revolution. “Initially,” writes Jared Meyer in the July issue of Reason, “hostility mostly came from state and municipal governments, at the behest of local special interests.” But as the services became more popular, opposition shifted. To the national Democrats like Sanders, Warren and . . . Hillary Clinton. She promises to “crack down on bosses who exploit employees by misclassifying them as contractors or even steal their wages.”

Par for the course: the Internet provides more opportunity than ever, and all some progressives see are the old socialist fears of “exploitation” and “greed” . . . while they greedily suck up to unions and special interests.

The bright side, Meyer argues, is that they are on the losing side.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*I guess the pun here is intended. Or not. You choose, P2P style.

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people nannyism national politics & policies property rights responsibility

The Climate Cassandra

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Thirty years ago, in June, 1986, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee met to consider the problems of ozone depletion, the greenhouse effect, and climate change.

Present at those hearings was today’s climate Cassandra, James Hansen, then of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies. And he was predicting that “global temperatures should be nearly 2 degrees higher in 20 years,” according to Associated Press reporting at that time.

There was some sloppiness either in Hansen’s account, or the AP’s, for in one part of his testimony Hansen claimed that his institute’s climate models projected, for “the region of the United States, the warming 30 years from now is about 1 1/2 degrees C, which is about 3 F.”

Ronald Bailey, the science writer over at Reason, tries to make sense of this mess of numbers, models, and predictions.

Oh, and actual, tabulated results.

Hansen’s predictions went, as Bailey put it, “definitively off the rails when tracking the temperature trend for the contiguous U.S. between 2000 and 2016. Since 2000, according to the NOAA calculator, the average temperature trend has been downward at -0.06 F degree per decade.”

That’s not the whole picture, though: “global temperatures have increased by 0.51 C degree since 1986, so perhaps the man-made global warming signal has finally emerged.”

No matter, though, as Bailey notes, “the United States and the Earth have warmed at considerably slower pace than Hansen predicted 30 years ago.”

Which suggests that Hansen’s models may be inspired more by wish, fear, and ideology than genuine science.

So, to those who wish to rush to “do something” (anything?) to combat “climate change,” take it slow. Follow the pace of the Earth itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom nannyism national politics & policies

Beggar Thy Philanthropist

seatbelt, trap, police, Regina, Saskatchewan, illustration

Making up petty rules and enforcing them is one thing governments do well.

On Monday I warned about the dangers of asking too much from government. I think, today, I’ll make the opposite warning: of not asking enough.

Mandatory seatbelt laws were enacted (sometimes by citizens initiative and referendum) to save people’s lives. But the reason many police and local jurisdictions like these laws is that it gives them a chance to engage in shakedowns, entrapping citizens into non-compliance, and then socking them with fines.

In Regina, Saskatchewan, a man pulled up to an intersection and saw a down-and-outer with a sign. He felt sorry for him, so, as he pulled up, he unbuckled his seat belt and pulled three bucks in change out of his pocket. And dropped the three dollars on the curb.

A few moments later, police stopped him, and handed him a ticket. The “homeless guy” with the sign turned out to have been an undercover cop, and the few moments without a seat belt was enough to charge our philanthropist $175 Canadian.

Though an obviously preposterous misuse of police time and attention, and an abuse of the citizenry, Regina’s police force remains adamantine, claiming that “this is nothing new. It’s part of a project that has police watching for traffic violations at intersections.”

Because this sort of thing only hits people almost at random, but the benefits are concentrated on police coffers, it’s hard to organize against such nonsense. Which is precisely why such nonsense goes on.

Still, we must prevent such abuse at the local level, if we’re ever to control the federal leviathan.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies

Secrecy, Conspiracy, and the Sauds

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The U. S. cleaves to some bizarre security standards. That is, about secrecy. Critics have been complaining for years about how “liberal” the federal government is in classifying information as secret. Or, put another way, how stingy the government is in providing us with information.

Not liberal at all.

This problem inhabits every nook and cranny of official Washington. But it’s most obvious in the case of 2002’s 9/11 report, from which 28 pages were removed. For reasons of state secrets. And that, as the BBC related this weekend, is the likely cause of much suspicion against Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia? Yes. The country whose sands were walked upon by Mohammad, the Prophet, is also the country that gave birth to 15 of the 18 terrorist skyjackers, as well as spreading the Wahabist spin on jihad throughout the Islamic world.

So, by withholding portions of the report from the public, the government fed the flame of conjecture. And with it, the belief in a Saud conspiracy and a Bush and Obama cover-up.

The withholding of information does not give us a univocal perspective. We don’t know what is being kept from our eyes and ears. So when I read the BBC report, which stated that the “probable publication” of the previously classified parts “will clear Saudi Arabia of any responsibility, CIA chief John Brennan has said,” I get suspicious.

Good, if true. But the timing of this Brennan opinion, on the weekend of the Orlando massacre?

Stinks of spin and deflection by the government, against us . . . who wonder, not without reason, about “conspiracies.”

Should we trust the newly de-classified segments?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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