Category: Accountability

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies political challengers

How Does “Unfair” Play?

Donald Trump, thin skinned, cry, 2016 Presidential, Hillary Clinton

“We’re being treated very unfairly.”

I don’t know about you, but this constant complaint from Donald Trump is getting a bit old.

Even if true.

Maybe I lost some patience for this shtick because my side in the political arena — the 85 percent majority for term limits, for example — has constantly had to bear with undue weights from major candidates, public officials, and other political insiders. This week I’m in Arkansas to help put term limits back on the ballot, after politicians lied to the citizenry in a legislatively referred measure, successfully fooling them to substantially weaken the limits.

It turns out that honest people have always been at a disadvantage in politics, because our enemies often feel free to lie, cheat, steal, etc.

My impatience is that, well, coming from a billionaire, the complaint seems . . . hollow. To the extent that wealth and fame lead to an unfair advantage over others, Trump has indeed parlayed both into a shot at the White House.

So to talk about how being treated unfairly smacks of narcissism. It is like going to the funeral of a good friend and having to listen to some whiner take the limelight to complain of his lumbago.

It seems inappropriate, in context.

But mainly it reminds me of Bernie Sanders in particular, and the socialist left in general. “Life [or The System] has treated us unfairly — so give us free stuff!”

Trump is not asking for free stuff. He is merely expecting us to forgive his ugly tirades — as in the current mess about the judge sitting on his Trump University case — and nasty escalations of name-calling.

He expects a free pass. And has so far gotten one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Donald Trump, thin skinned, cry, 2016 Presidential, Hillary Clinton

 

Categories
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.

Printable PDF

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

 

Categories
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.

Printable PDF

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

 

Categories
Accountability national politics & policies

Lack of Care

government waste, VA, Veterans, V.A., congress, health, insurance

Yesterday I asked the question, “Who comes first: the vets or the politicians?”

We all know who should come first. And we all know who actually does come first.

The Is/Ought Dichotomy in full view — the fact/value distinction.

America’s politicians have legislated themselves wonderful healthcare coverage. Meanwhile, they’ve legislated something very different for veterans: a huge, unaccountable bureaucracy.

The federal archipelago of substandard VA clinics and hospitals is so ineffective that vets have died waiting for any medical care at all.

The problem isn’t a lack of public support. Americans obviously want to help take care of veterans. The many charities are just one indicator of this.

Instead, it’s an unmistakable sign of how completely beyond citizen control Washington has wandered.

Heads haven’t rolled in the Veterans Administration bureaucracy. Fact. But why not? Because of insider values. Why should congressmen even worry their pretty, little re-electable heads about it? None of their heads have rolled for their incompetence or indifference.

In a Congress loathed by the people, only one incumbent congressman has been defeated for re-election this year — and he was facing a 29-count felony indictment for racketeering, etc.

One might wonder if anything ever happens in Washington other than waste, fraud and abuse.

For decades, the lack of care for vets has been an ongoing scandal. But it’s merely a symptom of a much bigger scandal: our government is out of our control.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

government waste, VA, Veterans, V.A., congress, health, insurance

 

Categories
Accountability government transparency nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

Disneyland vs. Politicians

V.A., VA, Veterans Administration, Disneyland

Last week, when asked by reporters about the arguably deadly wait times that vets have endured (or not), Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald replied, “What really counts is how does the veteran feel about their encounter with the VA. When you go to Disney, do they measure the number of hours you wait in line? . . . What’s important is: What’s your satisfaction with the experience?”

The national commander of the American Legion, Dale Barnett, calls the remark “an unfortunate comparison”:

“People,” after all, “don’t die while waiting to go on Space Mountain.”

The secretary also errs about Disney, as Fox News’s Neil Cavuto noted. Disney does measure the time people must wait in line. The for-profit company goes out of its way to entertain folks while they wait.

But the clowns running the Veterans Administration shouldn’t take up entertainment.

Fix the problem.

Democrats Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders both seek to throw more money at the VA. They seem most concerned in protecting the Veterans Administration, not veterans. And Sanders’s real beef turns out  to be with Disney.

Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, tweeted: “Obama’s VA Secretary just said we shouldn’t measure wait times. Hillary says VA problems are not ‘widespread.’ I will take care of our vets!”

But will he? Through the VA system?

A zillion reform efforts have failed.

Let’s demand more than a simple promise sans details.

Do congressmen wait months to get a medical appointment? No. Then why not close the VA and give veterans the same healthcare coverage as our (pardon the term) representatives?

On this Memorial Day, who comes first: the vets or the politicians?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

V.A., VA, Veterans Administration, Disneyland

 

Photo credit: Xiaojun Deng on Flickr

 

Categories
Accountability general freedom national politics & policies political challengers

The Primary Lie

Unbound, Curly Haugland, Sean Parnell, Republican, convention, Trump, book, pdf, Paul Jacob

Are we being lied to?

Donald J. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee for president. So presumes the news media and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, because all those delegates are bound to vote for Trump on the first ballot.

But what if Republican delegates convening this July aren’t bound. That’s the compelling case made by a new book, Unbound: The Conscience of a Republican Delegate,* written by Curly Haugland and Sean Parnell.

How does modern America get something so wrong, when it’s written down in black-and-white? Politicians don’t read the bills they enact and, apparently, politicos don’t read their party rules.

Except crazy ol’ Curly Haugland. The Republican National Committeeman from North Dakota reads and understands: convention delegates choose the nominee. In so doing, they are free to vote their conscience, unbound by primary or caucus votes, state party rules or even state law.

This information should anger voters. Political parties have a right to their own process, certainly, but not to pretend primary voters determine the winner, when they don’t.

Why the deception?

Well, the insiders and big-time consultants, with sway at RNC headquarters, make millions on TV ad buys. Not so for a nomination determined by core activists at a state convention, who aren’t susceptible to the expensive tricks of the modern political trade.

The media has a financial interest, too — in more readers, listeners and viewers. If primaries are known as merely “beauty contests,” they fear folks will tune out, along with paying advertisers.

Instead, tune in, turn on and download Unbound. Find out what the media and the RNC won’t tell you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

=========================

* Published by Citizens in Charge Foundation, the book can be downloaded for free here.

 

Printable PDF

Unbound, Curly Haugland, Sean Parnell, Republican, convention, Trump, book, pdf, Paul Jacob

 

Categories
Accountability free trade & free markets ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies

Puerto Rico’s Debt, Our Problem

“We have an important choice to make,” presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders recently wrote to Congress. “[D]o we stand with the working people of Puerto Rico or do we stand with Wall Street and the Tea Party?”

The bill in question has been dubbed Paul Ryan’s “first big victory as Speaker,” but was written in tandem with the White House. The plan attempts to rescue Puerto Rico, a United States territory, from financial collapse with both bailouts and austerity — the latter including a lowered minimum wage.

I hadn’t heard any Tea Party squawk about this, so that reference must be just signaling on Bernie’s part.

Puerto Rico is $72 billion in the hole. Basically, Sanders wants to partially repudiate that debt: “The billionaire hedge fund managers on Wall Street cannot get a 100 percent return on their bonds while workers, senior citizens and children are punished.”

Of course our sympathies are almost entirely with the people of Puerto Rico. But it was their government that racked up the debt, and repudiating sovereign debt is a tricky and parlous thing.

What happens when the United States itself faces similar (or worse) straits? Would Bernie then, again, plan to stick it to the government’s creditors — even after he, himself, had voted to increase spending above revenues and periodically raise the debt ceiling — and think that this wouldn’t have consequences?

Meanwhile, the possible minimum wage reduction is one of the stickiest of the issues. Bernie sees it as “sticking it” to the poor.

In truth, it would help increase employment, thus help the poor get out of poverty.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

Puerto Rico, debt, loan, Bernie Sanders

 

Categories
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.

Printable PDF

Venezuela, store, socialism, column

 

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom moral hazard U.S. Constitution

Not Drafting Our Daughters?

draft, selective service, woman, women, magic trick

Sometimes politicians have trouble making up their minds. During election years — with the looming prospect of voters having a say — their decision-making process becomes even more perilous.

Take the idea of forcing young women to register for the draft. Young men must, under threat of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and the loss of government benefits — all the way down to denying a driver’s license to non-registrants in many states. So why not force women to sign up for forced military service?

For equality!

Just days ago, it seemed nearly everyone was for conscripting our daughters — or, at least, registering them for future conscription. Obama’s Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and military leaders enthusiastically endorsed the idea. So did Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

In recent weeks, legislation beginning mandatory draft registration of women, ages 18-26, passed both the House Armed Services Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. Then, all the sudden — poof! — that provision was ripped out of the House bill.

“This is a dead-of-night attempt to take an important issue off the table,” complained the ranking Democrat on House Armed Services, Rep. Adam Smith of Washington.

Timing is everything, in comedy and politics. Congressional leaders don’t want to take any pro-draft action now, not with an election just six short months away.

“We have a choice to make,” Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.) argues, “either we continue with Selective Service and have women be a part of it, or we abolish it altogether.” Coffman advocates the latter, having introduced a bipartisan bill with Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), H.R. 4523, to end draft registration and close the superfluous agency.

That’s Common Sense, especially in an election year. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

draft, selective service, woman, women, magic trick

 

 

Categories
Accountability folly incumbents meme national politics & policies term limits

Indicting Incumbency

term limits, indictments, democracy, elections, meme, Congressman Chaka Fattah, illustration

How does that old, pithy anti-term limits slogan go, again? “We already have term limits, they’re called indictments!”

Wait . . . is that it?

Must be. This election year — the year of the outsider, the year of unbridled contempt for establishment, Washington, D. C., politicians — has seen only one incumbent congressman defeated by the voters.

Just one. It came late last month in the wake of a 29-count felony indictment charging Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.) with bribery, theft, bank and mail fraud, racketeering, and more.

In all the other congressional primary contests pitting incumbents against challengers across the country so far this year, a solid 100 percent were won by the incumbent — zero won by challengers.

Rep. Fattah, whose corruption trial began in federal court on Monday, has pled not guilty to all charges, proclaiming his innocence. “Chaka Fattah’s lifestyle is not on trial,” his defense attorney told jurors. “Philadelphia politics are not on trial. [Congressional] earmarks, donations, grants to nonprofits are not on trial.”

But Congressman Chaka Fattah certainly is.

The incumbent’s previous re-election had been a breeze — completely unopposed in the all-important Democratic Primary, and then garnering 88 percent of the vote against his sacrificial GOP challenger. That was in 2014, before the felony charges.

Following the indictment, the Washington Post reported that Fattah “found it difficult to raise money after the party establishment all but abandoned him.” So, even in this single instance, the FBI and the party establishment, more than voters, sent this 22-year incumbent packing.

I have a new slogan: “We don’t have term limits, and we need ’em!”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Printable PDF

term limits, indictments, democracy, elections, meme, Congressman Chaka Fattah, illustration

 

Common Sense Needs Your Help!

Please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar  (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money.

Your help in spreading the message of common sense and liberty is very much appreciated!