Category: Accountability

What Doesn’t Fly

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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Tags anti-gun hysteria, gun, gun control, gun panic, guns, mass, NRA, Orlando, shooting

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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Tags Canada, law, police, seat belts, ticket

Accountability government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies

Secrecy, Conspiracy, and the Sauds

Post author By CS Admin
Post date June 14, 2016
1 Comment on Secrecy, Conspiracy, and the Sauds

secrets, government, Saudi, 911, conspiracy, illustration

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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Tags CIA, report, Saudi, secrecy, terrorism, Washington

Accountability crime and punishment folly government transparency insider corruption national politics & policies

This Too Shall Pass

teflon, white house, Hillary Clinton, Obama, corruption, illustration

We are living in what I hope are the latter days of the Watergate Era.

I’m old enough to remember Watergate. The un-making of President Nixon, before our very eyes, informed Americans in a deep and profound way. It led, in part, to the election of Jimmy Carter, often referred to as one of the least effectual presidents. And the Carter presidency led to Ronald Reagan.

While living under Watergate’s dark shadow, not all of us took away the same lesson.

We outsiders learned, once again, that power corrupts.

Insiders, on the other hand, learned something different: never willingly play a part in your side’s unmasking and un-making.

We tend to forget, what with the economic rebound and end of the Cold War, that the Reagan Administration had significant scandals. At the time, Reagan was dubbed the “Teflon President,” because Reagan & Co. figured out how to react: shrug; stall; deny, deny, deny. For this reason, scandal flowed off him, not sticking, as water off a well-oiled duck’s back.

Reagan and the Republicans did not allow what Republicans had allowed in Nixon’s day: there was no turning on one’s own, no (or few) breaking of ranks.

Then, President Bill Clinton took the effrontery of denial and stonewalling to new heights. With great help from fellow Democrats.

And so it goes, even to the present day, with Hillary Clinton carrying on her husband’s tradition. She, the first candidate to run for the presidency while under official investigation by the FBI, just received the current president’s endorsement.

The back-room deal has been made, perhaps? Obama will not allow Hillary to be prosecuted. It would tarnish his legacy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, corruption, Hillary Clinton, pardon, President Barack Obama, teflon, White House

Accountability crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights

A New Way to Steal

ERAD, gift card, civil asset, forfeiture, stealing, theft, drug war

The fight against government theft of private property, through “civil forfeiture,” just got a little harder.

There’s a new technology available: ERAD card scanners.

And the Oklahoma City Police Department’s joint interdiction team has them, and can use the scanners to take money from you without your consent.

What money, in particular? The money you have stored in pre-paid debit cards.

ERAD stands for Electronic Recovery and Access to Data, and the ERAD Group, Inc., stands to make a lot of cash from the technology. Police around the country want to be able to take the funds secured in debit cards. It’s the latest thing in the war against the war against the War on Drugs.

Drug traffickers, we’re told, hide dozens of such cards in vehicles transporting drugs.

It’s not enough that police can, in the course of investigating a crime — without conviction, mind you; indeed, without charges being filed — confiscate the cards themselves.

The police also want to be able to siphon the money out of those cards.

Which leads to corruption. Which is already rife in civil forfeiture usage, as a recent Oklahoma state audit found — missing money, misused funds, that sort of thing.

The cavalier way in which government officials defend expropriation by ERAD scanners is chilling. In an Oklahoma Watch article, reporter Clifford Adcock relates the official explanation: “These cards are cash, not bank accounts.… Individuals do not have privacy rights with magnetic stripe cards.” Why not? Because the information on the strip “literally has no purpose other than to be provided to others to read.”

That’s so open to logical criticism you could drive a confiscated truck fleet through it.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags abuse, asset forfeiture, civil asset forfeiture, civil forfeiture, Drug War, ERAD, police, theft

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.

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