Category: Accountability

Mr. Most Merciless

Obama, clemency, pardon, mercy, crime, Common Sense, illustration

Usually, when contemplating the Office of the President of the United States, our cause for complaint is excess of power. Our country was founded on opposition to such centralized power — initially directed against King George III — and the Constitution written, in part, to allow a strong federal government without feeding the beast of Tyranny.

Yet, today, I’m not bemoaning unchecked presidential power. Instead, the opposite: an important presidential power that Mr. Obama lets lie unused.

What is that power?

The executive’s power to pardon, defined in Article II, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution.

Yesterday, George Lardner Jr., a scholar with the Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, and Political Science Professor P. S. Ruckman Jr., the editor of the Pardon Power Blog, reported in an op-ed for The Washington Post, that “Obama has a clemency record comparable to the least merciful presidents in history. He has granted just 70 pardons, the lowest mark for any full-term president since John Adams, and 187 commutations of sentence.”

“Obama’s record is all the more deplorable because of assurances that he has made,” argue Lardner and Ruckman, noting that the Department of Justice’s Clemency Project 2014 — designed to provide relief to non-violent drug offenders and announced “to great fanfare” — has “become a bureaucratic disaster.”

With all the injustice found even in the best justice systems, I cannot understand how a compassionate person could ignore this power. Or use it, as President Bill Clinton did, to provide last-minute pardons for cronies and high-rolling campaign contributors.

Have mercy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags capital punishment, clemency, crime, Obama, President Barack Obama, presidential pardon, prisons

Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies

Banking on Clinton

Hillary Clinton, Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, corruption, crony, presidential race, two-faced, 2 faced, illustration, Common Sense

I’ve been tough on Bernie Sanders, the socialist Vermont Senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate. Why? Because socialism is — to quote a current GOP candidate — “a disaster.”

But I appreciate his campaign for showing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what she is, the ultimate establishment insider.

Even while, as SNL parodied, she seeks to co-opt Sanders’s progressivism.

Nowhere is Hillary’s have-it-both-ways mode of operation more obvious than in regard to Big Finance. She attacks the big banks, promoting her “very aggressive plan to rein in Wall Street.” Yet, she is supported politically and has been enriched personally by Wall Street firms. In 2014 and 2015 alone, Mrs. Clinton was paid $11 million dollars for speeches to various groups, including these financial interests.

On the campaign trail, Bernie has been calling on Mrs. Clinton to release transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street firms:

She gets paid $225,000 for a speech. Now you know that is a lot of money for an hour speech.… It must be mind-blowing speech, it must be a Shakespearean speech, it must be a speech that could educate and enlighten the entire world.

An anonymous attendee of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs has characterized her remarks as “far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.” Another said making the transcript public “would bury her against Sanders.”

Understandably, Hillary refuses … until every other living person who has ever spoken a word to anyone on Wall Street does so first.

At his rallies, Bernie now throws his empty hands up into the air to release his non-existent speech transcripts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, banks, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Presidential campaign 2016, Wall Street

Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

The Peace Dividend

legalization, pot, marijuana, crime, drug war, illustration

Has the War on Drugs actually, finally, made some progress?

Well, yes … but, really, no.

“Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn’t,” explains Christopher Ingraham in The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, “taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels’ profits.”

Certainly “legal marijuana” is not the drug war. It’s that war’s antithesis.

Let’s recall, too, that legalization didn’t come about after five decades of drug war failure because politicians came to their senses, admitted their mistakes and advocated a different approach.

Instead, frustrated citizen leaders teamed up with successful entrepreneurs to launch ballot initiatives, allowing voters to directly decide the issue.

Domestic production isn’t driven merely by Colorado, Oregon, Washington State and the other Washington, the nation’s capital, where voters fully legalized possession. Marijuana for medical use is legal in 23 states, including California, where most domestic marijuana is grown. In these states, pot is widely prescribed.

Thus, a quasi-legal domestic marijuana industry was created. Lo and behold, now pot produced in the good old USA is outperforming pot grown south of the border.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) acknowledges that U.S. marijuana is being illegally smuggled into Mexico. (Maybe the smugglers will pay for the wall.)

On the other hand, what does it matter that the Mexican drug cartels are losing market share to non-violent American businesses?

Well, those cartels have waged a war with the Mexican government killing more than 164,000 citizens between 2007 and 2014. Less profit to fuel the Mexican drug lords in that bloody war is more for our peace and security.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags cartel, crime, Drug War, legalization, marijuana legalization, Mexico

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

Inch, Meet Mile

Give ’em an inch, they will take … a continent.

When Edward Snowden broke the secrecy of the NSA’s illegal surveillance on innocent Americans, many folks (especially those in government) said the snooping was OK, because

it is necessary for our security, and, besides,
the collected data would only be used against terrorists, as supervised by the FISA courts.

Well, it is now known that, whatever “a.” may be, “b.” is a dead letter, swept away by broken promises and a new information practice.

Yes, the National Security Agency now shares its (unconstitutionally obtained) information with various and sundry government agencies, for a wide variety of purposes.

Last week, Radley Balko noted in the Washington Post that “the ‘sneak-and-peek’ provision of the Patriot Act that was alleged to be used only in national security and terrorism investigations has overwhelmingly been used in narcotics cases. Now the New York Times reports that National Security Agency data will be shared with other intelligence agencies like the FBI without first applying any screens for privacy.”

That didn’t take long, eh?

Many of us have opposed the NSA’s data collection on American citizens because we believed the data would not continue to be used just for the alleged purpose they were collected.

It is not a “slippery slope” argument so much as an “inch-mile” one. Government tends to grow, in size and especially in scope.

And usually at the expense of our freedoms.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags National Security Agency, NSA, patriot act, surveillance, surveillance state, terrorism

Accountability ballot access general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies political challengers term limits

Adults for America

politics, immaturity, tug of war, adult, illustration

The answer to what ails us is … us.

Oh, we can say it is the fault of politicians — and we’re not wrong — but turning to the cause of a problem for its solution is … problematic at best.

Our politics is a tug-of-war, in part, between those wanting government to do ever more for us (by taking more from someone else) and those skeptical that such “solutions” supply much more than ever-more problems.

The Big Government crowd sports the opposite skepticism: Where’s the guarantee that “the private sector” will take care of folks? They assume government does provide a guarantee … like No Child Left Behind.

Meanwhile, advances do get made.

Throughout my life I’ve had the privilege to work with political activists whom I deeply respect. These “liberty initiators” work tirelessly to make government better, to right wrongs, to institute justice and the sort of transparent, ethical and limited government that’s consistent with a free and decent society.

Just as adults nurture their children, these citizens nurture their communities, their states, their country — as well as taking care of their children, their parents, their businesses.

Last week, an Arkansas woman took a day off work to join hundreds of fellow citizens in gathering petition signatures for term limits at the primary in Arkansas. I have a lot more faith in her and other responsible individuals than I do in far-off federal bureaucracies.

“The character inherent in the American people has done all that has been accomplished,” wrote Thoreau in Civil Disobedience, “and it would have done somewhat more, if the government had not sometimes got in its way.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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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!

Photo credit: Cary Bass-Deschenes on Flickr

Tags activism, big government, civil disobedience, limited government, Thoreau

Accountability general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility

Impatience as a Political Impulse

Post author By CS Admin
Post date March 8, 2016
2 Comments on Impatience as a Political Impulse

impatience, frustration, politics, radicals, balance, caution

It is not demonization to recognize a besetting sin.

Yesterday, I warned against demonization, though admittedly, I have “picked on” both Trump and Bernie here at Common Sense and in this site’s new Steal This Meme section. In my defense, to refrain from seeing only the worst in one side or the other (or both) is not to resist telling the truth about the characteristic worst aspects, right or left.

Neither the Donald nor the Bern are good party men. Trump has never been close to the GOP; Sanders has registered “independent” throughout his Senatorial career.

But Sanders is a self-proclaimed socialist, and his support is “from the left”; Trump is vague ideologically, but his characteristic blunt pronouncements seem “right-wingish” even if not obviously conservative.

Maybe this is all about frustration and impatience.

Socialism has long been associated with impatience at the “slow pace” of progress, as economist Yves Guyot made clear in The Tyranny of Socialism over a hundred years ago. The fact that, even in our bumbling age, all segments of society have gotten richer is not enough. More must be extracted from a few and given to the many. That is the Bern of it.

Trump’s supporters are obviously impatient with things “not getting done” in Washington, and upset that “we don’t win anymore.” But one reason things are hard to do, politically, is that limited government, a rule of law, and separation of powers makes it difficult. Cutting through the b.s. sometimes means destroying the bedrock of a free society.

That sort of “winning” would be a Pyrrhic victory.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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