Category: crime and punishment

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Pardon Him, Mr. President

Samuel Girod, Kentucky, crime, Amish, FDA, drug,

Presidents tend to issue pardons as their tenures draw to a close. But many victims of our government should be pardoned right now. Until the culpable agencies can be dismantled and/or sundry bad laws repealed, a steady flow of presidential pardons would provide the swiftest justice.

An Amish man in Kentucky, Samuel Girod, has been convicted of selling herbal remedies and such crimes as “failing to appear.” It doesn’t add up to one day in prison, let alone the six years of his sentence.

Girod created a salve from natural ingredients for treating skin disorders. After the state health department demanded that he stopped making certain claims for the product, he changed its name to Healing Chickweed. Told that the word “healing” was prohibited, he changed the name to Original Chickweed. The Food and Drug Administration also hounded him for selling various herbal remedies, which they called “drugs” because of his medical claims.

The man’s worst sin in all this seems to be failure to cooperate with the harassment. When FDA agents tried to examine his “manufacturing process,” he refused entry to his home. When Girod missed a hearing about his case, the government dubbed him a “fugitive.” The local sheriff can’t understand why the government is “victimizing such peaceful and law-abiding citizens.”

Yes, it’s a puzzle. Many historical, political, institutional, ideological and psychological factors would help explain it. More than answers, though, Samuel Girod needs his freedom.

How about it, Mr. President?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall

Left Wondering Why

Minneapolis, shooting, police, body camera, Justine Damond, Australian

In Minneapolis’s Fulton neighborhood a makeshift memorial has sprung up. Amidst flowers, a handwritten sign reads, “Why did you shoot and kill our neighbor?”

Police have yet to offer public comment on the police shooting of Justine Damond, the Australian woman killed in the alley behind her home last Saturday night.

“Sadly, her family and I have been provided with almost no additional information from law enforcement,” Justine’s fiancé, Don Damond,* told reporters, “regarding what happened after police arrived.”

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has launched an investigation, but not yet interviewed the two officers at the scene, the only known witnesses. The officers had been responding to Justine’s 911 call reporting what sounded like a sexual assault.

No gun was found on Justine; a woman in her pajamas otherwise doesn’t seem very threatening.

Local media identified Mohammed Noor, a Somali-American, as the police officer who fired the bullet that killed Damond. Noor has been on the force since March 2015 and has two previous complaints pending.

Most frustrating, the Washington Post reports that “the officers’ body cameras were not turned on” and . . . “It’s not clear why . . .”

Cameras do not work when turned off; public anger and angst are not ameliorated when we cannot see the body cam footage.

That’s why, back in April, we worked to pass a ballot initiative in Ferguson, Missouri: (a) mandating that police must actually turn on the body cameras they were “using” (after similar incidents, wherein Ferguson police claimed their cameras hadn’t been activated) and (b) setting rules for public access to the video.

The people of Minneapolis, likewise, deserve a more professional police force. Making that happen means taking the initiative: citizens reforming criminal justice policies at the ballot box.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Justine had already taken her fiancé’s last name, even though they were set to marry next month. Her legal name remains Justine Ruszczyk.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Police State Is in Sessions

Jeff Sessions, AG, Attorney General, asset forfeiture, civil, Trump

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatens to make himself one of the biggest threats to your liberty.*

President Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General just promised to encourage police departments to seize the personal property (cars, houses, cash) of criminal suspects.

The practice is called asset forfeiture. It comes in two forms, criminal and civil. Compelling objections have been raised against civil forfeiture, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of all forfeitures. Abuse is rampant in cities, counties and states around the country, routinely used against people who have not even been charged, much less prosecuted and convicted. (Often not really even suspected of criminality.)

“No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” he told conference attendees in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Monday.** But how can our top federal law enforcement officer ignore the profound difference between a suspect and a criminal?

No one is a criminal, before the law, until proved in court. Taking away property to make it harder for suspects to defend themselves — which is what RICO laws and other Drug War reforms intended to do — is obviously contrary to the letter of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as well as the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Sessions announced he’ll soon offer a “new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers.” Unless he clearly indicates that it will only be used against the property of persons legally convicted of crimes, Sessions will be merely making charges of an “American Police State” stick.

America’s top lawman argues completely contrary to American principles of justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Bigger than Eric Holder was. Bigger than Loretta Lynch.

** Sessions also went on to say that “sharing with our partners” — local police departments around the nation — is a good thing. This is, systemically, the most dangerous aspect of it all, for it encourages police departments to take things for their own benefit.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets local leaders nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Messed Up State

Marijuana, sand, Nevada, crisis, emergency

After lamenting Illinois’s fiscal decline into America’s “most messed up” state yesterday, lo and behold, today we find the State of Nevada messed up, too.

On marijuana.*

Question 2, passed by voters last November, legalized recreational use of what we used to call “weed” by those 21 years of age and older. The measure also stipulated that — for the first 18 months only — alcohol distributers are solely permitted to carry marijuana from wholesalers to the new retail dispensaries.

Why provide a monopoly to alcohol distributors?

“[T]he state’s powerful alcohol lobby worried that legalized weed would cut into liquor store sales,” explained the Los Angeles Times. Proponents added that provision as “a concession.”

But still not a single alcohol distributor has been approved to distribute marijuana.

So, with pot now flying off the shelves of Nevada’s 47 marijuana dispensaries, there is no lawful way to replenish those shelves. Nevada’s DOT (which requested from the governor an official declaration of a state of emergency) warns: “this nascent industry could grind to a halt.”

That’s not just a bummer for pot smokers; it has the governor and the DOT in a state, too. “A 10% tax on sales of recreational pot — along with a 15% tax on growers — is expected to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for schools and the state’s general fund reserves,” notes the Times.

Legalize marijuana, sure. And realize that the politics of it can be more toxic than the drug itself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*Is that why the slogan “A World Within, A State Apart” is now featured on the state’s website?

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

A Handy Evasion

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor, Obama, Trump, Russia, spying, surveillance

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor in President Barack Obama’s administration (2013 – 2017), is being picked on, she speculates, for reasons pertaining to her race and gender.

Handy evasion.

At issue is not her infamous prevarication in the Benghazi affair. We are used to being lied to about foreign policy, so that was barely a shock.

What is news now? The Trump-Russia story.

Background: Ever since her defeat to Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has provided the very model of how to deflect attention from one’s own defects. She’s blamed FBI Director James Comey, the vast right wing conspiracy, and, of course, Russia.*

Amusingly, the Russia biz still boils down to how Russian hackers, apparently directed from high in the hierarchy of the Eastern warlord state, illegally liberated information from private servers. Those revealed emails showed Mrs. Clinton and her campaign in a negative light. Excuse-makers call this “hacking the election.”**

It turns out, the biggest crimes committed during the campaign, and somewhat regarding Russia, were engaged in by the Obama Administration, perhaps especially by Rice herself. She is accused of illegally surveilling the Trump campaign and those around it by “unmasking” their identities in the course of surveillance reports, which are legally required to be anonymous . . . when catching in the net folks tangential to the target.

The law requires FISA court go-aheads for such identifications. And the Obama administration was roundly reprimanded by a FISA court for not following protocols.

In any case, the idea that only women and African-Americans are hounded by opposition parties and the press does not hold up to scrutiny.

Nixon, anyone?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Her team has also blamed President Barack Obama

** A private server was hacked, not an election.

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crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Serving Consumers? Punish!

Amazon, monopoly, trusts, antitrust, trade, free trade, big business, economic myths

New media ballyhooer Douglas Rushkoff made waves this week. Citing an un-named friend who went hysterical about Amazon.com’s purchase of Whole Foods, he asserted that such “unease is widespread, and has raised new calls for breaking up Jeff Bezos’s impending monopoly by force.”*

The company has “surely,” he claimed, “reached too far.”

Apparently, serving customers exceptionally well is bad for business.

Yes, he almost totally ignored the pro-consumer benefits of Amazon. Had to — his case makes no sense when you factor in us consumers. He focused, instead, on Amazon’s success in terms of its recent “online and offline retail sales growth” and its control of 40 percent of cloud storage and streaming services.

He went on to spin a bizarre fantasy about how disruptive bigness is in business. His economically illiterate farrago reminds me of the sad case made against pre-antitrust Standard Oil, a company which, during the whole time of its growth prior to break-up, kept on producing more fuel at ever-decreasing prices.** Broken up because of . . . fears about how businesses change. And of bigness itself.

As long as consumers are being served, this reaction strikes me as paranoid. When businesses get big (and even near-monopolistic) and then cease to serve customers, they fail. While serving customers, there is no call for fretting over businesses that move from one success to another  — which is what Rushkoff has the gall to worry about.

The call for Amazon’s break-up over-sells government and necessarily under-serves consumers.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Rushkoff’s piece in Fast Company was the first I heard of such a “call.” Rushkoff is the coiner of the term “media virus” and a sort of populist pusher of market skepticism.

** For the bizarre story of the Standard Oil case, and how it made no economic sense whatsoever, see Dominick T. Armentano, Antitrust: The Case for Repeal (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999), p. 41-43, and Antitrust and Monopoly (Independent Institute, 1990), pp. 57-60.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly ideological culture moral hazard responsibility

Sticks & Stones

James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, came to Alexandria, Virginia, shooting, blame, scapegoat, excuses, rationalizations

James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois, came to Alexandria, Virginia, where for the last few months he lived in his van . . . undoubtedly down by the river. Yesterday, he wielded an assault rifle, attempting to massacre Republican congressmen at a park practicing for tonight’s annual charity Congressional Baseball Game.

He shot House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, who remains in critical condition; a lobbyist also in critical condition; a staffer, hit in the leg and released from the hospital; and two Capitol Police officers, who still shot and captured the shooter. Hodgkinson later died in custody.

Politically, the down-on-his-luck, 66-year-old assailant was a big fan of MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. So, what does his act of violence say about Maddow? Nothing. How much is it Sen. Sanders’ fault? Zero.

The Washington Post reports that Hodgkinson was “angry with President Trump,” noting this violence came “amid harsh political rancor and a divided country.”

Michelle Malkin declared she had “warned for more than a decade about the unhinged left’s rhetoric.”

“The hatred is raw, it is undiluted, it’s just savage,” Rush Limbaugh offered. “These are the mainstream of the Democrat base, and I don’t have any doubt that they are being radicalized.”

It harkens back to then-President Bill Clinton’s success in blaming the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing on “loud and angry voices” (read: Rush Limbaugh) who “spread hate. They leave the impression that, by their very words, that violence is acceptable.”

Sure, we should hold speakers accountable for dehumanizing verbal attacks on their opponents. But not for acts of violence these speakers do not commit, nor condone.

Condemn the violence. Stop using it to smear your opponents.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism too much government

Sin, Soda and Say

Seattle , soda tax, nanny state, tax, socialist, social engineering

Government policy in Seattle, Washington, is being driven by an outright socialist on the city council. The mayor, apparently starving for attention, proposed a goofy new sin tax last year.

Now, writes Reason’s Baylen Linnekin, “Seattle lawmakers are expected to vote early next week on a citywide soda tax that would add more than $2.50 to the cost of a twelve-pack of soda.”

The tax’s proponents’ rationale is too familiar: sugary sodas are bad for us, so we must be discouraged from drinking them.

Besides, politicians want to spend our money.

The problem, of course, is that the more successful they are at the first task, discouraging the ‘sin’ itself, the less revenue for them to throw at voters to prove their ‘caring’ nature . . . and buy votes.

But it is not as if those are the only competing factors involved. “The tax would undoubtedly drive consumers,” writes Linnekin, “to buy more groceries in the city’s suburbs.” Bellevue and Kirkland are nice towns. And nearby.

Arguing for a tax like this — as a social engineering mechanism — is not only crude, but flies in the face of the very best wisdom, that of Jean-Baptiste Say:

A tax can never be favorable to the public welfare, except by the good use that is made of its proceeds.

But elitist nannyism corrupts politicians, who make it their job to steer our consumption.* And they tend to be resistant to the “best scheme of finance,” which is, as J.-B. Say put it, “to spend as little as possible; and the best tax is always the lightest.”

If the tax goes in, Seattleites, drive to out-of-town Costco or Walmart.

Then drive your greedy nannies out of office.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Considering the mayor’s push to include diet sodas in the sin tax, how competent at this are they? It’s the sugary drinks that are known killers, but the diet drinks are mainly imbibed by wealthier folks. The mayor wants to appease the socialist on the council, and pointedly not favor the “privileged.”

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government

Another Push for Censorship

Great Britain, Tory, Prime Minister, PM, censorship, terrorism, internet, web

It’s almost as if politicians are hell-bent on expanding government at the expense of our freedoms . . . and grandstanding to ‘look like they are doing something.’

The two proclivities are not unrelated.

Take Theresa May, Great Britain’s Tory Prime Minister. After yet another terrorist attack in her country, this time on the London Bridge, she re-iterated her party’s intent to censor the Internet.

“We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” May said on Sunday. But this “safe space,” she went on, “is precisely what the Internet, and the big companies that provide Internet-based services, provide.”

Now, blaming ISPs and social platforms is a crude form of business scapegoating—something I would expect from her opponent in the upcoming elections, Jeremy Corbyn, the much-loathed (but inching ahead in the polls) top banana of Labour.

As a conservative, May should understand markets and the limitations of government interventionism a bit better than a near–communist. She might recall that previous attempts to regulate the means of communication almost never to work, and, in those few cases when they do, never stay scaled to the original target issue.

They expand. To cover more than just terrorism, as in this case.

What’s more, Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group makes the case that such a move would likely “push these vile networks into even darker corners of the web, where they will be even harder to observe” — scuttling the alleged purpose of the Conservative Party’s longed-for censorship.

May knows this. But she is a politician. She has power, and she wants to keep it.

It’s almost as if power corrupts or something.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense crime and punishment ideological culture media and media people responsibility

Vinland?

Portland, murder, Vinland, white supremacist, white nationalism, Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein

Agreeing with a murderer is . . . uncomfortable. Even if the agreement is only in part.

Over the weekend, the news hit that one Jeremy Joseph Christian was in custody for a stabbing spree on one of Portland, Oregon’s MAX trains. According to reports, Christian had been yelling religious slurs at two hijab-wearing women when three men intervened in defense. Christian then stabbed the men . . . two to death.

The next day, quadrennial Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein politicized it in the now-de rigueur point-scoring manner: “Another heartbreaking tragedy in Trump’s America, as a white nationalist shouting anti-Islam slurs murders 2 on Portland, OR subway.”*

Immediately, other Twitterers (tweeters?) rushed to point the finger back at her. It turns out (investigation courtesy of BuzzFeed) the accused’s Facebook page showed the knife-wielder as supporting first Bernie Sanders and then . . . Dr. Stein herself.

But that is just the side story. Christian appears to have a long criminal record. It seems likely that he took to white nationalism as well as free speech — he brought a baseball bat to the recent Portland free speech rally I wrote about a few weeks ago, the police say, to “attack left-wing protestors” — and even progressive politics simply to fill his personal rage quota. The fact that he saluted Nazi-style, shouted “Hail Vinland,” and called himself a “nihilist” strongly suggest that he’s mostly unhinged.

You and I support free speech; he said he supported free speech. But free speech doesn’t include stabbing people. We can all agree that Stein is off the hook.

As is President Trump.

As are we.

We, after all, don’t support murder, heiling Hitler, or . . . Vinland?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Portland has no subway; MAX is an on-the-surface light rail system.

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