David Stockman has always sported a rather strict and gloomy view of the world. But even if you have not agreed with him in the past, the world may have caught up with him. Could it be that his vision of the near future is more likely than ever?
Category: folly
Categories
A Pointed Reminder
“In schools,” the Washington Post headline warned, “a pointed finger or a toy gun can spell trouble.” The front-page feature detailed a far too extensive and growing list of zero tolerance, zero commonsense punishments meted out to children as young as five at various “educational” institutions.
A ten-year old boy in Alexandria, Virginia, showed kids on the bus his new toy gun, which sported a bright orange tip to let even the most dense person know its essential toyness. Police arrested him the next day.
His mother points out that her son did not threaten anyone. Or pretend to. Nevertheless, he has been “fingerprinted and photographed,” writes the Post. “He now has a probation officer, lawyers and another court date.”
In my Virginia county, Prince William, an eight-year-old boy contorted his hand and fingers into an apparently loaded pistol and through insidious manipulation of his mouth and lips may have imitated the sound of firing hot lead at a classmate, while said classmate was, in an evil orgy of violence, simultaneously pretending to be shooting arrows from an invisible bow.
The finger-slinger was suspended for “threatening to harm self or others.” He did neither, of course, but his offense is equivalent to having waved a loaded gun. (No word on the whereabouts of the silent-but-deadly pantomime archer.)
A five-year-old girl was interrogated by three school staff members, summarily found guilty of issuing a “terroristic threat,” and suspended for ten days for allegedly attempting to murder her friend and then commit suicide. She offered to unload her weapon all over her friend and herself. The weapon? A Hello Kitty gun, which fires bubbles.
The Post suggests the schools are jumpy after the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. But this zero tolerance insanity didn’t begin last December.
My grandson was suspended from his public school more than a year ago. He was six and playfully shot his finger at several fellow students.
Educators, who long ago abandoned the distinction between play and reality, must have been shocked at the lack of fatalities.
Does the crusade against crime really require public institutions to reject, utterly, common sense?
Shouting “No!” … I’m Paul Jacob.
Wearing his I’m‑Not-Partisan-No-Not-Me hat, President Obama has again declared war on partisanship, telling congressional Republicans to “peel off the partisan war paint.”
To be partisan in a bad way is not merely to belong to a political party and more or less support its program. It is to cling to party at the expense of Doing the Right Thing.
Unless, that is, it’s about opposing the program of a president determined to be partisan at the expense of Doing the Right Thing.
I often disagree with both parties. But let’s say that a representative of one party is marginally more reluctant to destroy our wealth and freedom than a representative of another party. Then I prefer the slightly more responsible stance of the former — and wish it were tougher and more consistent — even when the latter engages in name-calling and abuse of the former.
Demanding “perspective,” President Obama declares that he and the Congress should “not put ourselves through some sort of self-inflicted crisis every six months.” And I wholeheartedly agree. These crises happen because their spending programs always go up and up and up, even when a few “cuts” get made.
But the president doesn’t stop there. He explains they must “allow ourselves time to focus on things like preventing the tragedy in Newtown from happening again, focus on issues like energy and immigration reform.…”
Um, sir, please do not suggest that an unimpeded path to fiscal ruin is the only way to prevent fiscal ruin, or can somehow enable policymakers to prevent crazy gunmen from killing people. Please.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Adults have expressed disappointment in the behavior of young people since civilization began. You can read complaints about “the kids these days” on cuneiform tablets.
That being said, I have some sympathy for U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D‑W.Va.)., who has asked MTV to cancel its latest “reality TV” extravaganza, Buckwild, slated to debut in January. This West Virginia-based show show emulates Jersey Shore, a low-level satire on low-life New Jersey twentysomethings that I know too much about … without ever having watched.
“As a U.S. Senator, I am repulsed at this business venture,” Manchin asserts. He seems especially troubled by the fact that “some Americans are making money off of the poor decisions of our youth. I cannot imagine that anyone who loves this country would feel proud about profiting off of” the presumably horrid show.
First, as Ed Krayewski notes on Reason’s Hit and Run, were the senator really to take pride in business, he could mind his own: “The Senate … hasn’t passed a budget in more than 1,200 days. And, unlike MTV, it’s their job.”
Second, this is “Reality TV” here, folks. Not much to see. The truth is that Americans, for reasons ranging from Schadenfreude to mirth, like watching people make fools of themselves. And the youngsters hired on to play the foul-mouthed, inebriated, uncultured, promiscuous ninnies of Buckwild will be well paid for their efforts, and, as Americans chortle at them, they’ll chuckle all the way to the bank.
Third, they perform a useful service. Most folks watching fools don’t want to become fools themselves. They laugh. And, in so doing, begin to grow up.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Categories
Copyright and Wrong
Even if one disagrees that patent and copyright laws should be shelved (as some critics contend), no sensible person denies that these protections are subject to pretty ridiculous abuse. People have claimed extraordinarily ludicrous proprietary rights to everything from commonplace words (“spike”) to generic software functions (click to buy).
Now we have German publishers demanding payments from Google and other aggregators for the crime of pointing visitors to the publishers’ websites. Fair-use excerpts are unfair without compensation, according to the German Association of Newspaper Publishers and others. The idea seems to be, “You must pay us if you give our work free advertising.”
Suppose the demanded licensing rules were confined to commercial contexts. If applied consistently, the rules would jeopardize a wide range of hitherto uncontroversial citations, e.g., in book and movie reviews, not to mention books and movies. Making the demand even sillier is that Google enables sites to block any displaying of their content, or to reduce a search result for their site to a bare link with no snippet of text. No site is obliged to benefit from the horror of receiving Google-directed traffic.
Google is arguing its case publicly, and German business sentiment is hardly united in favor of mandatory licensing. According to Bernhard Rohleder, who heads an association of German technology companies, such legislation “would be unique worldwide [and would tell] investors: Innovative online services are not desired in Germany.”
Let’s hope sanity prevails. (Send me a nickel if you quote me on that.)
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
In California and Rhode Island (to name just two states) cities are going bankrupt … or closing libraries and parks and cutting police and firemen to forestall going belly up. Meanwhile, they continue paying huge sums in employment benefits for folks who used to work at city hall, but have since retired into the politicians’ promised land.
Bankrupt cities don’t do so well at paying out those promises, though.
That’s why even many union members in San Jose and San Diego, California, supported the victorious citizen initiatives earlier this year that created a reasonable and workable pension program, and why serious pension reform passed through the legislature and was signed into law in deep-blue, heavily unionized Rhode Island.
In Los Angeles, former Mayor Richard Riordan’s Save Los Angeles campaign has worked mightily to prevent the city’s three pension systems from hitting the outrageous and piggy-bank breaking annual cost of $2 billion by 2017. Unfortunately, Riordan’s group abandoned a petition drive to place a reform measure similar to San Diego’s and San Jose’s on the Los Angeles ballot next Spring. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 721 claimed credit for blocking the initiative, claiming they convinced thousands of petition signers to withdraw their signatures.
Now, the Los Angeles Daily News reports that, “With no pension ballot initiative to fight, the unions can re-focus their energy and their money on the races for mayor, controller, city attorney and the City Council.”
“We are more freed up now,” said an anonymous union official.
And likely to have even more influence on how the city will be run and financed and managed.
Or should I say, “mis-managed”?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.