Category: general freedom

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Accountability folly general freedom too much government

How Dare You Say We Waste Our Time?

Businessmen tend to be extremely concerned about efficiency, even to the point of talking incessantly about things like “performance metrics.”

Bureaucrats? Not so much.

Indeed, the merest suggestion that a program isn’t cutting the mustard can bring on protests of outrage. John Payne, writing on The Lesson Applied, caught my attention to one such instance. Quoting from the Associated Press, he reveals the passion and “logic” of former “drug czar” John Walters:

“To say that all the things that have been done in the war on drugs haven’t made any difference is ridiculous,” Walters said. “It destroys everything we’ve done. It’s saying all the people involved in law enforcement, treatment and prevention have been wasting their time.”

Payne’s no-​nonsense response? “Yes, that is exactly what critics of the drug war are saying.”

Why did Walters take such umbrage? Could it be to intimidate us into not thinking about the evidence that drug-​war critics present? Or questioning the logic of the whole program?

And the logic is a tad shaky: Allegedly to prevent some people from ruining their lives, we ruin those lives and many, many others. 

Hundreds of thousands of people in prison. Billions in property confiscated without due process. Innocents shot in no-​knock raids — including dogs, little girls … and the police themselves from innocent Americans defending themselves from seemingly anonymous attackers in the night. 

Drug abuse can be very bad. I know. But Constitution-​abuse can be worse.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom national politics & policies

Riot Cops to a Tea

Here’s a federal budget cut: Air Force One and all other presidential travel services. The prez doesn’t need to travel. Keep the Executive Entourage in Washington, DC.

This struck home to me when I saw video of police in full riot gear, called up specifically to keep Tea Party people from gathering to greet the president at an event in Quincy, Illinois.

The cops marched around and repelled the Tea Party folk, moving them back, away from the president and his admirers. 

President Obama’s Secret Service and crowd control experts are carrying on the tradition of George W. Bush. I haven’t heard Orwellian talk of “free speech zones,” but that doesn’t mean that free speech or the mere waving about of signs is encouraged by the president.

Presidential outings and speeches are tightly controlled. They are now mere political events, designed to shore up the president’s party.

So there’s no reason, in the age of mass media, for American taxpayers to continue to pay for them. The president can speak in front of the camera, on radio and the Internet, and he can speak on the White House steps. But spending one more cent on presidential roamings to rally partisan troops just isn’t very American. Not if all sides aren’t allowed to participate.

What was unacceptable under Bush remains unacceptable under Obama. But I doubt if we’ll hear many on the left protest this marginalization of dissent.

Wrong crowd, I guess.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall Tenth Amendment federalism

Wayward States?

While Washington, DC, steps in to take over responsibility for determining just how much and what kind of medical insurance we should buy, the states march, instead, towards personal responsibility, defending a right to self-medication. 

More than a dozen states have enacted medical marijuana laws, in defiance of Congress and Executive Branch nannies. 

Now, California’s initiative to legalize recreational use of marijuana, or cannabis, has garnered enough signatures to qualify for November’s ballot. Oregon has a measure in the works, too, as do other, less bellwether-​worthy states. You can follow the story as it develops on Ballotpedia​.org.

California, the state most addicted to politicians (having the highest citizen-​to-​representative ratio in the union) also has one of the union’s most severely messed-​up budgets. Barring cuts, the state needs money. Legalizing and taxing Americans’ favorite weed might help out, some advocates think. No wonder the initiative is popularly known as the “Tax Cannabis Act.” 

We’ve heard this story before. The Great Depression allowed the repeal of the 18th Amendment. The Progressive Era’s crowning achievement in social control, the prohibition of alcohol, was seen by the world as weird, and by those who admired the original Constitution of the United States as rubbing against the grain of American liberty.

But it wasn’t freedom advocates who ended Prohibition. It was the separate states seeking revenue from selling booze.

Ah, politics. Nasty when going wrong. Messy when going right.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

Prisoners of Conscience

The crusade against political dissent under Venezuelan socialism rages on. The latest victim of President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías is former presidential candidate Oswaldo Ålvarez Paz. In March, Paz contended that Venezuelan officials had ties with drug traffickers and terrorists. For articulating this conclusion he is charged with “conspiracy” and “spreading false information.”

The president of the Human Rights Foundation, Thor Halvorssen, notes: “Ålvarez Paz said Venezuela was ruled by a ‘totalitarian regime.’ The Chávez government disagreed so strongly with this that they proved him right by arresting him and keeping him imprisoned.”

Guillermo Zuloaga, who owns the independent television network Globovisión, on which Paz uttered his opinion, was also arrested recently for saying things “offensive” to Chávez. 

Touchy, touchy, El Presidente.

“If the Venezuelan government can imprison a former presidential candidate and the head of the country’s only independent TV network because their opinions ‘offended’ the president,” asks Javier El-​Hage, HRF’s general counsel, “then what options are left for a college student who wants to protest against the government, or an independent journalist wanting to write a critical investigation?”

The Human Rights Foundation is one of many organizations rebuking Chávez’s conduct and calling for the release of persons arrested for what has been called the “crime of opinion.” They will have earned a large share of the credit if Chávez is ever forced to change course — or Venezuela manages to change course by getting rid of Chávez. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom

Searching for Google’s China Policy

Google took flak a few years ago when it announced that it would cooperate with Chinese censorship to operate a Chinese version of the Google search engine. The company’s top brass wrung their hands about the decision, since it seemed to clash with Google’s official “do no evil” policy.

In January, Google and other large companies suffered a major cyber attack apparently originating in China. In Google’s case, the target of the assault was the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Further investigation in the weeks since then has tended to confirm that the Chinese government sponsored the attack.

In response to the attack and further assaults on freedom of Internet speech in China, Google said that it was “no longer willing to continue censoring” its search results. It said that it would shut down Google​.cn if the government would not let it provide unfiltered results.

Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb reports that Google​.cn is still censoring its search results. The Chinese government isn’t about to cave. 

So why hasn’t Google left China?

Sure, it would be disruptive. People would lose their jobs. But in January’s   statement, Google seemed to be taking a belated but praiseworthy stand on principle. They should follow through. If there’s anything worse than doing evil, it’s publicly repenting it and then continuing to do evil as if nothing had happened.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom too much government

1984 in 2010

Students in a Pennsylvania school district are learning more about George Orwell’s novel 1984 than they had expected.

No, they’re not being subjected to “a boot stamping on a human face, forever” — the bottom line of Orwell’s bleak techno-​totalitarian dystopia — but they sure have gotten an unexpected taste of the telescreen in every room.

The Lower Merion School District says it intended no such thing when it handed out webcam-​equipped laptops to 1,800 students. It says that the only purpose of its ability to switch on the cams remotely was to help track lost or stolen laptops.

But Blake Robbins, a student at Harriton High, found out different. According to a class action lawsuit against the district, assistant principal Lindy Matsko confronted him about a bad deed he had allegedly done at home. As proof, Matsko pointed to an image on the laptop taken by the webcam. Matsko thought it showed Blake taking drugs. Blake says he had simply been eating Mike & Ike candies. Nor had he reported a lost laptop.

What exactly happened with these webcams will be thrashed out in court. It’s also being investigated by the FBI. But the district admits it never told anybody that it could operate the webcams remotely.

The kicker is this: Kids at the school had just read Orwell’s novel. I guess they’ll remember it better now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
general freedom national politics & policies

Greater Eloquence

Last week, two major speeches caught our attention.

Barack Obama wagged his finger at the Supreme Court and orated in front of Congress. He said the state of the union is sound.

Apple’s Steve Jobs gave the other big speech, presenting the new iPad, a portable device that accesses the Web, allows users niftily to buy and read e‑books, and much more. 

Which speech will usher in real change? 

Both have their critics. Many people no longer trust Obama, whether he’s pushing more government or a freeze. And many folks second-​guess Apple’s newest project, despite Jobs’s spectacular success record. 

For my part, I don’t buy Obama’s agenda. But I probably won’t buy an iPad, either. I tend to regard even the best new tech breakthroughs as just more vacuum cleaners. They really do suck … one’s time, anyway.

But to succeed, Apple doesn’t need my excitement. Just enough from others. 

Early in each of Apple’s revolutions, it was hard to prophesy success, with certainty. 

The neat thing about a possible neo-​Gutenberg Age of tablets, e‑books and virtual libraries is that I will still be able to read a normal book. One the other hand, if Obama gets his way, his policies will, willy nilly, crowd out better ones.

Still, it’s heartening to realize that to most of us the eloquence of a revolutionary thing means more, now, than the eloquence of any politician.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

How Not to Help Haiti

Haiti has suffered horrific devastation. It didn’t have to.

There was no way to prevent the 7.0 earthquake itself. But estimates of as many as 200,000 dead? That didn’t have to happen.

Economist Donald Boudreaux recalls that in 1989, an equally powerful quake hit the San Francisco Bay area. It caused lots of trouble but killed fewer than 70 people. But Haiti is a much poorer country than the U.S., with weaker buildings and roads, for starters.

Why so poor? 

Haiti is not a free society. It’s had one corrupt tyrant after another, recently emerged from the terrorizing rule of Jean-​Bertrand Aristide, who was sent packing in 2004.

Many pundits are saying that the way to strengthen Haitian society over the long haul is torrents of foreign aid. Economist Jeffrey Sachs wants Washington to spend billions on a five-​year development plan, which he says it should fund by taxing Wall Street bonuses.

Charity and rescue efforts are wonderful. Government-​to-​government foreign aid, not so much. Haiti has remained desperately poor despite the massive flow of foreign aid, which, over the years, has mainly subsidized corruption. What Haiti needs is stability. The ability to attract investment. Less propping up of corrupt politicians. Less foreign aid, more freedom. 

But a free society is something Haitians will have to build themselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
free trade & free markets general freedom too much government U.S. Constitution

Know Your Rights

For years, politicians and activists have declared that we have a right to medical care. Not a right to freely contract for medical services, mind you, but a fundamental right to medical care. 

This assertion serves as the moral force behind those pushing for nationalized, universal health care legislation. But can medical care really be a basic right?

Well, it’s nowhere to be found in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights. 

Should it be? 

Again, no.

Rights cannot involve requiring others to provide a product or service to us. We can’t simply demand, with talk of rights, the expertise and labor of doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers. Why? Because they possess the same rights we possess, in particular, the right not to be enslaved.

Watching the 2,000-page health care bill plod through the congressional sausage factory, the fraudulent nature of this “right to medical care” claim becomes painfully obvious. We’re not getting a new right from the deal. Instead, politicians are slapping us with a new mandate, forcing us to fork over our hard-​earned money to health insurance companies.

If our right to freedom of speech worked this way, the First Amendment would mandate that we buy a local newspaper and sign up for cable TV or XM Radio. The Second Amendment would force us to own a gun and pay dues to the NRA.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom too much government

Googling and Snuggling No More?

After years of abetting Chinese censorship, Google may finally take a stand. The world leader in Internet search may no longer be willing to help impose the Red regime’s repressive measures. The last straw? A cyber attack on Google that originated in China and targeted email accounts of Chinese dissidents. Other companies were also attacked.

In recent decades, China has loosened controls on its economy. But it is loath to permit any significant scraps of civil liberty as well, like the right to speak out freely in criticism of the government.

China lets the Internet function within its borders. But it also erects firewalls, filters and other restrictions to block or limit access to various corners of cyberspace. For years, Google has cravenly played along, preventing phrases like “Tiananmen Square massacre” from being searched on the Chinese version of its search engine.

Google officers have long squirmed over their hypocritical willingness to “do evil.” Now a Google lawyer says the company is “no longer willing to continue censoring our results.…” They’re taking a few weeks to mull their next move. But they say they’ll leave China altogether if its government won’t agree to let Google’s search engine function freely.

China’s rulers won’t agree; so I hope Google does what it says it will do. Some things one should just not collaborate with. Tyranny is at the top of the list.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.