Category: general freedom

Categories
Accountability general freedom individual achievement Popular

Settling the Science

climate, global warming, climate change, science, mistake

A paper in the august science journal Nature,* on the oceans’ “thermal inertia” and the ominous temperature rise therein, has been corrected. But not before the BBC (and other media outlets) ballyhooed the results in the usual “climate change”/“global warming” narrative: “Climate change: Oceans ‘soaking up more heat than estimated’” (Nov. 1).

The paper’s initial new (and alarming) estimate, however, proved wrong.

Over at Real Climate, one of the co-authors clarified the changes that had to be made: “The revised uncertainties preclude drawing any strong conclusions with respect to climate sensitivity or carbon budgets . . . but they still lend support for the implications of the recent upwards revisions in” . . . well, I will let you make sense of it.

I am not a climate scientist, nor do I pretend to be one on the Internet.

What is important to note is that the “strong conclusions” reported on were found to be groundless. 

Mistakes were made.

How were those mistakes identified?

They were caught at the ClimateEtc. — not an “august science journal” — published online at judithcurry.com.**

Nic Lewis, the astute blogger, identified a major source of the inaccuracy in the original paper as having arisen “primarily because of the inappropriate assumption of a zero error in 1991.”

We have just witnessed science in action — the public testing of published findings.

“The bad news,” Dr. Roy Spencer reminds us on his Global Warming blog, “is that the peer review process, presumably involving credentialed climate scientists” — note the dig — failed to catch the error “before publication.”

The crucial science happened afterwards, online. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “Quantification of ocean heat uptake from changes in atmospheric O2 and CO2 composition,” by L. Resplandy, R. F. Keeling, et al.

** I have had occasion to mention climate scientist Judith Curry in the past.

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Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies term limits

Trump Should Look to Peru

Peru, term limits, Trump

Democracy can degrade into other things, even strong-man rule. To avoid such degradation, we have a ready prophylactic. Term limits. Which hamper would-be dictators-for-life, including entrenched oligarchs in the legislature.

Many countries illustrate the point. But take Peru, where the new head of state, Martin Vizcarra, has been combatting political corruption by supporting a referendum to impose term limits and other reforms on Peru’s Congress. Voters weigh in on December 9. 

The congressional term limit would be a ban on consecutive terms. Peru’s presidency itself is limited, too weakly in my judgment, by a ban on consecutive terms. A former president may run again after a term out of office. But this is much better than having no presidential term limits.

Vizcarra got the top job early this year when his predecessor resigned because of corruption charges. The former vice president wasn’t very popular at first. But Vizcarra’s fight against corruption and for legislative term limits has changed things. The new guy now enjoys a 61 percent approval rating.

May I offer a suggestion to our own head of state? 

Americans, too, are heartily sick of corrupt incumbents. 

We, too, would love to see congressional term limits. 

Instead of voicing only occasional strong support for efforts to impose them, President Trump could make it a crusade. Push for the idea as loudly and eloquently as he can, day in, day out. The future of the country is at stake. 

And it would boost his approval ratings.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
general freedom ideological culture Popular Second Amendment rights too much government

Il Duce Cuomo

Cuomo, Mayor, New York

A federal judge has ruled that the National Rifle Association has a plausible case against New York Governor Andrew Cuomo; the NRA’s lawsuit, alleging that the organization’s rights have been violated by the governor, is going ahead.

As related by Jacob Sullum in two pieces over at Reason, Cuomo sure looks guilty. 

Indeed, the governor’s own words convict him: “If the @NRA goes bankrupt because of the State of New York, they’ll be in my thoughts and prayers. I’ll see you in court.” 

Precisely.

What has Cuomo done? “I am directing the Department of Financial Services,” he commanded, “to urge insurers and bankers statewide to determine whether any relationship they may have with the NRA or similar organizations sends the wrong message to their clients and their communities.”

Is this just regulatory business as usual, as defenders of Cuomo harrumph? Or is it a real violation of rights?

It can be both. 

This is more than “bully pulpit” power, it is actual, gun-under-the-table power — the kind you give to regulators when you set up regulatory bodies rather than establish general principles under a rule of law.

It is a problem on every level of our society, especially the federal government. But states like New York are obviously not immune.

And it reminds me of Mussolini’s method, of The Leader taking control and bullying businesses and groups to do his bidding. (For the “public safety” and to “end violence” — of course.) The essence of fascism.

It’s good to see Il Duce Cuomo get some legal pushback. 

In this Land of the Allegedly Free.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall political challengers Popular

Spoiler Season

libertarian, spoiler, porcupine, snake, politics

“Libertarians poll high enough to tip key races,” informs The Washington Times — citing contests for governorships and both houses of Congress.*

Libertarian Lucy Brenton is one example, running for U.S. Senate in Indiana. She grabbed 7 percent in a recent poll, greater than the margin between incumbent Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly, who had 44 percent, and Republican challenger Mike Braun with 40 percent. The Times says Brenton is just one of “a number of Libertarians whose poll numbers are high enough to more than account for the difference between Republicans and Democrats in key midterm races.” 

She had garnered 5.5 percent in 2016, when she sought the state’s other U.S. Senate seat. 

There is disagreement over whether Libertarians help or hurt Republicans. Most folks suspect that Libertarians take votes away from Republicans, but polling appears to show Libertarians snagging more otherwise Democrat-inclined voters.

No matter. As often discussed here, enacting Ranked Choice Voting is the rational institutional solution to the so-called spoiler effect Libertarians present. It’s a win-win for both so-called major and minor political parties. 

“Libertarians bristle at the term ‘spoiler,’” the newspaper notes, “saying it’s a belittling term for a party that presents a viable option to voters.”

Which brings me to a second solution to Libertarians luring away your voters. Steal their issues. Take them and make them your own.

There’s no law against it.

No reform required.

“Libertarians are running against President Trump’s tariffs, immigration policy and record on spending . . .” explains The Times, and “are embracing . . . less taxation as well as marijuana legalization, criminal justice reform and ending the war on drugs.”

Fresh elections. Happy voting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It won’t change the outcome, but on Monday the Boston Globe endorsed Libertarian Dan Fishman for state auditor, writing: “An auditor without any partisan axes to grind could shake up the state.” That’s a different kind of spoiler.

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Categories
crime and punishment general freedom insider corruption

The Ayatollah for Governor?

Former Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson is running for governor.

Again.

You may recall, as I certainly do, that Mr. Edmondson prosecuted — more like persecuted — me and two others involved in a 2005 petition drive. He charged us with “conspiracy to defraud the state,” a felony carrying a 10-year prison term.

At our arraignment and processing, the three of us were shackled together with handcuffs and leg-irons and paraded before TV cameras.

“Has North Korea Annexed Oklahoma?” was how a Forbes magazine editorial greeted the spectacle. The conservative Wall Street Journal connected the Sooner State to the kind of repression practiced in Pakistan, while liberal consumer advocate Ralph Nader also condemned the prosecution. New Jersey Star Ledger columnist Paul Mulshine noted that Russia’s Vladimir Putin “could learn a thing or two from the Oklahoma boys.”

We became the Oklahoma 3. The AG earned the label “Ayatollah Edmondson.”

Loudly expressing our innocence, we waited for our day in court.

It was a long wait.

Edmondson held the indictment over our heads for a year and a half, publicly attacking us and calling us criminals. But he never permitted us our day in court. He went to great lengths to avoid completing a preliminary hearing, which would have allowed a judge to determine if enough evidence existed to hold a trial.

Finally, in 2009, as he prepared to launch his previous unsuccessful run for governor, he dropped all the charges.

When someone abuses power so recklessly, that someone shouldn’t be given more power.

Today, career politician Drew Edmondson tells voters he will “Put Oklahomans First.” He can’t even come up with his own slogan.

Ayatollah Edmondson: Dangerous. And unoriginal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

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Additional Information

Capitol Beat: In critical analysis, Edmondson ranked among worst attorneys general
CEI: Drew Edmondson’s Prosecution of Paul Jacob Is Unconstitutional
Wall Street Journal: Still Oklahoma’s Most Wanted – Attorney General leads posse chasing critics of government
NewsOK: State’s Unjust Prosecution 
Capitol Beat: Edmondson should free “The Oklahoma Three”

My Writing on Edmondson’s Attack on Petition Rights

We, the Oklahoma 3 — Oct. 7, 2007
Guilt & Innocence in Oklahoma — Jan. 21, 2008
Constitutionally Unsuited for the Job — Feb. 13, 2008
Above the Law — March 14, 2008
Opposed to Answers — April 28, 2008
Edmondson vs. Term Limits — May 20, 2008
Another OK Court Decision — June 4, 2008
Petitioners May Petition — July 8, 2008
Scare Tactic in Oklahoma — July 23, 2008
Feeling Sorry for Oklahoma — Nov. 17, 2008
The Wheels of Injustice — Dec. 4, 2008
The Oklahoma Three, Free at Last — Jan. 26, 2009
The Year of Reform? — Feb. 18, 2009
The Untold Story of the Oklahoma 3 — May 1, 2009
Change Sweeping Down the Plains — May 19, 2009

Categories
general freedom ideological culture Popular too much government

Socialism Is Anti-Democracy

NPC, socialism, democracy, freedom

Common sense politics must peer beneath the superficial attractions of “democratic socialism.”

In “Civil Liberties and Socialism Don’t Mix,” Matthew Harwood explains why those who call themselves democratic socialists may “say they believe in civil liberties” nevertheless “will always be hostile to individual freedom.”

In this short Reason piece, Mr. Harwood starts out by showing that socialism cannot merely be “a more generous welfare state along Nordic lines.” For “socialism” to remain distinct socialists must offer a Unique Selling Proposition. You cannot plausibly push a “new” philosophy and stick to pushing the old liberal stand-bys of private property and markets.

Their own pretensions force them back to central planning, to economic planning for all by a few.

Which is not democratic, of course. It goes far further, to anti-majoritarian.

Actual economic planning requires micromanagement. Harwood quotes socialist economist and luminary Robert Heilbroner, who expresses this requirement as “the necessity to intervene deeply, and probably ruthlessly, into the economy in order to establish the socialist order in the first place.”  

But it cannot stop there. Once established, a socialist state must feel a “need to continue a policy of painful intervention” to adjust to “the constricting limits of the environment.”

“Democratic socialism is not freedom,” Harwood concludes. “It is authority paternalistically dressed up in the language of liberation and wielded on behalf of that fuzzy abstraction, ‘the people,’ regardless of what flesh and blood individuals want.”

Sure, democratic socialists may hope that majorities will allow their elites to plan for everybody. 

But once that handoff is made, the power obtained, then the tyranny.

Inescapably.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

 

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Categories
general freedom term limits

The Bonesaw Massacre

bone saw, Saudi Arabia, murder, free speech, ,press freedom,consulate,

Last week, the Washington Post published journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s final column. Khashoggi was apparently murdered by dismemberment at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, earlier this month.

“The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain,” Khashoggi wrote, “imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power.”

Decrying that “Arab governments . . . continue silencing the media at an increasing rate,” he called for the U.S. to “[play] an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom,” advocating the equivalent of a Radio Free Europe to reach nearly 400 million Arabs.

The Saudi dissident highlighted Freedom House’s 2018 report “Freedom in the World,” noting that “only one country in the Arab world . . . has been classified as ‘free.’ That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of ‘partly free.’ The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as ‘not free.’”

Perusing that report’s coverage of the Americas, I noticed a section on “Gains and declines show value of electoral turnover.”

“Under new president Lenín Moreno, Ecuador turned away from the personalized and often repressive rule of his predecessor, Rafael Correa,” the report states. “Moreno has eased pressure on the media, promoted greater engagement with civil society, proposed the restoration of term limits, and supported anticorruption efforts . . .”

In Bolivia, sadly, “the constitutional court . . . struck down term limits that would have prevented incumbent leader Evo Morales from seeking reelection. Voters had rejected the lifting of term limits in a 2016 referendum, and international observers called the court’s reasoning a distortion of human rights law.”

Rotation in office — you know, like provided by term limits — appears strongly linked to freedom.

The lack of which having proved tragic for Jamal Khashoggi.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
ballot access general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people Regulating Protest

Three Bad Propositions

initiative, petition, power, money, elections

Two propositions on this November’s California ballot, Propositions 8 and 11, have found an opponent.

“Both would have voters decide very narrow union-management conflicts in two relatively small medical service sectors,” explains Dan Walters, long the dean of California columnists. Unions are sponsoring Prop 8, which “purports to limit profits in clinics that provide dialysis treatments to sufferers of kidney failure.” Ambulance companies are behind Prop 11, which would “require ambulance crews to remain on call during meal and rest breaks.”

Walters thinks it “foolish to expect November’s nine-plus million voters to make even semi-informed decisions about their provisions, much less understand how dialysis clinics and ambulance services operate, or should operate.”

Well, yes, but this criticism applies to government universally. Legislators don’t understand how every business or industry functions, or should function, either. Even when politicians pretend to comprehend, by what right do they micromanage other people’s businesses and labor contracts?

Freedom, not government regulation, should be the default position.

But Walters’ fix runs against this logic. He thinks that upping the required percentage of signatures for ballot placement “by half . . . might discourage the misuse of the system for issues that cannot be fairly and rationally decided by voters.”

Don’t bet on it.

As Walters himself admits, making it tougher and more expensive to petition a measure onto the ballot won’t block the well-heeled: “any interest group with a few million bucks and an axe to grind can qualify a ballot measure, regardless of their merits.”

But it would disenfranchise grassroots groups.

Defeat bad measures; don’t destroy the democratic process.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture property rights too much government

Big Government Apologetics

fragile, socialism

Journalists play different roles.

Too few report. Too many engage in elaborate apologetics for favored causes.

Like big government.

Take this headline: “Venezuela’s Crisis Is Rooted In Oil Prices — and Authoritarianism.”

Guess: reporting, or bending over backwards to save socialism?

The article’s summary of the decline and fall of Venezuela is accurate insofar as it indicates assaults on liberty, including nationalizations and monetary inflation. But neither “oil prices” nor dependence on oil spawned Venezuela’s crisis.

Every industry, city and nation will experience unfavorable markets, now and then. But what’s fundamental is their “antifragility.” And, news to journalists: socialist societies are fragile in ways that freer societies are not.

Suppose Venezuela had had a free market when oil prices dropped so precipitously. People would then have shifted, however grumpily, into enterprises now more profitable than drilling for and distributing oil.

It is no blunder to specialize, to exploit comparative advantages in knowledge, skills or resources, and to engage in local, regional or international trade. It’s fine even if an economy’s production and exports ends up being dominated by just one good. What matters is whether people are free or burdened by government controls. If the latter, how hard does government make it to cope with changing circumstances?

Unhampered market prices supply the information and incentives needed to adapt to all kinds of changes. But if an economy is chronically distorted and calcified by government controls, it becomes much harder to adapt . . . and much harder to survive.

Today’s journalists routinely adapt facts to story, rather than adjust stories to reality. Guys, give up the ideological apologetics. Go back to reporting.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Categories
First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard privacy

Google Goes Bad

Google, don't be evil, China, censorship, free speech

Good Google’s evil twin, Bad Google, is at it again.

In addition to doing bad things to advance its political agenda, Google is willing to work with bad governments do bad things. 

For example, the authoritarian Chinese government.

Google is working on a mobile version of its search engine, code-named Dragonfly, which would censor search results the way the Chinese government wants. The company is doing so even though it shut down its Chinese-mainland search engine back in 2010 because it “could no longer continue censoring our results” in China. At the time, I praised Google for moving in the right direction.

Now it’s regressing.

And more than regressing. The Intercept reports that Dragonfly goes beyond censorship. How? By linking a user’s search results to his phone number. Critics note that this would abet human rights violations, since users could easily be detained and even jailed for searching for the “wrong” terms.

At least five Google employees have resigned in protest. One, Jack Poulson, a research scientist, says that he regards “our intent to capitulate to censorship and surveillance demands in exchange for access to the Chinese market as a forfeiture of our values and governmental negotiating position across the globe.”

Google no longer promotes what used to be its motto and guide: “Don’t be evil.” 

To be sure, that motto did not put a very positive spin on the company’s moral stance. “Always be good” might be better. But I agree with both. 

Be good, not evil.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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