Category: general freedom

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics Regulating Protest responsibility tax policy too much government

“Our Agenda Was Common Sense”

tea party, nail, coffin, spending, debt, responsibility, dead

The Republican Party doesn’t need to bury the corpse. Its victim has been assimilated, like the Borg did with alien peoples in the Star Trek universe, or maybe it was just soaked up as if the GOP were a giant fungus amongus.

So, what’s dead? The Tea Party, which was killed by partisanship, says Matt Kibbe, President and Chief Community Organizer at Free the People. He admits that the movement’s obituary has been written many times, but, he argues, “this time is different. Republicans, now controlling both the legislative and executive branches, jammed through a ‘CRomnibus’ spending bill that strips any last vestiges of spending restraint from the budget process.”

Kibbe identifies the Tea Party’s central theme simply: “Our agenda was common sense: We demanded that Washington politicians stop spending our money like it was theirs, and keep out of our health care. But in Washington, common sense is often seen as radical.”

This, he insists, was not a partisan movement.

But only Republicans played to it. Kibbe calls Sarah Palin a “political huckster” who “helped hijack our purpose,” and fingers Mitt Romney as the man who scuttled Tea Party “political momentum” in 2012. “And then Donald Trump split the Tea Party right down the middle, and that was the end.”

Nail in the coffin? The recent budget deal.

Kibbe signs the autopsy, but assures us: “American principles of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and constitutionally limited government, are all still very much alive.”

I sure hope so. But it takes more than a handful of Freedom Caucus members on Capitol Hill to realize it in practice.

Like a new citizen movement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Threat Assessment

Tide Pod, foolish, foolhardy, Atlantic, Jonathan Rauch, Benjamin Wittes, vote, voting, Republican, Democrat, threat, GOP

Don’t drink transmission fluid. Or perform a swan dive off the Empire State Building. Or munch on a Tide Pod.

Be cautious, in other words, of the advice offered in “Boycott the Republican Party,” the Atlantic opinion piece authored by Jonathan Rauch and Benjamin Wittes, both scholars at the Brookings Institution. Their erudite suggestion? Conservatives should “vote mindlessly and mechanically against Republicans at every opportunity, until the party either rights itself or implodes (very preferably the former).”

My Sunday column at Townhall.com, “Friendly Suicide Advice for the GOP,” reviewed their proposal and analysis. “[H]orrified” by President Trump, they see congressional Republicans as enablers of his “existential” threat “to American democracy.”

Big government has long frightened me, so I’m certainly not suggesting anyone relax just now. I do wonder, however, why these writers and others in the media have been so blasé to past presidential usurpations (noted in the column) with life-and-death implications.

Rauch and Wittes go so far as to reassuringly explain that “the Democratic Party is not a threat to our democratic order.”

Really?

In 2016, every single Democratic Party U.S. Senator voted to partially repeal the First Amendment of the Constitution. The Democrats’ proposal would have largely ended the prohibition that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech,” replacing it with “Congress and the States may regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections.”

In our present “democratic order,” the Constitution recognizes the primary importance of walling off political speech from regulation by these very politicians. The Democrats seek to repeal that order . . . that freedom . . . that criticism.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights free trade & free markets general freedom initiative, referendum, and recall nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights Second Amendment rights Tenth Amendment federalism too much government U.S. Constitution

Winning Too Much?

The Human Freedom Index for 2017, CATO, Fraser Institute, and the Liberales Institut at the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom Switzerland, US, United States

“We’re Number 17!!!”

This lacks a certain triumphant note.

It is nothing like the “We’re Number 1!” the Swiss are now hollering as they pump their arms into the air, waving giant #1 foam fingers against the backdrop of snow-covered Alps.

Actually, knowing the Swiss, they are probably a bit more restrained. Still, you get the point.

Number 1 in what, you ask? Creamy, delicious chocolate, perhaps? Banking? Skiing?

Freedom.

The Human Freedom Index 2017, jointly published by the institutes Cato, Fraser, and Liberales, is hot off the presses. The report ranks the countries of the world on “personal, civil, and economic freedom.”

This year, Switzerland switched places with Hong Kong, which had come in first the year before. The U.S. moved up from 23rd place in 2016, but down from 2008, when we were challenging Top 10 status at Number 11.

“Weak areas [for the U.S.] include rule of law, size of government, the legal system and property rights,” according to a Cato video.

Let’s compare Switzerland to the United States. The 1848 Swiss Constitution creates 26 sovereign cantons (states), greatly influenced by our system of federalism. In the 20th century, Americans in 26 states and most localities borrowed from the Swiss, establishing a system of direct democratic checks on government — what we call ballot initiatives and referendums.

Both countries have constitutional limits on government, protecting individual rights — even from fully democratic tyranny. But in the freest nation in the world, Switzerland, citizens possess a powerful direct democratic check on their government at all levels . . . while we do not.

After all, we’re Number 17.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism privacy responsibility too much government

The Winds of Regulation

occupational, licensing, permission, unions, protectionism, regulation, license, law

Among the many goofy occupational licensing laws in these United States, Arizona’s licensing for professional blow-drying services is up there with the silliest. 

“Under current law, using a blow-dryer on someone else’s hair, for money, requires more than 1,000 hours of training and an expensive state-issued license,” we learn at Reason. “Blow-drying hair without a license could — incredibly — land you in jail for up to six months.”

This came into the news because of a campaign to deregulate the cosmetology industry — just a bit, anyway. Gov. Doug Ducey, in his recent State of the State address, “mocked the state agency that licenses stylists, barbers, nail technicians and affiliated professionals in Arizona, and endorsed legislation to remove training requirements for those who simply wash, brush and blow-dry customers’ hair.”

Licensed cosmetologists — well, at least some organized ones — have gone into a tizzy.

Hardly surprising, since occupational licensing, though usually argued for on consumer safety grounds, rarely finds consumers clamoring for it. 

It’s groups of established businesses, professionals.*

Brandy Wells, the sole non-cosmetologist on the state board overseeing the regulation of the industry, supports the liberalizing bill. So of course she has been called every name in the book. But even she was amused by one stylish denigration: “your logic on deregulation of cosmetology is much like your hair, dull and flat.”

The issue may seem trivial, with not all that much on the line — though jobs are . . . and freedom is. 

But it doesn’t lack for hot air.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* As Adam Smith argued, whenever businessmen (“dealers”) in the same industry group together, their proposals should be listened to “with great precaution.”

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general freedom individual achievement media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

Red Roadster Rides Outer Space

Tesla, Elon Musk, SpaceX, launch, space, orbit, government

On Tuesday, SpaceX launched one of the largest rockets ever, the Falcon Heavy. Because it is still experimental, it didn’t carry up an expensive satellite. Too early for that. Instead, it has sent up a Tesla Roadster.

And it’s not aiming for orbit . . . around Earth.

It’s aiming for, well, “a precessing Earth-Mars elliptical orbit around the sun.”

All the while playing the late David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.”

This is all very bizarre, of course. But SpaceX is headed by Elon Musk, who is one of those daring people who do daring things. The very fact that he kept finding funding (no small amount of it from taxpayers, sadly) for Tesla Motors (which he also founded), while failing to make a profit, is a tribute to . . . something.

Sending Musk’s personal car into space — to circuit Sol for a billion years — is, the visionary says, at least not boring. (Musk, perhaps not coincidentally for that word choice, also founded the Boring Company.) The Roadster, “piloted” by a dummy “Starman,” is an upgrade with flair.

But who is he playing to? The masses of auto buffs? Stargazers? Science fiction fans?*

Maybe the mad-scientist/eccentric-mogul is playing for bureaucrats, Capitol Hill staffers, and politicians. For, by one estimate, his companies have received $4.9 billion in government subsidies.

So, think of what’s going into orbit as just another part of the skyrocketing — spacerocketing — federal debt.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The odd payload choice might make sense in sci-fi context, for, in the early days of science fiction, one idea often mentioned was to literally send a bomb to the Moon: an explosion, after all, could be seen, in early Space Age days, with old technology right here from Planet Earth surface. This was the case in the boys’ book The Rocket’s Shadow as imagined in 1947.

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free trade & free markets general freedom too much government

Bank on It?

marijuana, bank, California, California State Treasurer John Chiang, Federal Reserve

It took me a moment. And I assure you, I wasn’t high.

When I read that California State Treasurer John Chiang was considering a “marijuana bank,” my first thought was that he was talking about warehousing bud and leaf.

Well, no. That would be stupid.

So, maybe reporters and bloggers shouldn’t call it a “marijuana bank.” What these government officials are doing is trying to determine “the potential of a public bank to service the cannabis industry in California.”

A state bank, in other words. Not unheard of.

But would it be stupid?

Not according to Treasurer Chiang.* But his notion is not just about serving an industry that the federal government still tries to suppress — and continues to use its regulatory powers over banks to monkey-wrench.

Chiang defends his move in part on anti-capitalist grounds: “We see deepening public dissatisfaction and cynicism over the private banking system — a dissatisfaction that can be traced to the financial excesses of Wall Street, which triggered the worst recession since the Great Depression.”

Was the financial crisis the result of “bad actors” in the industry alone? No. The American banking industry is heavily regulated, the government-created Federal Reserve is very hands-on in its control of money and banking, and federal regulatory and financial bodies have exerted similar influence over housing industry financing for scores of years.

So of course a Californian politician wants to solve a government-induced problem by creating more government.

That’s what’s stupid, if you ask me.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* He’s going forward with a big study to “answer questions about costs, benefits, risks, and legal and regulatory issues, including the needs for capitalization, deposit insurance, and access to interbank transfers of funds.”

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people Popular term limits

Let There Be Light

Washington Post, Democracy, term limits,

The Washington Post sports a new masthead slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness,.”

A story in last Sunday’s Metro section suggests that the editors are yet to fully implement the slogan’s implicit mission — providing impartial, unbiased illumination. “Term limits for Maryland legislators?” reads the headline. “Here’s why that’s unlikely,” it immediately answers.

“Term limits seem highly popular in Maryland,” begin the article.

Seem?

What produces that elusive sensory perception? I mean, other than every poll ever taken and, as the Post elaborates, “Voters in the state’s two largest jurisdictions, Montgomery and Prince George’s counties, strongly endorsed them at the polls in recent years.”

Add to that three other counties, which had previously enacted term limits, the paper informs.

Still, the idea is “widely considered dead on arrival.”

Why? you ask.

“It’s very difficult,” explains Gov. Larry Hogan, “to convince people to willingly give up their power.”

“People” not as in “the People” but, instead, such as Senate President Mike Miller, a 46-year incumbent and the Senate boss for three decades running, and Speaker Mike Busch, a 31-year incumbent and the longest serving speaker in state history.

But wait . . . why didn’t politicians in those five Maryland counties block term limits like state legislators “likely” will? Did their lack of experience cause them to forget to be self-serving jerks?

No. Counties in Maryland have a ballot initiative process whereby citizens can petition term limits directly to a democratic vote. Their elected servants simply cannot ignore them.

The Post piece could have pointed out that very difference — between the democratic outcomes in those counties and an unrepresentative one at the state capitol.

It did not.

Democracy dies in darkness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Popular privacy Regulating Protest too much government

The Last Straw

plastic straws, nanny state, fine, crime, California, freedom

How much should we fine waiters who destroy our planet?

For how long should they go to jail?

I don’t know where you would hold such an evildoer after the earth has been destroyed. Or where he’d go when released. But we’re speaking hypothetically. Assume that planet-destroyers can be imprisoned on the moon, which let’s just say still orbits the earth’s decimated remains. Or assume that after being destroyed, the planet can be reconstructed. After serving his sentence, then, the waiter would be released to a reconstructed earth.

In that case, a maximum $1,000 fine as suggested by Ian Calderon, Democratic majority leader of the California State Assembly, seems only fair. However, a maximum of six months in jail is excessive. In my opinion, planet-destroying waiters should suffer no more than 100 days in jail.

Calderon has proposed a bill, AB-1884, to fine and/or imprison waiters who offer unsolicited plastic straws to restaurant patrons. In response to criticism of his silly and vicious bill, Calderon says hey, it’s “NOT a ban” on straws! Oh, okay. Anyway, “Penalties are based on the code section the bill is currently in, which it will be amended out of,” which sounds like Calderon was prior to the uproar . . . what, joking?

As long as we’re amending, let me amend my own implication that people who offer, use, make or sell plastic straws* are in fact helping destroy earth. Just kidding!

The earth will survive plastic straws. Will it survive the Calderons of the world?

Open question.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Not that I’m confirming or denying ever using one myself.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Twitter’s Merkel Tactics or Merkel’s Twitter Tactics?

Twitter, censorship, Germany, Merkel, speech, double standard

Is Twitter cooperating with Germany’s new crackdown on social-media speech because otherwise it risks steep penalties? Or is Twitter just doing what it would do anyway?

When Germany’s new law against unwelcome speech went into effect this year, many Germans protested. “Please spare us the thought police!” was the headline in one top-selling paper, Bild.

The law requires social-media sites to block unapproved content — which includes “hate speech” and “fake news” — within 24 hours or face exorbitant fines. (Of course, every piece of news, no matter how well or shabbily reported, gets decried as hateful “fake news” by somebody.) Under the new law, Twitter suspended the accounts of two officials of the political party Alternative for Germany who tweeted that Muslim men have violent proclivities. Hateful, fake, inexact, whatever, such tweets by themselves threaten nobody and violate nobody’s rights.

Did Twitter act only under duress here?

Well, in the U.S., the company is not ordered by our government to muzzle anybody except perhaps terrorists or persons directly instigating a crime. Yet Twitter regularly suspends or bans users whose speech it considers objectionable. Moreover, it has become notorious for especially targeting speech that can be regarded as on the right end of the political spectrum — while leaving intact the tweet-speech of left-wing micro-bloggers no matter how threatening or abusive.

I don’t say America’s government should become involved. It should certainly not compel Twitter to drop its double standard.

Instead, it is Twitter itself that should become involved . . . and drop its double standard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest tax policy too much government

Still at Large

IRS, drain the swamp, Trump, Lois Lerner, tax, tax man

Blogger Paul Caron, dean of Pepperdine Law School, still counts the days since we learned that the IRS was blocking applications for nonprofit status from right-leaning groups at the behest of former IRS honcho Lois Lerner.

Now years later, the agency can still arbitrarily victimize any one of us. Nor have Lerner and other bad guys been brought to justice. Lerner collects a six-figure pension, instead.

And so, on Day 1699, Caron highlighted Kimberly Strassel’s proposal that President Trump make 2018 “the year of civil-service reform — a root-and-branch overhaul of the government itself. Call it Operation Drain the Swamp.” Exhibit A? The IRS and civil “servants” like “Lois Lerner, the IRS official who used her powers to silence conservative nonprofits.”  

And on Day 1709, Caron called our attention to Lerner’s attempt to suppress a deposition she gave in June “for a civil suit that victims [of IRS targeting] brought in 2013.” Lerner thinks we have no right to know why she felt justified in discriminating against applicants for tax-exempt status based on their political viewpoint.

Unfortunately, not everyone cares about justice as much as Caron.

Consider an obtuse Washington Post editorial pretending that the IRS didn’t really target conservative groups. Instead, “conservative groups, their allies in Congress and the IRS itself all bear responsibility” for the appearance otherwise.

And the aftermath.

Uh huh. If only victims of the abuse of power would stop being so indelicate as to object!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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