Category: general freedom

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general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility too much government

Undefeated

Missouri Ethics Commission, lobbyist, lobbying, Ron Calzone, Missouri First

It’s over . . . but it’s not.

A conscientious Show-Me state activist has won his case, but . . .

A year ago, the unethical Missouri Ethics Commission fined Ron Calzone $1,000 for not paying a silly $10 fee. To register as a lobbyist. They also ordered him to stop talking to legislators until he complied.

Citizen Calzone didn’t register.

He didn’t pay.

And he didn’t shut up.

On principle.

Instead, he contacted the Freedom Center of Missouri and the Center for Competitive Politics, a national outfit that defends our rights to participate in our supposedly participatory and representative democratic republic.

On Monday, a judge ruled in Ron’s favor, tossing out the “ethics complaint” against him. On a technicality, actually.

Winning is better than losing. But even if someone bothers to try again against Calzone, filing the suit properly*, Calzone would win.

You see, we have rights . . . including the freedom to talk to those pretending to represent us. It is not at all certain that government has any constitutional authority to regulate paid lobbyists.

But Ron is not a paid lobbyist. He volunteers for Missouri First, a citizen group.

So why did the speech police’s long arm reach out to grab him?

He’s effective.

More than a forthright advocate for what he believes, he has proven smart enough to find ways to allow fellow freedom-lovers to weigh in on bills they favor or oppose.

This has endeared him neither to legislators nor the lobbying “community” — professionals paid handsomely to lose to Calzone’s grassroots network. They will strike back. You can count on it.

But as long as there are citizens like him, the people will not be defeated.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The charges weren’t filed by a “natural person,” as the law requires, but by the attorney for the Missouri Society of Governmental Consultants, the state lobbyist guild.

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general freedom nannyism national politics & policies too much government

A Federalist Prescription

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California has become the 32nd state to stand up for the dying.

Gov. Jerry Brown just signed the “right to try” law that the Goldwater Institute has been pushing. It allows diagnosed terminally ill patients with only a few months left to live to try “experimental” medications.

These are drugs that haven’t passed through all the Food and Drug Administration’s many hoops.

The rationale for the law is that the FDA’s decade-long, costly process is ostensibly designed to prevent “dangerous” drugs from being regularly prescribed and sold and used in the United States. To save lives, you see. But it is simply cruel to hold patients in the process of dying to the strict standards of the slow, bureaucratic federal bureaucracy. Cruel because purposeless.

The Goldwater Institute’s press release clarifies the law like this: “Right To Try is limited to patients with a terminal disease that have exhausted all approved treatment options and cannot enroll in a clinical trial. All medications available under the law must have successfully completed basic safety testing and be part of the FDA’s on-going approval process.”

Hardly radical. Indeed, it seems such a meek and mild move, to me. If you are dying, and your doctor is obliging, who is harmed?

Two things, though:

  1. Had Americans a right to self-medicate — like we did before the Progressive Era nanny state bureaucracies were set up — this issue would not even come up. These reforms are necessary because we are not Once upon a time, all Americans could choose any medication.
  2. This is yet another example of states effectively nullifying federal law.

More please.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability ballot access First Amendment rights general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall media and media people moral hazard nannyism Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

Four Measures for Rogue Government

speech, anti-speech, NAACP, Supreme Court, First Amendment, Free Speech,

Rule of thumb: don’t enact today laws that, had they been obeyed by folks in the original 13 states of our union, would have prevented independence.

Voters in Missouri, South Dakota, and Washington have the “opportunity” to enact such laws this November.

In “Beware of Anti-Speech Ballot Measures,” Tracy Sharp and Darcy Olsen, presidents of the State Policy Center and the Goldwater Institute, respectively, offer a warning. Focusing on Measure 22, the South Dakota Government Accountability and Anti-Corruption Act, they show how dangerous notions like forcing “nonprofit organizations to report the names and addresses of their donors to the state government” can be.

Such disclosure would subject non-profits “to possible investigation by an unelected ethics board that is given the power to subpoena private documents and overrule decisions made by the state attorney general. . . .” Rogue, star-chamber government.

Fever dream?

No. Sharp and Olsen highlight a famous U.S. Supreme Court case that protected the NAACP from the state’s demand for the group’s funding sources. Both women also offer personal tales of how nasty the opposition (in government and out) can become when big issues are on the line.

I can personally attest.

These measures fly in the face of what really matters — encouraging robust public debate. Democracy doesn’t work when people dread participation. As our authors challenge, “[d]o we want America to be a country where government keeps public lists of law-abiding citizens because they dare to support causes they believe in?”

Especially when, without the secret (unreported!) activities of the Committees of Correspondence, the USA would not have become united states in the first place.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Original (cc) photo by Michael Tracey on Flickr

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom media and media people

Crime and Terror and Panic

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Many people think crime is going up. But it’s going down.

Similarly, many people think terrorism is “an existential threat” to our very civilization.

Could the latter folks be wrong for the same reason the former folks are?

Because news reporting concentrates on crime, covering it intensely, incessantly — if it bleeds, it leads — we get the wrong perspective on crime. The long-term trend-line shows crime going down since the early 1990s. Though we’re now seeing upticks in certain big cities, it’s simply not all getting worse.

This is not a reason to slack off. It is a reason not to panic.

How is terrorism different?

In 15 years, there has been no repeat of 9/11/01, or anything close to it. Granted, there have been horrific homegrown terror incidents. That threat remains. Though, thankfully, last weekend’s terrorist spree wasn’t more effective: One bomb fizzled, another killed no one, and the mad jihadist knifer was himself put down before anyone was killed.

Some might note that the number of deaths as a result of automobile crashes* is far, far higher than from terrorism. Why worry more about the very small number of terrorist outbreaks in a huge country like ours?

Here’s why: the terrorism is intentional, and could become worse for whatever reasons flip normal Muslim men and women into jihadist radicals. So our vigilance must not abate.

But there’s another difference. Terrorists, unlike normal criminals, want to be noticed. The more we panic, the more they are tempted to seek to cause us to panic.

Terrorism, whether going up or down, requires, along with vigilance, a certain resolute calmness.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

 

* Deaths from automobile accidents have been decreasing for decades, a 35 percent drop from 1979 to 2005. However, last year the U.S. had the “highest one-year percentage increase in traffic deaths in half a century.”

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Accountability ballot access folly general freedom media and media people national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

The Two-Product Economic System

election, duopoly, rotten choices, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trumpk

What if our economy worked like our political system?

Only two major companies would provide any particular product for sale. But don’t worry — we’d still have a solid choice between “This Product Is Obnoxious” and “I Don’t Trust This Product.”

Those two companies would create a non-profit entity — a Commission on Product Debates — empowered to determine the rules under which any upstart company could present its “third-choice” product to consumers.

That Commission would prevent any third-choice product from standing on the marketplace stage where consumers could compare it face-to-face with the two established choices . . . until it captured 15 percent of the market.

Last week, in real life, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that its upcoming September 26th debate would feature only Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Neither Libertarian Gary Johnson, averaging 8.4 percent in the five commission-approved polls, nor Dr. Jill Stein, the Green, at 3.2 percent, met the 15 percent threshold set by the Commission.

Forget that polls also show nearly two-thirds of consumers — er, voters, want Johnson and Stein in the debates. You can’t win ’em all.

Or any at all . . . if you can’t take your product to market. And the presidential debates are an essential space in today’s political marketplace.

No third-party or independent presidential candidate has been allowed on that debate stage since Ross Perot qualified in 1992, at the time polling at 8 percent — below Johnson’s current percentage.

That was before the Commission required a polling threshold. After those debates, one in five Americans voted for Perot on Election Day.

Duopolies do not serve us well. They cannot. That is not even their aim.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture meme moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

10 Out of 10

Muslim, terrorist, Jihadist, guns, gun rights, 2nd Amendment, illustration, meme

10 out of 10 terrorist Jihadists agree…

American gun rights must be restricted!

 

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Blame the Kids?

National Service, David Brooks , Mayor Rahm Emanuel , illustration, children, brick wall, illustration

Why is it when some politicians or pundits get a brilliant idea about how to make the country better, involving (of course) making people do as the government dictates, it only applies to other people?

Sunday, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” New York Times columnist and Times-styled conservative David Brooks bemoaned the electorate’s disunity due to the unprecedented unpopularity of Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton: “We could have a winner at 42 percent. Look at those poll numbers. . . . And so, that’s almost like a minority government. I think we’ve just got to do something about it.”

Do something? What?

Brooks explained, “Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago has an idea that every kid who graduates from high school spends the next three months in some sort of national service. So a kid from Martha’s Vineyard or Marin County is with a kid from Mobile, Alabama, and just three months, it would make a difference.”

Chicagoans will warn against emulating Mayor Emanuel.*

“I thought national service was going to be a given,” host Chuck Todd then offered. “I mean, my God, we’ve been talking about national service my whole adult life and I can’t believe we’re not there.”

News Flash: The problem with our politics is not the fault of teenagers. Nor would forcing young people to put their dreams on hold the better to toil in some social engineering scheme solve anything.

Want national service? Begin with politicians and TV talking heads.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* A whopping 62 percent of Chicagoans disapprove of their mayor and fully 40 percent want ole Rahm Never-Let-a-Crisis-Go-to-Waste Emanuel to immediately resign. The mayor’s delay in releasing an incriminating police video, until after his re-election, has been the most incendiary issue. But also consider some ugly facts about systemic breakdown in city governance: the number of murders this year is already higher than last year, four out of ten freshman in Chicago high schools fail to graduate and 91 percent of graduates going on to college require remedial courses.

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Accountability ballot access general freedom media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Serving the Voters

debates, presidential, Gary Johnson, phone number, Commission on Presidential Debates, illustration

Who will choose the next president of these United States?

Voters? A private non-profit organization? The media? The Electoral College? The U.S. House of Representatives?

Russian hackers?

No joke, that last. Beyond the suspected Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee, the FBI warned last week that hackers, likely Russian, had broken into the online election systems of Arizona and Illinois.

Earlier this week, and months ago, I floated the possibility that Libertarian Gary Johnson could win New Mexico, where he served two terms as governor. Currently polling at 25 percent, a New Mexico win might prevent any candidate from obtaining an electoral majority, throwing the election into the House of Representatives.

Not likely. But possible. After all, by the Constitution, what actually determines who will be president is the Electoral College. Its elected electors vote in December. And, as attorneys David Rivkin and Andrew Grossman remind us in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, those electors can vote their conscience.

But first, voters must decide. Vote their consciences, based on good information not predigested by the press and the insider class.*

Which means people need to hear from each candidate who can be elected president. The partisan Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) has no right to narrow our choices by holding a closed debate.

A series of polls before voters have even evaluated their choices ought not pre-determine the election.

Tell the Commission on Presidential Debates (202-872-1020) to open the debates to all viable candidates.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*The media made a mountain out of Gov. Johnson’s gaffe yesterday morning, not knowing immediately what MSNBC’s Mike Barnicle was asking concerning “Aleppo.” Johnson seemed to think it an acronym for some government agency, instead of a besieged Syrian metropolis. But consider it a sign the media is paying attention. Meanwhile, Green Party nominee Jill Stein became the first candidate charged with a crime — vandalism — for spray painting “I approve this message” on a bulldozer used to build a pipeline.

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general freedom national politics & policies responsibility

Give or Take a Million

Muslim, immigrants, assimilation, welfare state, U.S., Illustration

“Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU party has been beaten into third place by an anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party in elections in a north-eastern German state,” a BBC story headlines in bold type.

Indeed, Chancellor Merkel’s own constituency is abandoning her. Why? She invited in over 1.1 million refugees (and migrating pseudo-refugees) following the collapse of Syria.

This mass migration resulted in serious problems, including an apparent skyrocketing in rapes by migrants (old and new), most if not all Muslim men.

Which a “populist, Eurosceptic party” called Alternative for Germany (the AfD) has capitalized on, as has the more radical National Democratic Party. An AfD spokesman told the BBC, recently, “It’s very difficult to integrate Muslims.”

But how hard is it, really, for Muslims to assimilate? In Europe, and even England, it seems a disaster. In America, these United States, it has been much better.

Why?

American Muslims generally work. If you are employed, you have less time to plot terrorism, or otherwise raise a ruckus. And, moreover, less reason: you have hope.

Vertrag macht frei.* Truly.

Europe’s “more generous”-than-America’s state aid system is therefore problematic.

But it gets worse. The European Union’s movers and shakers welcomed migrants to increase the population of the young — recognizing that African and Asian Muslims procreate at much higher rates than do European whites. Why is this desirable?

To shore up an unstable system, for all social security systems depend upon population growth.

Immigration is right now popularly seen as a peril. But it is Germany’s and others’ welfare states that make it a peril, and that spurred the immigration initially.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* A play on a more alarming (and misleading, to say the least) Third Reich motto. One assimilates by contract, not state aid. (And certainly not by state aid’s extreme opposite, forced “arbeit,” or work.)

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folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard too much government

When Parasites Collide

Apple, EU, tax, Europe, Ireland, illustr

There are times I wish I were a tax accountant.

You know, just so I could better understand the news.

The European Commission has handed Apple, Inc., a $14.5 billion tax bill.

Owed to Ireland.

Apple, the tax commissioners said, had paid too little in taxes to Ireland, amounting to a mere 1 percent of the company’s European profits.

The Emerald Isle’s normal corporate tax rate is 12.5 percent.

On first read, this sounded like a tale of crony capitalism, with the EU’s tax authorities riding in, heroically, holding aloft the gonfalon of fair play, on the side of truth, justice, and an even playing field.

Well, the story gets complicated. The U.S. Treasury has protested the ruling as unfair. And Senator Chuck Schumer called it a “cheap money grab.”

The Wall Street Journal opinion page comes out on Apple’s side, too, but gives some specifics. Apple paid all the taxes it owed under Irish and EU law, but the ruling wasn’t about law, it was, we are told, about politics.

I can believe that.

So, as near as I can make out, what we have here are three sets of governmental interests, each intent on sucking the most out of a rich, innovative, and wildly successful multinational corporation.

It’s hard not to side with the target, Apple, and think of the other groups as mere parasites.

After all, my non-accountant’s spidey sense suspects that Schumer objects because the U.S. government isn’t going to get any of that $13 billion.

Preferring an “expensive money grab,” I suppose.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.  

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