Category: government transparency

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Accountability education and schooling folly government transparency insider corruption local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Reading, Writing & Racketeering

schools, corruption, D.C., Washington, education, cheating, incentives, teachers, union

When I attended a public school — many decades ago, in a galaxy far, far away — teachers told students that cheating was unacceptable and would be punished.

Harshly.

Today, the idea has students laughing — all the way to graduation.

Last year, after DC Public Schools officials breathlessly announced massive improvements in graduation rates, several honest teachers broke ranks, and an investigation uncovered massive fraud: a whopping one of every three graduates across the city resulted from falsified records.

Many students played hooky for a third or even half the school year. Administrators also pressured teachers to improve grades to hike the graduation rate.

“The problem,” Washington Post columnist Colbert King concluded, “is systemic indeed.”*

You see, employment evaluations and cash bonuses for teachers and administrators were — and still are — tied in part to student graduation stats. It turns out that an incentive to good work can also serve as an incentive to cheat. Could it be that government employees grading their own work does not encourage honesty?

Just months after confirmation of the worst fears of public school corruption, new allegations against teachers and administrators at Roosevelt High School more than suggest fudging attendance records is ongoing.

“This growing environment of fear and mistrust,” asserts Elizabeth Davis, president of the Washington Teachers’ Union, “has never been addressed and continues to be a disservice to students and teachers.”

City officials have had plenty of time to address the issue. And of the common sense idea that the best way to avoid fear and mistrust is to follow the rules?

Crickets.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Nor is the fraudulent behavior limited to dishonestly boosting graduation rates. Former DCPS Chancellor Antwan Wilson resigned back in February after it became public knowledge that his daughter jumped 600 other students on a waiting list for her school. A recent Post story about enrollment fraud, whereby non-residents grab spots at prestigious schools such as the Duke Ellington School of the Arts, without paying the non-resident fee, was entitled, “Stop enrollment fraud? D.C. school officials are often the ones committing it.” Two-thirds of pending cases involve a current or past DCPS employee.

 

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Accountability folly government transparency local leaders media and media people too much government

Low Bigotry Expectations

tin foil hat, D.C. Councilman Trayon White, climate control, conspiracy, jews, antisemitism

“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” explained Washington, D.C. Councilman Trayon White back in March.

White (who is black) went on to accuse “the Rothschilds” (who were Jewish financiers) of “controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man.”

Man. Oh. Man.

White later apologized, taking up the invitation of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington to tour the Holocaust Museum. During the tour one of White’s staffers referred to the infamous Warsaw Ghetto as “a gated community.” Then, before the tour’s end, the councilmen unceremoniously bugged out.

Next, news broke that Councilman White had used his constituent services account,* which the Washington Post reports “must [by law] benefit D.C. residents,” to send $500 to a Nation of Islam event in Chicago.

At which Minister Louis Farrakhan denounced Jews.

The Post noted how all this “turned into a test of the ability of city officials to handle the explosive race and class resentments that can arise in a city whose prosperity masks a troubling gap between its haves and have-nots.”

Even D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (who is Jewish) echoed the partial excuse that White “represents the poorest parts of our city, . . . whose residents feel like they haven’t benefited, and the remarks were directed at a community that’s largely affluent here, and seen as powerful.”

Is bigotry against an entire religion wrong or not so much, depending on the race or socio-economic status of the people espousing the bias?

No, man.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Why do we have programs allowing politicians to hand out free money? This never ends well.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency insider corruption local leaders media and media people Popular

Sweet Schadenfreude?

Arkansas State Senator Jon Woods, corruption, Arkansas, conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering

Yesterday, jurors convicted former Arkansas State Senator Jon Woods on 15 felony counts consisting of conspiracy, wire fraud, mail fraud and money laundering.

Woods was at the center of a corrupt scheme to reward cronies at Ecclasia College and AmeriWorks with GIFs — state General Improvement Funds — in return for kickbacks. Former State Rep. Micah Neal, his co-conspirator, pleaded guilty more than a year ago. And last month, the former president of Ecclesia College, Oren Paris III, also admitted guilt.

Regular readers may remember Woods as the Senate author of Issue 3, placed on the 2014 ballot by legislators — along with a summary for voters to read that fibbed about “establishing term limits” and imposing a gift ban between lobbyists and legislators.

Enough voters were hoodwinked,* leading to the gutting of term limits (allowing a legislator to stay in the same seat for 16 years), the empowering of a legislature-appointed “Independent” Commission to bestow a 150 percent pay raise on legislators, and the enabling of legislators to eat every meal at the lobbyists’ trough.

Mr. Woods now faces as many as 20 years on each of 14 counts and ten more years on the money laundering conviction. Having experienced, in a previous life, the poor customer service in the federal prison system, I do not wish that on anyone.

But justice has been done.

More good news: the Arkansas Supreme Court has since ruled the entire corrupt GIF program unconstitutional . . . while Arkansas Term Limits closes in on completion of their petition drive to place a measure on this November’s ballot to restore the term limits stolen by Woods.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The measure passed 52 to 48 percent at the ballot box.

 

Previous coverage here of Woods’ corruption:

 

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Accountability general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Principle and Compromise

De-Escalate Washington, Tim Eyman, Initiative 940, initiative, democracy, shootings

Last Friday, Tim Eyman — the Evergreen State’s best-known ballot initiative practitioner — won an important court case.

But he also scuttled an amazingly impressive compromise between state legislators, police, and the proponents of Initiative 940.

The measure was written and promoted by De-Escalate Washington, a group that includes several relatives of deceased victims of recent controversial police shootings. I-940 would implement violence de-escalation and mental health training for police, and require law enforcement personnel to provide first-aid to save lives. Most likely Washington voters tell pollsters they approve.

De-Escalate Washington got the required signatures, sending this “indirect initiative” to Olympia. The Legislature was faced with three choices:

  • approve the initiative as written;
  • not act, letting the measure go to the ballot; or
  • approve an alternative and place both proposals on the ballot.

The Legislature tried to “create a fourth option”: it passed the measure with amendments.

And that’s what Thurston County Superior Court Judge Christine Schaller found unconstitutional. She sent the measure, un-amended, to the ballot for a vote of the people.

Interestingly, those amendments were the result of negotiations among the measure’s advocates, the police, and the Legislature. There had been many congratulations all around on the “historic” compromise. But, “historic” or no, legislatures must follow the law.

Tim Eyman is pleased that the court defended the constitutionally defined initiative process by definitively siding against the backroom compromise.

And voters will still get the chance to vote on the proposal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

While the Clock Ticks

national debt, debt clock, Mercatus Center, economics, economy, folly,

Pushing annual federal spending over a trillion bucks into the red?

It has consequences.  

“Our debt is growing, and it’s growing fast,” writes Veronique de Rugy at Reason. “Though it’s a shame that lawmakers passed tax cuts without cutting spending to offset short-term losses in revenue, there’s no doubt that Social Security and Medicare deficits are almost entirely to blame for our impending debt crisis.”

Ms. de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, has a typo in the version of her article that I read (it has probably since been corrected): “Based on current trends, the debt held by the public is set to reach $15.7 trillion by the end of this year and continue rising to $28.7 trillion by 2028.” She surely meant “$25.7 trillion,” since the current debt clock figure shows the U.S. public debt at over $21 trillion. Still, $25.7 seems a bit high . . . but at this point we can leave the exact numbers to the professionals.

We just know that the debt’s too damn high.

As de Rugy explains, it has present as well as future cost. And, yes, entitlements are the biggest problem — but even more than Ms. de Rugy suggests. Congress owes the Social Security “trust fund” (in Al Gore’s infamous and non-existent “lock box”) nearly $3 trillion.

Our solons would have to (painfully) switch from revenue deficits to revenue surpluses just to pay off its debt to a much-relied upon institution.

What will happen, though, is surely this: Congress will borrow more from elsewhere to pay what Social Security needs — which all too soon will be a lot more than $3 trillion.

That’s not Common Sense. (But I am Paul Jacob.)

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Accountability general freedom government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Wag the Wolf

Syria, Donald Trump, Trump, war, wag the dog, diversion, antiwar, gas, gassing, chemical, chlorine, false flag

Once upon a time, President Donald Trump was against attacking Syria merely on grounds that its dictator is a murderously bad guy — despite numerous chemical attacks on civilians in opposition-occupied and -contested areas that had been blamed on Syrian dictator Bashar Hafez al-Assad.

Almost exactly a year ago, a sarin gas attack spurred President Trump to order a cruise missile strike on the Syrian airstrip where it was alleged the Assad regime sent those planes to drop weaponized chemicals on innocent populations. The strike was widely characterized as “Donald Trump’s most dramatic military order since becoming president.”

Since then, after another reported gassing — this time “chlorine”; this time a hospital as target — the drumbeat for war has gotten louder, despite Russia’s stern warning that there would be “grave repercussions” were the U.S. to attack its ally again.

Whoops and war cries even from the anti-Trump media.

But as Tucker Carlson argues, there are still legitimate disputes about previous gas attacks — about who really perpetrated them, and the uncertainty of proclaiming Assad the malefactor in the most recent one.*

Meanwhile, the FBI raided Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen’s offices. The rationale? Apparently unrelated to the “Russia investigation.” Instead, it is about “campaign finance law” — that is, the paid-off pornstar issue.

In the 1990s, we called Bill Clinton’s bombing of a “chemical weapons” factory in Africa — on the very same day that Monica Lewinsky testified before a grand jury about her affair with the president — “wag the dog.”

Trump cries “witch hunt!” but I wonder if the Deep State may not be trying to wag the wolf this time around.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* News stories about atrocities have been faked before in the Middle East — remember the hospital baby-murder story in Kuwait? “Both” sides in Syria are known to possess chemical weapons.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Bailing on Mass Transit

mass transit, metro, cars. low income, recession

Around the country, our major metropolitan transit systems have hit the skids. “Between 2016 and 2017, ridership fell in each of the seven largest transit markets,” the Washington Post informs.

You might guess that the reason for declines in ridership might have something to do with bad planning and poor service. Washington, D.C.’s Metro system, with which I am all-too familiar, is a horror . . . run by people I wouldn’t trust to sweep your driveway much less mine, and certainly not to manage how I get between those (or any other) two locations.

But the Post quotes an urban planning scholar who attributes the decline (in part) “to increased car ownership, particularly among low-income and immigrant populations, who were in a better position to afford cars following the Great Recession.”

This puts planners in a pickle since, he explains, if “low-income people are doing better, getting the ability to move around like everyone else, it’s hard to say that what we should do is get them to remove themselves from their cars and back on trains and buses.”

Shockingly sensible — especially coming from a planning specialist. “Transit systems should deliver quality service to low-income people,” he insists. “But low-income people do not owe us a transit system.”

Well, maybe that’s the problem, this notion that governments “owe” this service to “low-income people.”

After all, web-based services like Uber and Lyft have shown how market innovations provide the best ways to move millions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

Georgia on My Dime

pig, pigliets, crony capitalism, Delta, NRA

After the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida, followed by pressure from gun control advocates, Delta Airlines announced it would end its corporate relationship with the National Rifle Association, whereby NRA members were given discounts on travel.*

Meanwhile, Georgia legislators were in the process of passing legislation to give Delta a state sales tax break on their fuel purchases. That special legislative deal was worth a whopping $40 million to the Atlanta-based company.

Yet, when Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle heard about Delta dissing the NRA, he tweeted, “I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA.”

The Lt. Gov. added, “Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back.”

Everyone is familiar with the story. Those who favor gun rights were angry with Delta Airlines and ecstatic with the pushback from Georgia legislators. Those favoring new legislation to restrict gun ownership were thrilled by Delta’s break with the NRA and livid with those legislators.

But while cheering and jeering one side or the other, too many folks missed the 800-lb problem in the room. A letter writer to the Washington Post illuminated it: “The government can’t punish people or businesses for their political views. They can be punished only by the free market, in the form of lost business.”

True enough in the free market.

But when crony capitalism replaces free markets, the government certainly will punish or reward people and businesses — with millions and billions of our tax dollars — on purely political grounds.

Georgia government just did it to Delta Airlines.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* To be precise, reports claim a grand total of 13 NRA members availed themselves to the special rates once offered by Delta.

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Accountability ballot access general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard

Fear of Voters

Oklahoma, votes, democracy, initiative, marijuana, State Rep. John Enns, ballot

You are a state legislator, say. And an issue could be placed on the ballot on which a majority of your state’s citizens might not vote according to your preference. What would you do?

  1. Educate your fellow citizens on the merits of your position; or
  2. Dawdle while calling a lobbyist for advice; or
  3. Change the constitution to make it impossible for such a vote to ever be held?

State Rep. John Enns chose option C — perhaps after exhausting B. Stamping out Oklahoma’s ballot initiative process, freeing Enns and other legislators from this citizen check at the ballot box, is the essence of his House Bill 1603.

The Sooner State already possessed the toughest petition requirements in the country.  Supporters must gain the country’s highest percentage of voter support (15 percent) while limited to the second shortest time period (90 days) to circulate petitions.

On top of this current statewide slog, Enns’ constitutional amendment would require also qualifying in every single county. Oklahoma has 77 counties.

As the Tulsa World editorialized, “he wants to make it impossible.”

What lousy rationale lies behind Enns’ desire to destroy democratic governance?

In response to another legislator’s query about his “fear that some marijuana bill will . . . become a state [ballot] question,” Enns claimed his effort was “not pre-emptive.” But he acknowledged his strong opposition to legalizing recreational marijuana, which he pointed out “had been done through initiative petition” in other states.

Enns is afraid of Oklahoma voters having their say. He should be.*

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


* I mean, of course, that Rep. Enns should fear being booted out of office on his keister. He should not have to fear physical reprisal. The Tulsa World reports that the Oklahoma Highway Patrol is now providing security to Enns, after a death threat was received related to his HB 1603.

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crime and punishment government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Why Paranoia

conspiracy, Northwood, Cuba, Kennedy, Parkland, shooting, crisis actors

Goofy conspiracy theories? Worth a chuckle, maybe. But not when they are about live, blood-running-in-the-street topics. Then, cries Kevin Williamson of National Review, “shame.”

Paranoia-spinners “have failed to learn the sad lesson of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Williamson warns. “When people have come to assume that every other word out of your mouth is a lie, it becomes very difficult to tell the truth effectively.”

Well, yes. But that cuts every which way, no?

Apropos of this, comedian Dave Smith, on his most recent Part of the Problem podcast, brought up Operation Northwoods, an early-’60s clandestine false flag proposal.

“The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. Government,” Wikipedia summarizes. “To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government.”

This outrageous moral horror was actually signed off on by “responsible” people . . . such as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.*

“Why do these conspiracy theories persist?” Dave Smith considers, referring to the trying-too-hard conspiracy conjectures such as the now-infamous “crisis actor” hoopla. “Well, there’s . . . these conspiracies that are absolutely real — and you guys [in the media] have no interest in talking about them. And the only people who do talk about them are people like Alex Jones.”

Seeing governments lie and cover up the truth, while media too often turn blind eyes, everyday concerned folks are obviously more open to conspiracy theories.

Everyone should remember that it is the truth that will set you free.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. President John F. Kennedy nixed it in 1962, and it was never implemented, thank goodness.

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