Category: government transparency

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Accountability general freedom government transparency media and media people nannyism national politics & policies responsibility too much government

Ad Budget Slashed

Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, advertising, partisan

Republican politicians, who had been running since 2010 on killing ObamaCare, did not. Not when they had a chance. Despite dominating Congress, they failed, because

  1. they opted for a goofy way to do it (the House’s AHCA plan being a terrible mess, probably worse than the monster it was trying to replace) and
  2. partly because the libertarians — along with a few “liberal” Republicans — blocked it in the Senate.

But that’s the olds; here’s the news: the Trump Administration has cut back ObamaCare’s advertising budget.

Progress?

I’m not sure. Maybe. Probably not.

The facts: ObamaCare outreach has been cut by 90 percent, and outsourcing grants to groups engaging in sign-up efforts have been cut by 40 percent:

The Trump administration downplayed the impact of boosted ad spending, noting that during 2017 open enrollment there was a decline of 5 percent in overall sign-ups. It also saw a 42 percent decline in first-time enrollment and enrollment of people who pay their premiums decline by 500,000 people.

So, it seems natural to respond to a perceived decline in “demand” with a reduction in “supply” — or any attempt to drum up more “customers” for subsidized policies.

Also natural is the partisan fall-out, with Democrats crying “foul” over the decided lack of support for their program. As Peter Suderman noted over at Reason, ObamaCare became partisan because it started out partisan.

But it was always — from conception in the Heritage Foundation braintrust* to its current choking gasps — an unworkable monstrosity.

And folks of all parties — and none — should be able to understand that.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Note: the Heritage folks not unreasonably distance themselves from their past association with some of ObamaCare’s core notions, and others are skeptical of the distancing.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall

Left Wondering Why

Minneapolis, shooting, police, body camera, Justine Damond, Australian

In Minneapolis’s Fulton neighborhood a makeshift memorial has sprung up. Amidst flowers, a handwritten sign reads, “Why did you shoot and kill our neighbor?”

Police have yet to offer public comment on the police shooting of Justine Damond, the Australian woman killed in the alley behind her home last Saturday night.

“Sadly, her family and I have been provided with almost no additional information from law enforcement,” Justine’s fiancé, Don Damond,* told reporters, “regarding what happened after police arrived.”

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has launched an investigation, but not yet interviewed the two officers at the scene, the only known witnesses. The officers had been responding to Justine’s 911 call reporting what sounded like a sexual assault.

No gun was found on Justine; a woman in her pajamas otherwise doesn’t seem very threatening.

Local media identified Mohammed Noor, a Somali-American, as the police officer who fired the bullet that killed Damond. Noor has been on the force since March 2015 and has two previous complaints pending.

Most frustrating, the Washington Post reports that “the officers’ body cameras were not turned on” and . . . “It’s not clear why . . .”

Cameras do not work when turned off; public anger and angst are not ameliorated when we cannot see the body cam footage.

That’s why, back in April, we worked to pass a ballot initiative in Ferguson, Missouri: (a) mandating that police must actually turn on the body cameras they were “using” (after similar incidents, wherein Ferguson police claimed their cameras hadn’t been activated) and (b) setting rules for public access to the video.

The people of Minneapolis, likewise, deserve a more professional police force. Making that happen means taking the initiative: citizens reforming criminal justice policies at the ballot box.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Justine had already taken her fiancé’s last name, even though they were set to marry next month. Her legal name remains Justine Ruszczyk.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies property rights responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

The Police State Is in Sessions

Jeff Sessions, AG, Attorney General, asset forfeiture, civil, Trump

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatens to make himself one of the biggest threats to your liberty.*

President Donald Trump’s pick for Attorney General just promised to encourage police departments to seize the personal property (cars, houses, cash) of criminal suspects.

The practice is called asset forfeiture. It comes in two forms, criminal and civil. Compelling objections have been raised against civil forfeiture, which accounts for nearly 90 percent of all forfeitures. Abuse is rampant in cities, counties and states around the country, routinely used against people who have not even been charged, much less prosecuted and convicted. (Often not really even suspected of criminality.)

“No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime,” he told conference attendees in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on Monday.** But how can our top federal law enforcement officer ignore the profound difference between a suspect and a criminal?

No one is a criminal, before the law, until proved in court. Taking away property to make it harder for suspects to defend themselves — which is what RICO laws and other Drug War reforms intended to do — is obviously contrary to the letter of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as well as the spirit of the U.S. Constitution.

Sessions announced he’ll soon offer a “new directive on asset forfeiture — especially for drug traffickers.” Unless he clearly indicates that it will only be used against the property of persons legally convicted of crimes, Sessions will be merely making charges of an “American Police State” stick.

America’s top lawman argues completely contrary to American principles of justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Bigger than Eric Holder was. Bigger than Loretta Lynch.

** Sessions also went on to say that “sharing with our partners” — local police departments around the nation — is a good thing. This is, systemically, the most dangerous aspect of it all, for it encourages police departments to take things for their own benefit.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

A Handy Evasion

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor, Obama, Trump, Russia, spying, surveillance

Susan Rice, National Security Advisor in President Barack Obama’s administration (2013 – 2017), is being picked on, she speculates, for reasons pertaining to her race and gender.

Handy evasion.

At issue is not her infamous prevarication in the Benghazi affair. We are used to being lied to about foreign policy, so that was barely a shock.

What is news now? The Trump-Russia story.

Background: Ever since her defeat to Donald Trump, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has provided the very model of how to deflect attention from one’s own defects. She’s blamed FBI Director James Comey, the vast right wing conspiracy, and, of course, Russia.*

Amusingly, the Russia biz still boils down to how Russian hackers, apparently directed from high in the hierarchy of the Eastern warlord state, illegally liberated information from private servers. Those revealed emails showed Mrs. Clinton and her campaign in a negative light. Excuse-makers call this “hacking the election.”**

It turns out, the biggest crimes committed during the campaign, and somewhat regarding Russia, were engaged in by the Obama Administration, perhaps especially by Rice herself. She is accused of illegally surveilling the Trump campaign and those around it by “unmasking” their identities in the course of surveillance reports, which are legally required to be anonymous . . . when catching in the net folks tangential to the target.

The law requires FISA court go-aheads for such identifications. And the Obama administration was roundly reprimanded by a FISA court for not following protocols.

In any case, the idea that only women and African-Americans are hounded by opposition parties and the press does not hold up to scrutiny.

Nixon, anyone?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Her team has also blamed President Barack Obama

** A private server was hacked, not an election.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Feckless, Indeed

House Oversight Committee, Jason Chaffetz, Justice Department, information, Congress, Executive Branch, Legislative Branch, checks and balances, secret, secrets

Last night, House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, where Chaffetz was asked how he would know if the Justice Department fully complied with subpoenas issued by his committee for documents.

“Look, we have a storied and horrific background on this,” explained the Utah representative, retiring after this, his fifth term in Congress. “You can go from everything from Fast and Furious to the Benghazi investigation, email, IRS, anything pretty much over the last eight years, which I’ve served in Congress, and I don’t believe we ever got a full production out of the Department of Justice or the State Department.”*

“I can issue a subpoena unilaterally. It’s part of my constitutional responsibility to provide that check and balance,” argued Chaffetz. “But that subpoena is only as strong as its ability to be enforced.”

Problem? Enforcement requires Congress to work through the DOJ, part of the executive branch. Tricky . . . when the Department of Justice** itself is being subpoenaed.

“You’ve seen, for instance, Judicial Watch,” Rep. Chaffetz noted. “Tom Fitton has much more power using a Freedom of Information Act, because he can get to the courts and the courts can force them.”

“The Department of Justice is afraid of a court; they’re not afraid of Congress.”

He added, “And we don’t use the power of our purse; we don’t beat it over their head and we don’t enforce it. And so it’s somewhat feckless, and it’s very frustrating as somebody who is chairman of the oversight committee.”

“Congress should have an expedited way to get to the courts to enforce those subpoenas,” Chaffetz offered.

Why, then, doesn’t Congress enact such a process?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “And that continues, by the way,” Chaffetz added. “One of my frustrations, with all due respect to the Trump administration, is that they have not loosened up the documents that we have been requesting for years.”

** Or, for that matter, any another executive branch agency.

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Accountability government transparency incumbents local leaders national politics & policies responsibility

A+ in Arrogance

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma, salary, congressional, pay, representation, representative

The folks in Congress represent ‘We, the People’ . . . well, theoretically, at least. They’re supposed to work for us. We are their bosses. We pay their salary.

But not U.S. Rep. Markwayne Mullin, the third-term Republican from the rural Second District of Oklahoma. At two recent town hall meetings, the former professional mixed martial arts fighter responded to comments that the people pay his salary and health insurance with a sort of verbal karate-chop.*

“You say you pay for me to do this. Bullcrap,” he aggressively retorted. “I pay for myself. I paid enough taxes before I got there and continue to through my company to pay my own salary. This is a service. No one here pays me to go.”

Mullin’s taxpayer-funded PR professional, Amy Lawrence, was nice enough to explain the prickly, arrogant ranting of her boss, noting that, “Like all business owners, Congressman Mullin pays his taxes, which contribute to congressional salaries.”

Which means — yes sirree! — that of course his constituents pay his salary, when they also “contribute” their taxes. The fact that Rep. Mullin pays taxes, too, doesn’t change that fact.

And, though Mullin claims being a member of Congress is not how he makes “his living,” he does, nonetheless, deposit into his bank account a not inconsequential $174,000 a year in congressional salary.

Moreover, as a member of Congress, Mullin also gets to flout the Obamacare law with a special health insurance deal.

A town hall set for Tahlequah was canceled . . . for security reasons.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* His comments in Jay, Oklahoma, are available here; his Okemah comments, here. An entire hour video of his Okemah remarks are here (the portion about his pay begins at 24:48).

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Rep. Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma, salary, congressional, pay, representation, representative

 

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency responsibility

Ferguson Finally Wins

Ferguson, body camera, lapel camera, video, vote, election, police

Yesterday, on the 49th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination,* voters in Ferguson, Missouri, passed a charter amendment requiring police to wear body cameras while on duty. The measure also provides the public access to that footage, along with reasonable rules about privacy.

In August 2014, Ferguson came to the nation’s attention — and the world’s — when a black resident was shot and killed by a white policeman. In the aftermath, the nation witnessed a militarized police response to senseless riots that destroyed 17 local businesses.

People there and across the country jumped to fact-free conclusions about who was at fault: the deceased Michael Brown or the policeman, Officer Darren Wilson.

“If there’s one thing that I think everybody in Ferguson would agree on, it’s that we’d like to have a video of what happened on Canfield Drive back in August of 2014,” remarked ballot measure proponent Nick Kasoff.** “If we had that, Ferguson wouldn’t be a hashtag. It would be just another quiet suburb of St. Louis.”

Police began wearing body cameras after the Michael Brown shooting, and the consent decree the city reached with the Department of Justice set some useful parameters. But the rules in the just-enacted charter amendment go much further to guarantee the public access to the video.

Not to mention that just this week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a review of all such consent decrees nationwide. Without yesterday’s victory at the ballot box, the police cams policy might simply be abandoned.

Not now. The voters have spoken, 71 to 29 percent.

Spurred by Ferguson, there’s been a ton of talk about reforming criminal justice in recent years. But I like action a whole lot better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Yesterday also reminds me of 1984, George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel, because the book’s protagonist Winston Smith begins his diary on April 4, 1984.

It’s my favorite book, and has enjoyed quite a surge in sales since last November’s election. Yesterday, the movie was shown in nearly 200 theaters in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Croatia and Sweden.  

** Nick Kasoff led the six-resident committee that drafted and petitioned the measure onto the city ballot, with assistance from Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe). Regular readers may remember that LIFe is where I have my day job — and that without contributions like yours, fewer successful measures like this Ferguson body camera initiative get off the ground.

 

More on the issue

Townhall: “Finding Ferguson”

Townhall: “First Step for Ferguson”

USA Today: “Ferguson residents push for body cameras”

Townhall: “The Citizens Are In Session”

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Accountability government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard term limits too much government

Regnat Tyrannis

Regnat Populus, The People Rule, Arkansas, corruption, petition, initiative, House Joint Resolution 1003, SB 689, Governor Asa Hutchinson

Arkansas’s motto is Regnat Populus — “The People Rule.” Unfortunately, the people’s so-called representatives are demanding that this motto be made more fitting: Regnat Tyrannis.

I jest. The Natural State’s legislators aren’t nearly so honest. Just devious.

A few years back, the fine people of Arkansas (where I grew up) had arguably the nation’s most accessible-to-the-people petition process. With it, they enacted issues that legislators despise: term limits, for instance.

But in 2013, legislators passed several bills upping the difficulty and cost of the citizen initiative process.

They’re back.

Yesterday, Senate Bill 698 was passed and now goes to the governor.

Today, the Senate votes on House Joint Resolution 1003, a constitutional amendment for the 2018 ballot. It increases the petition requirement and raises the vote threshold to 60 percent to pass an initiative amendment.*

SB 698 is straightforwardly sinister. When groups gather the voter signatures to place a measure on the ballot, the Secretary of State is required to publish the wording in the legal notice section of newspapers throughout the state. Despite low readership. This bill would make the petitioners pay.

According to a report in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state spent nearly $2 million publishing the language of these measures in 2016. The old requirement should be repealed, but the new one would be disastrous: Only citizens with deep, deep pockets could pursue ballot initiatives.

A veto is needed from Governor Asa Hutchinson — call him at (501) 682-2345.

As for HJR 1003, Arkansans can find their state senator here. Call early.

My adopted state’s motto is also Latin: Sic Semper Tyrannis.** The good people of Arkansas are welcome to it, until theirs is once again operative.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* At least, voters can defeat this measure at the ballot box.

** The precise English translation of Virginia’s motto is “Thus always with tyrants.” The common translation is “Death to all tyrants.”

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Accountability government transparency ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Legislating in the Real World

Steve Bannon, Trump, Freedom Caucus, big government, Ryancare, Trumpcare, Obamacare

Rolling back Big Government is not easy, especially when you are not that into it.

Robert Draper, profiling Steve Bannon in the New York Times, gives us a view into the mind of Trump’s right-hand man, who appears to think GOP insiders are obsessed with principles. “[I]t’s all this theoretical Cato Institute, Austrian economics, limited government — which just doesn’t have any depth to it. They’re not living in the real world.”

At best, this only fits the Freedom Caucus members, who killed RyanCare. But who is avoiding reality, here?

“Bannon clearly is not as familiar with the mindset of congressional Republicans as he imagines,” counters Jeff Deist, head of the “Austrian” Mises Institute. “They are primarily concerned with how the whole ‘repeal and replace’ debacle plays back home.”

Like Deist, I see the spectacular fizzle of RyanCare as evidence of the increasing irrelevance of Republican compromising. “The GOP is the party of trillion dollar military budgets,” Deist insists, noting that it “won’t even kill an openly cronyist program like the Export-Import Bank.”

If keeping Big Government secure is all Republicans can do, what use are they?

“All around us are the almost unimaginable benefits of markets, cooperation, and technology,” Deist explains, “yet somehow we’re naïve if we don’t want to funnel human activity through government cattle chutes.”

Bannon will not secure solid GOP support if he keeps pushing the usual establishment compromises while pretending they are either realistic or revolutionary. Freedom Caucus Republicans seem bent on doing something Republicans usually avoid: change “the real world” for the better by practically limiting government.

Not just in theory.

Bannon seems to have other goals.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies too much government U.S. Constitution

Public Record

body camera, police, abuse, civil rights, obstruction, brutality

Police departments nationwide have begun to outfit their on-duty officers with body cameras. These small recording devices make great sense, so we can better judge police encounters.

And it turns out that not only do police behave better when wearing body cameras, so do the citizens with whom they interact.*

Yet, cameras aren’t magic. They do not work when turned off. And video recorded by police offers little value when tampered with or deleted.

On Monday, the Washington Post ran an in-depth feature about the 2014 fatal shooting of 19-year-old Mary Hawkes by Albuquerque, New Mexico, police, who pursued her for allegedly stealing a truck.

The Post explained that her case “has become a cautionary tale about the potential of new technology to obscure rather than illuminate, especially in situations when police control what is recorded and shown to the public,” raising concern “about whether a nationwide rollout of body cameras is fulfilling promises of greater accountability.”

Six police officers huddled in close proximity to the deadly incident — all wearing body cameras. The officer who shot Ms. Hawkes, however, had his turned off. Footage from three others “showed signs of alterations and a deletion.”

A federal investigation is underway.**

It is now obvious that cameras alone won’t suffice. Rules must require that the cameras be turned on — with consequences for non-compliance. The public needs access to the footage, too.

The Police Cameras for Ferguson initiative*** on the ballot April 4th does exactly that. We need similar legislation in Albuquerque and everywhere else.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* See Barak Ariel, William A. Farrar, Alex Sutherland, “The Effect of Police Body-Worn Cameras on Use of Force and Citizens’ Complaints Against the Police: A Randomized Controlled Trial,” Journal of Quantitative Criminology (September 2015, Volume 31, Issue 3), pp 509–535; reportage on this study can be found here.

** The probe has already revealed that a former Albuquerque police employee has declared, in an affidavit, “it was routine for officials to delete, alter or refuse to release footage because of ‘political calculations.’”

*** Your support is still desperately needed to educate voters in Ferguson, Missouri, about the Police Camera ballot measure. Please help today.

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