Category: government transparency

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general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard political challengers responsibility term limits too much government

Graceless Memphis Politicians

instant-runoff elections, Memphis, city council, government, term limits,

“We could care less about instant runoff voting,” fibbed Allan Wade, the city attorney for Memphis, Tennessee.

Wade was rebutting the recent Commercial Appeal revelation that Memphis’s “City Council worked behind the scenes to find a sponsor for legislation this year that could ban instant-runoff elections statewide.”

After long relying on the mayor’s lobbyists, was it purely coincidental that the council suddenly spent $120,000 on its own Nashville lobbyists?

One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), missed the memo. He acknowledged being “approached . . . on the council’s behalf to ask if he would again sponsor the bill.” A lobbyist also confirmed to the Memphis Flyer that the council engaged him to push the ban on what is also known as ranked choice voting.

So, the city council is directly lobbying the Tennessee Legislature to overrule their city’s residents — who voted 71 percent YES for instant runoff voting in 2008.

And there’s a twist. The council has placed two measures that would repeal instant runoff voting on this November’s ballot, hoping to somehow convince voters to scrap the reform. Wait . . . why lobby the legislature when the voters are already set to make the decision?

Oooooooooohhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Now they are using our money to take away that choice from us,” protests Aaron Fowles with Save Instant Runoff Memphis.

This city council — in addition to their sneaky, anti-democratic assault on instant runoff voting — has also placed a measure on the ballot to weaken their own term limits, passed by an 80 percent vote.

To paraphrase Memphis’s King, these rabid-dog politicians ain’t never caught a rabbit and they ain’t no friends of ours.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. After media coverage, a hearing on the Senate version of the bill to ban instant runoff voting, SB 2271, was abruptly postponed for three weeks.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Not Even with a Straight Face

CIA, foreign policy, elections, influence, interference, puppets

Is American foreign policy so foreign to our values that even those who have served at the very pinnacle of national intelligence agencies have trouble telling the truth?

“Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries’ elections?” Laura Ingraham, host of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, asked James Woolsey, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1993 to 1995.

“Oh, probably,” Mr. Woolsey replied. “But, uh, it was for the good of the system, in order to avoid communists from taking over. For example, in Europe in ’47-’48-’49, the Greeks and the Italians, we, the CIA—”

“We don’t do that now, though?” Ingraham interjected. “We don’t mess around in other people’s elections, Jim?”

“Well . . . urrrrr, yum, yum, yum, um, um,” the old spymaster offered to laughter from both Ingraham and her studio cameramen. “Only for a very good cause,” he added with a sly grin, “and the interests of democracy.”

Interests. Of. Democracy.

Ha. Ha ha. Laughing yet?

Foreign Policy tells us that documents declassified in 2017 “shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s central role in the 1953 coup that brought down [elected] Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh . . . poisoning U.S.-Iran relations into the 21st century.”

Need more? There’s a handy database that lists undemocratic and illegal* shenanigans going on and on through the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, up through President Obama to today.

“This broader history of election meddling has largely been missing from the flood of reporting on the Russian intervention . . .” noted the New York Times last December.

Of course, our government’s interference doesn’t justify Russian government interference. But, we can only (possibly) control our politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “Meddling in other’s elections is a violation of international law,” Steve Baldwin writes in The American Spectator. “More importantly, U.S. law prohibits the use of tax dollars to influence foreign elections.”

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

Thwarting Cops Who Are Robbers

asset forfeiture, corruption, police, traffic, theft, robbery, traffic stop

“Carrying cash is not a crime,” Institute for Justice attorney Dan Alban informs us, “yet too often the government treats it like one.”

Musician Phil Parhamovich learned that the hard way. He was porting his life savings, almost $92,000 — earmarked for a down payment on a recording studio — when cop-robbers of the Wyoming Highway Patrol stopped him for not wearing a seat belt.

It turned out to be an extremely expensive infraction. The officers intimated that it was illegal to travel with so much cash and pressured him to hand it over. Scared and believing that his alternative was jail, Phil signed a preprinted waiver letting them grab his life savings.

Preprinted waiver? This means it’s routine for these guys to try to legitimate their actions as they premeditatedly intimidate and rob people.

The state of Wyoming tried to keep the money. Fortunately, the Institute for Justice took Phil’s case, and a judge accepted the facts presented by Phil and his IJ lawyer. After months of tribulation and suspense, the robbery victim got his money back.

Another win for the good guys.

Thankfully, the Institute for Justice’s freedom-defenders have won a great number of such cases. Yet, IJ lawyers certainly cannot litigate all the forfeiture injustices being committed by government  authorities all across the country.

That’s why the group is pushing to reform civil asset forfeiture laws, requiring a criminal conviction before property can be forfeited. 

And you can help. How? Launch efforts in your town or state, or work to push infant efforts to a higher level. Take the initiative. 

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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Accountability government transparency insider corruption moral hazard national politics & policies term limits too much government

Captured Congress

House Oversight Committee, lobby, lobbyist, bribes, control, congress, corruption, puppet

“Do you think party leaders exert too much control over members of Congress and over the agenda,” Full Measure host Sharyl Attkisson asked retiring Rep. Darrell Issa, “in a way that might be motivated by donations and corporate influence and special interests?”

Winner of five Emmys, as well as the 2012 Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Video Investigative Reporting, Attkisson’s “exit interview” with Congressman Issa (R-Calif.) is illuminating.

“It happens every day,” he replied, “that a lobbyist calls the majority leader, the minority leader, the speaker, and some chairmen or ranking member gets a call saying, ‘hey go light on that.’”

Issa pointed out that the committee chairs “really don’t control the committees. More and more it’s controlled out of the speaker’s office and out of the minority leader’s office. You know, they pick who gets the committees and then they pick really what you get to do.”

And it’s getting worse, he said.

As chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Issa has led a number of very high-profile investigations. His investigation of Countrywide, Attkisson noted, “revealed that federal public officials and their staffers, both Democrats and Republicans, had quietly received lucrative VIP loans from Countrywide as the company sought to influence their decisions.”

“It was much more effective than political giving,” Issa offered.

He also accused Republican leaders of removing the Benghazi investigation from his committee to a select committee to “keep it from going too far.”

“I have seen the defense-related committees that take money from defense contractors go easy on defense oversight,” Attkisson explained, prompting the congressman to agree “that happens every day here.”

Between the party bosses and the special interests, our Congress has been captured.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N. B. Full Measure is broadcast every Sunday on 162 Sinclair Broadcast Group stations reaching 43 million households in 79 media markets.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly government transparency ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies U.S. Constitution

Defiance?

Washington Post, lap dog, lapdog, Department of Justice, FBI, crime, accountability

“Once the party of law and order,” screamed the Washington Post’s top-of-the-front-page Sunday headline, “Republicans are now challenging it.”

The story’s lede: “Republican leaders’ open defiance last week of the FBI over the release of a hotly disputed memo revealed how the GOP, which has long positioned itself as the party of law and order, has become an adversary of federal law enforcement as the party continues its quest to protect President Trump from the Russia investigation.”

Huh?

Defiance,* by definition, is “bold disobedience.” But the Constitution tasks Congress with control (by oversight and purse string) of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice. Because subservient, it is the FBI and DoJ that can disobey. Not Congress.

While some Republicans seemingly switched sides on the appropriateness of criticizing the FBI over the Nunes memo release — congratulations are in order! — the same point, reversed, can be made (even humorously) about some on the Left now condemning such criticism.

Criticizing the government — including law enforcement agencies — has always been as American as apple pie.

The Post supports an ever-increasing role for the federal government, favoring Democrats. But now, Trump Derangement Syndrome has apparently pushed the company-town paper over the edge . . . to Media Madness (the title of Howard Kurtz’s new book, which the paper sophomorically savaged).

How ridiculous to characterize Republicans as enemies of “federal law enforcement” because they believe some within the FBI acted improperly, perhaps unlawfully.**

The Post should remember that its journalistic street cred didn’t come from reporting partisan spin as fact, but from what some saw as “defying” the president and publishing “national secrets” in search of the truth

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* The Post wasn’t alone. Politico echoed the message in its story, “GOP defies FBI, releases secret Russia memo to partisan fury,” and so did other media outlets.

** Moreover, Republican leaders have been clear that the memo does not impact Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

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