Category: government transparency

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Accountability folly government transparency national politics & policies

Democrats’ Own Private Government

Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, transparency, government, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Don’t feel lonely, Mrs. Clinton. You’re not the only public official shielding public actions from the public by using private modes of communication — a private email account and server, or texts on a personal cell phone.

Meet fellow Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago Tribune* recently took the Emanuel administration to court for the second time in three months. The paper charges the mayor is “[violating] state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through private emails and text messages.”

Still pending is the World’s Greatest Newspaper’s first lawsuit against the mayor’s office, seeking the full disclosure of emails specifically concerning a $20-​million-​dollar no-​bid public school contract, over which the Feds have now launched a criminal investigation.

The Trib argues in its legal complaint that Freedom of Information Act requests “have been met with a pattern of non-​compliance, partial compliance, delay and obfuscation.” But on Chicago Tonight, Mayor Emanuel offered that, “[W]e always comply and work through all of the Freedom of Information [requests] in the most responsive way possible.”

Probably all just a big misunderstanding …

What’s especially droll is to find presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, two Democrats who have long fought against privatizing any government function or service no matter how inefficiently performed or delivered, suddenly embracing a creative new approach to privatizing government … beginning with their own transparency and accountability.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* In full disclosure, my brother, Mark Jacob, works for the Tribune.

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Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, transparency, government, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

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Accountability Common Sense government transparency ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers

Walker vs. Union Power

Taxes Make Us Strong

Governor Scott Walker, who is running for the U. S. Presidency, has cooked up a white paper on the subject for which he is nationally known: labor relations. It’s a doozy.

His main points are:

  • Reduce the power of union bosses by eliminating the National Labor Relations Board.
  • Eliminate big-​government unions.
  • Take “right to work”
  • Protect state employees’ First Amendment rights.

And that’s not the whole of it. Some of his points are worth quoting at length, including this:

On Day One of my administration, I will put in place accountability and transparency rules. I will require online disclosure of union expenditures, including revealing the total compensation of union officers, itemizing union trust fund expenditures, increasing reporting requirements for local affiliates of government employee unions, and restoring conflict-​of-​interest reporting requirements.

Walker’s is not a detailed, in-​depth policy paper. It’s a list of goals, really. It does not address how he would accomplish this, if elected. It’s obvious that many (perhaps most) of these reforms would require congressional compliance and even legislation.

Yet by focusing on the inordinate power of government workers’ unions, Gov. Walker advances what many of us were hoping for when we first heard that the surprisingly daring, surprisingly successful Wisconsin governor would make a bid for the top spot in the federal government. Something needs changing.

And that something is the general purpose for government: what and whom government serves, other than itself, and how.

Or, in Walker’s words, “commonsense reforms” to narrow “the federal government’s role.…”

He says let’s close “special-​interest loopholes … once and for all.”

Is that possible? It’s worth a try.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Taxes Make Us Strong

 

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Common Sense folly general freedom government transparency national politics & policies political challengers

Weird & Wacky

Presidential Weirdness, collage, photomontage, http://cognitivebiasparade.prosite.com/, Paul Jacob, James Gill, Presidential Race, political, politics

Have you noticed how weird politics has gotten?

I don’t mean government spying on us or never-​ending wars or crony capitalism or rights violations or mounting trillions in debt or new, innovative forms of waste, fraud and abuse.

I’m just talking about the presidential horse race.

The Donald is way out front on the Republican side. Trump is … interesting: rude-​to-​obnoxious, but definitely not a mealy-​mouthed, play-​it-​by-​the-​focus-​group politician. Still, his weakness may be all the “business” he’s done with politicians, taking advantage of eminent domain and other purchased governmental powers.

I’m glad to see Carly Fiorina moving up. If 2016 is going to be the year American voters choose a woman to be president — and why not? — please let it be Carly Fiorina.

The other woman running is … let me check my notes … oh, yes, Hillary Clinton. After weeks of campaigning in a style that I think can best be described as “going underground,” she went on vacation.

But she can’t stay in hiding forever. (Can she?)

Democrats are getting so nervous that they’re talking — seriously — about a Joe Biden candidacy.

Why Biden? Having spent the last 43 years wielding power in Washington, will he be packaged as an outsider?

“The short answer is Clinton may be in real legal trouble,” writes conservative Jennifer Rubin. “The longer answer is that the Democrats need to make this election about the Republicans. With Clinton, that is impossible.”

Yes, the Democrats are more popular when the public is thinking about Republicans. And vice versa.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Presidential Weirdness

 

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Common Sense general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy term limits

Conflicts Perplexing Prominent Politicians

In Disguise

When does the same old song-​and-​dance, performed by yet another self-​selected committee of the political elite, become “a unique process” that “Nobody’s ever done …”?

When the much-​liberal Denver Post reports the “much-​respected” Daniel Ritchie saying so.

Every election cycle for a decade, it seems, a cabal of big-​spending politicians and big-​receiving special interests form a “prominent” and “bipartisan” group to propose making citizen initiatives more difficult, weakening term limits, and circumventing the state’s Taxpayer Bill of Rights (or TABOR, which limits spending and requires voter approval for tax increases).

This cycle’s iteration is “Building a Better Colorado,” now being formed for a September launch by Ritchie, the former Denver University chancellor.

Sunday’s Post provided the group of “prominent civic and business leaders [not to mention politicians]” ample coverage: “The project — developed behind the scenes for months and detailed in exclusive interviews and documents obtained by The Denver Post — is perhaps the most concerted effort in recent memory to address what organizers see as inherent conflicts in how the state is governed.”

Conflicts?

“Those conflicts, they say, are impeding Colorado’s ability to build new roads, put more money in classrooms, engage an increasingly disenchanted electorate and prepare for the future.”

“I’ve seen this game played too often in Colorado,” remarked the Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara. “It’s like a Kumbaya committee. We are going to get all these people who are marginally diverse and at the end of this long process … the conclusion is to raise taxes.”

While the “new” group isn’t “advocating any specific policy outcome” and plans to engage the public at town hall meetings, the meetings’ agenda has been pre-​set … by “experts.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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In Disguise

 

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Accountability Common Sense government transparency national politics & policies porkbarrel politics tax policy too much government

The Spenders’ Eternal Excuse

Gluttony

Most modern welfare states have a huge problem: their politicians promise more than government revenue covers. So they borrow and borrow until they can borrow no more.

And then they go down. Like Greece has gone down. Banks are closed there, and the people suffer.

The problem is over-​spending and over-​promising (the latter being merely committing to future over-​spending, so let’s just call it all over-​spending). But when you confront a partisan of such extravagance — whether that person be a politician or a constituency beneficiary or an ideological socialist or social democrat — the most common defense is: THEY WOULDN’T LET US TAX ENOUGH.

The “they” in such defenses could be an opposition party, or a constituency, or … “the evil rich.”

But anyone with something other than a lump of coal for a brain knows the real truth: responsible people don’t make such defenses. If a political difficulty gets in the way of the extra revenue needed for something promised, it’s practically the same as an economic difficulty, so the excuse falls apart.

Say again?

If you cannot get enough revenue for your favorite program, it doesn’t matter whether the people who are the source of your “needed” revenue are broke — have nothing to give — or they simply balk at giving. The point is, you don’t have the revenue. The responsible reaction would be: cut back on spending.

Responsible people budget; irresponsible people blame others for not having the wherewithal to spend and spend and spend.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Gluttony

 

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Accountability Common Sense folly general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall tax policy

Republican-​Required Referendum

Politicians in a jar

Last November, Nevada Republicans scored a “stunning” political sweep. The party’s incumbent governor rolled up a 40-​point win, while the GOP gained majorities in both the Assembly and Senate — the first time Republicans have controlled all three since before the Great Depression.

At the same time, voters crushed a ballot measure to create a 2‑percent gross receipts tax on businesses taking in over $1 million, by a whopping 78 – 22 percent. Gov. Brian Sandoval ® and GOP legislators opposed the tax.

My tax-​fighting friend Chuck Muth, president of Citizen Outreach, must be happy as a clam, living the easy life.

No?

Mere months after that vote, the solidly Republican state legislature passed — you guessed it — a gross receipts tax. And with it, for good measure, all stuffed into Senate Bill 483, the Republican majority also made permanent a whole slew of taxes passed as temporary measures back in 2009.

The total tax increase — ahem, to celebrate the Republican trouncing of Democrats — turned out to be the largest in Nevada history: $1.1 billion.

I wish this story of betrayal were shocking, not par for the course. But as we all know, the lack of surprise signals the depth of the problem.

Thankfully, Silver State citizens have what Ralph Nader calls the “ace in the hole”: statewide initiative and referendum.

Two referendum measures have been filed. One would repeal the gross receipts tax. The other, filed by Muth’s “We Decide Coalition,” places the entire billion-​dollar-​plus tax hike onto the ballot.

“It’s time for these elected elites to stop using Nevadans as ATM machines,” Muth recently wrote.

Yes, time for Nevadans to crank up the machinery of democracy … starting with 55,000 signatures on petitions for each measure.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Politicians in a jar