Category: Regulating Protest

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Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture moral hazard Regulating Protest

The Shallow State

deep state, shallow state, free speech, censorship, first amendment, law. university

Amidst all the talk of The Deep State, we are in danger of losing track of a parallel problem: the Shallow State — which, despite lack of depth, is very wide.

I am referring to government employees who increasingly abandon any pretense of impartiality. And the public institutions that protect them.  

Consider the case of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and its 39-year-old lecturer Tariq Khan, who is a member of an Antifa-affiliated group called the Black Rose Anarchist Federation. Mr. Khan had been angrily shouting and chanting at a campus anti-Trump rally when he was mildly challenged by a non-nut student journalist. Khan went on a rampage, screamed at and pushed the young journalist, and deliberately broke the smartphone of a fellow journalist who had been recording the fracas.

Khan was charged with destruction of property. But the story doesn’t stop there.

“I was told that if I wanted the ‘situation to improve,’” wrote a third journalist, “that I should stop writing about Khan.”

The university placed a restraining order on the three, to squelch news and dissent.

So the trio sued on First Amendment grounds.

Here we have a teacher willing to abridge free speech the old-fashioned way, by playing the bully. And a public institution ready and willing to defend him, to take his petty criminality and raise it to a conspiratorial, Big Brother level.

Not only does this rob Americans of rights, taxpayers are being forced to fund what they might justifiably regard as the destruction of the republican form of governance.

Root out the infamous Deep State?

Sure.

But limit and make transparent the Shallow State, too.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom local leaders moral hazard Regulating Protest responsibility

Less Bullying, S’il Vous Plaît

union, labor, France, brick, busting, scab, President Emmanuel Macron,

I oppose unions. Or, to speak more precisely, I oppose those tactics too often used by unions intended to render societies hostage to their demands — as we’re seeing in France.

For the last few months, a series of strikes has been conducted by various unionized workers in protest of reforms proposed by President Emmanuel Macron. Rail workers are a major focus of the fracas.

Ultimately SNCF, France’s state-owned railway company, should be privatized. But reducing too-generous pay and benefits, including automatic annual pay raises, is a step in the right direction. The Macron administration hopes to begin opening up the state railways to competition by 2023. The unions and their allies are willing to cripple the French economy to prevent any reforms.

It’s fine for employees to voluntarily get together to ask for better working conditions, or even to go on strike to protest terms of employment they regard as unfair. It’s fine, that is, if they also understand that employers have an equal right to replace them if willing and able to do so.

Workers should only peacefully petition employers. Nobody has an inalienable right to a particular job or to a particular wage higher than they can voluntarily negotiate.

According to the BBC, “Just over 11% of the French workforce is unionised,” one of the lowest levels in the EU. May the decline there and everywhere accelerate until unions cease bullying the entire French society, or any society.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies property rights Regulating Protest too much government U.S. Constitution

That Something You Do

Congress, Facebook, hearings, control, regulations, Mark Zuckerberg, censorship, censor, regulate

Congress grilled Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, last week, and as usual ended up roasting itself.

“Zuckerberg has already experienced the worst punishment of all,” quipped comedian Trevor Noah on The Daily Show. “He had to spend four hours explaining Facebook to senior citizens.”

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch, retiring after his 42nd consecutive year in Washington, asked, “How do you sustain a business model in which users don’t pay for your service?”

“Senator,” Zuckerberg incredulously replied, “we run ads.”

Inc. magazine reported the obvious: “several of our elected leaders asked questions that were highly uninformed, or in some cases just plain weird.”

Uninformed. Weird. That’s them, alright.*

Still, the Washington establishment seems to seriously think these same congressmen ought to be re-writing privacy rules.

“Elected officials know the public wants them to do something to protect their privacy,” announced Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s Meet the Press. “The question now turns to what is that something?”

“Americans are largely together on this issue,” Todd said, citing a recent poll where a similar “66 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Republicans say they want more control over the information companies have about them.”

But Democrats and Republicans are together on something else: Only 21 percent of Democrats and a tiny 14 percent of Republicans “trust the federal government” to act on the issue.

The senators, though obviously “confused about basic topics,” Emily Stewart wrote at Vox,  “seem to agree they want to fix something about Facebook. They just have no idea what.”

Please Congress: DON’T “do something.” Don’t do that thing you do.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Reason TV has a very funny video on the Zuckerberg hearing.

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Accountability ballot access folly general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies Regulating Protest

The Real Democracy Hack

Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, data mining, hack, hacking, elections, democracy, meddling

A whistleblower in a British data company called Cambridge Analytica accuses his company of stealing as many as 50 million Facebook profiles. This is the latest version of the “hacked the election” meme pushed by the establishment after Trump’s 2016 defeat of Hillary Clinton.

Cambridge received data on 270,000 Facebook users, who traded their personal Facebook data and their friends’ profiles to download and use an app. The 50 million figure is an extrapolation supposing the average user had 200 friends.

The outrage over this “hack” — by the whistleblower and by the television news commentators, who seem collectively to suffer from a case of the vapors — appears to be mostly pretense. That is, they pretend voters voted in a way they did not want to vote.

But that simply wasn’t the case. The implication that conspiratorial, behind-the-scenes puppeteers changed votes in some nefarious scam remains far off the mark. All we are really talking about is data miners gaining additional info that they pushed to political propagandists who in turn did what campaign propagandists always do.

Maybe we should be grateful. 

And saying this data group propelled Trump is like saying that support for term limits propelled the GOP to take over Congress in 1994 — though, in this analogy, the data firm deserves less credit than the term limits issue. 

This is more a “life hack” than a technological intrusion into the political process. “Democracy was hacked” like civilization was hacked by Johannes Gutenberg.

What the fainting couch crowd really regrets? Their inability to control new media.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders political challengers Regulating Protest too much government

New-Fangled Vote Counting

Florida, Proposal 97, Constitution, democracy, voting, initiative, Constitution Revision Commission

Call me old-fashioned, but when you go to the pols to cast your vote on a ballot measure, your Yes vote should count for yes and your No vote for no.

And if you choose not to vote, your non-vote should count for neither yes nor no.

That’s just common sense. Right?

Well, meet its antithesis: Proposal 97, now being considered by Florida’s powerful Constitution Revision Commission (CRC).* Proposal 97 would count all those who do not cast a vote for or against a ballot measure as a No vote against it.

To pass a constitutional amendment in the Sunshine State already requires a supermajority vote of at least 60 percent of those who do cast a vote on the measure. Under Proposal 97, counting all those not voting on it as No votes, that percentage would necessarily go even higher. If 10 percent don’t vote, Yes would have to come in at 67 percent to win.

This is minority rule . . . with an extra perverse twist.

The supermajority requirement encourages big money interests to spend heavily against ballot initiatives — even when the issues have clear majority support — because if they can manage to lose by less than 20 points (60–40 percent), they win. Now all opponents need do is poison the water with the nastiest campaigning imaginable, causing more voters to throw up their hands or pinch their noses and avoid the issue . . .

. . . thus, being counted as voting No.

Don’t abstain. Stop Proposal 97. Tell them NO here.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* How powerful is the CRC? Every 20 years it meets with the awesome authority to refer constitutional amendments directly to the ballot — as many as it wishes and the amendments can be packaged to include several different subjects. No other state has a similar body. Of the 37 commission members, the governor appoints 15, the Senate president and the House speaker each appoint nine, the chief justice of the state supreme court appoints three and the attorney general is an automatic member.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest Second Amendment rights

The Other Kind of Trade War

trade war, fractured, division, Alex Jones, censorship, boycott, civility, civil discourse

President Donald Trump’s promise — threat? mere negotiating gambit? — to add a 25 percent tariff on steel could usher in a new international trade war, which he says is “easy to win” but which in reality could lead to a cascade of tariff increases worldwide, throttling trade and plummeting us into a Great Depression.*

This is not just politically divisive (designed to please his protectionist base), it’s socially and globally divisive.

But that’s not the only radically divisive move at present.

Last weekend, YouTube froze, for a short time, the account of one of the most popular channels on the video service, Alex Jones’ Infowars. This is part of a major effort by Google’s platform, Jones says,** as well as a general trend by businesses and European governments, to suppress the speech of the strongest critics of open immigration, PC speech codes, gender politics, and outrageous media bias. Though, in Jones’ case, admittedly peddling some ridiculous conspiracy theories in the process.

YouTube has admitted that the new people the company had hired to police the platform — from the Southern Poverty Law Center, Jones pointedly emphasizes — had taken down thousands of sites without cause.

For partisan reasons. Apparently.

Jones and many other YouTubers call it a “purge.”

What to make of all this I’m not sure. But I do know that the pressure that activist groups are putting on some companies to sever all ties with the National Rifle Association has an obvious problem: fracturing the market into warring political tribes.

Do activists on the left not see where this ultimately leads? Some companies serving half the market, others the other — this is a disaster in the making.

I prefer civil discourse.

And democracy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Just as it happened in 1929-1931 with the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act.

** Infowars insists that CNN is behind at least some of the push against Jones’ popular radio/podcast news-and-conspiracy commentary business, as CNN’s own coverage more than suggests.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture judiciary media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Post Blindfold

blind justice, unions, Supreme Court, polarization, politics

While the Supreme Court heard oral argument, Monday, in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the court of public opinion focused not so much on the constitutionality of the law in question, i.e. justice, but instead on the partisan impact of the decision, i.e. politics.

A Washington Post editorial advances the notion that the court was presented “with two questions. The first is the legal issue . . .” and the second “implicit” question is “how the court should conduct judicial review in a deeply polarized society.”

Plaintiff Mark Janus and his legal team are seeking an “extraordinary remedy in the context of the Supreme Court’s tumultuous recent history,” claims the Post.

But that history is not Mr. Janus’s.

Or the union’s.

Or even U.S. labor relations’.

The editors are talking about Washington’s bitter 2016 political fight.

What does political polarization have to do with the facts or law of this case? Nothing. Except . . . what’s in peril is a system whereby government workers who do not wish to join a union are nonetheless forced to pay union dues.

So, if the Court nixes current law, AFSCME might wind up with fewer dues paying members . . . meaning less money for AFSCME’s political pet, the Democratic Party.

And Democrats — now stuck with a conservative replacement for the late Justice Scalia — are left only with Obama’s pronouncement: “Elections have consequences.”

And, embarrassingly, the Post’s bizarre case for “steering the court modestly down the middle of the road.”

A lady, blindfolded, holding scales and a sword symbolizes justice. That blindfold is not to avoid reading the law; it represents the imperative to ignore politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers porkbarrel politics Regulating Protest responsibility tax policy too much government

“Our Agenda Was Common Sense”

tea party, nail, coffin, spending, debt, responsibility, dead

The Republican Party doesn’t need to bury the corpse. Its victim has been assimilated, like the Borg did with alien peoples in the Star Trek universe, or maybe it was just soaked up as if the GOP were a giant fungus amongus.

So, what’s dead? The Tea Party, which was killed by partisanship, says Matt Kibbe, President and Chief Community Organizer at Free the People. He admits that the movement’s obituary has been written many times, but, he argues, “this time is different. Republicans, now controlling both the legislative and executive branches, jammed through a ‘CRomnibus’ spending bill that strips any last vestiges of spending restraint from the budget process.”

Kibbe identifies the Tea Party’s central theme simply: “Our agenda was common sense: We demanded that Washington politicians stop spending our money like it was theirs, and keep out of our health care. But in Washington, common sense is often seen as radical.”

This, he insists, was not a partisan movement.

But only Republicans played to it. Kibbe calls Sarah Palin a “political huckster” who “helped hijack our purpose,” and fingers Mitt Romney as the man who scuttled Tea Party “political momentum” in 2012. “And then Donald Trump split the Tea Party right down the middle, and that was the end.”

Nail in the coffin? The recent budget deal.

Kibbe signs the autopsy, but assures us: “American principles of individual freedom, fiscal responsibility, and constitutionally limited government, are all still very much alive.”

I sure hope so. But it takes more than a handful of Freedom Caucus members on Capitol Hill to realize it in practice.

Like a new citizen movement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment folly general freedom local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Popular privacy Regulating Protest too much government

The Last Straw

plastic straws, nanny state, fine, crime, California, freedom

How much should we fine waiters who destroy our planet?

For how long should they go to jail?

I don’t know where you would hold such an evildoer after the earth has been destroyed. Or where he’d go when released. But we’re speaking hypothetically. Assume that planet-destroyers can be imprisoned on the moon, which let’s just say still orbits the earth’s decimated remains. Or assume that after being destroyed, the planet can be reconstructed. After serving his sentence, then, the waiter would be released to a reconstructed earth.

In that case, a maximum $1,000 fine as suggested by Ian Calderon, Democratic majority leader of the California State Assembly, seems only fair. However, a maximum of six months in jail is excessive. In my opinion, planet-destroying waiters should suffer no more than 100 days in jail.

Calderon has proposed a bill, AB-1884, to fine and/or imprison waiters who offer unsolicited plastic straws to restaurant patrons. In response to criticism of his silly and vicious bill, Calderon says hey, it’s “NOT a ban” on straws! Oh, okay. Anyway, “Penalties are based on the code section the bill is currently in, which it will be amended out of,” which sounds like Calderon was prior to the uproar . . . what, joking?

As long as we’re amending, let me amend my own implication that people who offer, use, make or sell plastic straws* are in fact helping destroy earth. Just kidding!

The earth will survive plastic straws. Will it survive the Calderons of the world?

Open question.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Not that I’m confirming or denying ever using one myself.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Twitter’s Merkel Tactics or Merkel’s Twitter Tactics?

Twitter, censorship, Germany, Merkel, speech, double standard

Is Twitter cooperating with Germany’s new crackdown on social-media speech because otherwise it risks steep penalties? Or is Twitter just doing what it would do anyway?

When Germany’s new law against unwelcome speech went into effect this year, many Germans protested. “Please spare us the thought police!” was the headline in one top-selling paper, Bild.

The law requires social-media sites to block unapproved content — which includes “hate speech” and “fake news” — within 24 hours or face exorbitant fines. (Of course, every piece of news, no matter how well or shabbily reported, gets decried as hateful “fake news” by somebody.) Under the new law, Twitter suspended the accounts of two officials of the political party Alternative for Germany who tweeted that Muslim men have violent proclivities. Hateful, fake, inexact, whatever, such tweets by themselves threaten nobody and violate nobody’s rights.

Did Twitter act only under duress here?

Well, in the U.S., the company is not ordered by our government to muzzle anybody except perhaps terrorists or persons directly instigating a crime. Yet Twitter regularly suspends or bans users whose speech it considers objectionable. Moreover, it has become notorious for especially targeting speech that can be regarded as on the right end of the political spectrum — while leaving intact the tweet-speech of left-wing micro-bloggers no matter how threatening or abusive.

I don’t say America’s government should become involved. It should certainly not compel Twitter to drop its double standard.

Instead, it is Twitter itself that should become involved . . . and drop its double standard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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