Category: insider corruption

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Accountability incumbents initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption local leaders political challengers term limits

Sneaky Lobbyists Prefer Sneakiness

time expired, time limit, term limits, Arkansas, politicians, referendum, vote, lobbyists

The Arkansas Chamber of Commerce’s CEO and chief lobbyist, Randy Zook and Kenneth Wall, have formed Arkansans for Common-Sense Term Limits. 

The Chamber has a burning hatred for term limits — Common-Sense or otherwise — just like every other lobbyist and special interest. But Zook and Hall are fibbing in their name because they realize that voters love term limits. 

The ballot committee’s stated purpose? To “advocate for the disqualification or defeat” of the Arkansas Term Limits Amendment, which citizens just petitioned onto the ballot, collecting 129,000 signatures.

Defeating such a popular ballot measure isn’t likely. Instead, these politically-experienced lobbyists are preparing to sue, hoping to disqualify valid voters’ signatures on some ginned-up technicality, feigning confusion over the clear ballot language — anything that might keep democracy from coming this November.*

At issue? The difference between real term limits and ridiculous ones.

That is, between term limits set by citizens and those set by legislators themselves. 

Currently, legislators can serve for 16 years in a single seat under the state’s “limits.” And because two-year Senate terms aren’t counted at all, senators can stay as long as 22 years. 

Legislators snuck this past voters in 2014 with a ballot title claiming only to “establish” term limits . . . amidst other lies. Politicians thereby turned Arkansas’s toughest-in-the-nation term-limit law into the nation’s very weakest — a significant 50 percent longer than limits in any other state.**

Unfazed by all the corruption in the Arkansas Legislature, Chamber lobbyists are focused on putting politicians in their pocket for as long as possible. 

But those pesky Arkansas voters are once again in the way.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* After recently threatening to challenge the signatures of another initiative petition, Zook had to admit that he was not aware of a single problem or deficiency in the petition. But he quickly added, “It’s a very complicated process.”

** Arkansas’s term limits were the same as Michigan’s until 2014, three terms, six years in the House and two-terms, eight-years in the Senate.

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Original photo by Jeff Kubina

 

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Accountability general freedom government transparency incumbents insider corruption local leaders moral hazard national politics & policies term limits

“Dorky” Doesn’t Define It

term limits, Congress, myth, power, corruption

“Term limits,” said Daniel McCarthy, editor of The Modern Age, in a recent podcast conversation with historian Tom Woods, “was one of the dorkiest ideas of the 1994 so-called Newt Gingrich revolution.”

He characterized it as not having really gone anywhere.

Huh?

Granted, Congress is still not term-limited. But Americans in 15 states — including California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and Ohio, and representing 37 percent of the nation’s population — do enjoy term-limited state legislatures.*

And it sure wasn’t Newt Gingrich’s idea. Gingrich opposed it.

McCarthy repeats the old chestnut that what term limitation “winds up doing is actually weakening Congress and congresspeople in particular — relative to their own staff, who stay in Congress and become sort of experts and learn how to manipulate their congressman, and also relative to the executive branch who have people rotate in from time to time.”

Nifty theory — one very popular with politicians, who know that voters fear unelected influences on legislation.

The reality, however, is that Congress, designed by the Constitution’s framers to be both most powerful and closest to the people‚ is, today, the weakest branch.

And legislators are not term limited.

Ditch the “manipulation theory”; adopt a “collaboration theory”: legislators with Methuselah-long careers learn, sans “rotation in office,” to feather their own nests and those of the interest groups that fund their re-elections (and insider trading schemes).

Term limits remain popular with normal Americans because voters intuitively grasp the reality of such everyday corruption, which is directly tied to Congress having sloughed off so much constitutional responsibility.

We need term limits to restore a Congress sold out by professional politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Nine of the ten largest cities in America likewise have termed-limited their elected officeholders. For more information, see the links to the column from which this episode of Common Sense is condensed.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption local leaders media and media people nannyism national politics & policies political challengers Regulating Protest responsibility

Not Fine with Feinstein?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, election, candidate, California, Democratic Party, money, campaign

Could it be that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, may not be liberal enough?

The San Francisco Democrat has ostensibly represented the Golden State in the United States Senate for the last 26 years. Before that, Feinstein spent eight years on San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors and then a decade as mayor.

Now, after 44 consecutive years as a public official, what does the 85-year-old Feinstein seek? More. That is, another six-year lease on her powerful perch in the U.S. Senate.

But the Executive Board of the California Democratic Party — Feinstein’s Party — just said, “No way!”

A whopping 65 percent of the 333-member board opted for State Sen. Kevin de León, a fellow Democrat seen as more “progressive.” Only seven percent supported endorsing Feinstein.

Keep in mind that Feinstein is already on the November ballot. She was the leading vote-getter in California’s primary last month. Yet, she received only 44 percent of the vote: a majority does favor someone else.

In February, 2,700 activists at the State Democratic Party Convention in San Diego voted 54 to 37 percent for State Sen. De León over U.S. Sen. Feinstein.

“Feinstein, who spends much of her time in Washington, has had a distant relationship with party activists for years,” noted the Los Angeles Times report.

Still, what Democratic Party activists want may not matter so much. Mrs. Feinstein enjoys tremendous name recognition and, according to the Times, has “$7 million in campaign cash socked away as of May, ten times what De León had.”

That money seems to be Sen. Feinstein’s real base of support.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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general freedom ideological culture insider corruption media and media people national politics & policies political challengers

Plantation Revolt

#Walkaway, voters, conservatives, culture, liberals, twitter, Facebook, Brendan Straka,

The #Walkaway movement started with Brendan Straka, who proclaimed that his tribe — the liberal Left — had become “intolerant, inflexible, illogical, hateful, misguided, ill-informed, un-American, hypocritical, menacing, callous, ignorant, narrow-minded, and, at times, blatantly fascistic.”

Mr. Straka’s beef — and the general tenor of the pile-on Twitterstorm — was not about Democratic Party policy, as Scott Adams noted. It was about the left-of-center movement’s rhetorical/propagandistic rut. Since the election of Donald Trump, Democrats had come to rely almost exclusively on the feeding of frenzy by psychological manipulation, by ginning up fear.

Straka’s appeal to “walk away” became a hit, especially amongst those “racial, sexual, and religious minorities in America” that he says the Democrats have treated as if they owned.

Yet the Washington Post pooh-poohs the trend as just a social media blip — over-hyped by the very nature of the medium itself.

Plausible?

David Catron says no. Before the #WalkAway movement, he writes in The American Spectator, African-American voters had already walked away from Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in enough numbers to allow Trump his victory. And this bodes badly for the Democratic Party, for, as Catron quotes YouTube sensation Candace Owens, “I’ve seen black liberals go conservative, but never seen a black conservative go liberal.”

It doesn’t take many defections, says Carton: “All that is needed is about 5 percent more African-Americans to vote Republican and another 5 to 10 percent to simply stay home.”

But be warned: wishful thinking and Straka’s litany of political vices — “groupthink, hypocrisy, division, stereotyping, resentment” — can overtake any movement pretty quickly.

Anti-leftists in general and Republicans in particular are not immune to mass mania and suicide-by-panic.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability general freedom ideological culture insider corruption media and media people property rights Regulating Protest

Ortega’s Got to Go

Daniel Ortega, Nicaragua, rebellion, atrocity, protest, violence

Sometimes “if it bleeds, it leads” fails us. Only a few news outlets have given much attention to Nicaragua’s ongoing atrocities.

Weeks ago, mothers of some of the 76 people, mainly students, already killed protesting despot Daniel Ortega, were leading a march demanding justice . . . “when gunmen opened fire on the crowd.” The Washington Post report continued, “Witnesses have accused police and their civilian allies of initiating the violence that left as many as 18 people dead and more than 200 wounded.”

The June 2 headline summed up the last seven weeks: “At least 100 killed in Nicaragua as political violence intensifies.”

But time and tyranny march on. “Every day they’re killing more people,” an attorney with the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights told the Post. Friday, the group updated the death toll to 137.

Then on Saturday, the English-language Today Nicaragua informed that a 60-year-old man was cut down by a government sniper in Masaya, the former Sandinista stronghold, which is “now under almost total rebel control.”

What can we do?

We can educate ourselves on what’s happening — and pester more news organizations to cover Nicaragua.

We can learn from the experiences in Cuba, in Venezuela, and now in Nicaragua, that leaders seeking awesome powers to remake society to supposedly benefit the poor are ultimately batting zero in helping the poor. Instead, they’re busy at the plate for themselves.

And we can add our voices to Amnesty International’s condemnation of what it calls “the systematic ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy of President Ortega’s government.”

When governments open fire on peaceful protesters, it is past time for those governments to go.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability general freedom incumbents insider corruption local leaders moral hazard political challengers Regulating Protest term limits

Missouri Shows Article V Action

Missouri, show me, Article V, term limits, legislature, congress,

There’s good news and there’s good news from the Show Me State.

First the good news. The Missouri House declined to follow the lead of the Missouri Senate during its recent legislative session in advancing a ballot measure to make a travesty, mockery and sham of state legislative term limits.

The proposed weakening of the limits would have doubled maximum legislative tenure from eight years to 16 years. Further, it would also have excluded terms already served from counting toward the new limit.

Had the measure ultimately been enacted, some incumbents would have been able to sit in a single seat for up to 24 years. This assault on term limits is dead . . . at least until next year.

Now the good news. The lawmakers deserve high praise for issuing a formal call for an amendment convention to consider the single subject of congressional term limits, making Missouri the third state to do so (after Florida and Alabama). In mid-May, the resolution for a Term Limits Convention easily passed in both chambers.

Thanks to a provision in Article V of the Constitution, if two thirds of the states (34 states) submit a similar application to convene a term limits amendment convention, the convention must be convened. The amendment that the convention produces would then be submitted to the states for ratification. Three fourths (38) are required to ratify.

We’re only in the first-steps stage here, but first steps are crucial.

Thanks for showing us how to do it, Missouri.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Missouri, show me, Article V, term limits, legislature, congress,

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets insider corruption media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics property rights responsibility too much government

Déjà vu All Over Again

housing, bust, financial, meltdown, Government-Backed Mortgages, jail, punishment, cause

One of the stand-bys of the post-2008 mortgage finance bust, at least from left-of-center policy mavens, has been to ask: why has no banker gone to prison? They played a game of fraud and got rich. What a protected class — Cronyism! Plutocracy! Capitalism!

The why is much easier to understand if you read up on Round Two of the aughts’ boom-bust scenario, as in Prashant Gopal’s coverage in Bloomberg, “Getting Rich on Government-Backed Mortgages.” Gopal spotlights a non-bank mortgage broker, Angelo Christian, who is making a killing selling houses to people with horrible credit, just as happened before 2008.

“Christian can do this kind of deal because he is, in effect, making the loan on behalf of the federal government through its most important affordable housing program,” Gopal writes. “It’s a sweet deal: He gets his nearly risk-free commission. [His client] puts no money down. If things go south, the government ultimately bears the risk.”

So, should he go to jail?

Not really. He’s merely doing Congress’s bidding.

Gopal notes that it is not banks that dominate this round. They are under too much scrutiny. But non-banking loan intermediaries like Mr. Christian are swarming like flies on a cow’s behind.

There’s a problem in Gopal’s account though. “No one is saying the system is close to another collapse.”

Well, plenty of people are saying that.

The Cassandras are just not being heeded.

Of course, they don’t know when the bust will happen.

They just know it will.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo by Images Money on Flickr.

 

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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 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 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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