Category: insider corruption

Categories
insider corruption

Standards of Behavior

When it comes to standards, how low can we go?

Congressman Charlie Rangel had failed to report more than half a million on his congressional financial disclosure forms, violated rent control laws in New York, taken corporate-funded junkets, and more. After being admonished by the House ethics committee, he has finally decided to take a leave of absence as chairman of the powerful Ways & Means Committee.

But before he stepped down, some excused him. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi argued that Rangel’s behavior “was not something that jeopardized our country in any way.” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said, “It is worth pointing out that none of these things actually seem to affect national policy.”

Oh, goody! He didn’t destroy the entire country!

Then there’s a local scandal in Washington, D.C. Former crack-mayor, current Councilmember Marion Barry allegedly earmarked his girlfriend a $15,000 city contract and then took a kickback from her. The council just censured Barry.

But Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy notes that people in Barry’s 8th Ward are dying of AIDS at an alarming rate, while money appropriated to help has vanished. He writes, “If Barry did take a kickback from his girlfriend, they say, it didn’t result in somebody’s death. So why should he face censure when those who stole the AIDS money got away clean?”

He didn’t kill anyone: Our new standard for ethical behavior. Really?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption term limits

Bye Bye Bayh

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana is calling it quits, leaving the Congress after two terms. What’s not to like?

Without mandatory term limits for the office, Mr. Bayh’s self-imposed limit seems an honorable second-best.

Bayh has also openly expressed his disgust with the behavior of this Congress, calling it “brain dead.” No argument from me.

On CBS’s Early Show Bayh clarified his decision to leave government for the private sector, saying, “If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months.”

Ouch!

If he’s talking about sustainable, productive jobs, he’s no doubt correct.

But there is something about Evan Bayh’s leave-taking announcement that leaves me more than a little disgusted.

Bayh’s decision surprised most. But it was certainly no surprise to Bayh. Surely contemplating re-election has been on his mind for some time.

By waiting until to the last minute to drop out, Bayh ensures that the people of Indiana will have no say in choosing the Democratic candidate for his position — no campaign, no primary election. The Democrat’s nominee will be installed by the party’s State Central Committee.

Bayh’s departure is unfortunately no departure from the brand of politics that continually games our elections, where the insiders offer voters as little choice as possible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access insider corruption political challengers

Independent at the FEC?

Nowhere has President Obama lost more support than among independent voters. So, now Mr. Obama is talking up bipartisanship. But his focus is too narrow. He needs to think more about NONpartisanship — or, perhaps, “transpartisanship.”

Take for instance the Federal Election Commission. The FEC is governed by six commissioners — three Republicans and three Democrats. As Theresa Amato, an attorney and author of Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny, wrote recently in the Kansas City Star, “[M]ake no mistake that the FEC is a partisan body.”

Amato — who serves on the board of Citizens in Charge Foundation, this program’s sponsor — explained that the FEC’s partisan make-up is not caused by “the demands of the law, merely the outcome of a ‘bipartisan’ rather than ‘nonpartisan’ appointment process.”

Amato suggests an easy way to break the partisan gridlock at the FEC and to reach out to the majority of Americans who identify as “independents”: Appoint the first non-Republican, non-Democrat as commissioner — someone independent, or a representative of a third party.

Months ago, leaders of IndependentVoting.org wrote to the president also urging him to shake up the FEC in exactly this manner.

It’s bad enough for a federal agency to regulate political campaigns and political speech. It’s worse to allow the two major parties to control such an agency. We need more independence — and thus independents.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption political challengers

Great Scott!

Just when you thought nothing could stop Congress from sucking another sector of American life and our economy into the dripping maw of government, a spark of hope.

Scott Brown, the Republican candidate for Massachusetts’s open U.S. Senate seat, won.

I’m sure I’d disagree with many of the senator elect’s opinions. But his campaign was based, loud and clear, on his promise to vote against the Democrats’ overblown, misguided, quasi-socialistic healthcare plan — a compelling enough message to propel a Republican to victory in a very Democratic state.

What now? Well, hopefully we are going to stop the big government juggernaut. That is, unless Democrats start playing some very dirty pool.

Will it be the kind of dirty pool MSNBC talk show host Ed Schultz endorses? In the final days of the campaign, Schultz bragged on his radio show that if he were a Massachusetts resident he’d cheat at the ballot box to stop Brown. “[I]f I lived in Massachusetts I’d try to vote ten times. . . . Yeah, that’s right. I’d cheat to keep these bastards out. I would.”

It’s not unheard of, in politics, for politicians and even activists to go off the deep end, foreswearing principle for the sweet smell of partisan success. But I bet one reason Brown won was that he represents the kind of above-board probity that Schultz and far too many in Congress — Democrats, and Republicans, too — utterly lack.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption too much government

That Other America

As we tramp forth into 2010, America’s great divide widens.

A recent Rasmussen poll shows a stark difference. Government workers see the economy getting better, while those in the private sector see it getting worse.

Different perspective or different reality?

Well, during this economic downturn, 6 percent of those in the private sector have lost their jobs, while public sector employment has dipped only 1 percent.

Stuart Varney with Fox Business News says, “If you’re a government worker, you don’t lose your job. You have a very rich and generous pension. You have a very generous health care plan. . . . You’re protected from the real economy.”

He also points out that, “[T]he three wealthiest counties in America . . . are all suburbs of Washington, DC . . . full of very well paid government employees and lobbyists. They are the beneficiaries of a great deal of taxpayer largesse.”

In a column for the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone notes that unions overwhelmingly support Democrats, contributing $400 million in the last cycle. Union members account for only 7.6 percent of the private sector, but a whopping 40 percent of public employees.

This leads Barone to conclude that there is a partisan interest in protecting public sector jobs. He writes, “In effect, some significant proportion of the stimulus package can be regarded as taxpayer funding of the Democratic Party.”

Whatever happened to “we’re all in this together”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption too much government

Look for the Union Babble

I have a very controversial position today. Sorry if you disagree, but I feel I must speak out.

Here goes: In my view, it is okay for boy scouts to do good deeds.

There, I said it. Sorry if you find my view repugnant. Eh? What’s that? You agree with me? Great! I always prefer it when you and I are on the same page.

Sadly, though, the president of a Pennsylvania chapter of the Service Employees International Union does not agree. Nick Balzano is upset that 17-year-old Kevin Anderson cleared a path so people could better enjoy a river. Kevin is pursuing an Eagle Scout badge and did the work voluntarily.

Balzano threatened the city of Allentown because it had recently laid off some union workers. He thinks it’s a sin to not only reduce labor costs but also get some work done for free. I think Balzano should try for a couple merit badges of his own. Maybe a logic badge and a common sense badge, for starters.

Turns out a lot of people agree with me. Balzano has resigned in the wake of a firestorm of protest . . . without learning a thing, apparently. He insists he’s got nothing against boy scouts. He’s just “trying to protect my jobs.”

Let’s hope his union never gets a city contract to help little old ladies cross the street.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Global Warming Conspiracy?

In politics, we’re used to being lied to. But in science?

Revelations coming out of the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit spark such questions, and more.

Hackers have released onto the Internet confidential emails of the CRU climatologists largely responsible for the “global warming” conclusions in the famous report by the International Panel on Climate Change, known as the IPCC.

The emails include ugly stuff, like researchers’ fantasies about beating up catastrophe skeptics. They also include the tricks catastrophists used to cook up their numbers.

In particular, scientists reported temperatures in the Medieval Warming Period as cooler than they were, and more recent cooling trends as warmer. Anthropogenic global warming catastrophists have engaged in a massive public fraud.

Now, you might not bat an eye were you to learn that economists associated with, say, our recent bailouts, had been fudging numbers. Trillions of dollars to spend!

But when climate scientists get caught lying — as well as conspiring to keep their basic data secret, and hijacking the peer review process — it’s hard not to feel a bit abused. Natural scientists are supposed to be above this.

Public, open criticism is the hallmark of science. Climate researchers who stonewalled to keep their actual data hidden from critics were scuttling science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

The Old Ball Game

Those New York Yankees did it again. I’d love to have seen them win their 27th World Series crown. But, well, the tickets are terribly expensive. For those who don’t buy season tickets, the average ticket price is $750. For Game 6 in New York, that average soared to $900.

But a few people pay a fraction of those amounts.

Major League Baseball’s lobbying office makes special tickets available to members of Congress at the face value of the tickets, many hundreds of dollars less than the price you’d pay. This deal is not for run-of-the-mill Americans, mind you, but for folks with clout, members of the inner politburo of America.

Bribery! Who said that?

Silly us, it’s all perfectly legal. The league and teams are selling the tickets at the price it says on the ticket, not giving them away.

But as Melanie Sloan, with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, put it, ‘Anytime you have access to something that regular people don’t have, it should be considered a gift. Regular people can’t call the Major League Baseball office and get tickets.’

Vice President Joe Biden went to one of the games in Philly along with his wife, Jill. As VP, he’s not even covered by the gift ban, but he was nice enough to pay $325 each for the two tickets worth $1,500.

Is this a great country or what?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability insider corruption

Nutty Acorn Shenanigans Never Stop

ACORN, a government-funded community activist group long noted for hard-left stances, has been earning more and more notoriety for sundry shady practices.

During the presidential campaign, the organization got in trouble for voter fraud. ACORN officials blamed a few bad apples. But phony registrations filed by its employees have been discovered in a slew of states. In 2008, 14 states began investigating the group for fraud.

Then there’s the ease with which many ACORN employees are willing to advise sex slave traders on how to avoid taxes.

As you no doubt know, in September of this year, Hannah Giles and James O’Keefe posed as a prostitute and a pimp at many ACORN offices. They pretended to seek advice on how to avoid paying taxes for income from the child prostitutes they said they were importing into the country. They recorded these visits with a hidden camera, and employees in all too many offices proved eager to help. ACORN responded by firing implicated employees . . . and suing Giles and O’Keefe.

Now it is coming to light that — to save money — ACORN bosses have been telling paid employees to work for them as volunteers, instead, and earn their pay by collecting unemployment insurance. This, as blogger Michael McCray notes, would be a form of fraud.

A fraud to match other ACORN policies, I guess, and the handout mentality that permeates our nation’s capital.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Moonlighting as President?

The presidency of the United States isn’t easy.  So, what does it say when a president takes a second job?

Our federal union’s chief executive, Barack Obama, has gone and done just that: He now serves as public relations flak for the city of Chicago. The Windy City wants to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, so he flew off to Copenhagen to lobby the International Olympic Committee.

Now, I wasn’t rooting for Chicago to get the Olympics. I have friends there, folks I’d rather not see fleeced with higher taxes to pay for it — nor forced to suffer the many inconveniences of such an event.

But here’s my real problem with Obama’s moonlighting: It shows that his priorities are way out of whack. Why is he being side-tracked with something so insignificant as where an athletic event will be held?

Oh, we’ve been told he can zoom there and back on Air Force One in no time, not to worry. But don’t be fooled. Time and focus on this Olympic bid business costs both Obama and his staff. Cost is opportunity foregone. The executive branch has enough to do without adding on the Olympics.

Could it be that Obama shares that ol’ special-interest class obsession with using a public position for the benefit of one’s own — as well as one’s buddies’ — private interests?

Next thing he’ll be running GM in his spare time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.