Category: insider corruption

Categories
Common Sense free trade & free markets insider corruption nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Welfare Kings

Bear Stearns. You gotta like an investment company with the word “bear” in it. If you are the kind of investor to go bullish over anything big, Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc., was BIG. For years its subprime mortgage biz made investors go all squirmy with bullishness.

They could pretend that the word “bear” was there for irony.

Call it prophecy, instead: The Bear Stearns bull lies on the ground, gored. Time to sell off the carcass.

The Federal Reserve has forced through a takeover deal, with J.P. Morgan buying out the dead bull. At a low, low price – though not nearly as low had the Federal Reserve stayed out. It’s another so-called capitalist bailout, an attempt to make a failure not seem so big.

This is not free-market capitalism, folks. This is big business welfare-statism.

In their normal run of operation, businesses negotiate the uncertainties of markets using tools like the profit-and-loss statement, aiming for profit. When they don’t manage this, they fail. Remember that term, loss?

Well, in today’s truly bipartisan political economy, the bigger you are the more scared our rulers get when you fail. So they prop up, as best they can, the biggest failures.

Forget welfare queens. The welfare kings are businessmen on the take from government. The losers are everybody else, as idiotic risks and bad business practices get propped up by government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability Common Sense insider corruption

Above the Law

It’s nice to have friends in high places. Or to sit on high yourself – way up above the law. Or so Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson must think, as he chirps from his high perch.

Last year, State Representative Mike Reynolds detailed publicly that Attorney General Edmondson had violated campaign finance laws. Numerous times.

Some of these Edmondson then sought to rectify, years after the fact. Some not.

But the Attorney General has not been prosecuted. Why, you ask? Well, it’s his job to prosecute such violations, and he has, not too surprisingly, not indicted himself.

Funny though, how Edmondson, a Democrat, has indicted Republicans Brent Rinehardt and Tim Pope for similar alleged violations.

Reynolds has now written to the governor, asking him to appoint an independent counsel. Reynolds argues that the Ethics Commission turns over matters for criminal or civil investigation to Edmondson, who “is hardly in a position to investigate his own campaign committee.”

But Edmondson told a newspaper, “It would be a waste of taxpayer money to pay another attorney to review what the Ethics Commission has already received.”

A spokesman for Governor Brad Henry, also a Democrat, says that the governor will not appoint an independent counsel.

Friends in high places . . . is for the birds.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Accountability Common Sense First Amendment rights initiative, referendum, and recall insider corruption

Constitutionally Unsuited for the Job

You can’t answer every random fallacy uttered by fierce foes of facts and logic.

Can’t always ignore them either. Like, when your polemical adversary is trying to jail you for ten years. I refer to Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson, who indicted me and two others for abetting democracy in Oklahoma.

Before our recent arraignment, I attended a news conference at which a number of concerned citizens, legislators and leaders of taxpayer and voter groups spoke out against this politically motivated travesty. I noted that we, the Oklahoma 3, acted in good faith to follow Oklahoma’s regulation requiring petition circulators to be state residents. Even though the regulation has been challenged in court as a violation of the First Amendment.

But Mr. Edmondson told reporters, “This is not a First Amendment issue.” Then, admitting the opposite was true, he added, “If the courts determine that the state’s process violates the First Amendment, so be it.”

First, he pretends to be oblivious to the First Amendment issue. Then, he acts as if he can do whatever he pleases, Constitution or not, unless a court steps in to stop him.

As someone observed at FreePaulJacob.com, Edmondson’s cavalier disregard for the Constitution, the very highest law, doesn’t square with his own official responsibilities. It’s just not consistent with his oath of office.

He’s sworn to uphold the Oklahoma constitution and the U.S. Constitution. Not prosecute those of us who take both very seriously.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.