Category: local leaders

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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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ideological culture incumbents local leaders media and media people political challengers too much government

The Centre Cannot Hold

UK, British, politics, parties, centrist, left, right, partisan

The British may spell their words in funny ways, but their political problems do not seem all that foreign. Their left-​of-​center party has gone far left, Marxoid left; their right-​of-​center party has gone ultra-incompetent.

A healthy majority of Brits disapprove of both parties. So, no wonder many Brits are looking to create a new one.

A new centrist political party, no less.

Over at The Economist, the columnist writing under the name “Bagehot” (pronounced “badget”) predicts that this hope will be dashed, for at least three reasons:

First, Britain already has a centrist party, and it is not doing very well.

Second, there sure are a lot of contenders — 35 new parties have been formed just this year, including one called, with humble brag, “Sensible” — and all that competition fractionalizes the vote.

Third, the country sports the same system of vote counting and elections as America does, first-​past-​the-​post, which “is hard on startups.”

That last point is worth thinking about. In multi-​candidate races, the British-​American electoral system declares as winners those who obtain a bare plurality of votes — thus ignoring the preferences of those who vote for minor party candidates. This means that those who “waste” their votes not only hurt the candidacies they like as second-​best but also insulate the second-​best parties from those voters’ influence. So the parties become narrow-​minded and unhinged from an interested group of voters.

Bagehot thinks Britain’s centrists need to rethink, conjure up some new ideas. But what they need to do first is fix a system that prods political parties away from new ideas. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Principle and Compromise

De-Escalate Washington, Tim Eyman, Initiative 940, initiative, democracy, shootings

Last Friday, Tim Eyman — the Evergreen State’s best-​known ballot initiative practitioner — won an important court case.

But he also scuttled an amazingly impressive compromise between state legislators, police, and the proponents of Initiative 940.

The measure was written and promoted by De-​Escalate Washington, a group that includes several relatives of deceased victims of recent controversial police shootings. I‑940 would implement violence de-​escalation and mental health training for police, and require law enforcement personnel to provide first-​aid to save lives. Most likely Washington voters tell pollsters they approve.

De-​Escalate Washington got the required signatures, sending this “indirect initiative” to Olympia. The Legislature was faced with three choices:

  • approve the initiative as written; 
  • not act, letting the measure go to the ballot; or 
  • approve an alternative and place both proposals on the ballot.

The Legislature tried to “create a fourth option”: it passed the measure with amendments.

And that’s what Thurston County Superior Court Judge Christine Schaller found unconstitutional. She sent the measure, un-​amended, to the ballot for a vote of the people.

Interestingly, those amendments were the result of negotiations among the measure’s advocates, the police, and the Legislature. There had been many congratulations all around on the “historic” compromise. But, “historic” or no, legislatures must follow the law.

Tim Eyman is pleased that the court defended the constitutionally defined initiative process by definitively siding against the backroom compromise.

And voters will still get the chance to vote on the proposal.

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 free trade & free markets local leaders porkbarrel politics tax policy too much government

Selling Us Out

Maryland legislature, pork, Amazon, tax break, Jeff Bezos, Senator Roger Manno

Last week, Maryland’s Legislature enacted an $8.5 billion package of tax breaks and infrastructure improvements to lure Amazon into building its second corporate headquarters in Montgomery County, Maryland, bordering Washington, D.C.

State Senator Roger Manno, the only legislator from the county to vote against the subsidy, dubbed it “a $5 billion tax break for the richest man in the world.…”*

Today, the Montgomery County Council will consider a further proposal to streamline its zoning process, cutting in half the time the county takes to review a proposed development.

“We are trying to make sure our processes are consistent with everybody else,” County Executive Ike Leggett explained, adding that the county now “sometimes takes 100 to 120 days, while many other jurisdictions are much less than that.”

Did Leggett say “consistent with everybody else”? Well, the new zoning rules won’t apply to every business, just those planning to hire 25,000 workers. Or more. 

“It’s neutral to the employer,” County Council President Hans Riemer slyly suggested. “It’s a proposal that would allow any really large employer to come in and build under certain terms.”

But only Amazon would be large enough.

“Really what it does is it creates predictability, reliability,” offered Riemer. But wouldn’t every other business also benefit from “predictability” and “reliability”?

“I think the Amazon proposal made the county realize … that it needed to look at some of its practices and where it has been criticized,” noted Bob Buchanan, chairman of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corporation. “We were more process versus results.”

And the county intends to remain that way … for “every” current business.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* He was referring, of course, to Amazon founder and owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos.

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency local leaders moral hazard nannyism porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government

Bailing on Mass Transit

mass transit, metro, cars. low income, recession

Around the country, our major metropolitan transit systems have hit the skids. “Between 2016 and 2017, ridership fell in each of the seven largest transit markets,” the Washington Post informs.

You might guess that the reason for declines in ridership might have something to do with bad planning and poor service. Washington, D.C.’s Metro system, with which I am all-​too familiar, is a horror … run by people I wouldn’t trust to sweep your driveway much less mine, and certainly not to manage how I get between those (or any other) two locations.

But the Post quotes an urban planning scholar who attributes the decline (in part) “to increased car ownership, particularly among low-​income and immigrant populations, who were in a better position to afford cars following the Great Recession.” 

This puts planners in a pickle since, he explains, if “low-​income people are doing better, getting the ability to move around like everyone else, it’s hard to say that what we should do is get them to remove themselves from their cars and back on trains and buses.”

Shockingly sensible — especially coming from a planning specialist. “Transit systems should deliver quality service to low-​income people,” he insists. “But low-​income people do not owe us a transit system.”

Well, maybe that’s the problem, this notion that governments “owe” this service to “low-​income people.”

After all, web-​based services like Uber and Lyft have shown how market innovations provide the best ways to move millions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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