Category: local leaders

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Accountability folly free trade & free markets ideological culture local leaders moral hazard nannyism property rights too much government

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos Is …

Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Seattle, taxes, homeless tax, business

A half a year ago, when trying to make sense of the much-publicized search for Amazon’s “HQ2” — a second headquarters city, away from Seattle — I concentrated on the subsidies that cities and metro areas were apparently throwing at Amazon.

It all seemed desperate, indecent.

But there was a story behind the story. Amazon has every reason to be looking for an escape route from the Evergreen State’s biggest city.

The city’s leadership is nuts.

“Seattle City Council members have finally released draft legislation,” the Seattle Times’ Daniel Beekman wrote last month, “for a new tax on large employers that would raise $75 million next year to address homelessness.”

The council blames the big companies for enticing workers into the city, thereby driving up rental costs and housing prices.

The tax would be on employee hours, would go into effect next year, and “in 2021, it would be replaced by a 0.7 percent payroll tax on the same category of companies,” explains the Seattle Times.

Now, if you tax something you discourage that something. That’s why progressives like sin taxes on sodas and fast foods. To discourage consumption.

So when progressives seek to tax big producers, they are apparently trying to tax away the housing crunch by driving away big business.

Amazon reacted. It put a halt to an expansion project.

“Jeff Bezos is a bully,” said Kshama Sawant, the confessed socialist, speaking for the council. “I think we are in broad agreement on that.”

If that is her attitude, and that of the council — and the consensus of the city’s denizens — then what Amazon’s Jeff Bezos really is?

A “good businessman.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Photo by JD Lasica

 

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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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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders national politics & policies political challengers property rights Regulating Protest too much government

A Sanctuary from Centralization

decentralize, centralize, federal and state and county, power, nullification, distributed

Defiance . . . nullification. It is a trend.

I take it as a sign of our contentious times that we now witness states in open rebellion against centralized control from the Imperial City of Washington, D.C., while cities and counties are also rattling the chains set by their respective state capitals.

The sweep of marijuana decriminalization and legalization is only the most obvious. The rise of “sanctuary cities” defying federal government immigration laws — often backed up by state legislatures — has been a contentious issue, with progressives supporting this sort of nullification and conservatives opposing it.

But the latest development does not hail from the left.

In Illinois, a number of rural governments have taken a cue from the immigration debate by “declaring themselves sanctuary counties for gun owners,” we learn from the AP’s Don Babwin, writing in the Chicago Tribune. “The resolutions are meant to put the Democratic-controlled Legislature on notice that if it passes a host of gun bills . . . the counties might bar their employees from enforcing the new laws.”

An Effingham County Board Member calls “sanctuary” an attention-getting “buzzword,” reporting that “at least 20 Illinois counties and local officials in Oregon and Washington have asked for copies of Effingham County’s resolution.”

Now, cities and counties do not have an analogous relationship to their state governments as do states to the federal government: the states created the “United States of America,” while cities and counties are also state creations.

Yet this move is important. It shows a growing recognition of the tyrannical nature of centralized power.

And the usefulness of decentralization.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability folly government transparency local leaders media and media people too much government

Low Bigotry Expectations

tin foil hat, D.C. Councilman Trayon White, climate control, conspiracy, jews, antisemitism

“Man, it just started snowing out of nowhere this morning, man. Y’all better pay attention to this climate control, man, this climate manipulation,” explained Washington, D.C. Councilman Trayon White back in March.

White (who is black) went on to accuse “the Rothschilds” (who were Jewish financiers) of “controlling the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities, man.”

Man. Oh. Man.

White later apologized, taking up the invitation of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington to tour the Holocaust Museum. During the tour one of White’s staffers referred to the infamous Warsaw Ghetto as “a gated community.” Then, before the tour’s end, the councilmen unceremoniously bugged out.

Next, news broke that Councilman White had used his constituent services account,* which the Washington Post reports “must [by law] benefit D.C. residents,” to send $500 to a Nation of Islam event in Chicago.

At which Minister Louis Farrakhan denounced Jews.

The Post noted how all this “turned into a test of the ability of city officials to handle the explosive race and class resentments that can arise in a city whose prosperity masks a troubling gap between its haves and have-nots.”

Even D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (who is Jewish) echoed the partial excuse that White “represents the poorest parts of our city, . . . whose residents feel like they haven’t benefited, and the remarks were directed at a community that’s largely affluent here, and seen as powerful.”

Is bigotry against an entire religion wrong or not so much, depending on the race or socio-economic status of the people espousing the bias?

No, man.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Why do we have programs allowing politicians to hand out free money? This never ends well.

 

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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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