Category: moral hazard

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture judiciary media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Post Blindfold

blind justice, unions, Supreme Court, polarization, politics

While the Supreme Court heard oral argument, Monday, in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the court of public opinion focused not so much on the constitutionality of the law in question, i.e. justice, but instead on the partisan impact of the decision, i.e. politics. 

A Washington Post editorial advances the notion that the court was presented “with two questions. The first is the legal issue …” and the second “implicit” question is “how the court should conduct judicial review in a deeply polarized society.”

Plaintiff Mark Janus and his legal team are seeking an “extraordinary remedy in the context of the Supreme Court’s tumultuous recent history,” claims the Post.

But that history is not Mr. Janus’s.

Or the union’s.

Or even U.S. labor relations’.

The editors are talking about Washington’s bitter 2016 political fight. 

What does political polarization have to do with the facts or law of this case? Nothing. Except … what’s in peril is a system whereby government workers who do not wish to join a union are nonetheless forced to pay union dues.

So, if the Court nixes current law, AFSCME might wind up with fewer dues paying members … meaning less money for AFSCME’s political pet, the Democratic Party. 

And Democrats — now stuck with a conservative replacement for the late Justice Scalia — are left only with Obama’s pronouncement: “Elections have consequences.” 

And, embarrassingly, the Post’s bizarre case for “steering the court modestly down the middle of the road.”

A lady, blindfolded, holding scales and a sword symbolizes justice. That blindfold is not to avoid reading the law; it represents the imperative to ignore politics.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies too much government

Why Paranoia

conspiracy, Northwood, Cuba, Kennedy, Parkland, shooting, crisis actors

Goofy conspiracy theories? Worth a chuckle, maybe. But not when they are about live, blood-​running-​in-​the-​street topics. Then, cries Kevin Williamson of National Review, “shame.”

Paranoia-​spinners “have failed to learn the sad lesson of Hillary Rodham Clinton,” Williamson warns. “When people have come to assume that every other word out of your mouth is a lie, it becomes very difficult to tell the truth effectively.”

Well, yes. But that cuts every which way, no?

Apropos of this, comedian Dave Smith, on his most recent Part of the Problem podcast, brought up Operation Northwoods, an early-’60s clandestine false flag proposal. 

“The operation proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. Government,” Wikipedia summarizes. “To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government.”

This outrageous moral horror was actually signed off on by “responsible” people … such as the Joint Chiefs of Staff.* 

“Why do these conspiracy theories persist?” Dave Smith considers, referring to the trying-​too-​hard conspiracy conjectures such as the now-​infamous “crisis actor” hoopla. “Well, there’s … these conspiracies that are absolutely real — and you guys [in the media] have no interest in talking about them. And the only people who do talk about them are people like Alex Jones.”

Seeing governments lie and cover up the truth, while media too often turn blind eyes, everyday concerned folks are obviously more open to conspiracy theories.

Everyone should remember that it is the truth that will set you free.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* It was signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense. President John F. Kennedy nixed it in 1962, and it was never implemented, thank goodness.

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Accountability moral hazard term limits too much government

Dictatorship with the Usual Characteristics

Mao, term limits, China, Xi Jinping, censorship, Mao Zedong

“Argh, we’re going to become North Korea,” a dejected Chinese citizen wrote on his country’s social media site, Weibo. 

His comment, later removed by China’s “safe space” police, responded to the Communist Party’s announcement that it would soon remove term limits on President Xi Jinping.

While neighboring North Korea has been ruled in totalitarian dynastic fashion by the Kim family since 1948, the Chinese have had their own experience with extended one-​man rule, 33 years of Mao Zedong.

“From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people,” the Washington Post clarified, “easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.”

A decade after Mao’s death in 1979 — there’s always that ultimate term limit — even Communist Party apparatchiks embraced a formal limit on the president and the vice-​president of two five-​year terms … to block dictatorship.*

Talk about a reform popular across the political spectrum!

So popular that, as Business Insider explained, “Criticism of the Chinese government’s desire to abolish presidential term limits has seen censorship soar since Sunday.” Searches for “two term limit,” “third consecutive term,” and “Emperor Xi” were blocked. 

“There are no longer any checks and balances,” complained a political analyst at the Chinese University in Hong Kong.

This is bad news for everybody everywhere. 

The need to limit those in power is universal. At National Review, John Fund reminds us of our “ongoing job here at home to limit the insatiable urge of incumbents to remain in office for years, even decades, and sometimes until they die of ripe old age.”

Early retirements for all!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* There are also five-​year limits on the tenure of those serving in the National People’s Congress. Do I hear six years for our Congress?

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crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy responsibility Second Amendment rights too much government U.S. Constitution

He Applied Himself

pre-crime, PKD, guns, gun control, shooting, Parkland, Florida, prevention, freedom

“I need to make this count,” wrote a young man in Everett, Washington. 

Unfortunately, it looks like he wasn’t attempting a big career-​oriented project. He was planning a mass shooting.

“I need to get the biggest fatality number I possibly can,” is one of many damning journal passages the police have made public. Apparently he had settled on attacking the high school he attended. “I’ve been reviewing many mass shootings/​bombings (and attempted bombings) I’m learning from past shooters/​bombers mistakes.”

Ambition and rigor: missapplied.

Fortunately, his grandmother read his journal and discovered a rifle in his guitar case. She turned him into the police the Tuesday before the Florida shooting I wrote about last week. And maybe just in time.

Meanwhile, last week’s Parkland, Florida, shooting dominates the headlines. Fellow students and neighbors of the Florida shooting victims have ramped up their condemnations and demands — including at a horrorshow “town hall” on CNN.

Yet the nature of the difficulties in preventing such atrocities has become lost in the rhetoric and anger.* 

In a free society, we cannot arrest people before they commit a crime. In the Everett case, officials were “lucky”: despite the young man’s lack of a criminal record, they were able to charge him with a burglary they allege he committed the day before arrest — and his extensive planning notes are being taken as evidence for intent. He’s also been charged with attempted murder. 

We should be in inquiry mode, right now. It could be helpful to know the exact motivations for both the Florida shooter and the Everett wannabe — and similar cases.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Law enforcement is tasked with uncovering spree shooting plots today — and to protect, too. But the armed, uniformed school resource officer at the Parkland high school failed to protect. He heard the gunshots but never entered the building, while the shooter killed 17 innocents.

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general freedom government transparency initiative, referendum, and recall local leaders moral hazard political challengers responsibility term limits too much government

Graceless Memphis Politicians

instant-runoff elections, Memphis, city council, government, term limits,

“We could care less about instant runoff voting,” fibbed Allan Wade, the city attorney for Memphis, Tennessee. 

Wade was rebutting the recent Commercial Appeal revelation that Memphis’s “City Council worked behind the scenes to find a sponsor for legislation this year that could ban instant-​runoff elections statewide.” 

After long relying on the mayor’s lobbyists, was it purely coincidental that the council suddenly spent $120,000 on its own Nashville lobbyists?

One of the bill’s sponsors, Rep. Mark White (R‑Memphis), missed the memo. He acknowledged being “approached … on the council’s behalf to ask if he would again sponsor the bill.” A lobbyist also confirmed to the Memphis Flyer that the council engaged him to push the ban on what is also known as ranked choice voting.

So, the city council is directly lobbying the Tennessee Legislature to overrule their city’s residents — who voted 71 percent YES for instant runoff voting in 2008. 

And there’s a twist. The council has placed two measures that would repeal instant runoff voting on this November’s ballot, hoping to somehow convince voters to scrap the reform. Wait … why lobby the legislature when the voters are already set to make the decision?

Oooooooooohhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

“Now they are using our money to take away that choice from us,” protests Aaron Fowles with Save Instant Runoff Memphis.

This city council — in addition to their sneaky, anti-​democratic assault on instant runoff voting — has also placed a measure on the ballot to weaken their own term limits, passed by an 80 percent vote.

To paraphrase Memphis’s King, these rabid-​dog politicians ain’t never caught a rabbit and they ain’t no friends of ours.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

P.S. After media coverage, a hearing on the Senate version of the bill to ban instant runoff voting, SB 2271, was abruptly postponed for three weeks.

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Accountability folly general freedom government transparency ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Not Even with a Straight Face

CIA, foreign policy, elections, influence, interference, puppets

Is American foreign policy so foreign to our values that even those who have served at the very pinnacle of national intelligence agencies have trouble telling the truth?

“Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries’ elections?” Laura Ingraham, host of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, asked James Woolsey, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1993 to 1995.

“Oh, probably,” Mr. Woolsey replied. “But, uh, it was for the good of the system, in order to avoid communists from taking over. For example, in Europe in ’47-’48-’49, the Greeks and the Italians, we, the CIA — ”

“We don’t do that now, though?” Ingraham interjected. “We don’t mess around in other people’s elections, Jim?”

“Well … urrrrr, yum, yum, yum, um, um,” the old spymaster offered to laughter from both Ingraham and her studio cameramen. “Only for a very good cause,” he added with a sly grin, “and the interests of democracy.”

Interests. Of. Democracy. 

Ha. Ha ha. Laughing yet?

Foreign Policy tells us that documents declassified in 2017 “shed light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s central role in the 1953 coup that brought down [elected] Iranian Prime Minister Muhammad Mossadegh … poisoning U.S.-Iran relations into the 21st century.” 

Need more? There’s a handy database that lists undemocratic and illegal* shenanigans going on and on through the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, up through President Obama to today. 

“This broader history of election meddling has largely been missing from the flood of reporting on the Russian intervention …” noted the New York Times last December. 

Of course, our government’s interference doesn’t justify Russian government interference. But, we can only (possibly) control our politicians.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* “Meddling in other’s elections is a violation of international law,” Steve Baldwin writes in The American Spectator. “More importantly, U.S. law prohibits the use of tax dollars to influence foreign elections.”

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