Category: moral hazard

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Accountability crime and punishment initiative, referendum, and recall moral hazard national politics & policies

Stealing Now Unpopular

Civil Asset Forfeiture, crime, drugs, marijuana, stealing, theft, police abuse

Civil asset forfeiture is stealing. So, why is it still happening?

Police seize boats, cars, houses and cash that they allege were used in the commission of a crime or were proceeds from the crime. Sometimes they simply take cash found on a motorist in a normal traffic stop, claiming it’s “drug money.”

Tragically, only 13 percent of forfeiture is criminal, i.e. involving a conviction. The rest is civil, wherein the person hasn’t been convicted of anything. Often not even charged.

When officials confiscate property without due process of law, it’s theft. The legal rationale government uses to snatch our stuff via civil forfeiture is a sick joke. Our property can be deemed “guilty” without enjoying our presumption of innocence. Instead, we have to go to court to prove our stuff is innocent.

Often officials negotiate a large cut, because hiring an attorney to get one’s money back might well cost more than the money itself.

The good news? People are becoming aware of civil asset forfeiture and overwhelmingly oppose it. A Cato Institute/​YouGov poll found 84 percent of Americans against taking property without a criminal conviction.

While New Mexico and Nebraska have outlawed civil forfeiture, and some other states have sought to at least minimize its abuse, there is still significant pushback from police and prosecutors, who like getting all that dough. And who often have the ears of decision-makers.

The time has come to short-​circuit the watered-​down half-​measure. Twenty-​four states and a majority of cities enjoy the initiative process.

Let’s do it ourselves.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Civil Asset Forfeiture, crime, drugs, marijuana, stealing, theft, police abuse

 

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Accountability ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

The Revenge of the Gatekeepers

watchers, watchmen, media, fake news, fact check, illustration

We saw glimmerings last year when Twitter began to selectively enforce “policy” against some (Milo Yiannoupolis) and not against others (the hordes of leftists who threatened to assassinate Donald Trump).

You could see it in Hillary Clinton’s campaign; after Trump won, it loomed to eclipse all reason.

And on Thursday I noted Congress’s reaction.

I refer to the hysteria over non-​Democratic “memes” and “fake news” that trumped the erstwhile gatekeepers of the Fourth Estate and the political classes — including the lobbying and bureaucratic cliques — and stymied the ascension of Mrs. Clinton to the Most Powerful Office in the Whole Wide World.

Now Facebook has come on board with a way to combat this freewheeling flow of ideas.

Fact-​checking.

Hayley Tsukayama, writing in the Washington Post, explained the new program:

The social network is going to partner with the Poynter International Fact-​Checking Network, which includes groups such as Snopes, to evaluate articles flagged by Facebook users.

If those articles don’t pass the smell test for the fact-​checkers, Facebook will pass on that evaluation with a little label whenever they are posted or shared, along with a link to the organization that debunked the story.

The problem, here, is not a First Amendment issue: Facebook is not the government; when it tampers with your communications, it does not break the law.

The problem is that the Internet’s self-​proclaimed fact-​checkers are not exactly fair-​minded, or even capable of sticking to the facts. I quoted Nietzsche yesterday (“there are no facts, only interpretations”), today I will merely reference Ben Shapiro, who has a history with false fact-​checkers, and riff off of Juvenal: who will fact check the fact checkers? (Obvious, I know.)

Meanwhile, the folks behind new social media service minds​.com offer an innovative posting promotion system, and promise never to sneakily favor some ideas over others.

The proper response to a business firm’s discriminatory policy is to provide market pressure.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest responsibility The Draft too much government U.S. Constitution

For Genderless Freedom

draft, register, registration, woman, Paul Jacob, resistance,

When President Obama announced last week that he wants my daughter to register for the draft — as a symbol of the nation’s commitment to gender equality and a “ritual of adulthood” — believe me, I noticed.

Sure, the symbolism rings hollow, I wrote at Townhall. The president is on his way out and Congress just agreed on a defense authorization bill blocking any Christmas-​time sign-​up of women by the festive folks at Selective Service.

Still, President O’s symbolism is all wrong.

Free societies don’t require the involuntary service of men and/​or women for their defense, much less celebrate conscription as a secular rite. Our All-​Volunteer Force is the most effective military in the world. Its leaders neither need nor desire to swell its ranks with draftees — even if, heaven forbid, a major war bubbles forth from all the foreign conflicts and interventions in which we’re currently engaged.

As for the “it’s just registration” argument, and promises by politicians that they don’t support a draft. Well, it’s registration for the draft. Per politicians’ promises, I rest my case.

Yet, this comment at Townhall called me back into service: “Has this author been against draft registration for the last 30+ years or is it just because his little princess might have to register? If men have to do it, so should women.”

With slight edits, I replied: “I oppose the draft on principle …  As Daniel Webster pointed out, government has no constitutional authorization to conscript citizens. The draft further violates the 13th Amendment. Conscription has been the hallmark of dictators and totalitarian regimes, not America. We’ve had a draft rarely in our history.

“In 1980, I refused to register for the draft when Jimmy Carter brought it back. Candidate Ronald Reagan said, ‘The draft or draft registration destroys the very values that our society is committed to defending,’ and pledged to end registration as president. But Reagan reversed himself and prosecuted 13 of us who had spoken out against the policy and refused to register. I served six months in a Federal Correctional Institution (without being corrected) — the longest of anyone post-Vietnam.

“Here are the reasons I resisted at the time (1985) and a more recent reflection (2010).

“My daughter will make her own decision, and I’ll be supportive. But it is a terrible policy that will diminish our military defense, while also violating … ‘the very values our society is committed to defending.’

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Today, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2016, marks the 32rd anniversary of my arrest by the FBI for violating the Military Selective Service Act by refusing to sign a draft registration form.

 

Additional Information

Common Sense: Needless List

Townhall: Draft the Congress and Leave My Kid Alone (2003)

Townhall: Americans Gung-​Ho to Draft Congress (2004)

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draft, register, registration, woman, Paul Jacob, resistance,

 

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Accountability folly ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government

A Hailstorm of Orthodoxy

global warming, climate change, skeptic, Pielke, science, illustration

Don’t worry, scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., informs us. He is doing fine — he has tenure.

It is too bad, though, that he no longer works in climate science.

He was drummed out of that endeavor by journalists, big-​monied foundations, and the White House.

Climate Scientist

Are you skeptical? Well, drill down into the Podesta emails on WikiLeaks. There you can read infamous billionaire Tom Steyer gloating, “I think it’s fair [to] say that, without Climate Progress, Pielke would still be writing on climate change for 538,” a popular website. Pielke has not been published there at all since 2014.

Pielke had made the mistake of publishing the results of his research. He claims not to be heretical on the main points of the current orthodoxy. But Pielke ticked off all the wrong people with his demonstration that the evidence did not back up the climate change movement’s much-​repeated charge that the weather has gotten more traumatic as the planet has gotten warmer.

Pielke relates all this in a fascinating Wall Street Journal commentary, “My Unhappy Life as a Climate Heretic.” Pielke is actually somewhat philosophical about the political and foundational forces arrayed against him — expressing more dismay at his betrayal by journalists and academics.

“You should come with a warning label,” jested one journalist who had merely quoted him. “Quoting Roger Pielke will bring a hailstorm down on your work from the London Guardian, Mother Jones, and Media Matters.”

This “hailstorm” is more widespread and damaging than the results of global warming itself. It effectively distorts both scientific research and the news.

Thus, a political orthodoxy rides herd over public opinion. Over us. By squelching good journalism and honest science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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global warming, climate change, skeptic, Pielke, science, illustration

 

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ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies porkbarrel politics responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Diversity, Identity, and the Liberal Implosion

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“To paraphrase Bernie Sanders, America is sick and tired of hearing about liberals’ damn bathrooms.”

Finally. Some sense from the New York Times.

Mark Lilla, in “The End of Identity Liberalism,” delivers a valuable lesson about political correctness — without once mentioning the term “political correctness.”

Now this is a lesson we can get behind.

The problem is “diversity.” The center-​left became so obsessed with it that it helped sink the last election for Hillary Clinton, Democrats at large, and the coherence and legacy of President Barack Obama.

“However interesting it may be to read, say, about the fate of transgender people in Egypt,” Lilla wrote in the Friday think piece, “it contributes nothing to educating Americans about the powerful political and religious currents that will determine Egypt’s future, and indirectly, our own.”

Fixating on diversity of gender identity and racial make-​up in business and government has scuttled the rights-​oriented approach of the older liberalism.

Alas, Lilla is not talking about the liberalism of J.S. Mill or Lord Acton. He is talking about FDR.

But compared to today’s “identity liberalism,” FDR’s burdensome promises look like sheer genius. And Lilla understands at least one thing about diversity: “National politics in healthy periods is not about ‘difference,’ it is about commonality. And it will be dominated by whoever best captures Americans’ imaginations about our shared destiny.”

He does not bring up the real liberal message: that the way to find commonality is to avoid making government all things to all people. It is to limit its scope, instead, so the president of the United States isn’t every school’s bathroom monitor.

Perhaps an essay on The End to Hubristic Liberalism is required?

Another day. And probably another paper.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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identity, diversity, politics, individualism, rights, individual, illustration, crowd

 

Original (cc) photo by James Cridland on Flickr

Categories
Accountability folly free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Thanksgivings, 1623 AD

pilgrims, socialism, communism, thanksgiving, sharing, shirking, illustration

The Pilgrims we were taught about in school deserve a Paul Harveyesque “Rest of the Story” treatment. Most students were not told about how they tried communism before they wised up, though I actually had a teacher who made a point of it.

Yes, initially, the “community” owned everything, and all worked together for the greater good and the Glory of God.

Of course, it was a disaster.

The commune plan sparked sloth, shirking, family quarrels and resentment — with men regarding their wives’ work for others a “kind of slavery.”

And then near-starvation.

The solution? Privatize! They allotted land, setting “corne every man for his owne perticuler.”*

That worked well, but they still had to endure a late Spring drought, and things looked bleak. Then, after prayers and expressions of humility (as Governor William Bradford explained**), the rain returned:

It came, without either wind, or thunder, or any violence, and by degreese in yt abundance, as that ye earth was thorowly wete and soked therwith. Which did so apparently revive & quicken ye decayed corne & other fruits, as was wonderfull to see, and made ye Indeans astonished to behold; and afterwards the Lord sent them shuch seasonable showers, with enterchange of faire warme weather, as, through his blessing, caused a fruitfull & liberall harvest, to their no small comforte and rejoycing. For which mercie (in time conveniente) they also sett aparte a day of thanksgiveing.

So the most obvious political lesson to be drawn from the Pilgrim experience got lost in stories of rain and corn and Indians and such.

But it’s worth noting that Bradford wrote his discussions of communism — and how very wrong Plato and his ilk were — in his primary text, while his talk of the drought was an afterthought in his mss., and appears as a footnote in the edition I’ve consulted.

Both*** Plymouth stories deserve to be told.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

*I wrote about this a few years ago, offering some of the juiciest quotations, in “Plymouth’s Great Reform.”

** Bradford’s History of Plimoth Plantation, available for free at Gutenberg​.org.

***The traditional date for the first Thanksgiving is given a few years earlier, with Squanto showing up and helping them plant and all. However, Bradford’s memoirs do not use the term thanksgiving (or “thanks-​giveing”) or even “thanks” in relation to the harvests of 1621 at Plymouth Colony. But there is talk of plenty of food, including that Thanksgiving specialty, the turkey:

And now begane to come in store of foule, as winter aproached, of which this place did abound when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besids water foule, ther was great store of wild Turkies, of which they tooke many, besids venison, &c. Besids they had aboute a peck a meale a weeke to a person, or now since harvest, Indean corne to yt proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty hear to their freinds in England, which were not fained, but true reports.

 

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pilgrims, socialism, communism, thanksgiving, sharing, shirking, illustration