Category: moral hazard

Dear Bernie: Here’s How Rights Work…

Post author By CS Admin
Post date March 30, 2016
1 Comment on Dear Bernie: Here’s How Rights Work…

Dear Bernie, rights, violation, violates, how rights work, meme, Common Sense

A new “right” that violates other fundamental rights, can’t be a right.

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Tags Bernie Sanders, health care, human rights, Individual rights, medical socialism, rights, socialism

Accountability crime and punishment ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Misleading Metric

pay gap, gender, legislation, justice, fairness, hypocrisy, Sen. Susan Lee

Yesterday’s Washington Post clarified how the “gender pay gap” is calculated:

This metric does not take into account the different types of jobs, varying levels of experience and education, or women who lose seniority and promotion opportunities when they leave the workforce temporarily to care for children, which they do in larger numbers than men. Still, it is widely used as a measuring stick.

The Post informed readers that the gap isn’t what it appears, that it doesn’t actually measure discrimination against women. Nonetheless, the paper justifies promoting this misleading statistic with the claim that it is “widely used.”

Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The Post’s story was sparked by legislation in Maryland to purportedly mandate “equal-pay” between men and women. Yet, the bill specifically authorizes unequal pay for any “bona fide factor other than sex or gender identity.”

It’s already against the law for employers to pay women less for the same job or to deny equal opportunity for advancement. This legislation, on the other hand, seems designed to create full-employment for lawyers. If passed, employees could sue their employer for “assigning work less likely to lead to promotion or future opportunities.”

Sen. Susan Lee, the bill’s sponsor, proclaims that, “Any gap is unequal and unacceptable.”

What about the gender pay gap in the Maryland Legislature? Using the same misleading metric, female legislative employees make less than what males make.

Unacceptable!

So, why don’t legislators fix their own pay discrepancy before they dictate to everyone else?

Or better yet, they could simply stop peddling a divisive non-solution for this dishonestly hyped “problem.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags feminism, gender pay gap, Sen. Susan Lee, sex equality, wage legislation, wages

crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard privacy property rights too much government

Taking Our Stuff Back

civil asset forfeiture, police, abuse, robbery, Common Sense

There’s been a big push for criminal justice reform, with some recent progress on civil asset forfeiture.

This is the process through which police and government agencies grab a citizen’s money or property — even if the citizen is never charged with a crime, much less convicted. Then, to get one’s stuff back, a citizen must sue to prove the stuff was innocent of being involved in criminal activity.

Asset forfeiture without a criminal conviction turns our system of justice on its head, encouraging bad behavior by police — ahem, stealing — by rewarding departments and agencies that get to keep the loot.

Reform legislation passed through an Oklahoma House committee earlier this week and now goes to the full House. Television News 9 in Oklahoma City began its report by acknowledging that, “A watered down version of the civil asset forfeiture bill has crossed another hurdle in the state Legislature.”

That’s because a bill to end civil asset forfeiture outright had already failed in the Senate. The currently pending legislation requires that citizens who sue to recover their property and win be awarded their legal fees.

It’s progress … but still not justice enough.

Late last month, Wyoming’s Gov. Matt Mead signed reform legislation mandating that there be a probable cause hearing before the legal forfeiture process can begin. Good. But that was after Gov. Mead vetoed a better bill, which stopped all official, convictionless snatching of stuff.

Police taking people’s stuff without having to prove a crime must be ended altogether, abolished. That means we better stop waiting for politicians. Instead, petition this important principle directly to the people — use ballot initiatives in cities and states across the country.

No time like the present.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags asset forfeiture, ballot initiative, civil asset forfeiture, law, police, police abuse

Accountability free trade & free markets general freedom government transparency moral hazard national politics & policies

Banking on Clinton

Hillary Clinton, Wall Street, Bernie Sanders, corruption, crony, presidential race, two-faced, 2 faced, illustration, Common Sense

I’ve been tough on Bernie Sanders, the socialist Vermont Senator and Democratic Party presidential candidate. Why? Because socialism is — to quote a current GOP candidate — “a disaster.”

But I appreciate his campaign for showing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for what she is, the ultimate establishment insider.

Even while, as SNL parodied, she seeks to co-opt Sanders’s progressivism.

Nowhere is Hillary’s have-it-both-ways mode of operation more obvious than in regard to Big Finance. She attacks the big banks, promoting her “very aggressive plan to rein in Wall Street.” Yet, she is supported politically and has been enriched personally by Wall Street firms. In 2014 and 2015 alone, Mrs. Clinton was paid $11 million dollars for speeches to various groups, including these financial interests.

On the campaign trail, Bernie has been calling on Mrs. Clinton to release transcripts of her speeches to Wall Street firms:

She gets paid $225,000 for a speech. Now you know that is a lot of money for an hour speech.… It must be mind-blowing speech, it must be a Shakespearean speech, it must be a speech that could educate and enlighten the entire world.

An anonymous attendee of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches to Goldman Sachs has characterized her remarks as “far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.” Another said making the transcript public “would bury her against Sanders.”

Understandably, Hillary refuses … until every other living person who has ever spoken a word to anyone on Wall Street does so first.

At his rallies, Bernie now throws his empty hands up into the air to release his non-existent speech transcripts.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, banks, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Presidential campaign 2016, Wall Street

free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Socialist Stasis, Disturbed

Post author By CS Admin
Post date March 21, 2016
3 Comments on Socialist Stasis, Disturbed

Cuba, stasis, Obama, visit, illustration

As the President of the United States treads ground previously trod by such a personage nearly ninety years ago — Calvin Coolidge was the last U. S. Commander in Chief to make the trip to Cuba — we are understandably inundated with coverage.

Obama’s Cuba trip is Big News.

We see that Cuba is backwards — it is socialist, after all, so no surprise there — but slowly opening up to American travel and trade. The nation’s voluntary sector squirms under the omnipresent, oppressive feet of its regulators.

What we see now is the result of socialist repression. Cuba shows, perhaps, socialism’s best-case-scenario result, stasis. The island dystopia is in many ways a time capsule. Some of its current charm is that stuck-in-timed-ness.

But there is also endemic hopelessness in the country. The people are held back. Infantilized. Ruled.

And there is no disputing the fact that this is all the result of an excess of socialism. As I have argued before, the old standby, the Blame the US Embargo ploy, is one that socialists wield with devastating results — to their own ideology. Socialism is the suppression of free trade; pure socialism abolishes all trade, along with all private property. Blaming an embargo shows how important private property and capitalism itself are to socialism’s few successes.

Barack Obama is, right now, demonstrating the best case against socialists in his own party, by opening up Cuba to the wonderfully corrosive processes of the market.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags Cuba, freedom, Havana, Obama, socialism

Accountability crime and punishment free trade & free markets general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

The Peace Dividend

legalization, pot, marijuana, crime, drug war, illustration

Has the War on Drugs actually, finally, made some progress?

Well, yes … but, really, no.

“Legal marijuana may be doing at least one thing that a decades-long drug war couldn’t,” explains Christopher Ingraham in The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, “taking a bite out of Mexican drug cartels’ profits.”

Certainly “legal marijuana” is not the drug war. It’s that war’s antithesis.

Let’s recall, too, that legalization didn’t come about after five decades of drug war failure because politicians came to their senses, admitted their mistakes and advocated a different approach.

Instead, frustrated citizen leaders teamed up with successful entrepreneurs to launch ballot initiatives, allowing voters to directly decide the issue.

Domestic production isn’t driven merely by Colorado, Oregon, Washington State and the other Washington, the nation’s capital, where voters fully legalized possession. Marijuana for medical use is legal in 23 states, including California, where most domestic marijuana is grown. In these states, pot is widely prescribed.

Thus, a quasi-legal domestic marijuana industry was created. Lo and behold, now pot produced in the good old USA is outperforming pot grown south of the border.

The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) acknowledges that U.S. marijuana is being illegally smuggled into Mexico. (Maybe the smugglers will pay for the wall.)

On the other hand, what does it matter that the Mexican drug cartels are losing market share to non-violent American businesses?

Well, those cartels have waged a war with the Mexican government killing more than 164,000 citizens between 2007 and 2014. Less profit to fuel the Mexican drug lords in that bloody war is more for our peace and security.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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