Category: moral hazard

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies responsibility

Eighty-​sixing Civility

Had Sara Huckabee Sanders been asked to leave the Washington, DC, Red Hen, rather than the restaurant of that name in Lexington, Virginia, things might’ve turned out a bit different. In the nation’s capitol, it is illegal to discriminate against customers for reasons of political affiliation.

Out in Lexington? Not so much. One can “86” a politico there with impunity, I guess.

A Yelp reviewer defended the restaurateur’s request not to serve President Trump’s Press Secretary. “Thank you for refusing to serve a person who lies to the American people for a living.” 

Wait — I thought that is what all Press Secretaries do: present the official lie. Be that as it may, or not, objecting to one Administration and not another implicitly endorses the policies and lies of the Administration not censured. And the grounds given in this Red Hen cluckery — that the Trump Administration is racist, etc. — might possess a tad more plausibility had the Obama Administration not engaged in policies startlingly similar to the ones Trump and Sanders are blamed for.

The “right to refuse service to anyone” may be a right retained by the people, but since the Ninth Amendment is a dead letter, and the federal government, at least, does not recognize such rights when the refused parties fall into certain “protected groups,” talking about it at length is probably a waste of time.

While the anti-​Trump side of the current political-​cultural divide seems resolute in denying a right to refuse to bake specialty cakes for gay couples, refusing to serve standard meals to political enemies is apparently copacetic.

Which can only mean: that democratically elected and appointed government officials are not the right “protected group” — which is odd, isn’t it, when those doing the discriminating call themselves “Democrats”?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom moral hazard nannyism privacy too much government U.S. Constitution

Social Workers: Stop Kidnapping Kids

Michael Chambers, Belle, custody, child, protection, Mississippi, Social Worker,

Michael Chambers is living a nightmare. 

His young daughter, Belle, has been taken away by social workers — without any reasonable cause or due process.

When Belle was two, her mother relinquished care to Belle’s grandmother. Then Michael accepted the responsibility. Periodically, his vindictive ex-​wife would sic Child Protective Services on him. At first, the annoyance was as benign as such an intrusion could be. The social workers where he lived understood that there was a troublemaking ex-​spouse in the picture.

But when Michael and Belle moved to a different Mississippi county, a new social worker, Kyra Reed, got involved. Reed seemed determined to intrude, make demands, and eventually remove Belle by force from Michael’s custody.

For example, Social Worker Reed early on demanded that Michael let her search his home. He was uncomfortable permitting it unless she obtained a warrant. Reed never did get one, or search the house — not even when accompanied by sheriffs. But somehow she didn’t need any legal authorization to steal Belle from Michael. Belle ended up in a foster home, where she was treated badly, before ultimately being forced to live with her mother, whom she hadn’t seen in four years. 

The many ugly details of this case cannot be recounted briefly. Michael’s fight to get his daughter back is an expensive one. You can find out more about what happened and, if you like, contribute to Michael’s gofundme campaign to raise money for his legal expenses.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency individual achievement media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy Snowden U.S. Constitution

Happy Birthday, Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden, birthday, surveillance, whistleblower, patriot, sacrifice, NSA

Edward Snowden turns 35 today and begins another year as a fugitive stuck in Russia.

Five years ago, he fled the country to Hong Kong, meeting with The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras to discuss documents he had released showing illegal National Security Agency collection of our phone records, social media posts and mega other metadata.

It is not merely Snowden who calls the NSA’s programs unconstitutional, or me, but how a federal judge ruled.

Remember when James Clapper, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, wittingly misled Congress by claiming our private information was not being swept up, except “unwittingly.” We only know that Clapper fibbed because of what Snowden divulged.

“[T]he breaking point was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress,” Snowden has explained. “There’s no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions.”

Clapper is free, collecting his pension. Snowden has been indicted under the Espionage Act, which unconstitutionally limits his defense.

Snowden sure has paid for his courage. He was making very good money, and living with his girlfriend in Hawaii, when he decided he had a duty to alert us to our government’s lawlessness — at the cost of his livelihood, his future, his very life, perhaps.

While our leaders call him a traitor, I call him “friend.”*

Edward Snowden is a friend of every American who cherishes our Fourth Amendment right “to be secure in [our] persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures.” 

Freedoms the government was secretly stomping upon.

It is time to bring him home.**

Ed Snowden, thank you for your service. Happy Birthday!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* I feel a connection to Mr. Snowden, and have an inkling of what it’s like to do what you believe is right and to find yourself wanted by the government, on the run, far from home. 

** Snowden deserves a presidential pardon. But he has said he would even return to face prosecution, provided the charges did not preclude him from defending his actions in open court.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy Regulating Protest Second Amendment rights U.S. Constitution

Brownells Defends Itself

YouTube, guns, gun control, censorship, 2nd Amendment, censor, ban, school shootings

I’m glad to be able to say this: Brownells has, present tense, a YouTube channel. Especially glad because, on June 9, Google had shut that channel down without warning or explanation.

Brownells is a family-​owned supplier of firearms, firearm parts and accessories, gunsmithing tools, and emergency gear. Well-​known and well-​regarded by shooters, hobbyists and gunsmiths, the company has a website and a YouTube channel that serves as a “portal to everything shooting and hunting,” as Pete Brownell explains.

Brownells’ YouTube channel is substantial, with almost 1,800 instructional videos and some 71,000 subscribers. Patrons stress that there’s nothing outré, radical, or offensive about the offerings — unless you’re reflexively anti-​Second Amendment, I guess. 

We’ve got no smoking gun in the form of an explicit admission from Google. But we may plausibly suspect that the firm terminated this YouTube channel for ideological reasons. Perhaps Google shot from the hip here in reaction to the recent spate of school shootings, without pausing to properly distinguish between promoting responsible gun ownership and promoting murder.

We may also never know whether Google expected Brownells to meekly accept the arbitrary snuffing of a resource it had spent so much time and energy developing. In any case, Brownells used Twitter and other forums to urge supporters to call Google and object.

The self-​defense paid off. On June 11, Google undeleted the channel. The protests against injustice must have been too many to ignore. 

YouTube is no longer a mere platform for video sharing. It has taken political controversy and complaints as excuses to editorialize.

Were it a government, I’d say “censor.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability crime and punishment folly free trade & free markets general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy property rights responsibility too much government

Working to Boost Unemployment

occupational licensing, hair braiding, permission, law, crime, employment, unemployment, control, health

Some government officials work overtime to throw people out of work.

What I’m referring to differs from losing your job or business because of slack performance or slackening sales. Instead, you lose the right to earn your living a certain way so that the government can benefit competitors at your expense.

Occupational licensing is great at dis-employing people. The regulations are especially galling when the work being regulated obviously requires no formal training in order to be done well and safely.

Hair braiding, for example. 

The Institute for Justice — which has done incredible work over the years representing victims of destructive government mandates — just won a victory for hair braiders in Iowa. Thanks to IJ’s efforts, a new law there exempts braiders from having to waste time and money getting a cosmetology license in order to practice their craft.

Such battles are never won permanently, of course. Washington, D.C., recently started requiring day care providers to get a college degree or lose their job. (As I have argued in a Townhall column, the same “logic” would justify forcing people to get college degrees to become parents.) IJ is helping affected parties to challenge the absurd law. 

It is time for a new licensing requirement. Nobody gets to become a local, state or federal lawmaker unless he first writes a million times in a row, “I will never help violate the rights of any man or woman to earn an honest living.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Accountability education and schooling folly general freedom ideological culture local leaders moral hazard nannyism responsibility too much government U.S. Constitution

Degrading Expectations

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, race, racism, low expectations, condescension, Stuyvesant High, quota, affirmative action

Expect racism to come from the Right … we are told by the Left. 

On Wednesday, I considered the sad case of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, pushing racial resentment in a black church, asking for an “amen” after telling the parishioners that there was something very wrong with Asian students dominating that most meritocratic of institutions, Stuyvesant High.

Giving up on meritocracy is quite bracing, as is de Blasio’s lack of commitment to the culture of individual achievement.

His assumption? Black and Hispanic Americans just cannot compete on merit alone. 

They don’t need to work harder, and we mustn’t expect them to. They needn’t change their values or encourage their children to be more academically ambitious. What’s the point in troubling to emulate successful cultures, like that of many Asians (many of them quite poor) who have been advancing so effectively? For de Blasio there’s no hope for blacks and Hispanics. 

Except through him.

Note the two pillars of de Blasio’s vision:

  1. racial determinism, where individuals cannot hope to succeed outside the stereotyped behavior of their racial background, their skin color and physical features determining their performance,
  2. except when Government steps in to save them (this is statist messianism).

And yes, by “government” he really means “de Blasio” — or “progressivise politics.”

The first assumption has been called “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” 

The second is idolatry of the State and overbearing pride in one’s own ideological tribe.

You individuals have no chance to succeed, the idea runs, but We, the Progressives, will save you. Vote for us!

How insufferable.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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