Category: national politics & policies

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folly national politics & policies political challengers

Tonight’s Permitted Debate

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Tonight, the Democratic Party holds its first presidential debate of this cycle. Finally! It’s one of only six total throughout the entire campaign for the party nomination.

And all the other debates will be on weekends, with much lower TV viewership.

What does it suggest when a political party wants to minimize rather than maximize the degree to which the public gets to see its candidates and hear the party’s message?

“[I]t seems infelicitous,” writes The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, “for Democrats to be embroiled in a very public fight in which party leaders are increasingly being accused of limiting the exposure of the candidates to voters.”

Is Supreme Democratic Party Commander Debbie Wasserman Schultz afraid that familiarity will breed contempt?

As party chair, Wasserman Schultz unilaterally decreed that debates shall be limited to just six. She also warned that “candidates will be uninvited to any debates if they accept invitation to any debates outside the 6-debate schedule.” (Meanwhile, Republicans are holding nine presidential debates, but likewise, dictatorially, blocking participation in additional debates.)

Wasserman Schultz, facing protests and heckling, claims her only aim is to prevent the debate schedule from getting “out of control.”

Or out of her control, perhaps?

Presidential candidate and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley called it a “rigged process,” asking, “What national or party interest does this decree serve?”

The limited debate schedule serves as a huge advantage for frontrunner Hillary Clinton by limiting the breakout opportunities of her opponents.

But, at least tonight, all the world’s a stage.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability national politics & policies responsibility tax policy

Raising Taxes & Truth

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Sheila Weinberg wants to raise your taxes. So fervent is her money-lust that she even threatens to run for president, and only half-jokingly, on that single issue.

More surprising: I would enthusiastically vote for her.

What gives?

Well, Weinberg isn’t demanding a tax increase or a spending cut, per se — just one and/or the other until accounts are balanced. She points out that tax increases tend to concentrate the minds of taxpayers to oppose greater spending by government. Otherwise, as long as governments — local, state and federal — can hide the true costs of their “services,” more will be spent, and more debt incurred, than the people can afford, or want.

That’s why this friendly CPA founded Truth in Accounting, a nonpartisan, non-profit group working to “compel governments to produce financial reports that are understandable, reliable, transparent and correct.”

Too much to ask? No, if you ask me, or you, or Sheila, or anyone else . . . until we inquire of politicians, and then, well . . . apparently, yes. And not merely at the federal level.

“For years, citizens have been told that their home state budgets have been balanced,” Weinberg recently told Watchdog.org. “If that were true, state debt would be zero . . .”

Yet, last month, Truth in Accounting issued its 2014 Financial State of the States report disclosing that state governments are truthfully — whether they admit it or not — a cumulative $1.3 trillion dollars in arrears. Individually, all but 11 states are carrying debt.

Lies won’t set us free. Or pay the bills.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability folly government transparency national politics & policies

Democrats’ Own Private Government

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Don’t feel lonely, Mrs. Clinton. You’re not the only public official shielding public actions from the public by using private modes of communication — a private email account and server, or texts on a personal cell phone.

Meet fellow Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago Tribune* recently took the Emanuel administration to court for the second time in three months. The paper charges the mayor is “[violating] state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through private emails and text messages.”

Still pending is the World’s Greatest Newspaper’s first lawsuit against the mayor’s office, seeking the full disclosure of emails specifically concerning a $20-million-dollar no-bid public school contract, over which the Feds have now launched a criminal investigation.

The Trib argues in its legal complaint that Freedom of Information Act requests “have been met with a pattern of non-compliance, partial compliance, delay and obfuscation.” But on Chicago Tonight, Mayor Emanuel offered that, “[W]e always comply and work through all of the Freedom of Information [requests] in the most responsive way possible.”

Probably all just a big misunderstanding . . .

What’s especially droll is to find presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, two Democrats who have long fought against privatizing any government function or service no matter how inefficiently performed or delivered, suddenly embracing a creative new approach to privatizing government . . . beginning with their own transparency and accountability.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* In full disclosure, my brother, Mark Jacob, works for the Tribune.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies Second Amendment rights

Most Murders?

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As the nation reels from another school-place murder spree, this time at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon, The Detroit News took notice of a not wholly unrelated milestone: St. Louis, Missouri, took “title” to “nation’s murder capital” from Detroit, Michigan.

Detroit’s Chief of Police waves, as he put it, a “flag of progress,” not a “flag of success.” Crimes overall are down . . . as are (interestingly) police forces. Still, as the FBI stats for 2013 make clear, “Motor City’s overall violent crime rate remains the nation’s worst for the second straight year for cities of more than 100,000 residents.”

St. Louis scored 50 murders per every 100,000 population; Detroit went down to 44 per 100,000.

But hold your breath: all this is based on a per capita reckoning: Detroit still tallied more murders than did St. Louis, 298 to 59. Detroit just has more population.

In total terms, Chicago actually leads the nation, with 411 murders. (These include all murders, not just gun-related homicides.) New York follows with 333. Then it’s Detroit, followed by Los Angeles (260), Philadelphia (248), Houston (242), and Baltimore (211).

The 2013 murder count for the nation?14,249. Subtract the seven highest grossing murder cities and the number is 12,246.

That’s still a lot, but remember: nationwide, the murder rate (including murders with guns) continues to plummet — even with more guns in private hands. Could it be that more than “more cops” and “more jails,” more guns is the answer?

Dramatic Gun-Free-Zone shootings are trend exceptions. Most usages of guns remain in self-defense. Real gun control has been, in a sense, privatized.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Fiorina Fires Back

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Politicians love talking up job creation. Presidential candidates, especially, pretend to a Svengali-like virtuosity in producing paychecks and, if only handed the keys to the White House, creating — presto! — a bunch more.

This year, Republican Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, has been repeatedly attacked by Democrats, democratic socialists and her Republican opponents for firing 30,000 workers during her tenure running the company. As if she did so out of meanness.

Sunday, on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd went at her again.

“I find it very rich,” Fiorina fired back. “Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton, all the Democrats who are attacking me, they’ve never created a job, they’ve never saved a job, and their policies destroy jobs, including Mrs. Clinton’s latest position on Keystone Pipeline.”

Mrs. Fiorina offers context for her “failure”: “I led HP through a very difficult time. The NASDAQ dropped 80 percent. Some of our strongest competitors went out of business altogether, taking every job with them.” As she sees it, her team “saved 80,000 jobs. We went on to grow to 150,000 jobs. We quadrupled the growth rate of the company, quadrupled the cash flow of the company, tripled the rate of innovation of the company. And went from lagging behind to leading in every single product and every single market. I will run on that record all day long.”

I’m not endorsing Fiorina, either as candidate or as CEO. Just sayin’ that those attacking her on 30,000 jobs don’t know anything at all about actually creating even one real one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense First Amendment rights folly national politics & policies political challengers

Trump Speech

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What is free speech? Is it what presidential candidate Donald Trump is trying to squelch?

Last week Trump’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Club for Growth. The Club, a well-known 501(c)4 limited government advocacy group, has put out a number of public service messages (“ads” as they witlessly call them in the politics biz — they are in truth anti-advertisements) criticizing Trump for past high-tax/tax-hike stances.

“Rest assured,” the lawyers wrote,

we will not sit idly by and allow special interest groups and political action committees like yours to defame Mr. Trump and cause damage to his reputation and business interests by intentionally disseminating libelous statements you fully know to be untrue and, even worse, continue to purposely mislead the American people for your own financial gain. Toward that end, Mr. Trump has authorized our legal team to take all necessary and appropriate actions to bring an immediate halt to your defamatory Attack Ads.

The lawyers, like Trump himself, must know that the case has zero merit. As Jonathan Adler explained in his coverage, what we have here “is commonly known as a SLAPP suit — a suit that’s designed to shut people up. ‘SLAPP’ stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation and the idea is that well-financed plaintiffs can use lawsuits, and the threat of suits, to discourage speech that they don’t like.”

These days, abridgments of free speech typically come from government coercively stamping out peaceful speech.

Meritless lawsuits, and their threat, are another and quite distinct anti-free-speech affront.

Would you trust anyone who employs such a method?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies political challengers tax policy too much government

Weekend with Bernie: Fairy-Tale “Free”

Bernie Sanders, Free, Fairy Tale, promises, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense, illustration

Bernie Sanders is many a progressive’s fairy-tale candidate.

Well, yeah.

Not “once upon a time,” but today . . .  the federal government’s public debt is in the double-digit trillions. The total debt — consisting also of unfunded/underfunded welfare state “promises” — may be in the triple digits. Still, politicians pat themselves on their backs when they deliver annual deficits under half a trillion per year.

Meanwhile, Senator Sanders, former member of America’s Socialist Party and current caucuser with the Democrats, is running on the “freebie” platform: let’s spend more!

He serves as the pusher of a very old folly: thinking that good things come to us without cost.

But the costs have to be paid.

And will be.

That’s the essence of common-sense wisdom since ancient times. Usually I conjure up an accountant or an economist to explain this, but why not go back to folklore? Folk and fairy tales, along with myths both ancient and modern (remember Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings?), tell us that magic powers come at a price.

And those costs can be killer.

Far-left-of-center magic pretends that not only can Bernie provide “free” stuff for everyone (including those of us in his “hard-working middle class”), but also that the wherewithal for these goodies (college, medicine, food, shelter, meaningful work) can easily come from . . . three pot-of-gold sources: “the rich,” “print more money,” and that least plausible sprinkle of fairy dust, “government efficiency.”

We tell children fairy tales not to make them wish for magic solutions, but to illuminate the logic of responsibility.

Bernie didn’t get that lesson.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Common Sense education and schooling national politics & policies

Diversity Double-Talk

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“Black teachers flee schools, leading to concerns about diversity,” warned the Washington Post headline. I’m less concerned about “diversity” and more about why teachers — black or otherwise — would “flee.”

The study found a significant drop between 2002 and 2012 in the percentage of teachers who are black in nine large city public schools systems — Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

In New Orleans, the percentage of black teachers fell from 74 to 51 percent, while the percentage of white teachers rose from 25 to 43 percent. In the nation’s capital, black teachers tumbled from 77 to 49 percent, while white teachers went from 16 to 39 percent.

“The whole effort . . . toward minority-teacher recruitment . . . [has] been an unheralded victory, really,” argues the University of Pennsylvania’s Richard Ingersoll. “The problem is with retention. Minority teachers have significantly higher quit rates than non-minority teachers.”

Some argue the problem is a system that micromanages teachers. Others cite the expansion of “teacher evaluation systems.” Neither reason explains the racial discrepancy.

However, black teachers do appear to be overrepresented in rougher, lower-performing schools — often with large minority populations. That may be causing a higher “quit rate.”

It may also be purposeful. As The Post article informs, “[R]esearch has suggested that students who are racially paired with teachers — black teachers working with black students and Hispanic teachers working with Hispanic students — do better academically.”

So, all the talk of diversity is aimed at keeping students and teachers with their own race?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

Note: My Townhall column last Sunday was a longer treatment of this subject.

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Common Sense crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom national politics & policies

Another Leaf Out of Gov’t’s Playbook

Zero Tolerance, schools, hysteria

Could government be a suck-hole for intelligence? Could one’s proximity to government reduce one’s IQ?

America’s public (read: government) schools too often serve as Wisdom-Free Zones.

The Ahmed Mohamed story shocked a lot of people. A kid with a clock was mistaken for a terrorist with a bomb and the school and local police threw reason and procedure and everything else out the window. But no one should be shocked. Every week, maybe every day, news creeps out of America’s “common schools” to prove, once again, that its administrators and teachers seem to be deficient in common sense.

When I wrote about Ahmed’s timepiece yesterday, I mentioned several examples of public school hysteria over fictitious, symbolic, or non-existent weapons. Such stories are Old Faithfuls here at Common Sense. But one case I haven’t written about* is the six-month-old tale of the Bedford County, Virginia, lad who was expelled from school for possession of a marijuana leaf.

The police dropped the drug case upon testing the leaf in evidence. It was not Cannabis sativa but Acer palmatum, the Japanese maple leaf, a harmless shrub.

Still, the school stuck to the year-long suspension, wouldn’t let up. Zero tolerance.

Now, the 11-year-old boy had supposedly boasted about having marijuana. And schools do have rules against “look-alike” drugs. I just wonder why the student received zero due process and how we expect youngsters to grow up in a world without even a tidbit of tolerance.

This dysfunction is not racism or fear or Islamophobia, as some claim in the Ahmed case.

It’s just the inflexible witlessness of those with too much unchecked authority.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Coming, as it did, immediately on the heels of the infamous Pop Gun Tart insanity. . . .

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Common Sense folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies

Case Closed . . . But Ticking

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Irving, Texas, authorities — I use that term loosely — announced yesterday that the case has been closed. Over. Finito. These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.

What case? That of the 14-year-old clock-maker assumed to be a potential bomb-making/let’s-err-on-the-side-of-panic terrorist.

Perhaps it didn’t help that the youngster had the wrong last name: Mohamed. Or that his family had immigrated from Sudan.

Ahmed loves to tinker. On Monday, he brought one project, a clock, to school hoping to impress his engineering teacher. His teacher mistook the clock for an improvised bomb, and told Ahmed not to show it to anyone. When the clock’s alarm went off later, his English teacher took the clock and told him to pick it up after school.

Later, the principal pulled Ahmed out of class. Five policemen then interrogated the lad, eventually handcuffing and marching him to juvenile detention.

A police spokesman admitted there was never any threat made. And, of course, no bomb. Ahmed’s engineering teacher clearly wasn’t scared. Yet, this 14-year-old was still treated like a . . . terrorist.

Before being released.

Some charge this is a case of obvious bias against this student’s race or religion. Maybe that’s why even Hillary Clinton tweeted her support for the student and why President Obama invited Ahmed to bring his clock to the White House.

Though prejudice may be part of this story, I doubt it’s the main issue. Many students not named Mohamed have been treated similarly — for bringing a butter knife to cut an apple at lunch, or gnawing a PBJ sandwich into the shape of a gun, or (horrors!) “shooting” pointed fingers at classmates.

Public school’s zero-judgment zero-tolerance is equal opportunity insanity.

Not Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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