Category: national politics & policies

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crime and punishment insider corruption national politics & policies

The Thick Blue Line

crime, criminal justice, Congress

In Minnesota — Land of 10,000 Lakes and a startling number of police killings of unarmed, innocent citizens, including George Floyd — the state legislature has “passed the most expansive criminal justice reforms in the state’s history.”

Though acknowledged as merely a start, it is good news. As are the banning in many major departments of neck restraints, and the kibosh placed on chokeholds in the nation’s capital.

Yet Eric Gardner died back in 2014 when placed in a chokehold by New York City police. Nevertheless, there is still no NYC ordinance against it. Numerous other cities also lack any such rule or law.

Why the glacial slowness?

It isn’t for lack of popular support. According to Cato Institute’s newly-released poll, 63 percent favor ending qualified immunity for police. 

So what is it? It’s no mystery; we do not need a blue ribbon investigative effort.

The Washington Post reports that reform-minded police chiefs and city officials “have repeatedly . . . run headlong into two formidable and interconnected forces: veteran officers who resist these efforts and the powerful unions fighting discipline.”

That second factor is key. Police unions are “powerful,” in part, because their political endorsement at election time means more to elected officials than the reform-minded opinions of mere citizens. 

So when you learn that, at the federal level, Democrats recently killed all prospects for criminal justice reform this year, you will not find yourself flummoxed.

Sadly, this festering dysfunction in our representative system corrupts our justice system.

And deaths result.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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initiative, referendum, and recall national politics & policies

Greater Idaho Goes Forward?

Greater Idaho, state, secession,

An Oregon case, People Not Politicians v. Secretary of State Clarno, was decided last week in favor of People Not Politicians, a group that has struggled obtaining signatures to qualify Initiative Petition 57 (IP 57) for the November 2020 ballot — while observing the governor’s stay-at-home orders.

It is hard to collect petition signatures under social distancing.

So the court is forcing the Secretary of State to give the group some leeway in advancing their redistricting measure.

This is good news for another citizen activist group, Move Oregon’s Border. Chief Petitioner Mike McCarter wants to place initiatives on county ballots in eastern, southern, and southwestern Oregon. His idea is to split off from Willamette Valley politics altogether, leaving wokester Portland — of the comedy Portlandia and antifa riots fame — in the distance.

But he does not want to form a new state. The secession is mere prelude to accession . . . to Idaho!

It has been a long time since the United States has fissioned a state, West Virginia during the Civil War being the most recent — Maine and Kentucky before that.

Great idea? Well, this goes far beyond these two western states. California is ripe for break-up, for by such a political reformation the ratio of citizens to representatives could be increased in favor of citizens.

The idea of calling the proposed new, larger State of Idaho “Greater Idaho” seems a bit much. Surely “Idaho” would do.

But the idea is politically more possible because it wouldn’t change the partisan complexion of the United States Senate, thus avoiding riling up one of the two major parties.

Other fissions, and fusions, would be much harder. Too bad. People should be able to insist on better representation. Democratically.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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crime and punishment national politics & policies property rights

Dereliction of Duty

police, riot, law, protection,

Must governments act to protect you when you or your property are attacked — for example, by rioters who vandalize and burn your store? 

Is the government liable if it willfully lets it happen?

Protection of life and property is the moral obligation of governments constituted for this purpose. But whether officials who ignore the obligation can be held to account is another question.

A Madison Avenue shop, Domus Design Center, is suing the mayor of New York City and the governor of New York State. In late May and early June, hundreds of businesses were damaged by rioters while Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo refused to act to oppose them.

“Where are our tax dollars going?” asks the Center’s attorney, Sal Strazzullo. “Not protecting commercial properties is negligence of duty. Paying taxes that help pay the salary of the NYPD, we expect protection in return. Government is responsible to protect its citizens and businesses against criminals who want to do bad.”

Yes. 

But Strazzullo’s client faces the precedents of rulings in cases like Warren v. District of Columbia, Castle Rock v. Gonzales, and a lawsuit by Parkland, Florida students against the local sheriff’s office. In these cases, plaintiffs argued that law enforcers had a positive duty to protect the plaintiffs when they were being clearly threatened. 

The courts disagreed.

We must hope that there are limits to the willingness and ability of judges to avert their gaze. Otherwise, we are paying everyone in the system to look the other way when trouble comes.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Photo by Georgia National Guard

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national politics & policies too much government

A Modest Anti-Capitalism?

Sawant, Seattle, socialism,

Socialists are so “modest”!

But how modest?

Ask Rep. Ilhan Omar, who recently proclaimed to be “fighting to tear down systems of oppression that exist in housing, in education, in health care, in employment, in the air we breathe.” 

Gasp?

Well, maybe that isn’t so clear. So listen to Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant.

“I have a message for Jeff Bezos and his class,” Sawant warned. “If you attempt again to overturn the Amazon Tax, working people will go all out in the thousands to beat you. And we will not stop there.”

Does that sound like a threat? Or is it really just a harmless expression of politics-as-usual?

“You see, we are fighting for far more than this tax,” the self-proclaimed socialist elaborated. “We are preparing the ground for a different kind of society, and if you, Jeff Bezos, want to drive that process forward by lashing out against us in our modest demands, then so be it. Because we are coming for you and your rotten system. We are coming to dismantle this deeply oppressive, racist, sexist, violent, utterly bankrupt system of capitalism. This police state. We cannot and will not stop until we overthrow it, and replace it with a world based, instead, on solidarity, genuine democracy, and equality: a socialist world. Thank you.”

And thank you, Ms. Sawant, for making yourself ultra-understandable.

You want to destroy private property and free markets and robust political debate and replace them with . . . well, let’s just say that if you complain about a police state now, wait’ll you get a load of what follows from your “modest” demands.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs national politics & policies scandal

WHO Don’t You Love?

WHO, World Health Organization, Coronavirus, Covid,

“It leaves Americans sick,” tweeted Sen. Robert Menendez, the Foreign Relations Committee’s top Democrat, “and America alone.”

Feeling lonely? 

The Trump administration has officially informed both the United Nations and Congress that the U.S. will withdraw from the World Health Organization effective July 6, 2021. 

“China has total control over the World Health Organization,” the president asserted, and covered up critical information about COVID-19, thereby enabling a very deadly worldwide pandemic.

And did so with the WHO’s help, he argues.

“Elements of Trump’s critique have resonated well beyond the White House,” notes the virulently anti-Trump Washington Post. “Foreign governments and current WHO advisers have questioned why the WHO amplified false Chinese claims in the early days of the outbreak and repeatedly praised Beijing as the virus spread.”

Back in April, President Trump demanded the WHO agree to “substantive improvements” within 30 days. “We will be terminating our relationship,” Trump announced a month later, “and directing those funds” to other global health efforts. This week, it was made official.

Funds? The U.S. is the largest donor nation, providing 15 percent of the WHO budget — more than $400 million in 2019. The BBC reports, “The withdrawal will call into question the WHO’s financial viability.”

Of course, many Democrats, global health experts, and editorial pages attacked the move as “dangerous,” “likely to cost lives” and lead to a loss of U.S. “influence.”*

Influence? 

Those running the United Nations or its agencies cannot now ignore U.S. complaints. 

The threat of funding cuts? 

No longer are they mere bluster only for show.

Mr. Trump may feel lonesome . . . what other U.S. president would buck** the establishment to stop our tax dollars from flowing to an unaccountable U.N. agency? 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* “On my first day as President,” Democratic Party candidate Joe Biden pledged on Twitter, “I will rejoin the WHO and restore our leadership on the world stage.”

** Some have disputed the president’s constitutional authority to unilaterally withdraw from the WHO. “[T]he U.S. joined the WHO via a joint resolution rather than through the mechanism set out in the Constitution’s Treaty Clause, it is what is sometimes termed an ex post congressional-executive agreement,” explains University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Jean Galbraith. “Presidents have withdrawn the U.S. from such agreements on a few prior occasions.”

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national politics & policies political economy too much government

The Slow Bullet

slow motion bullet, debt,

Modern government finance is like Russian Roulette . . . but with incredibly slow bullets.

We spend money. We create money out of thin air. We borrow it. We promise the Moon. We deliver rocks. With each action, we spin the chamber and pull the trigger. That slowround doesn’t immediately hit, so we do it again.

Calling the perennial deficits and ballooning debt a “predictable crisis,” Nick Gillespie at Reason writes that our federal government’s debt “is already choking down economic growth, but in the future, it could lead to ‘sudden inflation,’ and ‘a loss of confidence in the federal government’s ability or commitment to repay its debts in full.’” And worse: “‘Such a crisis could spread globally’ causing some ‘financial institutions to fail.’ That’s all according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which has been warning Americans about the long-term consequence of the ballooning debt for years.”

This is an old warning. I have been talking about it for years, too. So have you. But once politicians start playing the game, it’s hard for them to stop. They see and we see the benefits, but that slow motion slug has yet to strike the target. 

Gillespie makes a better analogy than “slow bullets” (which don’t exist): “Like the coronavirus, the debt problem has the potential to seemingly appear out of the blue and turn our world upside down in a matter of weeks.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb gained fame talking about “black swans,” major events we cannot predict. But he insists that the financial crisis resulting from government overspending is not a black swan. It’s predictable. We just do not know when.

Here’s a fourth analogy:

In free fall, you don’t feel a thing . . . until you hit the pavement.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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