Category: national politics & policies

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom ideological culture media and media people moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies Regulating Protest too much government

Twitter’s Merkel Tactics or Merkel’s Twitter Tactics?

Twitter, censorship, Germany, Merkel, speech, double standard

Is Twitter cooperating with Germany’s new crackdown on social-media speech because otherwise it risks steep penalties? Or is Twitter just doing what it would do anyway?

When Germany’s new law against unwelcome speech went into effect this year, many Germans protested. “Please spare us the thought police!” was the headline in one top-selling paper, Bild.

The law requires social-media sites to block unapproved content — which includes “hate speech” and “fake news” — within 24 hours or face exorbitant fines. (Of course, every piece of news, no matter how well or shabbily reported, gets decried as hateful “fake news” by somebody.) Under the new law, Twitter suspended the accounts of two officials of the political party Alternative for Germany who tweeted that Muslim men have violent proclivities. Hateful, fake, inexact, whatever, such tweets by themselves threaten nobody and violate nobody’s rights.

Did Twitter act only under duress here?

Well, in the U.S., the company is not ordered by our government to muzzle anybody except perhaps terrorists or persons directly instigating a crime. Yet Twitter regularly suspends or bans users whose speech it considers objectionable. Moreover, it has become notorious for especially targeting speech that can be regarded as on the right end of the political spectrum — while leaving intact the tweet-speech of left-wing micro-bloggers no matter how threatening or abusive.

I don’t say America’s government should become involved. It should certainly not compel Twitter to drop its double standard.

Instead, it is Twitter itself that should become involved . . . and drop its double standard.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment general freedom government transparency ideological culture moral hazard national politics & policies Regulating Protest tax policy too much government

Still at Large

IRS, drain the swamp, Trump, Lois Lerner, tax, tax man

Blogger Paul Caron, dean of Pepperdine Law School, still counts the days since we learned that the IRS was blocking applications for nonprofit status from right-leaning groups at the behest of former IRS honcho Lois Lerner.

Now years later, the agency can still arbitrarily victimize any one of us. Nor have Lerner and other bad guys been brought to justice. Lerner collects a six-figure pension, instead.

And so, on Day 1699, Caron highlighted Kimberly Strassel’s proposal that President Trump make 2018 “the year of civil-service reform — a root-and-branch overhaul of the government itself. Call it Operation Drain the Swamp.” Exhibit A? The IRS and civil “servants” like “Lois Lerner, the IRS official who used her powers to silence conservative nonprofits.”  

And on Day 1709, Caron called our attention to Lerner’s attempt to suppress a deposition she gave in June “for a civil suit that victims [of IRS targeting] brought in 2013.” Lerner thinks we have no right to know why she felt justified in discriminating against applicants for tax-exempt status based on their political viewpoint.

Unfortunately, not everyone cares about justice as much as Caron.

Consider an obtuse Washington Post editorial pretending that the IRS didn’t really target conservative groups. Instead, “conservative groups, their allies in Congress and the IRS itself all bear responsibility” for the appearance otherwise.

And the aftermath.

Uh huh. If only victims of the abuse of power would stop being so indelicate as to object!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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

Ho Hum

Donald Trump, sex, scandal, Stormy,

The President of the United States allegedly had an affair — or a one-night stand with attempts at an affair — with a porn star. And paid her to keep silent. While he was married to his current wife, and his son was an infant. Donald Trump denies it, but a variety of reporters claim to have multiple corroborations.

It’s all very tawdry.

And it looks like it has elicited . . . yawns.

Sure, the newsmedia push it. But the American people seem almost bored.

The election of Donald Trump marks the end of an era, maybe. Trump has overwhelming support from social conservatives, and it isn’t for his morals. Meanwhile, the Left loathes the Donald for alleged mistreatment of women, which they deemed so unimportant when documented against President Bill Clinton that it birthed the “move on” movement.

So, what changed?

The political divide between left and right is now so forbidding that questions of character pale. Democrats won’t like Trump even were he to usher in the Millennium, and Trump might have to tattoo a 666 on his forehead and anoint himself the Beast to shake off his so-con support.

For conservatives, the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency, after eight years of Obamamania in the media, was simply too much to bear. Indeed, a large swarth of the Democratic Party faithful didn’t quite trust her.

As for Democrats, the inability to defeat an opposing candidate caught on audiotape bragging about grabbing women’s private parts must be as frustrating as devil-with-a-blue-dress Bill’s success in the 1990s was for Republicans.

Character? So passé.

I wonder if it will come back.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability crime and punishment government transparency media and media people moral hazard national politics & policies privacy Snowden

Clapper into the Clink?

James Clapper, lies, Congress, testimony, Senate Intelligence Committee, surveillance, civil liberty

Lying to Congress is a strange crime. A number of people have been prosecuted for it over the years, but Congress isn’t a court of law and, more to the point, Congress may present the densest source of lies in the United States.

The idea that it would be illegal for a citizen to lie to a den of liars is, well, a bit amusing.

But it is illegal, and definitely should be illegal, for government functionaries to give false testimony before Congress.

That’s why the case of the admittedly “untruthful”* James Clapper is so aggravating. When asked by Senator Ron Wyden, on the Senate floor, about data collection of phone calls by the U.S. federal government, he — the director of national intelligence under President Barack Obama from 2010 to 2017 — lied through his teeth.

And had not Edward Snowden leaked information on the National Security Administration’s metadata collection program, we would not have learned anything about it.

No wonder, then, that several congressmen want to prosecute Clapper before March 12, when the Statute of Limitations runs out on his crime. Steven Nelson at the Washington Examiner quotes Rep. Ted Poe (R-Tex.), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.), and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) as all being in favor of siccing federal prosecutors on the forked tongue spymaster.

Senator Wyden warns that letting lies such as Clapper’s go unaddressed encourages Americans to be cynical about government, and “makes it possible, even probable, for hucksters and authoritarians to take power.”

Too late?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Clapper’s March 2013 whopper at the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing was that the NSA was “not wittingly” collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Later, to MSNBC, he characterized his artful dodge as having been “the least untruthful” way for him to respond.

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Accountability government transparency insider corruption moral hazard national politics & policies porkbarrel politics too much government

Earmark This Bad Argument

earmarks, ear marks, pork, Congress, spending, corrumption, deals

With President Trump endorsing a return to earmarks, House Republicans too are reportedly “reconsidering” their usefulness and pondering “how they might ease back into the practice.” Lawmakers fret that they have lost too much power by giving up this instrument of corruption. (Not their characterization.)

Wikipedia defines “earmark” as a budgetary provision that “directs funds to a specific recipient while circumventing the merit-based or [competitive] allocation process.” An earmark is a taxpayer-funded goodie bestowed on a congressman’s constituent, the sort of crony willing to contribute to the bestower’s next election campaign in return.

Quid pro quo, pay-for-play, bribery. Whatever you call it, there’s darn good reason why political leaders who fight corruption have fought to end earmarks.

Congressional Republicans imposed a ban on earmarks in 2011 to show that they were anti-corruption. So why relapse? Well, “the time is right,” according to GOP Representative John Culberson, for Congress to prove it can use earmarks responsibly. His bad argument is that the “excesses” of a decade ago were committed by “knuckleheads [who] went overboard.”

Somebody alert Culberson to the fact that many of the same knuckleheads are still in office. Ahem. Congress is not yet term-limited, remember?

The more basic point is that earmarks are by nature corrosive of sound government. President Trump’s only metric is apparently “getting [things] done” as opposed to obstructionism, preferring “the great friendliness” when we had earmarks. Sure, stuff got done — a lot more spending, a lot more bad stuff.

To the extent they’re gone, earmarks should stay gone. The only appropriate action is to make it even harder to bring them back.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Accountability general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies privacy tax policy

Hey, It’s Your Money

tax cut, trickle down, supply side, taxes, jobs, employment

I leave it up to you how to spend your own money. You decide, based on your own circumstances and priorities.

Oh, you don’t need my permission?

Of course not.

But some people think that if you spend your own money on your own priorities in accordance with your own judgment, it is indeed a problem. At least when you get to keep more of your own money because of tax cuts.

President Trump has often suggested that recipients of new corporate tax cuts will spend the additional money mostly on increasing wages and hiring new workers. Yet some major corporations reportedly say that they will spend the additional money on paying dividends or buying back shares. Maybe others will buy more advertising, storage space or tools. Various commentators fret. But why should a firm hire new workers if other expenditures would be more productive at the moment?

Of course, in the long run, a company that is more profitable and successful can hire more people and can pay them more.

But wages are not the only expense that companies must cover in order to be successful in the long run. Managers do, and should, devote resources first to the improvements that they conclude are most urgent. That a company’s resources increase because of a tax cut doesn’t alter the necessity or reasonableness of pursuing economic goals in accordance with one’s best judgment.

An approach that, to be sure, also benefits present employees as well as future ones.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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